"Labyrinth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seat and answering abstractedly, Mantel replied, "Each new day of life renders it more inexplicable. A man no sooner forms a theory than he is compelled to abandon it. I fear it is a labyrinth from which we shall none of ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of odd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no two parts of which were of one precise shade—owing I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times—this same arm of his, I say, looked for all the world like a ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... whom he feared to wake. Drawing the bow across the strings, he invoked a sweet plaintive sound, like the first sigh of the wind among the trees; then, without further preliminary wandered off into a strange labyrinth of melody, wherein it seemed that the voices of women and angels clamoured one against the other,—the appeals of earth with the refusals of Heaven,—the loneliness of life with the fulness of immortality,—so, rising, falling, sobbing, praying, alternately, the music expostulated with ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... suppose that this traitor prince would desert the emperor, who had so splendidly rewarded his services, and return to the rescue of those princes whom he had so basely betrayed? But who can thread the labyrinth of an intriguing and selfish heart? Who can calculate the movements of an unprincipled and restless politician? Maurice, at length, awoke to the perception of the real condition of his country. He saw its liberties being overturned ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... afternoon, and the shades and colours on the mountains and the sea were a labyrinth of delight. Yes, the eye and the mind lost themselves again and again, to start back again to the consciousness of an enchanted existence. The mountains rising from the coast were in full view of my window, shaded with all sorts of green from the different woods and cultivation which clothed ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... as geographical and historical changes have since made it, and was certainly far superior to Ostend, even if Ostend had not been almost battered out of existence. It had spacious streets and squares, and excellent fortifications in perfectly good condition. It was situate in a watery labyrinth, many slender streams from the interior and several saltwater creeks being complicated around it, and then flowing leisurely, in one deep sluggish channel, to the sea. The wrath of Leicester, when all his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... still fleeted across his face; he seemed as if weighing his thoughts in the balance, and the considerations he was resolving left him still silent. Austin tried to shake off the remembrance of tragedies as hopeless and perplexed as the labyrinth of Daedalus, and began to talk in an indifferent voice of the more pleasant incidents ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... apologized and left me. Nor did this specimen of the "genus homo" evince any unusual ignorance of woman's work, whose endless routine and diversified drudgery ofttimes require the patience of a Job and the wisdom of a Solomon. In the labyrinth of domestic entanglement more is needed than the silken clue of Ariadne, and the vexed question of domestic economy requires the unerring skill of the diplomatist, the subtle tact of the politician, and the sure strength of the statesman. The "Poet of Poets" has shown his appreciation ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... that I am lost," he explained. "Unless you can guide me out of this labyrinth of ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Zoega," I answered, looking gloomily toward the dry land, toward which my horse was now headed, plunging frantically in a labyrinth of tufts, his ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... deliberation—our course must now be ahead, so we stood across the lake-like expanse I have spoken of, where as much caution as before was necessary; for it was full of reefs, and in another quarter of an hour we were again threading the labyrinth-like canals, from which we had before emerged. Every instant I hoped to come upon the chase, but still as we ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... though they had been soldiers expecting an ambuscade; the graceful forms of the women bowing and bending over their horses' manes, and often leaving fragments of their mantillas and rebozas on the branches and thorns of the labyrinth through which we were struggling. But it was no time to indulge in contemplation of the picturesque, and of this we were constantly made aware by the anxious vociferations of the Mexicans. "Vamos! Por Dios, vamos!" cried they, if the slightest symptom of flagging ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... expire, and we laugh at the last price of them. But what signifies the fate of those tickets of despotism? The despotism will find despotic means of supply. They have found the short cut to the productions of nature, while others, in pursuit of them, are obliged to wind through the labyrinth of a very intricate state of society. They seize upon the fruit of the labour; they seize upon the labourer himself. Were France but half of what it is in population, in compactness, in applicability of its force, situated as it is, and being what it is, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... the wooden incline to where their sleepy black chairmen lay on the grass, waiting; and presently the two double chairs wheeled away toward that amusing maze of jungle pathways cut through the impenetrable hammock, and popularly known as the labyrinth. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... inner wall of each chamber "seem to be the first rudiments of those which, in the higher classes (i.e. in animals with a spinal column), are extended in the form of canals and spiral chambers, within the substance of the dense nidus of the labyrinth."[59] ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... became less and less broken by the talkative vein. His forefinger rubbed away defects in the aspect of faces or animals with a lion-like suppleness of sweep that seemed to me to wipe out the world. We also had a delicious game of a labyrinth of lines, which it was necessary to traverse with the pencil without touching the hedges, as I called the winding marks. We wandered in and around without a murmur, and I reveled in delight ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... canvassed, and he had walked behind. Every now and then he had attempted a little conversation, but in that he had been immediately pulled up by the conscientious and energetic Mr. Trigger. As for asking for votes, he hardly knew, when he had been carried back into the main street through a labyrinth of alleys at the back of Petticoat Yard, whether he had asked any man for his vote or not. With the booking of the votes he had, of course, nothing to do. There were three men with books;—and three other men to open the ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... finish this cigar, Jack," said Maurice, who wished to be alone with his thoughts. He sat in the chair by the window and lifted his feet to the sill. The night wind was warm and odorous. He had found a clue, but through what labyrinth would it lead him? A strange adventure, indeed; so strange that he was of half a mind that he dreamed. Prisoners.... Why? And these two women alone in this old chateau, a house party. There lay below all this ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... the quiet earth, and clots of sea-pink blooming on their sides instead of heather; and the great sea-conger to wreathe about the base of them instead of the poisonous viper of the land. On calm days you can go wandering between them in a boat for hours, echoes following you about the labyrinth; but when the sea is up, Heaven help the man that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... found a short flight of stairs, and below that yet another, which brought them to a glass door. Opening this, they entered a room which Casanova immediately identified as the ducal chancellery. Descent from one of its windows would have been easy, but they would have found themselves in the labyrinth of courts and alleys behind Saint Mark's, which would not have suited ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... minutes sufficed for saddling up the mule with his load, and then they started once more farther into the wilds, in all the glorious beauty of the early summer morning, Melchior leading them in and out through such a labyrinth of cracks and rifts that after some hours' walking, Saxe glanced ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... The entrance to her retreat was so curiously concealed by projections of rock, that she had nothing to fear but from sound. But she could not be sure of this; and she would have extinguished her fire by heaping sand upon it, and left herself in total darkness in a labyrinth which was always sufficiently perplexing, if Rollo had not held her hand. He stepped cautiously through the sand to the nearest point to the foe, listened awhile, and then smiled and nodded to Lady Carse, and seemed wonderfully delighted. This excited her ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... trait in the character of Alexander, even long before he had been exalted to a high dignity in the Church. He advanced rapidly into power, stepping from one office into another, until at length he found himself in the midst of the labyrinth, without being able to make his way, unless by means of guides as inexperienced as they were treacherous. It was by causes such as these that he brought himself into serious difficulties, not only with the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... I am in a great labyrinth, from which I must work my way out alone. Nevertheless, my friend, keep near me." Unconsciously she pressed his arm. He started, and turned his head away. The next moment he added, in a somewhat constrained voice, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... scurrilous assailants of the government. In truth, those who knew his habits tracked him as men track a mole. It was his nature to grub underground. Whenever a heap of dirt was flung up, it might well be suspected that he was at work in some foul crooked labyrinth below. Pitt turned away from the filthy work of opposition, with the same scorn with which he had turned away from the filthy work of government. He had the magnanimity to proclaim everywhere the disgust which he felt at the insults offered by his own adherents to the Scottish nation, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... than the pyramids is the labyrinth near Lake Moeris, and still more wonderful is Lake Moeris itself, all which were made by the twelve kings who ruled at once after Sethon. And after them, Psammetichus made himself the monarch; and after him his great grandson Apries prospered greatly, till he was overthrown by Amasis. And Amasis ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... four days we reached the Hudson Bay waters, the Savanne connecting through a long chain of lakes and rivers with Lake Winnipeg. Lac des Milles Lacs, into which we soon entered, is a perfect labyrinth of lakes and islands. Here and there were expectant Indians come out to meet us in their frail bark canoes, and, paddling up alongside, they joined the cluster at our stern. A strange and impressive sight was it when we at length hove in sight of the "Height of Land," a huge ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... Chapel of St. Mark were striking the hour of eight o'clock when, Fra Giovanni stepped from his gondola, and crossed the great square toward that labyrinth of narrow streets and winding alleys they call ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... wide; farmers dig canals to their barns and bring in their produce in barges instead of hay wagons.[669] Holland, where the ancient Romans constructed channels in the Rhine delta and where the debouchment courses of the Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt present a labyrinth of waterways, has to-day 1903 miles (3069 kilometers) of canals, which together with the navigable rivers, have been important geographic factors in the historical preeminence of Dutch foreign commerce. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... despair. After periods of exalted hope, stimulated by the girl's sublime confidence, there would come the inevitable backward rush of all the chilling fear, despondency, and false thought which he had just expelled in vain, and he would be left again floundering helplessly in the dismal labyrinth of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... here, it's there, Is Vanity Fair. It's not like a labyrinth, not like a lair. It's North and it's South, and it's East and it's West; You can see it, oh, anywhere, quite at its best. Dame Fashion is queen, Ready Money is king, You can join it, provided you don't know a thing. It's miles over here, and it's miles over there; ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... to cutlets. A very mild shandygaff was compounded for him in an old Oriel pewter. Both children made love to Miss Blossom with their eyes. It was not at all what Merton felt inclined to do; the lady had entangled him in a labyrinth of puzzledom. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... can rival the sublime and beautiful images that crowd the creased and folded labyrinth of the human brain; as far beyond the ken and analysis of the biologist's microscope, as some remote nebulae shining in blue gulfs of interstellar space, that no telescopic Jense can ever discover, even as a faint blur of silvery mist upon the black ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Follingsbee party, therefore, Rose accepted Harry as an escort in simple good faith. She was by no means so wise as not to have a deal of curiosity about it, and not a little of dazed and dazzled sense of enjoyment in prospect of the perfect labyrinth of fairy-land which the ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to be a regular labyrinth, my Captain," said Leclair, in French. "Surely a trap of some kind. They are clever, these Arabs. They let the mouse run ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... clergyman, and took his arm to walk. Bayham then fell to Mr. Pendennis's lot, and they went together. Through Hill Street and Berkeley Square their course was straight enough; but at Hay Hill, Mr. Bayham made an abrupt tack larboard, engaging in a labyrinth of stables, and walking a long way round from Clifford Street, whither we were bound. He hinted at a cab, but Pendennis refused to ride, being, in truth, anxious to see which way his eccentric companion would steer. "There are reasons," growled Bayham, "which need not be explained to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Peter. Irenaeus and Eusebius set Anacletus before him; Epiphanius and Optatus, both Anacletus and Cletus; Augustinus and Damasus, with others, make Anacletus, Cletus, and Linus all to precede him. What way shall we find to extricate ourselves out of this labyrinth?" [65:1] The different lists preserved attest that there was no such continuous and homogeneous line of bishops as the doctrine of the apostolical succession implies. When Irenaeus speaks of Polycarp as having "received his appointment in Asia from apostles as bishop ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... to pick up the wounded. Little puffs of white smoke dot the distant sandhills. Here and there a gaudy flag waves defiantly. In front the green tops of the palm-trees by the Nile tantalise but stimulate the soldiers. On the left the great mud labyrinth of Metemma stretches indefinitely. Suddenly the firing stops. The low scrub in front is alive with the swarming figures of the enemy. All the flags dance forward together. Ragged white figures spring up ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... here, very warm now, and comfortable, and she is somewhere along the shore—perhaps—she and John, as wet as drowned rats. Well, well, I had best tell you the tale from the beginning, or else we never shall be out of the labyrinth.—We started from Pulwick, for a ride by the shore, Madelon and I. When we were on the strand it came on to rain. There was smoke out of your chimney. I proposed a canter as far as the ruins, for shelter. I knew very well Madelon would not follow; but I threw poor Lucifer—you know Lucifer, Mr. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... considering the short time he had been a resident, and his woodlore, applied to the maze of tortuous narrow alleys made him a hunter not easily baffled. He saw the flutter of a cloak as its wearer turned down a narrow lane, and a rapid mental picture of the labyrinth illuminating his mind, Wilhelm took a dozen long strides to a corner and there stood waiting. A few moments later a panting man with cloak streaming behind him came near to transfixing himself on the point of the Commander's sword. The runner pulled himself ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... my life through the very heart of Nagasaki, I cast an inquiring look outside, at the risk of receiving a drenching: we were trotting along through a mean, narrow, little back street (there are thousands like it, a labyrinth of them), the rain falling in cascades from the tops of the roofs on the gleaming flagstones below, rendering everything indistinct and vague through the misty atmosphere. At times we passed a woman struggling with her skirts, unsteadily tripping along in her high wooden shoes, looking ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... lights—only now and then the flare of a torch which showed the grey stone houses, with every window latticed and shuttered. I had put out my headlights and had only side lamps, so we had to pick our way gingerly through the labyrinth. I hoped we would strike Sandy's quarters soon, for we were all pretty empty, and a frost had set in which made our thick coats seem as ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... all your bright Designs, And where you point the varying Soul inclines: See! Love and Friendship, the fair Theme inspires We glow with Zeal, we melt in soft Desires! Thro' the dire Labyrinth of Ills we share The kindred Sorrows of the gen'rous Pair; Till, pleas'd, rewarded Vertue we behold, Shine from the ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... cases, impracticable, and in others is so seldom practised, that it is frequent rather to incur loss than to seek for legal reparation, by entering a labyrinth of which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... sunshine by itself, late and lingering, never sound at heart. She floated on, with the light in her dusky eyes and the seldom rose on her cheek,—floated on from moonbeam to moonbeam,—and the lovers brought back their glances and gave them to each other. For one, life opened a labyrinth of warmth and light and joy; for the other, youth was passed, destiny not to be appeased: if his affection enriched her, the best he could do was to bestow it; in his love there ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... arrest attention on one guiding and dominating consideration, which may become a thread to lead us safely through the labyrinth, saving us the trouble of working out difficult speculations, and averting from us the danger of injuring ourselves by falls in the dark. The Lord delivered and the evangelist recorded this parable for the purpose of teaching, warning, directing, not spirits disembodied in the other world, but ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Reigns in Egypt. He adorned Memphis, and translated the seat of his Empire thither from Thebes. There he built the famous Labyrinth, and the northern portico of the Temple of Vulcan, and dug the great Lake called the Lake of Moeris, and upon the bottom of it built two great Pyramids of brick: and these things being not mentioned by Homer or Hesiod, were unknown to them, and done after ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... English forebears, who had considerately made history and bequeathed portraits and plate. But the path of Japhet in search of a father was primrose beside the American's in search of an ancestor, and Cora's researches were long barren of result. The labyrinth of Brown, her maiden name, she speedily forsook, though at the outset it seemed to run promisingly to knighthood, literature, and art; Huggins, her mother's name, was impossible, and Hilliard, more sounding, clearly ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... assured us; but I think she did so quite as much simply in order to show that she felt at home in Naples, and knew the city thoroughly. Indeed, she needed to know it very thoroughly to venture by night into that labyrinth of subterranean alleys and flights of steps. If ever any many showed absolute docility in allowing himself to be guided, that man was myself. Dante never followed the steps of Beatrice with more confidence than I felt in following those ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... authority, and obedience was obligatory. The word rendered 'statutes' means something engraved, or written, and recalls the tables inscribed by God's finger. 'Judgments' are the divine decisions or sentences as to what is right, and therefore the infallible clue to the else bewildering labyrinth. To obey these commandments, to read that solemn writing, and to accept these decisions as our guides, is man's perfection and blessedness; and for that God's felt presence ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... readers fair warning that I am about to plunge, for a chapter or two, into as complete a labyrinth as ever historian was perplexed withal; therefore, I advise them to take fast hold of my skirts, and keep close at my heels, venturing neither to the right hand nor to the left, lest they get bemired in ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... ennoblement of their own lives. No book has sold more largely than the Imitation of Christ. But was it not often a blind struggle in the dark, an attempt to reach a goal never clearly seen. Wandering in a labyrinth of fanaticism, agonizing in the effort to distort nature, the biographical record of religious aspiration serves to show how nearly multitudes may approach the boundary line of insanity in their protracted periods ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... feet below the surface of the earth. The ways are so intricate, and the subterranean so vast, and the dungeons so numerous that the base Ethiop, who has obeyed his master's orders in confining her, has himself been lost in the labyrinth, and has not been able to discover what dungeon he put her in. For three days he has been looking for it, during which our heroine has been without food, and he is still searching and scratching his woolly ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... adorn'd me. Bear with my ventrous and bold approach. And since not vain Curiosity, nor fond Conceit, nor Love of aught save Thee alone, inspires me with such thoughts as these, be thou my Assistant, and guide me in this Pursuit; whilst I venture thus to tread the Labyrinth of wide Nature, and endeavour to trace thee ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... Minos and prevailed on him to make peace, on the condition that every nine years they should send him a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens. The most tragic of the legends states these poor children when they reached Crete were thrown into the Labyrinth, and there either were devoured by the Minotaur or else perished with hunger, being unable to find the way out. The Minotaur, as ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... sweet lady go, Whom years agone he saw for evermore. "Ah me!" he said; "my dreams are come for me, Now they shall have their time." And home he went, And slept and moaned, and woke, and raved, and wept. Through all the net-drawn labyrinth of his brain The fever raged, like pent internal fire. His father soon was by him; and the hand Of his one sister soothed him. Days went by. As in a summer evening, after rain, He woke to sweet quiescent consciousness; Enfeebled much, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... steamship "Hungarian," on which the wretched pair had embarked, was ploughing the waters of Lake St. Louis. After a time they passed through the Beauharnois and Cornwall canals, and entered the labyrinth of beautiful patches known as the "Thousands Islands." As they emerged from this lovely spot the saloon became suddenly filled with smoke, and in a few minutes cries of "Fire! Fire!" were heard on every hand. ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... Rosamond's corpse was deposited. It was at Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, then a royal palace, that in the twelfth century Henry II. built "Fair Rosamond's Bower" for his charmer, who was the daughter of Lord Clifford. This bower was surrounded by a labyrinth. Queen Eleanor, whom the king had married only from ambitious motives, was much older than he, and he had two sons by Rosamond, whom he is said to have first met at Godstow Nunnery. The bower consisted of arched vaults underground. There are various legends of the discovery of Rosamond by Eleanor, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... out my poor boy?" asked Lady Oldfield, as they hurried along through a labyrinth of by-streets, each dirtier and more ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... The only remains of palaces are the pavilion of Rameses III. at Medinet Abou, and another at Semneh. The Royal Labyrinth has so completely perished that even its site is uncertain. The Egyptians lived so much out of doors that the house was a less important edifice than in colder climates. Egyptian dwellings were probably in most cases built of wood or crude brick, and their disappearance is ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... war broke out is like threading the Cretan Labyrinth in a dense fog. The fog, curiously enough, which now seldom lifts, would seem to form an integral part of the politics. For one of the maxims of the present chief of the Consulta, Baron Sonnino, is that secrecy ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... place with which he was acquainted, except London, did the buildings completely shut out the woods and fields. Large as Bristol might then appear, it occupied but a very small portion of the area on which it now stands. A few churches of eminent beauty rose out of a labyrinth of narrow lanes built upon vaults of no great solidity. If a coach or a cart entered those alleys, there was danger that it would be wedged between the houses, and danger also that it would break in the cellars. Goods were therefore ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... will, I fear, give the reader too favourable an opinion of the original sentence. In order to make the story at all intelligible, I have had to pick out my facts, from a perfect labyrinth of sentences and parentheses. All I, or any one else can state is, that these seem to be the facts, which seem to have been proved by the witnesses. What the character of the evidence was, or what was the relative credibility of the witnesses, whose ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... In striking contrast to the undisturbed disorder, so redolent of middle-age alchemy, was the big table that flanked the laboratory through its whole length. It began with a powerful galvanic battery, succeeded by a wiry labyrinth of coils and helices, with little keys in front of them like a telegraph-office retired from business; these gave place to many-necked jars wired together by twos and threes, like oath-bound patriots plotting treason; beyond them stood ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... great is builded rich and round, And in the centre of the inmost hold There lies a garden sweet, on fertile ground, Fairer than that where grew the trees of gold: The cunning sprites had buildings reared around With doors and entries false a thousandfold, A labyrinth they made that fortress brave, Like Daedal's ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... worked his way through the brake, which formed a labyrinth of flesh-colored flower-clusters, he saw before ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... condition sine qua non of Darwinism and Weismannism. For any one, who has studied the work of Eimer and still adheres to this fundamental error of Darwinism, there is no possible escape from the labyrinth into which he has allowed the hand of Darwinism ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... murmured, with a nod of her head towards the stairs, and with slightly heightened color, Miss Ray smiled acceptance at the captain, and, following Sandy's lead through the labyrinth of steamer-chairs about them, tripped briskly away over the open deck, and there, at the very foot of the steep, ladder-like ascent, became aware of Mr. Stuyvesant leaning on an elbow and gazing at her with all his ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... Jewish quarter of Prague represents a remarkable labyrinth of crooked and narrow streets; it is situated in the outskirts of Prague which witnessed numerous bloody episodes of Bohemian and German history. The dwellers of the dirty and dilapidated houses of this quarter are engaged in petty trading and profiteering ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... person, and pleasant wit, with other amiable qualities, being verelie a rare and perlesse pece in those daies. [Sidenote: Rosamund his concubine.] He made for hir an house at Woodstocke in Oxfordshire, like a labyrinth, with such turnings and windings in & out as a knot in a garden called a maze, that no creature might find hir nor come to hir, except he were instructed by the king, or such as were secret with him in that matter. ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... this crooked business! This intercourse with the world, which obliges one to see the worst side of human nature! Why cannot you be content with the object you had first in view, when you entered into this wearisome labyrinth?—I know very well that you have imperceptibly been drawn on; yet why does one project, successful or abortive, only give place to two others? Is it not sufficient to avoid poverty?—I am contented to do my part; and, even here, sufficient ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... were being driven carefully out of the courtyard. Careful was the word all night, and it was an alleviation of our miseries that we did not often enjoy. In general, as we were driven the better part of the night and day, often at a pretty quick pace and always through a labyrinth of the most infamous country lanes and by-roads, we were so bruised upon the bench, so dashed against the top and sides of the cart, that we reached the end of a stage in truly pitiable case, sometimes flung ourselves down ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to west, are charged with different coats of arms, said to be those of the families who attended Duke William in his invasion of England. The intervals between each of these rows are filled up with a kind of tessellated pavement, the middle whereof represents a maze or labyrinth, about ten feet in diameter, and so artfully contrived that were we to suppose a man following all the intricate meanders of its volutes, he could not travel less than a mile before he got from one end to ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... of the Queen of the Scythians, Zarina, which was a stadium high and three in circumference, and which was decorated with a colossal figure; the fourteen Etruscan pyramids, which are said to have been enclosed in the labyrinth of the king Porsenna, at Clusium—were reared to serve as the sepulchres of the illustrious dead. Nothing is more natural to men than to commemorate the spot where rest the ashes of those whose memory they cherish whether it be, as in the infancy of the race, by simple mounds of earth, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Came near to gaze upon his noble form And gentle, loving but majestic face, And thought some god had deigned to visit men. And thus he sat, still as the rock his seat, Seeking to pierce the void from whence man came, To look beyond the veil that shuts him in, To find a clue to life's dark labyrinth, Seeking to know why man is cast adrift Upon the bosom of a troubled sea, His boat so frail, his helm and compass lost, To sink at last in dull oblivion's depths; When nature seems so perfect and complete, Grand as a whole, and perfect all its parts, Which from ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... our sovereigns, and often said that it was a pity that the great fire had not spared the old portico of St. Paul's and the stately arcades of Gresham's Bourse, and taken in exchange that ugly old labyrinth of dingy brick and plastered timber. It might now be hoped that we should have a Louvre. Before the ashes of the old palace were cold, plans for a new palace were circulated and discussed. But William, who ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and even different varieties of the same plant, use these elements in widely differing proportions; then you begin to understand what a complex matter this question of manuring is and why it is so much discussed and so little understood. What a labyrinth it offers for any writer—to say nothing of ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... came Effie and Grace, dragging a box-sled in which the baby was comfortably stowed, and Kitty, the nurse, brought up the rear, leading little Harry. The two boys met them at some distance from the snow palace, and told them they must go through the labyrinth before they could reach the place ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... objects, glorious and beautiful in the sunlight. Theology became visibly a shrivelled thing. Men grew to be conscious of the vastness of the universe. At the same time and by the same process the Encyclopaedia gave them a key to the plan, a guiding thread in the immense labyrinth. The genealogical tree, or classification of arts and sciences, which with a few modifications was borrowed from Bacon and appeared at the end of the Prospectus, is seen to be faulty and inadequate. It distributes the various branches of knowledge with reference to faculties of the human understanding, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... hits of chance, with a bezo las manos to Fortune, or a bare gramercy to my good stars. Abraham might have thought the ram in the thicket came thither by accident: human reason would have said that mere chance conveyed Moses in the ark to the sight of Pharaoh's daughter. What a labyrinth is there in the story of Joseph! able to con- vert a stoick. Surely there are in every man's life certain rubs, doublings, and wrenches, which pass a while under the effects of chance; but at the last, well examined, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... to be teased by a little fear that Gerald was not quite his usual self. She did not think of him as tipsy. The idea of his being tipsy would have shocked her. She did not think clearly at all. She was lost and dazed in the labyrinth of new and vivid impressions into which Gerald had led her. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... ayre; Greece will the olde Ephesian buildings blaze, And Nylus nurslings their Pyramidcs faire; The same yet vaunting Greece will tell the storie Of Ioves great image in Olympus placed; Mausolus worke will be the Carians glorie, And Crete will boast the Labyrinth, now raced; The antique Rhodian will likewise set forth The great Colosse, erect to Memorie; And what els in the world is of like worth, Some greater learned wit will magnifie. But I will sing above all moniments Seven Romane Hils, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... taking place is the gradual adoption of the new agriculture. "Book-farmin'" is still decried, and many "perfessers" have a rocky road to travel in their attempts to guide the masses through the labyrinth of scientific knowledge that has been constructed during the last decade or two. This difficulty has not been wholly the farmer's fault—the scientist would often have been more persuasive had his wings been clipped. ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... as this made him feel uncomfortable and humiliated. Until this was explained in some way he knew that he would be able to find rest neither by night nor by day. He was, therefore, resolved to press things forward, in hopes of getting some clew at least to the labyrinth in which his mind was wandering. He therefore took Lord Chetwynde by the arm and drew him up toward Hilda, so that he stood between ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... account of Powell's second expedition, Dellenbaugh tells of ancient ruins found below Labyrinth Canyon. "Small huts for storage were found there in the cliffs, and on a promontory, about thirty feet above the water, were the ruins of stone buildings, one of which, twelve by twenty feet in dimensions, had walls still standing ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... again and continued on her errand; crossed Tottenham Court Road, plunged into a labyrinth of blocked alleys, of dark courts, and, suddenly, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... I belong to thee, am thine, my Ganem! Ask me not now how this has come to pass: This is the centre of a labyrinth, But now we stand here. Wilt thou not behold me! He gave me freedom, he himself, my husband ... Why does thy countenance ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Banner, entered the Oriental Building, that dingy pile of brick and brownstone which covers a block on Sixth Avenue, and began to hunt for the office of the Royal Society of Egyptian Exploration and Research. After wandering through a labyrinth of halls, he finally found it on the second floor. A few steps farther on, a stairway led down to one of the side entrances; for the building could be entered from any ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... box some distance off with "a's," and another with "b's," and so on, till presently the lower of the two cases was nearly full. Reginald watched him with something like admiration, inwardly wondering if he would ever be able to find his way about this labyrinth of boxes, and strongly of opinion that only muffs like printers would think of arranging the alphabet in such an absurdly haphazard manner. The lower case being full up, Gedge meekly suggested that as he was yet several feet from his full size, they might as well lift the ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... himself, it is but just to add, had the good sense and candour to renounce his own scheme; and hence we need dwell no longer upon it. It remains at the present day only as a striking example of the frightful contortions of the human mind, in its herculean efforts to escape from the dark labyrinth of fate into the clear and open light ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... most numerous. On the east coast, at the head of the Burdekin River, there are unmistakeable signs of an upward effort of the imprisoned waters to free themselves. One main tributary, a creek called Fletcher's Creek, takes its rise in a labyrinth of basaltic rocks, that for years defied the efforts of the whites to penetrate. This stream rising from its cradle in the dead lava, winds in and out of the encompassing stretches of rocks, until it emerges on the outer country, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... complacency—including, it would seem, a touch of the vanity of personal appearance—in his own. "He frequently," writes Dr. Carrlyon, "recited his own poetry, and not unfrequently led us further into the labyrinth of his metaphysical elucidations, either of particular passages or of the original conception of any of his productions, than we were able to follow him. At the conclusion, for instance, of the first stanza of Christabel, he would perhaps comment at full length upon ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... possessed the insolent twist of the past fortnight. To receive the cut direct from a man whose pomposity and mental density had excited her wit and amusement, surprised her even if it did not hurt. It had rudely awakened her to the fact that her independence might be leading her into a labyrinth. She was compelled to admit that at home she would have avoided Warrington, no matter how deeply sorry she might have been. His insistent warning against himself, however, served to arouse nothing more than a subtle obstinacy to do just as she ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... enough too; even in daylight one may sometimes be deceived,—there are turnings and windings without end: in the first place, you must turn three times to the right, then twice to the left, then turn once—stay, is it once or twice, though? at all events, when you get clear of the labyrinth, you will see an avenue of sycamores, and this avenue leads straight to the pavilion in which ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the bridge where the cables are anchored is a labyrinth of trails crossing and recrossing. The Chief explained that Bright Angel, the little wild burro, had made those at a time when high water had marooned him on that small area. While the bridge was being built he hung around constantly, ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... of a block of land would involve years of bargaining even when a majority of its owners wished to sell; that the ascertainment of a title would mean tedious and costly examination by courts of experts of a labyrinth of strange and conflicting barbaric customs; that land might be paid for again and again, and yet be declared unsold; that an almost empty wilderness might be bought first from its handful of occupants, then from the conquerors ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... wholly to himself and his own difficulties, which had reached possibly the worst crisis of his life. He had never been in such a hard place as this. He had heretofore seen a loop-hole out, into another labyrinth in the end, it is true, still a way out. Now he saw none except one; that was into a fiery torture, and whether it was or was not the torture of beneficial sacrifice he could ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Taug nor Teeka saw him as he swung through the trees into the glade. He paused a moment, looking at them; then, with a sorrowful grimace, he turned and faded away into the labyrinth of leafy boughs and festooned moss out of which he ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... formulas in introducing a neophyte to a study designed to subvert the very foundations of the Mosaic cosmogony? I take it the Cavaliere is one of us, since he is here this evening: why, then, permit him to stray even for a moment in the labyrinth of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... sylvan grandeur; here she has scattered, with a liberal hand, every charm that foliage can give to earth, and many a lovely flower to scent the evening breeze. Descend, and in this immense labyrinth you will find a tangled skein of forest paths, in which it is never prudent to ramble alone; as will be seen by the following adventure, which befell a young student who once went to Le Morvan, anticipating infinite pleasure ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... pay is naturally of a higher character; and this, in a business where everything depends upon hand manipulation, is a controlling influence. The factory we select is that of Pusey, Scott & Co., at Madison and Third streets, five stories high and a hundred and sixty feet deep. Over this scented labyrinth we go, up stairs and down; now among the slippery vats, where the hides are deprived of their hair; now into a bright room, where half a dozen pretty sewing-machine girls are stitching the wet, slimy skins into bags; now into gloomy cellars, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... tied to chronology. The Roman poet brings Dido and AEneas together,—the historian parts them far asunder. Homer may or may not have been the contemporary of Laertes. Nothing is idler or more dangerous than to enter a labyrinth without a clew." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of qualities never elsewhere found together; his striking unlikeness to other men in whom great and free nations have for long periods placed their trust. I am not sure that the incessant search for clues through this labyrinth would not end in analysis and disquisition, that might be no great improvement even upon political history. Mr. Gladstone said of reconstruction of the income-tax that he only did not call the task herculean, because Hercules could not have done it. Assuredly, I am not presumptuous ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... hour the carriage threaded its way through a dingy brick labyrinth of streets, growing smaller and smaller and dirtier and dirtier the further we went. Emerging from the labyrinth, I noticed in the gathering darkness dreary patches of waste ground which seemed to be neither town nor country. Crossing these, we passed some forlorn outlying ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... irregular forms, and there are, in fact, an infinite number of irregularities which the slow and grave process of our tribunals can neither take cognizance of, nor put a stop to, nor foresee, nor punish. The audacious or subtle delinquent would triumph in the winding labyrinth of our civil laws. The laws of the police, more direct, watch him, press him, and surround him mose closely. The abuse, is contiguous to the benefit, I admit; but a great many private acts of violence, base and shameful crimes, are repressed by this vigilant ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... walk that we have just had together the summer and the sweetness of living have weighed more than ever on my shoulders. Her huge home, which is such a swarming hive at certain times, is now immensely empty in the labyrinth of its dark stairs and the landings, whence issue the narrow closed streets of its corridors, and where in the corners taps drip upon drain-stones. Our immense—our naked solitude pervades us. An exquisite emotion takes hold of me while we are slowly climbing the steep ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... of proportion may in certain cases disclose, namely, a particular mechanical arrangement which it reveals to us, as through a glass, at the back of the series of effects and causes. Disregard this arrangement, and you let go the only clue capable of guiding you through the labyrinth of the comic. Any hypothesis you otherwise would select, while possibly applicable to a few carefully chosen cases, is liable at any moment to be met and overthrown by the first unsuitable ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... twilight of southern latitudes was giving place to the shades of night, when Bacri the Jew issued from the low door of his house, and threaded the narrow labyrinth of streets which compose the ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... who sits in the House of Lords between the Earl of Jersey and the Earl of Greenwich, has a hundred thousand a year. To his lordship belongs the palace of Grantham Terrace, built all of marble and famous for what is called the labyrinth of passages—a curiosity which contains the scarlet corridor in marble of Sarancolin, the brown corridor in lumachel of Astracan, the white corridor in marble of Lani, the black corridor in marble of Alabanda, the gray corridor in marble of Staremma, the yellow corridor ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... own surgeon crippled. A southeasterly gale induced the American skipper to give Cape Horn a wide berth, and the Maria soon found herself three degrees south of that perilous coast. There she encountered field-ice. In this labyrinth they dodged and worried for eighteen days, until a sudden chop in the wind gave the captain a chance, of which he promptly availed himself; and in forty hours they sighted ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... and most of them got inside the village, but they were entangled in the labyrinth of narrow streets, and were obliged to retire. Another assault ended with another repulse, 'and the victorious Murids, driving the broken columns before them, followed until stopped by ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... thus deals with the lamb, let us see how he treats the wolf. We have neither space nor taste for groping through the long and dark labyrinth of Cromwell's proverbial duplicity and audacious apostacy: we shall content ourselves with two facts, which, though stated in the gentlest way by Mr. Macaulay, will abundantly justify the opinion which all mankind, except a few republican zealots, hold of that man's sincerity, of whose abilities, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Tarragona, but the first in the heart of the town as soon as it was taken. Accidents of this sort happen in all attacks, but with this pair of friends they were customary. Supporting each other, they made their way bravely through a labyrinth of narrow and gloomy little streets in quest of their personal objects; one seeking for painted madonnas, the other for madonnas of flesh ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... of Egypt of which we now speak, is famous for several rarities, each of which deserves a particular examination. I shall mention only the principal, such as the obelisks, the pyramids, the labyrinth, the lake of ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... along the banks of the Nile from the cataracts to the sea. Shaking torches with veil-covered face, he had cast a black cock upon a fire of sandarach before the breast of the Sphinx, the Father of Terror. He had descended into the caverns of Proserpine; he had seen the five hundred pillars of the labyrinth of Lemnos revolve, and the candelabrum of Tarentum, which bore as many sconces on its shaft as there are days in the year, shine in its splendour; at times he received Greeks by night in order to question ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... understand? It was all a sham then, you say? No, it was all real as far as it went. You are young—you haven't learned, as you will later, the thousand imperceptible signs by which one gropes one's way through the labyrinth of human nature; but didn't it strike you, sometimes, that I never told you any foolish little anecdotes about him? His trick, for instance, of twirling a paper-knife round and round between his thumb and forefinger while he talked; his mania for saving the backs of notes; his ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... cultivated American tongue, she was 'through' at last—through that tortuous labyrinth of make-shifts, which must be traversed before fashionable display can be combined with the sound economy of a Forsyte. Thin but brilliant, in her maize-coloured frock with much tulle about the shoulders, she went from place to place, fitting on her gloves, and casting ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... over we wandered down to the little disencumbered space before the inn, through a small labyrinth of obliterated things. They took the form of narrow, precipitous streets, bordered by empty houses, with gaping windows and absent doors, through which we had glimpses of sculptured chimney-pieces and fragments of stately arch and vault. Some of the houses are still inhabited; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... modesty, as I have said, wandered at will alone and unattended, without fear of insult from lawlessness or libertine assault, and if they were undone it was of their own will and pleasure. But now in this hateful age of ours not one is safe, not though some new labyrinth like that of Crete conceal and surround her; even there the pestilence of gallantry will make its way to them through chinks or on the air by the zeal of its accursed importunity, and, despite of all seclusion, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "We skirt a labyrinth," he answered quietly. "You will have observed, of course, that no one has passed us or disturbed our talk. To be sure, the archway under which you found me is one of the 'false entrances,' as they are called, of Rueda cellars. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... romancers, kings became gods and their adventures of gallantry were transformed into immortal allegories. According to M. Chompre, licentiate in law, the classic author of the Dictionary of Mythology, the labyrinth was 'an enclosure planted with trees and adorned with buildings arranged in such a way that when a young man once entered, he could no more find his way out.' Here and there flowery thickets were presented to his view, but in the midst of a multitude of alleys, which crossed ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... spot where it can be climbed; here is a morass or a river, and there is a bridge in one place, and a ford in another. There are robbers in this forest, and wild beasts in that; the tracks cross and recross, and, as in the old labyrinth, only one will bring us right. The age of the saints has passed; they are no longer any service to us; we must walk in their spirit, but not along their road; and in this sense we say, that we have no pattern great men, no biographies, no history, which are of real service to us. It is the remarkable ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... would arrive at the Fairy Land must face the Phantoms. Betimes, I set myself to the task of investigating the motley world to which our progress in humanity—has attained, caring little what misrepresentation I incurred, what hostility I provoked, in searching through a devious labyrinth ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... regiments, and at the top of it—opposite the entrance—stood the cattle kraal itself, that cut off a piece of the open space by another fence bent like a bow. Behind this again were the Emposeni, the place of the king's women, the guard-house, the labyrinth, and the Intunkulu, the house of the king. Dingaan came out on that day and sat on a stool in front of the cattle kraal, and by him stood a man holding a shield over his head to keep the sun from ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... that the earthquake had done away forever with the underground labyrinth of the Chinese quarter—those thousands of pens inhabited by creatures that shunned the light of day, those mole-holes which served as headquarters for a subterranean agitation, the mysterious methods of which have never been revealed to the eye of the white man. When ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... things had a close resemblance to the growth of the mind. Had he lived in these days he would doubtless have endeavored to work out the details of his method on a purely psychological basis; but in the then state of psychology he had to find another thread through the labyrinth. The mode of demonstration which he adopted was thus, as he himself called it, the syncretic or analogical. Whatever may be said of the harmony that exists between the growth of nature and of mind, there can be no doubt that the observation of the former is capable of suggesting, if it does ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... castle keep, where the lady of his heart was confined; all which he achieved as easily as a man would carve his way to the centre of a Christmas pie; and then the lady gave him her hand as a matter of course. Ichabod, on the contrary, had to win his way to the heart of a country coquette, beset with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which were forever presenting new difficulties and impediments; and he had to encounter a host of fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous rustic admirers, who beset every portal ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... the bureau. It was Byron, and turning over the leaves till I came to Don Juan, I read it through, and began Childe Harold, but the candle expired. I struck out my hands through the palpable darkness, to find the bed without disturbing mother, whose soul was calmly threading the labyrinth of sleep. I finished Childe Harold early in the morning, though, and went down to breakfast, longing to ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... resolve the query, being herself in a dismal labyrinth of doubt. She remembered—betwixt a smile and a shudder—the talk of the neighbouring townspeople, who, seeking vainly elsewhere for the child's paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offspring: such as, ever since old Catholic ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her cousin had spent a whole afternoon there once and had been simply wild about it. Vernabelle said it was times like this, with a few real people, that she got her biggest ideas; that life in the rough was too terribly a labyrinth, didn't we think, stunning one with its immensity, while in these dear little half-lighted moments the real came out unafraid, if we understood what she meant. Many ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... the labyrinth, Van Emmon, after standing on tiptoes for the tenth time, in order to locate himself, noted something that had escaped their attention before. "These compartments used to be covered over," he said, for some reason lowering his voice. He pointed out niches in the walls, such as ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... he regulates his behaviour. An objective way of looking at events is unknown to him; everything is brought by him into relation to his belief, and by it he seeks to explain everything that to him seems strange and rare."[433] "The labyrinth of animistic customs at first sight presents an appearance of wild confusion to him who seeks to penetrate into them and reduce them to order; but on closer inspection he will soon recognise certain guiding lines. These ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... disease, and like a hoarse voice in a beautiful person, is a kind of warning." Yet Emerson says of him that "He lived to purpose: he gave a verdict. He elected goodness as the clue to which the soul must cling in this labyrinth of nature." ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... at my desk; I hid my face in my hands to keep out all impressions of external and present things; and I searched back through the mysterious labyrinth of the Past, through the dun, ever-deepening twilight of the ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... dozen oil-lamps; the former, though a palatial building of brick, with verandahs and good rooms, is left to darkness and the rats in the absence of travellers. Having groped our way for half an hour or so about a labyrinth of dark, narrow streets, we presently emerged on the dimly lit boulevard (three of the oil-lamps had gone out), and rode up to the melancholy looking hostelry at the end. Failing to obtain admission, we burst open the door, and made ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would allow. ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... reefs, which closed in behind us so near together that they seemed to form a single chain of rocks. At the same time the hurricane was so broken by the rocks in our rear that the further we sailed through this ever-changing labyrinth of projecting rocks, the calmer the sea became, until at last the vessel's progress was perfectly smooth and quiet as we entered one of those long sea- roads running through a giant ravine—for such the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... which were dressed up with variegated lamps, and shed their powerful fragrance in the air: I ruminated upon what might be my friend's intentions, and what might be the result of an intrigue carried on in a country where the stiletto follows Love so close through all the mazes of his labyrinth, when I was again accosted ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Glacier for a week. I had caught just such a cold as this from the same cause—a stuffy stateroom. So I made me a little sled out of spruce boughs, put a blanket and some sea biscuit on it and set out up the glacier. I got into a labyrinth of crevasses and a driving snowstorm, and had to spend the night on the ice ten miles from land. I sat on the sled all night or thrashed about it, and had a dickens of a time; I shivered so hard I shook the sled to pieces. When morning came my cold was all gone. That is my prescription, ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... righteousness had precipitated him. In his despair he told himself that there was no one, and then suddenly he remembered—Patricia would know, and she would understand better than any one else in a populous world how to point the way out of the labyrinth. He must go to her and tell her. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... longer waited in the summer-house, but paced impatiently before the entrance to the labyrinth. Another five minutes. He was deceived, undoubtedly. She and her sisters were probably waiting for him and laughing at him on the lawn. He ground his heel into the clover, and threw his switch into the thicket. Yet he would give ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... Pass, the Bernese Oberland range, and further to the northeast the long range of the Tyrolean Alps, are recognized with their white snow-caps glittering in the bright sunlight. The forest of pinnacles beneath our feet, mingled with a labyrinth of ornamented spires, statues, flying buttresses, and Gothic fretwork, piled all about the roof, is seen through a gauze-like veil of ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... same functions. They radiate heat, they absorb gases, and exhale uncombined gases and watery vapor, and consequently act upon the chemical constitution and hygrometrical condition of the air, their roots penetrate the earth to greater depths than is commonly supposed, and form an inextricable labyrinth of filaments which bind the soil together and prevent its erosion by water. The broad-leaved annuals and perennials, too, shade the ground, and prevent the evaporation of moisture from its surface by wind and sun. [Footnote: It is ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... deeds of ancestors, and given us vague stories of the origin and history of the tribes. It is only in this folk-lore—proved often on patient investigation to be of historic value—that we can find some threads to guide us through the labyrinth of mystery to which we come in the prehistoric {113} times of Canada. Popular tradition tells us that the Hurons and Iroquois, branches of the same family, speaking dialects of one common language, were living at one time in villages not far from each other—the Hurons ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... the rim wall split into towers, crags and pinnacles. I thought I had found my pipe organ, and began to climb toward a narrow opening in the rim. But I lost it. The extraordinarily cut-up condition of the wall made holding to one direction impossible. Soon I realized I was lost in a labyrinth. I tried to find my way down again, but the best I could do was to reach the verge of a cliff, from which I could see the canyon. Then I knew where I was, yet I did not know, so I plodded wearily back. Many a blind cleft did I ascend in the maze of crags. I could ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... Church, and Church's head, Were on her reverend phylacteries read. But what disgraced and disavow'd the rest, 400 Was Calvin's brand, that stigmatized the beast. Thus, like a creature of a double kind, In her own labyrinth she lives confined. To foreign lands no sound of her is come, Humbly content to be despised at home. Such is her faith, where good cannot be had, At least she leaves the refuse of the bad: Nice in her choice of ill, though not of best, And least deform'd, because ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Homopoulo. I gathered that the butler (who, I must admit, seemed thoroughly to comprehend his duties) had entered the service of Sir Lionel during the time that the latter was pursuing his celebrated excavations upon the traditional site of the Daedalian Labyrinth in Crete. It was during this expedition that the death of a distant relative had made him master of Graywater Park; and the event seemingly had inspired the eccentric baronet to ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... on, M. La Fontaine! pray go on. We are walking in the same labyrinth, always within call, always within sight of each other. We set out at its two extremities, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... surrounded by shoals, and he was yet in doubt whether he should beat back to the southward, or seek a passage to the north or east. He had now a most anxious time, for it was clear that there was no way to sea except through the labyrinth of shoals amid which the ship lay. The navigation of a ship among coral rocks is at all times dangerous, for the lead gives no notice of their vicinity, their sides rising up like walls ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Pyrenees stretched across Wellington's path, a tangle of mountains sixty miles in length; a wild table-land rough with crags, fierce with mountain torrents, shaggy with forests, a labyrinth of savage and snow-clad hills. On either flank a great fortress—San Sebastian and Pampeluna—was held by the French, and Wellington was besieging both at once, and besieging them without battering trains. The echoes of Vittoria had aroused Napoleon, then fighting desperately ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... thence. Whither now? Back—and whither then? Back, round endless galleries, vaulted halls, staircases, doorways, some fast, some open, up and down, trying this way and that, losing himself at whiles in that enormous silent labyrinth. And his breath failed him, his throat was parched, his face burned as with the simoom wind, his legs were trembling under him. His presence of mind, usually so perfect, failed him utterly. He was baffled, netted; there was a spell upon him. Was it ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... day? Can you picture, as I picture now, that dark and lonesome cavern, with the sea beating upon its roof and the air coming salt and humid to the tongue, and the echo of distant breakers in your ears, and always the night and the doubt of it? Can you follow me from grotto to grotto and labyrinth to labyrinth, stumbling often by the way, catching at the lantern's dancing rays, calling one to the other, "All's well—lead on"? Aye, I doubt that you can. These things must be seen with a man's own eyes, heard with his own ears, to be understood and made real to him. To me that ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... immediate ready money there was no extraction from the hideous labyrinth. His position had been already too long sustained by bills of exchange. There were people in the City who wanted, in vulgar parlance, to see the colour of his money. He knew this—and knew how frail the tenure by which he held his position, and how dire the crash ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon |
