"Disentangle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ladder which led to the upper chambers, took in the scene at a glance. She was a bright little girl of ten years old. Setting down the tray in her hand, she first speedily delivered the captive pussy, and then proceeded deftly to disentangle the wool, rolling it ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... himself in a veritable thicket of these delicate branches, high above his head, and so interlaced that he could make headway only by slowly and patiently disentangling them, as one would disentangle a skein of silk. It was a fantastic sort of dilemma, and not unpleasing. Except that the Father was in haste to reach his journey's end, he would have enjoyed threading his way through the golden meshes. Suddenly he heard faint ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... If the hunter should wish to leave a danger signal behind him, he will take two saplings, one from either side of the trail, and twist them together in such a way that they shall block the passage of the follower, requiring him to pause in order to disentangle them or to pass around them; and if the hunter were to repeat such a signal two or three times, it would signify that the follower should use great caution and circle down wind in order to still-hunt the hunter's trail in exactly the same way he would still-hunt ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... us already to foresee that the Necrophorus cannot employ fixed methods in the accomplishment of his labours. Exposed to fortuitous hazards, he must be able to modify his tactics within the limits of his modest perceptions. To saw, to break, to disentangle, to lift, to shake, to displace: these are so many methods of procedure which are indispensable to the grave-digger in a predicament. Deprived of these resources, reduced to uniformity of method, the insect would be incapable of pursuing the calling which has fallen ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... the flowers disguised does fold, With wreaths of fame and interest. Ah, foolish man that wouldst debase with them And mortal glory, heaven's diadem! But thou who only couldst the serpent tame, Either his slippery knots at once untie, And disentangle all his winding snare, Or shatter too with him my curious frame,[142] And let these wither, that so he may die, Though set with skill, and chosen out with care; That they, while thou on both their spoils dost tread, May crown thy feet that could ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... on a race course, till at last, among a lot of cordage and fishing gear, I thought I espied a man cast ashore, and so it was. He was entangled in the mass of wreckage, and appeared dead. As I thought a spark of life might still remain, I tried to disengage him, but try as I would I could not disentangle his legs, so had recourse to my knife to cut away the ropes which held him so fast. This I found a long process, but at length I freed the poor fellow, and carried, or rather half dragged him to the shelter of some rocks, and tried ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... of Hereward has gathered round it such a mass of fiction, old and new, that it is hard to disentangle the few details of his real history. His descent and birth-place are uncertain; but he was assuredly a man of Lincolnshire, and assuredly not the son of Earl Leofric. For some unknown cause, he had been banished in the days of Edward or of Harold. He now ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... Simpleness. — N. simpleness &c. adj.; purity, homogeneity. elimination; sifting &c. v.; purification &c. (cleanness) 652. V. render simple &c. adj.; simplify. sift, winnow, bolt, eliminate; exclude, get rid of; clear; purify &c. (clean) 652; disentangle &c. (disjoin) 44. Adj. simple, uniform, of a piece[Fr], homogeneous, single, pure, sheer, neat. unmixed, unmingled[obs3], unblended, uncombined, uncompounded; elementary, undecomposed; unadulterated, unsophisticated, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... related, the sepoy, Mangal Pandy, shot at the sergeant-major.[3] The Adjutant, on hearing what had happened, galloped to the parade-ground. As he neared the quarter-guard he was fired at, and his horse shot by the mutineer, who then badly wounded him with a sword as he was trying to disentangle himself from the fallen animal. The General now appeared on the scene, and, instantly grasping the position of affairs, rode straight at Mangal Pandy, who stood at bay with his musket loaded, ready to receive him. There was a shot, the whistle ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... like the more instructed Daughters of the North, accustomed herself to that delicious Confessional, the transfusion of thought to writing. Now, suddenly, her heart felt an impulse; a new-born instinct, that bade it commune with itself, bade it disentangle its web of golden fancies,—made her wish to look upon her inmost self as in a glass. Upsprung from the embrace of Love and Soul—the Eros and the Psyche—their beautiful offspring, Genius! She blushed, she sighed, she trembled as she wrote. And from the fresh world ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Simpleness — N. simpleness &c adj.; purity, homogeneity. elimination; sifting &c v.; purification &c (cleanness) 652. V. render simple &c adj.; simplify. sift, winnow, bolt, eliminate; exclude, get rid of; clear; purify &c (clean) 652; disentangle &c (disjoin) 44. Adj. simple, uniform, of a piece [Fr.], homogeneous, single, pure, sheer, neat. unmixed, unmingled^, unblended, uncombined, uncompounded; elementary, undecomposed; unadulterated, unsophisticated, unalloyed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... maintain, therefore, that no one has told you forcibly enough how the very persons who justly admire your work, constantly complain of this fragmentary style of publication, which is the despair of those who have not the leisure to place your scattered sheets where they belong and disentangle the skein.* (* Owing to the irregularity with which he received and was forced to work up his material, Agassiz was often either in advance or in arrears with certain parts of his subject, so that his plates and his text did not ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... excited and draw a parallel more or less striking in regard to his own kindred and so we went on far into the night, until we got our several families mixed up to such an extent that it became almost impossible to disentangle them; for, being three families, you know, we became inextricably confused as to which was which, though each was perfectly clear in regard to his own! Thus, to me, Jane Lumley became confused with Janet ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... conceived, how frequently, in these extemporaneous controversies, the dull will be subtle, and the acute absurd; how often stupidity will elude the force of argument, by involving itself in its own gloom; and mistaken ingenuity will weave artful fallacies, which reason can scarcely find means to disentangle. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... had multiplied. Gazing on that yardful of imbecile-looking canines, my admiration for Noah's wisdom increased; he certainly needed no more than a pair to restock the earth. Redmond claimed there were twenty-two of them, though nobody else pretended to have been able to disentangle them enough for a census. They were all light brown in colour; and the aggregation reminded me of a rather disentangled bunch of angle-worms. They lived in a large enclosure; and emerged therefrom only under supervision, for they considered chickens and young pigs their especial prey. The Captain ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... Taou Yuen had been killed by America. It was a fantastic thought, and he attempted to dismiss it, waiting for more secure knowledge, but it persisted. She had been killed by unfamiliar circumstances, tradition, emotions. In some manner, but how he was unable to disentangle from the pressures of mere curiosity and conjecture, Nettie Vollar—or rather Gerrit's old passing affair with Nettie—had entered into the unhappy occurrence. After an hour's vain search he gave up all effort to pierce the darkness until he had actual knowledge—if ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... have fled or surrendered. But the first was impossible, so closely had they been enveloped; and in the cruel wars maintained by the Welsh upon their frontiers, quarter to the vanquished was out of question. A few of the men-at-arms were lucky enough to disentangle themselves from the tumult, and, not even attempting to enter the castle, fled in various directions, to carry their own fears among the inhabitants of the marches, by announcing the loss of the battle, and the fate of the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... from one to the next until the final catastrophe; but he did this at the cost of much repetition, whence another charge brought against the work—that of its interminable tedium. I will therefore first disentangle the main idea, which is simple. Let it be granted that Wotan is ruler of the world—not a first cause, but a god, limited in his powers, conditioned, ruling only so long as he obeys the laws inscribed in Runic characters on his spear. How he arrived ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... formation. He hopes that, by comparing the works of Shakespeare with those of writers who lived at the same time, immediately preceded, or immediately followed him, he shall be able to ascertain his ambiguities, disentangle his intricacies, and recover the meaning of words now lost ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... time for all things; a time when the sword may cut the Gordian knot, and set free the principles of right and justice, bound up in the meshes of hatred, revenge, and tyranny, that the pens of mighty men like Clay, Webster, Crittenden, and Lincoln were unable to disentangle. Wishing you all success, I am, with respect, your friend, ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... with second-hand accounts of natives of other parts of New Guinea but with discussions of general theories of the origin and migrations of races and of the development of social institutions; so that it is not altogether easy to disentangle the facts for which he is a first-hand witness, from those which he reports at second, third, or fourth hand. Scarcely anything, I may observe in passing, more impairs the value and impedes the usefulness of personal observations of savage races than ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... was a Mrs. Judson of Ullerton. I want to find an heir-at-law in a direct line from Matthew; and you know my theory on that point. But if we fail in that direction, we must of course fall back upon the Judsons, who are a disgustingly complicated set of people, and will take half a lifetime to disentangle, to say nothing of other men who may be working the same business, and who are pretty sure to have pinned their faith on the female ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... wait, without interrupting, or trying to help her disentangle her thought, of which he had in truth ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... saw a white canoe making toward me, and I knew that our shy young gentleman was coming to help me, and that we should become acquainted without an introduction. So it was, sure enough. He saw what the trouble was, managed to disentangle my feet without drowning me in the process or upsetting his little flimsy craft, and, as I was somewhat tired with my struggle, took me in tow and carried me to the landing where he kept his canoe. I can't say that there is anything odd about ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... with the look often seen when people are struggling, with introverted effort, to disentangle a thought which is either too high for quick discernment or ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... sculpture a glimpse into the life of antiquity, and that glimpse served to correct the vulgarism and distortion of the mediaeval life of the fifteenth century. In the perfection of Italian painting, the union of antique and modern being consummated, it is perhaps difficult to disentangle what really is antique from what is modern; but in the earlier times, when the two elements were still separate, we can see them opposite each other and compare them in the works of the greatest artists. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... straight ahead, even for a few rods, and then turn short round and return to him, you will find it next to impossible to do so. So many paths come in at acute angles; they look so much alike; and the light of a lamp reveals them so imperfectly, that none but the practised eye of a guide can disentangle their windings. A gentleman who retraced a few steps, near the entrance of the cave, to find his hat, lost his way so completely, that he was not found for forty-eight hours, though twenty or thirty people were in search of him. Parties are occasionally mustered and counted, to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of English statesmen there is no one of whom we would willingly know so much, no one of whom we really know so little, as of Thomas Cromwell. When he meets us in Henry's service he had already passed middle life; and during his earlier years it is hardly possible to do more than disentangle a few fragmentary facts from the mass of fable which gathered round them. His youth was one of roving adventure. Whether he was the son of a poor blacksmith at Putney or no, he could hardly have been more than a boy when he was engaged in the service of ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... now came up about the puzzled young aviators as might a snowdrift or it heap of hay. Dave dashed a filmy, flake-like substance resembling sawdust from eyes, ears and mouth. Hiram tried to disentangle himself from strips and curls of some light, fluffy substance. ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... itself in motion. Even if Mars were at rest, the fact that the earth moves would make the planet appear to move. The apparent movements of Mars are thus combined with the real movements. This circumstance will not embarrass the geometer. He is able to disentangle the true movement of the planet from its association with the apparent movement, and to account completely for the complicated evolutions exhibited by Mars. Could we transfer our point of view from the ever-shifting earth to an immovable ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... sensory element of vision in human sexual selection has been mainly an attempt to disentangle the chief elements of beauty in so far as beauty is a stimulus to the sexual instinct. Beauty by no means comprehends the whole of the influences which make for sexual allurement through vision, but it is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... something to Buchanan, when suddenly I could not hear my own voice. The great machine, with another behind us, was working at a fabulous speed and with a fabulous clatter. All that my startled senses could clearly disentangle was that the blue arc-lights above us blinked occasionally, and that folded green papers were snowing down upon the iron table far faster than the eye could follow them. Tall lads in aprons elbowed me away and ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... a little difficult to disentangle the causes that have restricted the flow of these inventions. It has happened, I remark, to others as well as to myself, and in spite of the kindliest encouragement to continue from editors and readers. There was a time ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... convent to die in peace. The sufferer had never fully recovered his consciousness. He seemed but dimly aware of any thing—not fully sensible even to pain. His words were few, incoherent, scarcely intelligible. What the nuns could occasionally disentangle from his low mutterings was something about "blue eyes," and "watching from the lattice." The last rites of the Church were administered, but there could be no confession; a crucifix was held before his eyes, ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... there now, holding to the weathervane! His legs curled doggedly around the flagstaff. He had need now to use all the strength in his legs, for he must use one hand to disentangle the black scarf, which lay twisted about the vane just over his head. But it was the right scarf. The glint and dazzle of the diamonds ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... began, as he twisted and turned the much-bepatched harness, "you doin' soom work now! All you' life you havin' mooch good times! Eet is not for thee fun thot you live, you know?" he went on, academically, continuing to disentangle the harness. "Eet is for thee work thot you live! Work—thot's thee answer!" Then, having straightened the harness at last, with a grunt of satisfaction ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... his best to disentangle the question, but Bobus was not satisfied till the clock chimed his doom, when he went off with Jock, who was ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some minutes in a state of semi-consciousness. Her head was swimming with vague memories, and she was unable at first to disentangle the thread of them. At length she remembered all that had happened, and ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... explanation. In the Bible we have the mythical setting much as we have the mythical version of the agony of spirit undergone by Christ before he definitely committed himself to his prophetical work. It is for us to-day to disentangle the substantive truth from the maze of legend with which an imperfectly developed age has surrounded it and discover the true raison d'etre of that doctrine which "the Bible Christian" confesses under the aspect of the ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... visual sensations likewise lend themselves to the most varied interpretations; by the side of the efficient cause of an event we find a thousand entangled contingencies which appear so important that to disentangle them we are as much perplexed as the savage, who, unable to discriminate between causes and coincidences, returns to drink at the well which has cured him, carefully keeping to the same hour, the same gestures, and the ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... faster. He overlooked entirely the things that might happen, such as having to pull your boat up on shore and pull out the weeds and rubbish which were stopping your intake pipe, or climb overboard yourself and disentangle water-plants from your propeller, if indeed it had not lost a blade and you were forced to be ignominiously towed ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... shocking spectacle to the view. The bodies of horses and men lay mingled in dreadful confusion, as they had fallen, some dead, others still alive, the men moaning, crying for water, and feebly struggling from time to time to disentangle themselves from the heaps of carcasses under which they were buried. The deadly and inextinguishable hate which the Carthaginians felt for their foes not having been appeased by the slaughter of forty thousand of them, they beat down and ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... comfortable feeling that there would be some kind of turning-point in Indian history there or thereabouts. Sometimes things do happen so, beautifully, as if arranged by the clock. But unfortunately, enough mischief may be done in thirteen decades to take a much longer period to disentangle; and again, it is only when you strike an average for the whole year, that you can say the nights are equal to the days. We are trying to see through to the pattern of history; not to dogmatize on such details ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Mayor of Dumfries Corners only by courtesy of those who honor defeated candidates with titles for which they have striven unsuccessfully, was strolling through the country along the line of the Croton Aqueduct, trying to disentangle, with the aid of the fresh sweet air of an early summer afternoon, an idea for a sonnet from the mazes of his brain. Stopping for a moment to look down upon the glorious Hudson stretching its shimmering length like a bimetallic serpent to the north and ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... true, altogether different. However this may be, in Calderon the ingenious boldness of an extravagant invention is always preserved in due keeping by a deeper magic colouring of the poetry; whereas in Corneille, after our head has become giddy in endeavouring to disentangle a complicated and ill-contrived intrigue, we are recompensed by a succession of mere tragical epigrams, without the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... right, Tom,' returned his friend, after a short interval of reflection. 'You cannot do better. It is quite clear to me that whatever the business is, there is little good in it; and it is so desirable for you to disentangle yourself from any appearance of willful connection with it, that I would counsel you to see her husband, if you can, and wash your hands of it by a plain statement of the facts. I have a misgiving that there ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... means of which our speech proceeding in argument adds belief, and authority, and corroboration to our cause. As to this part there are certain fixed rules which will be divided among each separate class of causes. But it appeals to be not an inconvenient course to disentangle what is not unlike a wood, or a vast promiscuous miss of materials all jumbled together, and after that to point out how it may be suitable to corroborate each separate kind of cause, after we have drawn all our principles of argumentation from this source. ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... and send the MS. to the printer without correction. But in some cases he acted in a somewhat similar manner. When a sentence got hopelessly involved, he would ask himself, "now what DO you want to say?" and his answer written down, would often disentangle ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... we must be careful to distinguish the universal from the local and ephemeral element. The latter is indeed of great interest and value; but we shall tend to miss the really precious and permanent elements in their thought if we do not take pains to disentangle Thucydides the disillusioned Athenian patriot from Thucydides the scientific historian and psychologist, and Plato the aristocrat born out of due season from Plato the unrivalled student of human nature and of the permanent ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... that it is part of the long struggle between good and evil does not appeal more to my mind. We are just here in it, and whatever we suffer and whatever we lose, it is for the right we are standing.... It is all terrible and awful, and I don't believe we can disentangle it all in our minds just now. The only thing is just to go on doing one's bit.... Miss Henderson is taking home with her to-day a Serb officer, quite blind, shot right through behind his eyes, to place him somewhere where ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... Again, the writer's mind may contain several jumbled ideas, each one good in itself but totally independent of the others; and if he attempts to express any particular one before it has had time to disentangle itself, it is bound to bring with it portions of other and distinct ideas. Clear thinking is the basis of clear writing; and clear writing prevents the chief errors that ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... absorbed not so much in his thoughts (he could not yet disentangle them) as in his spiritual condition, unlike anything he had ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... elusive idea, the Social Idea. It is that idea struggling to exist and realise itself in a world of egotisms, animalisms, and brute matter. Now, I submit it is not only a legitimate form of approach, but altogether the most promising and hopeful form of approach, to endeavour to disentangle and express one's personal version of that idea, and to measure realities from the stand-point of that idealisation. I think, in fact, that the creation of Utopias—and their exhaustive criticism—is the proper ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... tails?' where'er we be. Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks, A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books, Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms, To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims, 95 Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray Of figures,—disentangle them who may. Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie, And some odd volumes of old chemistry. Near those a most inexplicable thing, 100 With lead in the middle—I'm conjecturing How to make Henry understand; but ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of world philosophy and folkways. It is quite impossible for us to disentangle the elements of philosophy and custom, so as to determine priority and the causative position of either. Our best judgment is that the mystic philosophy is regulative, not creative, in its relation to the folkways. They reacted upon each other. The faith in the world philosophy drew ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... there, painfully cogitating in a vain endeavour to disentangle the threads of mingled thought that seemed to be inextricably wound together in his throbbing, struggling brain, two warm drops splashed upon his face, and the same low voice that he ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... wakes up out of humor. Frowning and gloomy, he clears his throat angrily and looks from under his brows at Yasha who, supporting a bullock with his powerful shoulder and slightly lifting it, is trying to disentangle ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... While you are frantically hanging on to your hat, the wind playfully unbuttons your rubber coat and lifts it up over your head and flaps the wet, muddy corners about in your face and eyes; and, ere you can disentangle your features from the cold uncomfortable embrace of the wet mackintosh, the rain - which "falls" upward as well as down, and sidewise, and every other way-has wet you through up as high as the armpits; and then the gentle zephyrs complete your discomfiture by purloining your hat ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... system has been in operation since 1907, and the whole political circumstances of Finland have undergone so many striking changes, and so many new factors are at work that to disentangle particular causes and effects is an impossibility. But plainly the Finnish machinery gives a greater freedom to the elector than the Belgian system. The Finnish system in fact encourages the electors ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... has been said by Lord Brougham that "his vast superiority was apparent when, as from an eminence, he was called to survey the whole field of dispute, and to unravel the variegated facts, disentangle the intricate mazes, and array the conflicting reasons, which were calculated to distract or suspend men's judgment." And Brougham adds that "if ever the praise of being luminous could be bestowed upon human compositions, it was ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... so astonished that it took his breath away. When he recovered he spoke learnedly about its clothes as evidence of its heathen origin. Never saw such a thing before, he said. They were like they were sewn on; it was impossible to disentangle that child by any way short of rolling ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... done now. It was twenty years ago that Roger bumped into his fate in that eddy of Broadway and I was as powerless as you are now to disentangle him and keep him for myself, which, selfishly enough, of course, I wanted terribly to do. You see, he was all I had, Roger, and I was hoping we would play the game out together. But—not to have known Margarita? Never to have watched that bending droop of her neck, that extraordinary colouring of ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... Triple Alliance, the existence of which the King and the Government had expressly acknowledged after the outbreak of war, was still alive, Italian statesmen had long before engaged themselves so deeply with the Triple Entente that they could not disentangle themselves. There were indications of fluctuations in the Rome Cabinet as far back as December. To have two irons in the fire is always useful. Before this Italy had shown her predilection for extra dances. [Cheers and laughter.] But this is no ballroom. This is a bloody battlefield upon which ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... amendment providing that the "States lately in insurrection" should be restored and relieved of military rule upon their ratification of the Constitutional Amendment and adoption of impartial suffrage. In order to "disentangle what seemed so much entangled," it was moved that the bill be recommitted to the Judiciary Committee, with instructions to report back immediately the amendment of Messrs. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... groups, eying each other suspiciously, while regarding the rest of the world with that indulgent air they assume at musicales. Everything to my unpractised eye seemed in hopeless disorder; a frightful buzz filled the air, and a blond girl at the big piano was trying to disentangle a lot of music. Near her stood a long-haired young man who perspired incessantly. "Ah!" I gloated. "Nervous! serves him right; he should have ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Mr. Humphreys himself could be more grave and abstracted than poor Ellen was that night. So many points were to be settled—so many questions answered to herself—it was a good while before Ellen could disentangle them, and know what she did think and feel, and what she ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... that! I must see that!" cried Dolly, with all reserve and caution flown; "to see Capp'en Zeb in the arms of a Frenchman—yes, I declare, two have got him, if not three, and he puts his great back against the mast to disentangle it. Oh, what will he do next? He has knocked down two, in reply to excessive cordiality. What wonderful creatures Frenchmen are! How kind it is of you to show me this! But excuse me, Mr. Carne; there will be twenty people coming to the house before ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... almost stifling, laden with the perfume of many flowers. Even the song of the birds grew fainter. Only the tiny fountain, more assertive than ever, became louder and louder. The princess breathed deeply; half-arose; a vine caught in her hair; she stooped to disentangle it; then ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... contain the minutes of Committees and other documentary material embodying the story of the past, but this dry chronicle is never likely to see the light except when unearthed by law courts or legislative committees. It seems worth while, therefore, to disentangle the essential thread of the tale of 1914 from the mass of unreadable detail in the minute books, and put it in a shape where those who are interested may ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... other, whom Sultan had attacked, was scarce likely to look again upon the light of day. The leader of the band had fallen again to the earth, and was enveloped in the folds of the heavy cloak, from which he appeared to be feebly struggling to disentangle himself. The girl followed the direction of the youth's glance, and explained the matter in a few ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... should be kept full of water. When using a burette, the water must be run out; the burette is next rinsed with some of the solution to be used, and drained; and then it is filled with the solution. Next squeeze the india-rubber tube so as to disentangle air-bubbles and, by smartly opening the clip, allow the tube and jet to be filled; see that no bubbles of air are left. Then run out cautiously until the level of the liquid in the burette stands ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... point, as is natural enough, that romance has been most busy, and it has become impossible to disentangle the actual facts from monkish legend and Saxon ballad. In happier times Alfred was in the habit himself of talking over the events of his wandering life pleasantly with his courtiers, and there is no reason to doubt that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... plunge about in order to disentangle myself from the embarrassing night robe, but it took me several minutes to effect my escape, my tender buttocks suffering every moment more and more under her strokes. At length I was free, and catching her round the waist almost lifted her on to the bed, and as ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... Academie Francaise, written a work on military science, also a national tragedy which was still unpublished. She was dazzled by his brilliancy, and when she fathomed his shallow nature, as she finally did, it was too late to disentangle her heart. He was a man of gallantry, and was flattered by the preference of a woman much in vogue, who had powerful friends, influence at the Academy, and the ability to advance his interest in many ways. He clearly condescended to be ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... well then, if she has come, we can open the meeting. And now to see if we can disentangle ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... so felt by those who understand its secrets,' said Philip. 'I would not depreciate it; so you may hear me patiently, Guy. I only meant to warn you, that it is often the means of bringing persons into undesirable intimacies, from which they cannot disentangle themselves as ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... once," she replied. "I am trying to disentangle my father from disgrace. I am working to put him apart when the ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... presently her mistress would want her to help her to dress: she was far from strong yet. A straying bramble caught her gown and held it fast, and with an impatient little cry she stooped down to disentangle it, when, to her astonishment, a great brown hand from behind closed upon hers, and a strong arm was slipped round her waist, and a voice, that set her trembling ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... rubbing his eyes in a desperate endeavor to disentangle dreams from actualities. "What are ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and so on. Is this true education? or rather, should our great aim ever be to translate noble precepts into daily action? "Teach me," he says, "to despise pleasure and glory; afterwards you shall teach me to disentangle difficulties, to distinguish ambiguities, to see through obscurities; now teach me what is necessary." Considering the condition of much which in modern times passes under the name of "education," we may ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... eminent philologist, Mr. Horatio Hale, who has done so much to elucidate the whole subject of Indian ethnography and migrations, with the argument derived from language in connection with established tradition; and especially to disentangle Iroquois history from its complications with the legends of their mythology."—Auburn ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... continue the family down to 1418 or 19, because it seems to me certain that all of them do more or less confound with our Polos of S. Giovanni Grisostomo, members of the other Polo Family of S. Geremia. It will help to disentangle the subject if we put down what is ascertained regarding ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... her loving heart, the precious scrap which assures her, visibly, tangibly, unerringly, that he is hers and hers alone. Words may deceive, scenes of bliss pass away like a dream. Though ever present to the mind it requires an effort to disentangle the realities of memory from the illusions of imagination; but a letter is proof positive; there it is in black and white. You may read it again and again; you may kiss it as often as you please; you may prize it and study it and pore over it, and find a new meaning in every fresh ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... wife of Moamba, who seemed very intelligent, maintained that Lokhopa and Lokholu went to the Chambeze; I therefore put it down thus. The streams which feed the Chambeze and the Liemba overlap each other, and it would require a more extensive survey than I can give to disentangle them. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... Ranger sought to disentangle the ivy; but this he found it almost impossible to effect in consequence of the pain arising from his left arm whenever he slung himself by it. At length he in some degree succeeded, but could see nothing, except that light came up from a chamber, which, he ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... entering the lists with Faustina St. Clair, going in her ways? I knew these were her ways. I had heard scraps enough of conversation among the girls about these things, which I then did not understand. And another word came therewith into my mind, powerful once before, and powerful now to disentangle the false from the true. "The world knoweth us not." Did it not know me, last night? Would it not, if I went there again? But ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the poop and quarter-deck, by a most spirited and well-directed fire, aided by a furious cannonade, repulsed them with great slaughter. A light breeze now springing up, enabled Captain Thompson to disentangle himself; and, soon after, he had the satisfaction to luff under Le Genereux's stern, and discharge every gun into that ship, at the distance of only ten yards. The action continued, within pistol-shot, till half past three in the afternoon; when Le Genereux, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... the world kept on as of old. Biblical theology continued to spin its own webs out of its own bowels, and all the lesser theological flies continued to be entangled in them; yet here and there stronger thinkers broke loose from this entanglement and helped somewhat to disentangle others.(20) ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... into the wilderness, but quick as a flash he was, to keep him from getting out. This, was why he had been marching the legs off of us, rations or no rations. This, was why he couldn't wait for Longstreet, but tore off with the men he had, to meet Grant and fight him, before he could disentangle himself from The Wilderness. We had got up in time; and into the chaparral our men plunged to get at the enemy, and out of it was now roaring back over our swift columns the musketry of the advance. As brigade after ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... noble fore-runner King Arthur, yet, like King Arthur, he has become associated particularly with one or two haunts; and it is no easier—nor in the end more profitable—to reconcile Lyonnesse with Carlisle and Inglewood[10] than to disentangle Robin Hood of Barnsdale from Robin Hood ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... of the adversaries nearly always upsets the other, perhaps far off, perhaps a little nearer. Were this "a little nearer," face to face, one of the two troops would be already defeated before the first saber cut and would disentangle itself for flight. With actual shock, all would be thrown into confusion. A real charge on the one part or the other would cause mutual extermination. In practice the ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... Juanna knew not; but as she sat there with a sphinx-like face, trouble and doubt, and many another fear and feeling, took so firm a hold of her that at length her mind, bewildered with its own tumult, lost its grip of present realities, and sought refuge in dreams which he could not disentangle. No wonder, then, that Leonard failed to guess her thoughts, as she watched him go from ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... to one another, and were carried on by the impetus of the pace at which we were going, all the animals tumbled down one on the top of the other in a heap. The packs got mercilessly undone, and it took us the best part of an hour to disentangle all ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... solve—at so inconvenient a moment, when we were as busy as busy could be, trying to disentangle the canoe—was rather tiresome. The strange man, having laid his gun upon the ground, helped us with all his might in our work. When the canoe got off, the strange man, gun and all, jumped clumsily into her and nearly capsized her a second time. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Vaudremont's pride was perhaps more roused than her curiosity to disentangle the thread of this intrigue. In the absorption of mind to which she was a prey she was no longer mistress of herself. The Colonel, interpreting to his own advantage the embarrassment evident in the Countess' manner and speech, became more ardent ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... all that passed. She had long since abandoned the effort to disentangle the skein of that day's events. Everybody was talking and acting unnaturally. Perhaps the ravel of things would clear itself when they regained the commonplace world of the hotel. In any case, she wished the men would ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... Wednesday, had returned. He had brought back the news that the sight on the road was simply horrible. The refugies had got so blocked in their hurry that they could move in neither direction; cattle and horses were so tired that they fell by the way; it would take a general to disentangle them. My! wasn't I glad that I had not been tempted ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... sir, I do love to work in these rooms! I’m never so happy as when I’m arranging them elegant things!” And, although my pleasure in her pleasure was modified by the discovery that she had taken an eighteenth-century comb to disentangle the fringes of a rug, and broken several of its teeth in her ardor, that she invariably placed a certain Whister etching upside down, and then stood in rapt admiration before it, still, in watching her enthusiasm, I felt a thrill of satisfaction at seeing ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... that occurs to any man who does thus seriously examine the relation of the war to theism is that, after all, it is not so easy to disentangle theology from the crude old doctrines which our more liberal divines think they have abandoned. They tell us that they do not believe in a vindictive Deity, they disdain the doctrine of eternal punishment, they smile at many of the Judaic conceptions ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... showing that the methods proposed are totally to be rejected? Where a proposition is of a mixed kind, and only erroneous in part, it is an useful and no disagreeable task to separate truth from errour, and disentangle from ill consequences such measures as may be pursued with advantage to the publick; but mere stupidity can only produce compassion, and afford no ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... how closely the phenomena of hereditary memory are related to those of individual memory: at this stage . . . it is practically impossible to disentangle the effects of hereditary memory ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... of hygiene, and now the moral situation and the demands of religion; now the influence on the feministic movement, and now on art and social life; now the situation in the educated middle classes, and now in the life of the millions. We ought to disentangle the various threads in this confusing social tissue and follow each by itself. We shall see soon enough that not only the various elements of the situation awake very different demands, but that often any single feature may lead to social postulates which interfere with each other. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... just risen above the far off eastern horizon, and was struggling to disentangle itself from the drifting tresses of fog hanging in massy banks over the river. Slowly but surely it slipped away from each misty, tremulous embrace, and then like a giant refreshed by the encounter assumed the offensive. Before the mighty ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... and all was well. Meanwhile the men who had been capsized with the boat were struggling to disentangle themselves from the waggon-box, and when freed they gained support on the rope till the entire combination was pulled back to the shore. The whole party were finally on the island and then used the same tactics in crossing the other deeper channel. Here they upset the ferry three ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... seething mass of humanity, but soon discovered that if he wished to make any progress at all he would have to allow himself to be carried forward by the slowly moving crowd. At the corner of Twenty-second Street he managed to disentangle himself and hurried through the block, only to find a new ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... Pythagoras, in its relation to the general development of Greek theory, we may note, to begin with, that it is not necessary, or perhaps possible, to disentangle the theory of Pythagoras himself from that of his followers, Philolaus and others. The teaching was largely oral, and was developed by successive leaders of the school. The doctrine, therefore, is generally spoken of as that, not of Pythagoras, but of the Pythagoreans. ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... lightly from his seat and, without waiting to help Nora, ran up the path to the house. As she stood up, trying to disentangle herself from the heavy lap-robe, she could hear a key turn noisily in a lock. With a jerk, he threw ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... heart like Cora and the Doctor, they stood there for a long while, till they heard the rumble of wheels on the bridge and knew they must disentangle. ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... generally believed. In the early Christian centuries there existed three great creeds: the Christian, Hebraic, and Mohammedan. The Christian Church was in a perplexing condition. As observed by Draper,[52] it was impossible to disentangle her from the principles which had, at the beginning, entered into her political organization. For good or evil, right or wrong, her necessity required that she should put herself forth as the possessor of all knowledge within the reach of the human intellect. But the monk and priest were prohibited ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... to McNiven's office with a dark life ahead of her. She had no desire left except to disentangle herself from Peter Cheever's life as quietly and swiftly as possible. She ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... I must spend my nights walking round the outside of it. Being a woman of like passions with himself, I had a 'ter'ble dust' with him on the subject, and the next I heard was that he was going to make Retreat in a kind of English-church monastery somewhere in the city, where he would 'try to disentangle' himself 'from the world' and see what he 'ought to do next.' He sent me his blessing with this message, and I sent him back mine—a less holy one, but he'll ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... disentangle the shreds from the jagged edge of the spur, but she bent down, and, seizing the skirt in both hands, tore it away, leaving a large fragment trailing from ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Discredit senkreditigi. Discreet diskreta. Discretion singardemo, diskreto. Discriminate distingi. Discursive tro skribema. Discuss diskuti. Discussion diskutado. Disdain malsxati. Disease malsano—ego. Disembark elsxipigxi. Disengage liberigi. Disentangle liberigi. Disfavour malfavoro. Disgrace malhonori. Disguise alivesti. Disgust nauxzi. Dish plado. Dishcloth telertuko. Dishearten malkuragxigi. Dishonest malhonesta. Dishonesty malhonesteco. Dishonour malhonori. Dishonourable malhonora. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... though it would break; but she said nothing. Ronald sprang from the ground and kneeled again upon the step beside her; very gently his arm stole about her and drew her to him. She took one hand from her face and tried to disentangle his hold, but he held her strongly, and ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... and answer the question that perplexed her, something of the quality of an attempt to clothe and serve hidden purposes. It could not but be evident to him that the effort of Lady Harman to free herself a little from her husband's circumvallation and to disentangle herself a little from the realities of his commercial life, might lead to such a liberation as would leave her like a nascent element ready to recombine. And it was entirely in the vein of this drift of thought in him that he should resolve upon an assiduous proximity against ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... ground, the third into the water. Madame Nadar, in spite of the efforts of the voyagers, remained the last, and found herself squeezed between the ground and the car, which had fallen upon her. More than twenty minutes elapsed before it was possible to disentangle her, in spite of the most vigorous efforts on the part of everyone. It was at this moment the balloon burst and, like a furious monster, destroyed everything around it. Immediately afterwards they ran to the ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... conception that there exists a unique plan of structure, the idea of the scale of beings, the notion of the parallelism between the development of the individual and the evolution of the race. It is difficult to disentangle the part played by each school and to determine which should have the credit for particular theories and discoveries. The philosophy seems to have come chiefly from Germany, the science from France. It must be borne in mind that German comparative anatomy was largely derivative from ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... with all the dusty pollen grained upon its anthers, crushing it between her fingers, breaking the thread, and scattering the beads upon the carpet. He stooped with her to gather them again, he took from her hand and restored to her afterward the shattered fragments of the bell-wort, he helped her disentangle the aromatic string from her falling braids,—for I kept apart,—he breathed the penetrating incense of each separate amulet, and I saw that from that hour, when every atom of his sensation was tense and vibrating, she would be associated with the loathed amber ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... answered Eustace; but, as he spoke, Amyas burst through the bushes at him. There was no time to be lost; and ere the giant could disentangle himself from the boughs and shrubs, Eustace had slipped off his long cloak, thrown it over Amyas's head, and ran up the alley ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... whatever he considered that he reasonably could do to further the party welfare and the private interests of his masters. Most people never trouble to look into the mechanics of the thing they call their conscience too closely. Where they do, too often they lack the skill to disentangle the tangled threads of ethics and morals. Whatever the opinion of the time is, whatever the weight of great interests dictates, that they conscientiously believe. Some one has since invented the phrase "a corporation-minded judge." There are ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... go back so many years and take up one thread in the skein of life, and follow that alone. I will disentangle it as rapidly as I can; but first let us ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... Eugene Morgan and of the Major; they seemed to be the same person for awhile, but he managed to disentangle them and even to understand why he had confused them. Long ago his grandfather had been the most striking figure of success in the town: "As rich as Major Amberson!" they used to say. Now it was Eugene. "If ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... were now fathomless, but he fancied that he had been outwardly cool, chilled into subconscious calculation by the very violence of the shock ... The frenzy had come later when he found himself aboard a ferryboat bound for Oakland. He could not disentangle the mixed impulses which had sent him upon this irrational errand, but he remembered now that a consuming desire to see Hilmer had possessed him. Perhaps an itching for revenge again had sprung into life, perhaps a fury ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... that Mr. Langley was a man of the world. He was strongly attached to his children; but he had a little of the selfishness and much of the reverence for wealth of a man of the world. As he now endeavored to determine mentally on his proper course of action—to disentangle the whole case from all its mysterious intricacies—to view it, extraordinary as it was, in its proper bearings, his thoughts began gradually to assume what is called, "a practical turn." He reflected that he had another daughter, besides the twin-sisters, to provide for; and that he had two sons ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... translating the old record literally. But it is full of wearisome repetitions, and the main lines of the story are forever straying off into side issues. So I have tried to disentangle it, and give it here in a simpler form. At times, however, I have reverted to the text because no other words could have conveyed so exactly the sense of what I felt at Kerfol; and nowhere have I ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to believe that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every step, and feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work carefully and patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her loving heart, felt that her children were being ruined, that it was not the count's fault for he could not help being what he was—that (though he tried to hide it) he himself suffered ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... so. Downy's webbed feet were fast in Dinah's kinky hair, and it took some time to disentangle them. Then the cook could get up, which she did with many ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope
... so." He straightened. "The only thing to do is to go after them one at a time and disentangle all the conflicting threads. It looks as though there will be any number of possible false leads and so we must be careful and deliberate. I think I'll question each ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... poverty, misery, and suicide. Grant that this species of gambling has arisen from the facility of obtaining the fictitious means of making the purchase, still it is not the less necessary that I beseech you not to practise it, and if engaged in it already, to disentangle yourself as soon as you can. Your life, while thus engaged, is that of a gamester—call it by what smoother name you may. It is a life of constant anxiety, desire to overreach, and general gloom; enlivened now and then, by a gleam of hope ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the bare walls of barrack rooms, the goat-skin of douars, and the canvas of his own camp-tent. To come once more, after so long an interval, amid the old things of luxury and grace that had been so long unseen wrought curiously on him. He could not fairly disentangle past and present. For the moment, as his feet fell once more on soft carpets, and his eyes glanced over gold and silver, malachite and bronze, white silk and violet damasks, he almost thought the Algerian years were a disordered dream of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... soul much fed by the discourse, but, keen and discriminating as his mind might be, he was not yet a Bible student and able to disentangle the original thoughts of the preacher from the teachings of revelation. He found much to assent to ethically, but, compared with the revelation in his laboratory when the pure light of heaven shone upon the pages of John's Gospel, the rhetorical ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock |
