"Obscurely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came to see the king's lieutenant, and it was easily noticed that they were conversing on weighty matters. We had scarcely become accustomed to having strangers quartered upon us in the first three months, when a rumor was obscurely circulated that the allies were on the march, and that Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick was coming to drive the French from the Main. Of these, who could not boast of any special success in war, no high opinion was held; and, after the battle of Rossbach, it was thought ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Appear of respiration to the just, And vengeance to the wicked, at return Of him so lately promised to thy aid, The woman's Seed, obscurely then foretold, Now amplier known thy Saviour and thy Lord, Last in the clouds from heaven to be revealed In glory of the Father, to dissolve Satan with his perverted world, then raise From the conflagrant ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... stately Consolations are mine. Poor earth! what though thy viler dust enrolls The frail enclosures of these mighty souls? Their graves are all upon record; not one But is as bright and open as the sun. And though some part of them obscurely fell, And perish'd in an unknown, private cell, Yet in their books they found a glorious way To live unto the Resurrection-day! Most noble Bodley! we are bound to thee For no small part of our eternity. ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... stirred in the Countess for this girl. There seemed to be some hidden link between them, the nature of which baffled her. She felt the impulse to protect and cherish—was it the voice of Mother Love obscurely speaking? ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... used to stand on the pedestal over there has been removed. It was an anachronism," Captain Mitchell commented, obscurely. "There is some talk of replacing it by a marble shaft commemorative of Separation, with angels of peace at the four corners, and bronze Justice holding an even balance, all gilt, on the top. Cavaliere Parrochetti was asked to make a design, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... somewhere in mediaeval poetry in Italy—but in a dreadful sense divine. At the first reading, this sentence against inconstancy, spoken by one more than inconstant, moves something like indignation; nevertheless, it is menacingly and obscurely justified, on a ground as it were beyond the common ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... peace and war; And say, there shall; for years together, Be peace and war, and both, and neither. Happy, O Market-Hill! at least, That court and courtiers have no taste: You never else had known the Dean, But, as of old, obscurely lain; All things gone on the same dull track, And Drapier's-Hill been still Drumlack; But now your name with Penshurst vies, And wing'd with fame shall reach ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... (Figs. 838-840).—Plants oblong about 3-4 mm., stipitate or substipitate at the base, growing densely caespitose, in patches, black, smooth, the apices usually obscurely mammillate. Stipes usually short, but sometimes 6-8 mm. long, and when growing in clusters, the bases consolidated by a carbonous stroma. Interior of the receptacle in two compartments (Fig. 841 x6), the lower filled with soft tissue, black around the edges, but white in the center. The upper compartment ...
— Synopsis of Some Genera of the Large Pyrenomycetes - Camilla, Thamnomyces, Engleromyces • C. G. Lloyd
... ordinarily solitary and desolate, now thronged with an eager multitude on foot and with numerous open carriages, in which were seated ladies in full dress as at the opera with us. Arriving at the Coliseum, we left the carriage and passed through the huge portal. The gloomy arches were obscurely seen in the dusky Roman twilight, when suddenly, as if by magic, every arch and crevice of the gigantic ruin glowed, incarnadined, as if dyed with the blood of the martyrs that had drenched its soil. There were salvos of artillery, bursts of military music and a few vivas ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... for the immortality which was not yet revealed to it, even "as through a glass darkly." Here and there, but thinly scattered through the ages, divinely illumined men caught, through the parting seams of the veil, a transient glimpse and ray of the life to come. Here and there, obscurely and hesitatingly, they refer to this vision of their faith. Here and there we seem to see a hope climbing up out of a good man's heart into the pathless mystery of a future existence, and bringing back the fragment of a leaf which it believes must have grown on one of the trees of life immortal. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... carriage, everywhere the ensign of man's ineffectual goodness:—ah! if I could show you this! if I could show you these men and women, all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honour, the poor jewel of their souls! They may seek to escape, and yet they cannot; it is not alone their privilege and glory, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... evidence of his capacity for, as well as application to medical researches, in his mechanical account of poisons; which he informs us was begun some years before he had leisure to publish it. These subjects, our author justly observes, had been treated hitherto very obscurely, to place therefore the surprizing phoenomena, arising from these active bodies in a more intelligible light, was his professed intention; how well he succeeded, the reception this piece universally met with, even from its first publication,[2] sufficiently declares. In 1708 he ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... parasitic accretions which swiftly began to form around the Canon law and to entangle its practical activity, that legislation embodied—predominantly at the outset and more obscurely throughout its whole period of vital activity—a sound core of real value. The Canon law recognized at the outset that the essential fact of marriage is the actual sexual union, accomplished with the intention of inaugurating a permanent relationship. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... best manual in hand, you must not expect to be able to identify every new bird at the first attempt, for some species are either exceedingly shy or obscurely marked, or probably both, while quite a number are so much alike in markings and habits that it is hard to distinguish them from one another. A few birds remained enigmas to me for a number of years, in spite of the help of the field glass. At intervals for several months you will ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... raised by it are strong. The solemnity of such an extent of wood unbroken by any intervening objects, and the whole hanging over declivities, is alone great; but to this the addition of a constant roar of falling water, either quite hid, or so far below as to be seen but obscurely, united to make those impressions stronger. No contradictory emotions are raised; no ill-judged temples appear to enliven a scene that is gloomy rather than gay. Falling or moving water is a lively object; but this being ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... a higher quality, some of which, like the lovely Never the Time and Place, I have been already quoted. Ixion is too obscurely put to attain its end with the general public. But it may be recommended, though vainly, to those theologians who, hungry for the Divine Right of torture, build their God, like Caliban, out of their own minds; who, foolish enough ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... L'Her. (STUARTIA.) Leaves thick, ovate, acuminate, acute at base, obscurely mucronate, serrate, finely pubescent, 3 to 4 in. long, one half as wide. Flowers whitish cream-colored, one petal much the smallest; stamens of the same color. ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... cylindrical, deciduous by an articulation between the cone and its peduncle, leaving the latter for several years on the tree; apophyses dark lustrous orange-red, rugose, elevated along a sharp transverse keel, the umbo obscurely defined, the mucro usually broken away; nuts large, flaxen yellow, the spermoderm ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... it as her Americanism, which loathed the idea of slavery in any form. But nevertheless, she had been aware of alarming possibilities within her. She was able to understand the woman in the play. And that must surely be because she was obscurely akin to her. And she knew that when she had read the article the man in the play had made her think of Arabian. That, of course, was absurd. But she understood why it was. That woman had been attracted by a man of whom she knew ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... His name will pass into prayer to Him. As He not obscurely teaches us here (if we adopt the reading to which I have already referred), He has an ear to hear such requests, and He wields divine power to answer. Surely it was not blasphemy nor any diversion of the worship due to God alone, when the dying martyr outside the city wall cried and said, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... She knew her brother thoroughly and liked him as he was. Moreover, the scorn and loathing of mankind were the lot of the Jacobin Fouche, who, exploiting for his own advantage every weakness, every virtue, every generous illusion of mankind, made dupes of his whole generation and died obscurely as Duke of Otranto. ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... sun-chequered, echoing corner. Holding his feet, he stared out of a drowsy trance, wondering, admiring, musing, losing his way among uncertain thoughts. There is nothing that so apes the external bearing of free will as that unconscious bustle, obscurely following liquid laws, with which a river contends among obstructions. It seems the very play of man and destiny, and as Otto pored on these recurrent changes, he grew, by equal steps, the sleepier and the more profound. Eddy and Prince were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I thoucht ye was some scunnert at it; an' I canna bide Shargar to be luikit doon upo'. Luik here,' he continued, going to his box, and bringing out Shargar's little heap of coppers, in which two sixpences obscurely shone, 'he brocht a' that hame last nicht, an' syne sleepit upo' the rug i' my room there. We'll want a' 'at he can mak an' me too afore we get ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... dramatic contrasts, as belongs to "Venice Preserved" or to the "Fiesco" of Schiller. 2dly, That of a great military expedition offering the same romantic features of vast distances to be traversed, vast reverses to be sustained, untried routes, 20 enemies obscurely ascertained, and hardships too vaguely prefigured, which mark the Egyptian expedition of Cambyses—the anabasis of the younger Cyrus, and the subsequent retreat of the ten thousand, the Parthian expeditions of the Romans, ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... than with one. Thus [see diagram on next page] we only see from A to A with both our eyes, the two side portions Ab Ab being seen with but one eye, and therefore (when we are using both eyes) being seen obscurely. But if we look at a flat object, whether square or oblique to the line of vision, we see it of exactly the same size with two eyes as with one because the one eye can see no part of it that the other does not see also. But in painting I believe that this difference ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... suspended, by a chain from the roof, over a triangular altar of black marble. The architecture of the room was strange and massive as of Egyptian temples. Strong, dark colors met the eye on all sides; in the panels of the walls and distant ceiling fantastic devices showed obscurely forth. Nine mighty columns, of design like those in the doorway, were ranged along the walls, their capitals ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... arms: that he is not likely to have his tables up again in his house,—[The tables at which the king dined in public.-B.]—for the crew that are about him will not have him come to common view again, but keep him obscurely among themselves. He hath this night, it seems, ordered that the Hall (which there is a ball to be in to-night before the King) be guarded, as the Queen-Mother's is, by his Horse Guards; whereas heretofore they were by the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... necessary to elicit sparkles from the flint. What follows next? that it, like a current, flies each bound it chafes. This may mean, that it expands itself notwithstanding all obstructions: but the images in the comparison are so ill-sorted, and the effect so obscurely expressed, that I cannot but think something omitted that connected the last sentence with the former. It is well knovn that the players often shorten speeches to quicken the representation; and it may be suspected, that they sometimes performed their amputations with more haste than judgment, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... that was a fine generosus; He was a great guller, his name I take to be Fuller; See where he stands, that unto my hands convey'd a powder; And, like a knave, sent her to her grave, obscurely to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... interprets as setting forth the so-called pratibimbavada according to which the individual Self is merely a reflection of the highest Self. But almost every Sutra—and Sutra 50 forms no exception—being so obscurely expressed, that viewed by itself it admits of various, often totally opposed, interpretations, the only safe method is to keep in view, in the case of each ambiguous aphorism, the general drift and spirit of the whole work, and ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... formation known as the true Chalk, divided into the three subdivisions of the chalk-marl, white chalk without flints, and white chalk with flints. The first of these is simply argillaceous chalk, and passes up into a great mass of obscurely-stratified white chalk in which there are no flints (Turonien of D'Orbigny; Mittelquader of Germany). This, in turn, passes up into a great mass of white chalk, in which the stratification is marked by nodules ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... human beings say? But she turned her back on them as if in disdain of their fate: she had swung round, burdened, to glare stubbornly at the new danger of the open sea which she so strangely survived to end her days in a breaking-up yard, as if it had been her recorded fate to die obscurely under the blows of many hammers. What were the various ends their destiny provided for the pilgrims I am unable to say; but the immediate future brought, at about nine o'clock next morning, a French gunboat homeward bound ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... in dreams that first I stole With gentle mastery o'er her mind— In that rich twilight of the soul, When reason's beam, half hid behind The clouds of sleep, obscurely gilds Each shadowy shape that Fancy builds— 'Twas then by that soft light I brought Vague, glimmering visions to her view,— Catches of radiance lost when caught, Bright labyrinths that led to naught, And vistas with no pathway thro';— Dwellings of bliss that opening shone, Then ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... confiscation were pronounced against a great number of who were involved in the same accusation. The guilt imputed to their charge was that of Atheism and Jewish manners; a singular association of ideas, which cannot with any propriety be applied except to the Christians, as they were obscurely and imperfectly viewed by the magistrates and by the writers of that period. On the strength of so probable an interpretation, and too eagerly admitting the suspicions of a tyrant as an evidence of their honorable crime, the church has placed both Clemens and Domitilla ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... sharpened a little as he pronounced those last words, and the girl's hands clasped each other more tightly as she perceived the snare in the phrase. If the Etheling should answer unheedingly or obscurely, so that it should not be made quite ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... they met, and she was able to welcome him gently to the interview which she made very brief. His face fell in visible disappointment when she said that Mr. Ewbert would not be able to see him, and perhaps there was nothing to uplift him in the reasons she gave, though she obscurely resented his continued dejection as a kind of ingratitude. She explained that poor Mr. Ewbert was quite broken down, and that the doctor had advised his going to the seaside for the whole of August, where he promised everything from the air and the bathing. ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... reasonable Contradiction to his Elders, is esteemed an unpardonable Insolence, and regarded as a reversing the Decrees of Nature. I am a young Man, I confess, yet I honour the grey Head as much as any one; however, when in Company with old Men, I hear them speak obscurely, or reason preposterously (into which Absurdities, Prejudice, Pride, or Interest, will sometimes throw the wisest) I count it no Crime to rectifie their Reasoning, unless Conscience must truckle to Ceremony, and Truth fall a Sacrifice to Complaisance. The strongest Arguments are enervated, and the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the supreme judicial office devolved on the Praetor, at the time the first functionary in the commonwealth, and together with these duties was transferred the undefined supremacy over law and legislation which always attached to ancient sovereigns and which is not obscurely related to the patriarchal and heroic authority they had once enjoyed. The circumstances of Rome gave great importance to the more indefinite portion of the functions thus as transferred, as with the establishment ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... curious sense of something foreseen. He had never witnessed precisely this mood in her before; but now that it was thus revealed, he was suddenly aware "that something like it had been for long moving obscurely below the surface of her life. He took the child and laid him on the floor, where he rolled at ease, cooing to himself. Then he came back to Kitty, and soothed her with extraordinary tenderness and skill. Presently she looked at him, as though some obscure trouble of ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... representative of the so-called Old Comedy of Athens; a form of dramatic art which developed obscurely under the shadow of Attic Tragedy in the first half of the fifth century B.C., out of the rustic revelry of the Phallic procession and Comus song of Dionysus, perhaps with some outside suggestions from the Megarian farce and its Sicilian offshoot, the mythological ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... form and countenance forbid such a suspicion, I might think myself the son of some Indian director, or rich citizen, who had more wealth than grace, and a handful of hypocrisy to boot, and who was breeding up privately, and obscurely enriching, one of whose existence he had some reason to be ashamed. But, as I said before, I think on my mother, and am convinced as much as of the existence of my own soul, that no touch of shame could arise from aught ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... be taking place in Lydia, went on silently and obscurely during that summer; but in the fall a new moral horizon burst upon her with the realization that she was again to become a mother. Another life was to be entrusted to her hands, to hers and Paul's, and with the knowledge came the certainty that she must now ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... In the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the general interest in the White Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho's story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... lay bare the buried complex, the suppression of which has produced the conflict in the mind of the sufferer—will seldom fail to discover the influence of sexual forces and sexual attractions which, while capable of causing disorders of mind and of conduct, show themselves only obscurely and indirectly, as, for example, in ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... distressed by a fancy of an old German couple, spectacled and peering, puzzled by his letter. Perhaps they would be obscurely hurt by his perplexing generalisations. Why, they would ask, should ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... affections are, in a sense, to be learned. If there exists a native spark of love in all of us, it must be fanned while we are young. Hers, if she ever had it, had been drenched in as ugly a lot of corrosive liquid as could be imagined. But I was surprised at Fyne obscurely ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... time after his death that the Cardinal had been long married, but very obscurely! He paid his wife to keep silent when he received his benefices; but when he dawned into greatness became much embarrassed with her. He was always in agony lest she should come forward and ruin him. His marriage had been ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... disappointment to the man who is mentally unworthy of a great intellectual vocation, so long as he is morally worthy of it; so long as he can pursue it honestly, patiently, and affectionately, for its own dear sake. Let him work, though ever so obscurely, in this spirit towards his labor, and he shall find the labor itself its own exceeding great reward. In that reward lives the divine consolation, which, though Fame turn her back on him contemptuously, and Affluence pass over unpitying to the other side of the way, shall still ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... went, obscurely, no less than three reasons to the quick shaping of this decision. In the first place, Piers had glanced over his father's letter, and saw in it matter for long reflection. Secondly, his headache was declared, and he would ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... to its Eastern bed, and the world was once more comparatively at rest, the continent of Greece rose visibly and majestically above the rest of the civilized earth. Afar in the Latian plains the infant state of Rome was silently and obscurely struggling into strength against the neighboring and petty states in which the old Etrurian civilization was rapidly passing into decay. The genius of Gaul and Germany, yet unredeemed from barbarism, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... should scarcely have expected—Rouget Delille, author of the Marseillois Hymn, who, while his muse was rouzing the citizens from one end of the republic to the other to arm against tyrants, was himself languishing obscurely a victim to the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... of the books then called the Scriptures)— that it cannot but seem strange, and assuredly is against all analogy of Gospel revelation, that such a doctrine—which, if true, must be an article of faith, and a most important, yea, essential article of faith—should be left thus faintly, thus obscurely, and, if I may so say, OBITANEOUSLY, declared and enjoined. The time of the formation and closing of the Canon unknown;—the selectors and compilers unknown, or recorded by known fabulists;—and (more perplexing still) the belief of the Jewish Church—the belief, I mean, common to the Jews of ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... evil destiny of the Government of the Hundred Days that the influence of moral opinion ranged itself on the side of its adversaries the Royalists; and that the conscience of the nation, clearly or obscurely, spontaneously or reluctantly, justified the severe judgments to which its origin ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... obscurely careful in selecting his way, will presently be seen. In the direction last taken, he traveled on until the sun was bending to the western horizon, when he came to a thicket of bushes and vines, so compact in growth ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... when several grafts, bearing fruit that ripens at different times, are growing upon the same stock. Her earlier impulses may have been derived directly from her father and mother, but all the ancestors who have been mentioned, and more or less obscurely many others, came uppermost in their time, before the absolute and total result of their several forces had found its equilibrium in the character by which she was to be known as an individual. These inherited impulses ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... inch before their nose, and who can comfortably digest contradictions; but Carlton is really a clever man; he is no common thinker; this makes it so provoking. When I write an essay for him—I know I write obscurely, and often do not bring out the sequence of my ideas in due order, but, so it is—he is sure to cut out the very thought or statement on which I especially pride myself, on which the whole argument rests, which binds every part together; and he coolly tells me that it is extravagant ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... streaks of black and red, feathers tossing in their hair, and blankets gathered round their shoulders; each, as he passed through the dim light-ray, swung his hatchet, uttered his war-cry, and was swallowed up in darkness again. Out poured the multitude from the church, startled, excited, mystified, obscurely feeling that some decisive act was about to be done: and here are Adams and Hancock among them, cheering on that strange procession which passed down toward the wharfs swiftly, two by two, and seeming to increase in numbers as they ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... agreed From rest and kindness must the cure proceed: And he was cured; for quiet, love, and care, Strove with the gloom, and broke on the despair; Yet slow their progress, and as vapours move Dense and reluctant from the wintry grove; All is confusion, till the morning light Gives the dim scene obscurely to the sight; More and yet more defined the trunks appear, Till the wild prospect stands distinct and clear; - So the dark mind of our young poet grew Clear and sedate; the dreadful mist withdrew; And he resembled that bleak wintry scene, Sad, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... completely got out of touch with Mr. and Mrs. Sessions, but after her marriage she had gone to call on Mamie Magen, now prosperous and more earnest than ever, in a Greenwich Village flat; on Jennie Cassavant, sometime of the Home Club, now obscurely on the stage; on curly-haired Rose Larsen, who had married a young lawyer. But Una had fancied that they were suspiciously kind to her, and in angry pride she avoided them. She often wondered what they had heard about ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... which is also bad business. And that was the status of the matrimonial adventure of the Gilfoyles for the present. It made no perceptible difference to anybody that they were married—least of all to themselves—for the present. But of course Kedzie was obscurely preparing all this while for a tremendous explosion into publicity and into what is known as "the big money." And that was bound to make a vast difference to Gilfoyle as well as ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... anthropologist is to explain this fact by Survival and Revival. Given the savage beliefs in magic, spirit rapping, clairvoyance, and so forth, these, like Marchen, or nursery tales, will survive obscurely among peasants and the illiterate generally. In an age of fatigued scepticism and rigid physical science, the imaginative longings of men will fall back on the savage or peasant necromancy, which will be revived perhaps in some obscure American village, and be run after by the credulous and half-witted. ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... various reasons for this non-resistance to the cancelling of their Charter; but he omits or obscurely alludes to ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... said. "Just as soon as I've finished it you shall have it." I wanted to ask whether he would reciprocate by lending me one of his own books, which would give me some clue to his tastes; but again I felt obscurely that he ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... of peculiar branches of business, and which committees, by degrees, assumed an independent and permanent existence... Justices itinerant, who, despatched throughout the land, decided the ' Pleas of the Crown,' may be obscurely traced in the reign of the Conqueror; not, perhaps, appointed with much regularity, but despatched upon peculiar occasions and emergencies." 1 Palgrave's Rise and Progress, &c;., p. ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... eyes. The contrast between his own lump of a body, drink-dazed, dull-throbbing, and the warm, bright day came in on him with a sudden sinking of the heart, a sense of degradation and personal abasement. He realized, however obscurely, that he was an eyesore in nature, a blotch on the surface of the world, an offence to the sweet-breathing heavens. And that bright silence was so strange and still; he could ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... he hesitated, seeking an excuse. One soon suggested itself to his ready mind. That very morning the king had told him not obscurely that Owen had pleaded for his safety and saved him from being put upon his trial on charges of witchcraft and murder. He would go to him, now at once, playing the part of a grateful penitent, and the White Man's magic must be keen indeed if it availed ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... Clitopilus. Pileus thin, convex, then expanded or slightly depressed; dingy-white, cracked in areas or concentrically rivulose, sometimes obscurely ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... last came a decision on the sudden;—royal mind suddenly illuminated, it is a little uncertain how. Some give the credit of it to Gundling, which is unlikely; others to "Two Generals" of pious orthodox turn, acquainted with Halle;—and I have heard obscurely that it was the Old Dessauer, who also knew Halle; and was no doubt wearied to hear nothing talked of there but injured Philosopher Wolf, and injuring Theologian Lange, or VICE VERSA. Some practical military man, not given to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... wrong. Thus a friend of my own was suddenly so overwhelmed, at golf, with inexplicable misery (though winning his match) that he apologised to his opponent and walked home from the ninth hole. Nothing was wrong at home. Probably some real ground of apprehension had obscurely occurred to his mind and expressed itself in ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... Obscurely, however, he felt that he was about to take part in a struggle for Patsy. It was to be a fight, not so much against danger from unscrupulous dandies like the Duke of Lyonesse and his acolyte, my Lord ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... this mysterious star, but too often in the condition of a dim spark hardly perceptible. It is the philosophic child, the immanent Logos or the Christ incarnate, which legend represents as born obscurely in the midst of the filth of a cave serving as a stable. The initiation becomes the vestal of this inner fire [Symbol: Sulfur]; archetype or principle of all individuality. She knows how to care ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... rich clothes and jewels; for Hermione had made it very fine when she sent it to Leontes, and Antigonus had pinned a paper to its mantle, and the name of "Perdita" written thereon, and words obscurely intimating its high birth and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... 1813 a new and potent influence came into his life. Mrs Leigh, whose home was at Newmarket, came up to London on a visit. After a long interval the brother and sister met, and whether there is or is not any foundation for the dark story obscurely hinted at in Byron's lifetime, and afterwards made public property by Mrs Beecher Stowe (Macmillan's Magazine, 1869, pp. 377-396), there is no question as to the depth and sincerity of his love for his "one relative,"—that her ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... truth to keepe in their registers maye appeare how mercifully God hath looked vppon this realme, retayning within it some sparke of his light, euen in the time of greatest darknes. Neither ought any m[a] to wonder albeit that some things be obscurely and some thinges doubtfully spoken. But rather ought al faithfull to magnifie Gods mercy who without publike doctrine gaue so great light. And further we ought to consider that seeing that the enemies of Iesus Christe ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... and I daresay that I may have expressed myself obscurely, and so led you to imagine that I was speaking of some really existing state of things, whereas I was only saying what regulations I would like to have about music; and hence there occurred a misapprehension on your part. ...
— Laws • Plato
... secret visit to Dolfo Spini. Here the Captain of the Compagnacci sat through this memorable night, receiving visitors who came and went, and went and came, some of them in the guise of armed Compagnacci, others dressed obscurely and without visible arms. There was abundant wine on the table, with drinking-cups for chance comers and though Spini was on his guard against excessive drinking, he took enough from time to time to heighten the excitement produced ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... There was much to which she alone had the clue, too deep, and too obscurely hinted, to be understood at a glance. She met with such evidence of suffering as made her shudder and weep, tokens of the dark thoughts that had gathered round him, of the manful spirit of penitence and patience that had been his stay, and of the gleams that lighted ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it availed[10] to hear, that he, who caused fear to all the world, found her at the sound of his voice secure with Amyclas;[11] nor had it availed to have been constant and bold, so that where Mary remained below, she wept with Christ upon the cross. But that I may not proceed too obscurely, take henceforth in my diffuse speech Francis and Poverty for these lovers. Their concord and their glad semblances made love, and wonder, and sweet regard to be the cause of holy thoughts;[12] so that the venerable Bernard first bared ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... Malarichus, sending a soldier also with him; and entreated Malarichus to explain in intelligible language what he wanted, and not to use such obscure terms. For he declared that he, being but a plain and somewhat rude man, had not in the least understood what was intimated so obscurely. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... and brilliance of the West and North, and sometimes her heart is so full that it cannot find utterance at all. In the "dream state," that which is mere nature for the scientist reveals itself, obscurely indeed and yet insistently, as very God. God is dwelling in Fiona. He is smiling in all sunsets. He is filling the universe with His breath and holding us all ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... thought. A black sense of entanglement and fate grew upon him in the darkness, as he thought of the two women together, in the midnight silence, while he was pacing thus, alone. He met it with the defiance of newborn passion—with the resolute planning of a man who feels himself obscurely threatened, and realises that his chief menace lies, not in the power of any outside enemy, but in the very goodness of the woman ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sure that she liked dancing. There was something obscurely dangerous about it. She was afraid of being lifted off her feet and swung on and on, away from her safe, happy life. She was stiff and abrupt with her partners, convinced that none of those men who liked Connie Hancock could like her, and anxious to ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... eldest of the great masters of fiction whom we can claim for our period—Dickens, who in 1837 first won by his "Pickwick Papers" that astonishing popularity which continued widening until his death; Thackeray, who in that year was working more obscurely, having not yet found a congenial field in the humorous chronicle that reflects for us so much of the Victorian age, for Punch was not started till 1841, and Thackeray's first great masterpiece of pathos and satire, "Vanity Fair," did not begin to appear till five years later. ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... Or by the lone, romantic flood; Let us in the busy town, When sleep's dull streams the people drown, Far from drowsy pillows flee, And turn the church's massy key; Then, as through the painted glass The moon's faint beams obscurely pass, And darkly on the trophied wall Her faint, ambiguous shadows fall, Let us, while the faint winds wail Through the long reluctant aisle, As we pace with reverence meet, Count the echoings of our feet, While from the tombs, with confess'd breath, Distinct responds the voice of death. If thou, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... wanted and be contentedly invisible when that was fitting. "I might almost as well be a paid dame de compagnie," Miss Scrotton had more than once murmured to herself with a lip that trembled; and, obscurely, she realised that close association with the great might reveal one as insignificant rather than as glorified. It was therefore with her air of melancholy that she paused in her advance along the terrace to gaze out at the prospect, and with an air of emphasized calm ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... 1 1/2 to 3 inches broad, convex or nearly plane, viscid or glutinous when moist, often obscurely streaked (virgate). Flesh whitish or dull yellowish. Tubes plane or convex, adnate, small, nearly round, yellow, becoming ochraceous. Stem 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 inches long, 2 to 4 lines thick, equal, slender, pale or yellowish, dotted above and below the ring with ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... which the "Parson of Slaidburn" obscurely refers may be found in Whitaker's "Whalley," ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... in that manner to spin out the whole course of their life; that is, if it may be explained, to live at ease. For this opinion of theirs is not to be concealed, many of them delivering it clearly, and not a few more obscurely." Who therefore did more grow old in this scholastic life than Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Diogenes, Zeno, and Antipater, who left their countries not out of any discontent but that they might quietly enjoy their delight, studying, and disputing at their ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... cruelty of youth, Constance and Sophia had assembled in their favourite haunt, the show-room, expressly to deride Maggie in her new clothes. They obscurely thought that a woman so ugly and soiled as Maggie was had no right to possess new clothes. Even her desire to take the air of a Thursday afternoon seemed to them unnatural and somewhat reprehensible. Why should ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... democracy, and yet not toward anarchy and lawlessness. The throes of a gigantic revolution have not sufficed to outweigh the instinctive love of law and order peculiar to the English race. Though events unforeseen by the authors of the Federal Constitution have called for exercises of power, obscurely permitted perhaps by that instrument, yet unknown to former practice, still there has been no popular convulsion at the North, no armed outbreak, no phrensy of mob power. There is as yet no such thing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... subterranean; there, the Loire was open. If you ask, why I did not prefer throwing myself before the pursuers, and dying like a soldier, my reason was, that I should have been numbered merely among those who had fallen obscurely in the various skirmishes of the country; and besides, that if I escaped, I should have one chance more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... sinks, more lovely ere his race be run, [1] Along Morea's hills the setting Sun; Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright, But one unclouded blaze of living light; O'er the hushed deep the yellow beam he throws, [i] Gilds the green wave that trembles as it glows; On old AEgina's rock and Hydra's isle [2] The God of gladness ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... as much in a wild state as the ants and butterflies are wild. There is less occasion here for the continual "might be" and "may be," which we are compelled to put up with when dealing with plants and animals, of the workings of whose minds we can only obscurely judge. Also, there is more prospect of pecuniary profit attaching to the careful study of machinery than can be generally hoped for from the study of the lower animals; and though I admit that this ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... given too much authority, and aimed to safeguard democracy by leaving the governing power as largely as possible in the hands of the several states. To readers who are not politicians the most interesting thing concerning these two leaders is that Hamilton, the champion of aristocracy, was obscurely born and appeared here as a stranger to make his own way by his own efforts; while Jefferson, the uncompromising democrat, came from an excellent Virginia family and was familiar from his youth with ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... order as well as to eliminate all subversive innovation. Yet in spite of all the well-conceived and shrewdly managed endeavors of the German Imperial system in this direction, e.g., there has been evidence of an obscurely growing uneasiness, not to say disaffection, among the underlying mass. So much so that hasty observers, and perhaps biased, have reached the inference that one of the immediate contributory causes that led to the present war was the need of a heroic remedy to correct this untoward ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... glory for the reality of sacrifice—they know to what they may look forward. But untried troops have yet to be disillusioned; dreams of the pomp of war are still in their eyes. They have not yet owned that they are merely going out to die obscurely. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... employed. Already Edwin, whose father had been thrashed by workmen whom a compositor would hesitate to call skilled—already Edwin had the mien natural to a ruler, and Big James, with dignified deference, would submit unresentingly to his attitude. It was the subtlest thing. It was not that Edwin obscurely objected to the suggestion of his being present at the free-and-easy; it was that he objected (but nicely, and with good nature) to any assumption of Big James's right to influence him towards an act ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Andros looked at the old man; then he cast his hard and cruel eye over the multitude, and beheld them burning with that lurid wrath, so difficult to kindle or to quench; and again he fixed his gaze on the aged form, which stood obscurely in an open space, where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his thoughts, he uttered no word which might discover. But whether the oppressor were averawed by the Gray Champion's look, or ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... used by Ptolemy and Pliny in a more confined, by Ammianus and Procopius in a larger, sense, has been derived, ridiculously, from Sarah, the wife of Abraham, obscurely from the village of Saraka, (Stephan. de Urbibus,) more plausibly from the Arabic words, which signify a thievish character, or Oriental situation, (Hottinger, Hist. Oriental. l. i. c. i. p. 7, 8. Pocock, Specimen, p. 33, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Half-round, on two main pillars vaulted high, With seats where all the lords, and each degree Of sort, might sit in order to behold; The other side was open, where the throng On banks and scaffolds under sky might stand: I among these aloof obscurely stood. The feast and noon grew high, and sacrifice Had filled their hearts with mirth, high cheer, and wine, When to their sports they turned. Immediately Was Samson as a public servant brought, In their state livery clad: before him pipes And timbrels; ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Son lived obscurely; he never carried weapons, he could not bear to have so much as a human ear cut off in his presence. But see how he figures in the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... which demand a serene and collected attention, alike inconsistent with the amorous discontent of the secret heart, and with the temporary exhilaration of the spirits, produced by the occasion on which they were met. This must surely be the meaning of Horace in this Ode, however obscurely expressed. People of sense do not, even in their gayest conversation, start from their subject to another of total inconnexion. When the latent meaning in the concluding verses is perspicuously paraphrased, it accounts ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... nitre in the foregoing manner until the acid of nitre had separated from the residual red precipitate. In this case also I obtained our fire-air.... Whence comes the boiling of nitre, fused in a crucible and obscurely red-hot? Neither smoke nor vapours are seen to rise from it, and yet coal dust flying above the open crucible takes fire, burning brilliantly. Whence comes it that such nitre maintained in red-hot fusion in a glass retort for half an hour, ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... the end of it will be death in some swamp, obscurely, worn out with disease and exposure; and my bearers will make off with my guns and my stores, and the jackals will ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... of trees, heavy with honeysuckle and wild rose, is thickest. Fireflies begin to flit above the growing corn. At last the plain is reached, and all the skies are tremulous with starlight. Alas, that we should vibrate so obscurely to these harmonies of earth and heaven! The inner finer sense of them seems somehow unattainable—that spiritual touch of soul evoking soul from nature, which should transfigure our dull mood of self into impersonal delight. Man needs to be a mytho-poet at ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... It is almost certain that it was at Johnson's instigation that he had been admitted into this choice fellowship. Long before either the Traveller or the Vicar had been heard of, Johnson had perceived the literary genius that obscurely burned in the uncouth figure of this Irishman; and was anxious to impress on others Goldsmith's claims to respect and consideration. In the minute record kept by Boswell of his first evening with Johnson at the Mitre Tavern, we find ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... does not imply thinking clearly. A man may think and reason as obscurely as Dogberry himself, but he may (though it is not probable that he will) be able to write clearly for all that. Writing clearly—so far as arrangement of words is concerned—is a mere matter of adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs, placed ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... and shoal obscurely mapped, And hauntings of the gray sea-wolf, The palmy Western Key lay lapped In the ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... apical margin of the prothorax, the margins of the scutellum, and the sides of the metathorax covered with a dense short ochraceous pubescence; the disk of the thorax thinly sprinkled with short black hairs; the posterior tibiae obscurely ferruginous; the tarsi ferruginous; the legs covered with bright golden-yellow pubescence; wings subhyaline, the nervures ferruginous; the tegulae yellow with a fuscous stain in the middle. Abdomen obscurely chalybeous, closely punctured, ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... would seem that the springs of water with which these parts of the island abound in an uncommon degree operate directly, though obscurely, to the producing this irregularity of the surface of the earth. They derive their number and an extraordinary portion of activity from the loftiness of the ranges of mountains that occupy the interior country, and intercept and collect the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the haughtiest popes that ever was) upon a slight offered to him, and extricated himself with honour. Another is the work of him(4) who, without any one exterior advantage but mere strength of genius, had the most sublime imaginations, and executed them accordingly, yet lived and died obscurely. Another we shall consider as the work of him(5) who restored Painting when it had almost sunk; of him whom art made honourable, but who, neglecting and despising greatness with a sort of cynical pride, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... I hesitate, when I find these conclusions of mine not obscurely foreshadowed as impending in 1872 by Ernest Renan, and re-affirmed as imminent in ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... cut. But with a firmness and ability scarcely ever seen in any man so young, he brought his proofs forward, and, after an inquiry of some weeks, fully made out his case. —— was dismissed in disgrace, and is now living obscurely in England. The Government here and the Directors at home applauded Trevelyan in the highest terms; and from that tithe he has been considered as a man likely to rise to the very top of the service. Lord William told him ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... said that few could know, but that few actually did know, unless he was aware of circumstances that precluded all but those implicated in the crime of her death from knowing the precise moment of its occurrence. If Lucy was the kind of person not obscurely portrayed in the poem; if Wordsworth had murdered her, either by cutting her throat or smothering her, in concert, perhaps, with his friends Southey and Coleridge; and if he had thus found himself released from an engagement which had become irksome to him, or possibly ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... it in a Rolls-Royce. She had no such wish. It needed more vitality than went with true comfort to deal with a house in an opulent spot and a Rolls-Royce. Worries attended such possessions, worries of every kind, crowned by bills. In the sober gloom of Prince of Wales Terrace she could obscurely enjoy inexpensive yet real comfort, without being snatched at by predatory men-servants or collectors for charities, and a taxi stand was at the end of the road. Her annual outlay was small. The house was inherited. Death had furnished it for her. She trod in the dining-room ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... further point in this connection. Let him imagine how delightful it must be for the people in the home which he has made, the loving people whom he loves and to whom in theory he is devoting his career, to feel continually that he only sees them obscurely through the haze emanating from his business! Why—worse!—even when he is sitting with his wife, he and she might as well be communicating with each other across a grille against which a turnkey is standing ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... on his hands, and not far from the sale-room at which I have obscurely hinted, Mr. Denton thought that he would spend an hour there upon the chance of finding, among that portion of the famous Thomas collection of MSS., which he knew to be then on view, something bearing upon the history or topography of his ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... tempest. Broken was the helm and sailless was the mast, and he must drift till borne upon some ship-wrecking reef! Had fate designed him to float over every rock? must he wait till the years let through the waters of disease, and he foundered obscurely in the immense loneliness ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... equally honoured and powerful: as among the commoners of England are sometimes found persons of higher birth and more important station than among the peers—(a term somewhat synonymous with that of Equal.) But the higher class enjoyed certain privileges which we can but obscurely trace [146]. Forming an assembly among themselves, it may be that they alone elected to the senate; and perhaps they were also distinguished by some peculiarities of education—an assertion made by Mr. Mueller, but not to my mind sufficiently established. With respect ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which only differs from spout in that it is smaller, and with less noise and force; but sputter is, because of the obscure u, something between spit and spout: and by reason of adding r, it intimates a frequent iteration and noise, but obscurely confused; whereas spatter, on account of the sharper and clearer vowel a, intimates a more distinct poise, in which it chiefly differs from sputter. From the same sp and the termination ark, comes spark, signifying a single emission of fire with a noise; namely ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... strange, I can make nothing of them. In music I am at home. Why is not all life music? We instantly know when we are going wrong there. Convince me it is for the best, and I will go with you at once. But now it seems wrong, unwise, scarcely better than to stay as we are. We must go secretly, must live obscurely in a corner. That I cannot bear,—all is wrong yet. Why am I not at liberty to declare unblushingly to all men that I will leave the man whom I do not love, and go with him I do love? That is the only way that ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Oh, yes. I am not that gentleman; neither are you. Take 'em by the throat or chuck 'em under the chin is all one to me—almost," affirmed Ricardo, with something obscurely ironical in his complacency. "Now, as to this business. A three days' jaunt in a good boat isn't a thing to frighten people like us. You are right, so far; but there ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... or bluish white, distinctly and obscurely spotted, speckled, and blotched with cinnamon brown ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... the female of a dull red all over. These two latter beetles belong to the family of Longicorns. Messrs. R. Trimen and Waterhouse, jun., inform me of two Lamellicorns, viz., a Peritrichia and Trichius, the male of the latter being more obscurely coloured than the female. In Tillus elongatus the male is black, and the female always, as it is believed, of a dark blue colour, with a red thorax. The male, also, of Orsodacna atra, as I hear from Mr. Walsh, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... of windless marshes, masked the Kentish coast. The Medway at flood-tide from Sheerness to Gillingham Reach was one maze of creeks and bends and inlets and tiny bays. Nothing was visible an oar's length overside but shifting cloudy shapes that bulked obscurely in the fog. But although this was Francis Drake's first voyage as master of his own ship, he knew these waters as he knew the palm of his hand. His old captain, dying a bachelor, had left him the weather-beaten cargo-ship as reward for his "diligence ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... specific payment of money. The exact date when the managers began to pay instead of receive on the score of their advertisements, is hardly to be ascertained. Genest, in his laborious "History of the Stage," says obscurely of the year 1745: "At this time the plays were advertised at three shillings and sixpence each night or advertisement in the General Advertiser." It may be that the adverse systems went on together for some time. The managers may have paid certain journals ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... of strong logical faculties, but she had in some things a very surprising and awful astuteness. She seldom introduced any purpose directly, but bore all about it, and then suddenly sprung it upon her unprepared antagonist. At other times she obscurely hinted a reason, and left a conclusion to be inferred; as when she warded off reproach for some delinquency by saying in a general way that she had lived with ladies who used to come scolding into the kitchen ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... huge volume of deep black cloud, while a very thin fillet crossed the middle of the orb, as narrow and thin and black as a ribbon of crape. The long trembling road of moonlight, which lay on the water and reached to the stern of our vessel, glimmered dimly and obscurely. We saw two or three lights from the right bank, probably from bed-rooms. I felt the striking contrast between the silence of this majestic stream, whose banks are populous with men and women and children, and flocks and herds—between the silence by night of this peopled river, and the ceaseless ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... without a judicious plan, and their discoveries being left imperfect without immediate settlement, or subsequent examination, and scarcely recorded in any well-authenticated or accurate narrations, had been almost forgot; or were so obscurely remembered, as only to serve the purpose of producing perplexing debates about their situation and extent, if not to suggest doubts about ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... discouragement that Maurice had arrived at by a process of reasoning settled down upon the denser intellects of the troops who lay there inactive, anxiously awaiting to see what the end would be. Distrust, as a result of their truer perception of the position they were in, was obscurely burrowing in those darkened minds, and there was no man so ignorant as not to feel a sense of injury at the ignorance and irresolution of their leaders, although he might not have been able to express in distinct terms ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... remained taciturn, self-absorbed without expansion, without confidants. This work of mental exaltation was brought about obscurely but surely. The nerves of children are quickly excited; one ought to have regard to the fact that they live in a state of deep quiescence up to the time of their almost complete development. But does anyone reflect that, for certain students, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... And this reminds me of another point on which the good English James offers sound advice. 'Remember to be plaine and sensible in your language; for besides, it is the tongue's office to be the messenger of the mind, it may be thought a point of imbecilitie of spirit, in a king to speak obscurely, much more untrewly, as if he stood in awe of any in uttering his thoughts.' That is precisely your mood at the present moment, Humphry,—you stand 'in awe'—of me or of someone else,—in 'uttering ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... upon the scaffold, by royal order; and was buried at night obscurely in the common churchyard; friends, in silence, took mark of the place against better times,—and Katte's dust now lies elsewhere, among that of his ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... in July and August, are of a pale pink or rose color: the calyx, or flower-cup, is bell-shaped, obscurely pentangular, villous, slightly viscid, and presenting at the margin five acute, erect segments. The corolla is twice the length of the calyx, viscid, tubular below, swelling above into an oblong ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... smiled curiously. "I have perhaps expressed myself obscurely. Yet I am generally considered a clear exponent. First of all, let me ask you, do you believe in the ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... of Queen Mary's reign he had given up all his preferments and lived privately and obscurely. Four years after his consecration he had permission from the queen "to arm himself against the ill-doings of papists and other disaffected persons in his diocese." He died in 1570, and ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... What was his grievance? What had Plowden done to provoke this savage hostility? Thorpe could not tell. He knew only that unnamed forces dragged him forward to hurt and humiliate his former friend. Obscurely, no doubt, there was something about a woman in it. Plowden had been an admirer of Lady Cressage. There was her father's word for it that if there had been money enough he would have wished to marry her. There had been, as well, the General's hint that if the difficulty ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... whereof she had any knowledge, Clarissa fancied they might find a temporary lodging—only a temporary shelter, for all her hopes and dreams pointed to some fair rustic retreat, where she might live happily with her treasure. Once lodged safely and obscurely, where it would be impossible for either her husband or George Fairfax to track her, she would spend a few shillings in drawing-materials, and set to work to produce a set of attractive sketches, which she might sell to a dealer. She knew her ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... reference to the effects which it has produced upon the subsequent destinies of civilized man, the most memorable in the history of the world.... The wrecks and fragments of these subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole. Their very language ... in variety, in simplicity, in flexibility, and in copiousness, excels every other language of the western world.' Then, after some words on their sculpture, he adds: 'their poetry ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... rumors that the Rebels contemplated a raid upon Holly Springs, for the purpose of cutting General Grant's communications and destroying the supplies known to be accumulated there. From the most vague and obscurely-worded hints, given by a Secessionist, I inferred that such a movement was expected. The Rebels were arranging a cavalry force to strike a blow somewhere upon our line of railway, and there was no point more attractive than Holly Springs. I attached no importance ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... when all heaven Laboured for him, when each propitious star Stood wakeful in his orb, to watch that hour, And shed his better influence. Her own birth-day Our queen neglected, like a vulgar fate, That passed obscurely by. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... of the voyage, faithfully kept in a big book given by Arthur for the purpose. A full and complete history of the six weeks might be written from it, but I forbear. Norman or Harry, in language obscurely nautical, notes daily the longitude or the latitude, and the knots they make an hour. There are notices of whales, seen in the distance, and of shoals of porpoises seen near at hand. There are stories given which they have heard in the forecastle, and hints of practical jokes ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... consciousness of the whole situation returned, the coming of the guards. But the place remained in absolute stillness. He was, in fact, at liberty, but for his own disabled condition. And it was certainly a genuine clinging to life that he felt just then, at the very bottom of his mind. So it had been, obscurely, even through all the wild fancies of his delirium, from the moment which followed [217] his decision against himself, in ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... Middlemas. "I suppose Hartley would tell your Excellency my unhappy state—that I am an orphan, deserted by the parents who cast me on the wide world, an outcast about whom nobody knows or cares, except to desire that I should wander far enough, and live obscurely enough, not to disgrace them by their ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... cereals, and vegetables that ever grew on earth; and if I get done answering questions about the best way of raising these things before I go raving crazy, I shall be thankful, and shall never write obscurely for fun any more). ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of consequence than these, who attained to an established reputation for their humour. The Devil's pranks have been referred to; Joseph's rusticity also; and the obstinacy of Noah's wife has been obscurely hinted at. Her gift lay in preferring the company of her good gossips to the select family gathering assembled in the Ark, and in playing with Noah's ears very soundingly when at length she was forcibly ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne |
