"Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in my sleep last night between sleeping and waking. A figure standing beside me, thin, miserable, sad and sorrowful; the shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the tears down his cheeks. His ribs were bending like the bottom of a riddle; his nose thin that it would go through a cambric needle; his shoulders hard and sharp that they would cut tobacco; his head dark and bushy like the top of a hill; and there is nothing I can liken his fingers to. His poor bones without any kind of covering; a withered ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... Quantity of labor cannot, therefore, be measured, in individual cases, by time units. Despite a hundred passages which, detached from their context, seem to imply the contrary, Adam Smith recognized this very clearly, and attempted to solve the riddle by a differentiation of skilled and unskilled labor in which he likens skilled labor to a machine; and insists that the labor and time spent in acquiring the skill which distinguishes skilled ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... for both, but they intended to solve them that day, to see which way the riddle ran, and the Wilderness itself was as dark, as calm and as somber as ever. It had been torn by cannon balls, pierced by rifle bullets and scorched by fire; but the two armies were yet buried in it and it gave no sign to the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... and wax-moths and ants, and even mice. These things eat the honey and riddle and ruin the comb. Then birds eat the bees, and spiders catch them. Honey-bees do nothing but good that I can see, yet Nature 's pleased to fill the world with their enemies. Queen and drone and the poor unsexed workers—all have their ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... to have visited Solomon, "to prove him with hard questions," by which have generally been understood enigmatical puzzles. Some of these are to be found in sacred writ, of which the riddle which Samson proposed to the young men of Timnath, is a very ancient and curious specimen. It appears from the writings of the ancients, that the Greeks and all the Eastern nations, were singularly attached to enigmas. Plutarch, in his Feast of the Seven Sages, introduces the following ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... boy," the other said impressively, "a few years ago, it was found out that there were trout in these streams above falls which would be absolutely impassable to any fish. How could they get there? It was a riddle. The only possible answer was that the fish must be older than the falls, that the stream had worn away its bed, bit by bit, until an impassable barrier from below had been created, but that the trout had gone on in the upper creeks, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... does not tremble. It is as though she had taken measurements; and the edge of her weapon does not swerve by a hair's breadth. Need I give you any further proofs or examine all the other details with you? Surely not. You now possess the key to the riddle; and you know as I do that only a lunatic can behave in this way, stupidly, savagely, mechanically, like a striking clock or the ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... noise of protest. He gazed into the darkness of the landing, and presently, by the light from the bedroom, could distinguish the vague boundaries of it. The chair, invisible, was on the left. He opened the door wider to the nocturnal riddle of the house. His hand clasped the notes in his pocket. No sound! He listened for the ticking of the lobby clock and could not catch it. He listened more intently. It was impossible that he should not hear the ticking of the lobby clock. Was he dreaming? Was he under some delusion? Then it ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... I believe you are too candid to counterfeit. Your easy solution of that great human riddle given the world, to find happiness. The Athenian and Alexandrian schools dwindle into nothingness. Commend me to your 'categories,' O Queen of Philosophy." She withdrew her searching eyes, and fixed them moodily on the ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving for ever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time. (It is certainly not the solution of any problems of natural science ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... sighed Bert in mock despair. "Frieda has made us explain all the old jokes we knew this summer, and I don't see how that one was overlooked. Did you ever hear the riddle about when a door is not ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... and fro and stopped in front of Philippe. Philippe, he half thought, had perhaps not done his utmost. Philippe perhaps had still one stage to travel. But how was Le Corbier to find out? How was he to fathom that mysterious soul and read its insoluble riddle? Le Corbier knew those men endowed with the missionary spirit and capable, in furtherance of their cause, of admirable devotion, of almost superhuman sacrifice, but also of hypocrisy, of craft, sometimes of crime. What was this Philippe ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... violently in love with me; and though I say it who shouldn't, as the phrase goes, my wife was not the only woman of rank in London who had a favourable opinion of the humble Irish adventurer. What a riddle these women are, I have often thought! I have seen the most elegant creatures at St. James's grow wild for love of the coarsest and most vulgar of men; the cleverest women passionately admire the most illiterate of our sex, and so on. There ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you: To the rich men that eat up a realm there cometh a time when they whom they eat up, that is the poor, seem poorer than of wont, and their complaint goeth up louder to the heavens; yet it is no riddle to say that oft at such times the fellowship of the poor is waxing stronger, else would no man have heard his cry. Also at such times is the rich man become fearful, and so waxeth in cruelty, and of that cruelty do ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... What a riddle she has been to him all the time—flitting about the house so pale and inaccessible, so silent, too, in general, since that night when he had wrestled with her in the drawing-room. One moment of fresh battle between them there has been—in the park—on ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... glasses and slowly shook his head. Something was forming itself in his mind, this was evident. He walked around the ledge and back again. Finally, he said: "I wish it were night, it might help to solve the riddle." ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... silence, the lift of an eyebrow—things which had no apparent meaning a dozen years ago, which were either unnoticed or forgotten in an instant—are alive with monitions now. Not to have seen! Not to have guessed 'It looks incredible. A mule might have begun to read the riddle. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Pigott eventually saved Parnell and his followers. But the last word on that has not yet been spoken. Another pen than mine may, perchance before long, tell the whole truth about that tragic episode, and explain what is still an unsolved riddle in all dispassionate minds. Without challenging and exciting the strongest racial prejudices, it will be impossible to lift the veil, and I have no intention of affording even the slightest preliminary peep behind the scenes of that dramatic affair. The wheels ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... sit in silence upon his cloud? There was a general call for the purse-bearer, but he floated in silence, and was inexplicable. The purse-bearer was not to be bullied into any sudden reading of the riddle. Then there came on a general debate about money matters, in which the purse-bearer did say a few words, but he said nothing as to the great question at issue. At last up got Mr Palliser, towards the close of the evening, and occupied a full hour in explaining what ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... world a place of torture or undying bliss, death the prime object of our meditation, and lifelong abandonment of our fellow-men the highest mode of existence. Why, then, should monks, so persuaded of the riddle of the earth, have placed themselves in scenes so beautiful? Why rose the Camaldolis and Chartreuses over Europe? white convents on the brows of lofty hills, among the rustling boughs of Vallombrosas, in the grassy meadows of Engelbergs,—always the eyries ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... as we think, I'll do my best to take it away; but, in order to do that, I have, of course, got to go inside of her skull right to the brain itself, and the trouble might be here, or here, or here." He touched her now profusion of curls at different cranial points. "That is the riddle which you and I must solve, and I have got to look to you for the key. The human brain is still a book of mystery to us. Some day, physicians will be able to read it with full understanding; but so far, we ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... The riddle was too great for solving. Perhaps Wilbur had disappeared merely to play a practical jest on her; but that supposition was too childish to be retained an instant. Perhaps—perhaps Pierre himself had discovered her, but having vowed never to see her again, he cared for her like the invisible ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... I'll soon solve for you my poor little riddle. Miss Mildred, you know that I have loved you ever since you waked up an awkwad, lazy, country fellow into the wish ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... face—well," said the earl, softly. "But yet," he added, in an altered and reflective tone, "the boy is to me a riddle. That he will be bold in battle and wise in council I foresee; but would he had more of a young man's honest follies! There is a medium between Edward's wantonness and Richard's sanctimony; and he who in the heyday of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the time what it was that my husband "owed" Mrs. Underwood. The riddle was solved ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... who had some glimmering of the necessity, had not been allotted the necessary time, for he too had had to conquer to remain. His father had more than almost any of the Afghan sovereigns {155} who preceded him failed to read the riddle. He fell before a better general, and his rootless system died at once, leaving not a trace behind it. Penetrated, then, with the necessity of founding a system that should endure, and recognising very gradually, that ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... victory hovering nearer to St. George than himself, and a rivalry begun in good-humor was likely to take a different cast. In his pique, Marlboro' bade his host farewell, and returned to Blue Bluffs; but it was idle riding, for every day found him again at The Rim, like the old riddle,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... was the pair of snowshoes. It was the season of light travel. A single Englishman touring the world as the crow flies occupied the car. He looked at me so askance that I made an opportunity of talking to him. I should like to read his "Travels" to see what he made out of the riddle. In similar circumstances, and without explanation, I had fun talking French and swapping boulevard reminiscences with a member of a Parisian theatrical troupe making a long jump through northern Wisconsin. And once, at six of the morning, letting myself into my own house with a latch-key, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... a riddle, but I think I see an answer at any rate to half of it. Then the marriage would still take place, but ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... pry'thee, dear Ibrahim, read me this riddle: if the devil gets into water and kills, why don't he kill when he gets ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... he sat himself upon the edge of the sluice-box for some thoughtful minutes, and his mind traveled back over many scenes and incidents. But it dwelt chiefly upon Jessie Mowbray and her dead father. And it struggled in a great effort to solve the riddle of ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... significant historical fact of this Fourth Book is the connection which it makes between Egypt and Greece. In another Greek legend, that of OEdipus, the same connection is made through the Sphinx, whose riddle the Greek hero solves, whereat ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... a riddle," says he, "you might remember I am only a little one, and unequal to the great things ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... co-trustee in no very amiable way, and now replied to that gentleman's greeting with a somewhat stiff "How do you do?" "Where on earth did I see you before, my gentleman?" said he to himself, and having put the riddle, he ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... ponder on your evident dejection, But my carefulest reflection leaves the riddle still unread. How do you yourself explain your dismal tendency to wander By the melancholy ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... published in 1844 is now exceedingly rare; yet many of the pieces belong to a high order of excellence. In ease and grace of versification they resemble Longfellow, but in thought they are more like Emerson or Goethe. Consider this opening from "The Riddle": ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... Dixon, Doolittle, Guthrie, Hendricks, Johnson, McDougall, Morgan, Nesmith, Norton, Riddle, Saulsbury, Stewart, Stockton, Van Winkle, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... confronted by a riddle which has never been clearly interpreted. Why did Ishida seek asylum from Ieyasu whom he had persistently intrigued to overthrow, and why did Ieyasu, having full knowledge of these intrigues, grant asylum? Possibly ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... world-poet. Attempting to solve this problem Emerson coolly assumed that the men of the Elizabethan age were so great that Shakespeare himself walked about among them unnoticed as a giant among giants. This reading of the riddle is purely transcendental. We know that Shakespeare's worst plays were far oftener acted than his best; that "Titus Andronicus" by popular favour was more esteemed than "Hamlet." The majority of contemporary poets ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... at me again, and then I had already determined to meet the request he was not bold to ask. I believed, equally with the physician, from the conduct and expressions of young Harrington, that the riddle of his present condition waited for explanation in the village, whose name seemed like a load upon his heart, and constituted the whole of his discourse since he had arrived amongst us. It was there he yearned to be. It was necessary only to mention the word to throw ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... Indians. In the course of the next summer (after doing much mischief in a smaller way in the meantime), they gathered together to the number of six hundred, and led on by Colonel Bird, a British officer, came down upon Riddle's and Martin's stations, at the forks of Licking river. They had with them six cannons, and managed their matters so secretly, that the first news of their approach was given to the settlers by the roar of their guns. Of course it was of no use to resist; the pickets could not defend ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... and hitherto unsolved riddle of Tibet, Petrie," he replied—"a mystery concealed from the world behind the veil of Lamaism." He stood up abruptly, glancing at a scrap of paper which he took from his pocket—"Suite Number 14a," he said. "Come along! We have not a moment to waste. ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... demanded the major, astonished. "Going to let that plane close in on us, and maybe riddle us?" ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Among other extremely curious terra-cottas I must also mention three pots with three rows of perforations; they have the usual handle on one side and three feet on the other; also three large vases with perforations right round, on all sides, from the bottom to the top; their use is a riddle to me; can they have served as bee-hives? Also a vessel in the form of a pig, with four feet, which are, however, shorter than the belly, so that the vessel can not stand upon them; the neck of the vessel, which is attached to the back of the pig, is connected with the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... and will grant it: by deeds, when, by what we do, we probe another's prudence, will or power. Either of these may happen in two ways. First, openly, as when one declares oneself a tempter: thus Samson (Judges 14:12) proposed a riddle to the Philistines in order to tempt them. In the second place it may be done with cunning and by stealth, as the Pharisees tempted Christ, as we read in Matt. 22:15, sqq. Again this is sometimes done explicitly, as when anyone intends, by word or deed, to put some ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... of its influence. This thesis of the relation of heterogeneous ethnic and social elements to each other, with all the consequences proceeding from it, contains within it the key to the solution of the entire riddle of the natural process of human history. We shall see this thesis illustrated ever and everywhere in the past and the present in the interrelations of heterogeneous ethnic and social elements and become convinced of its universal ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... outside lecturers were invited, because the friends of the measure were met by a strongly-expressed wish that the women of Michigan should speak for themselves. Short speeches were made by May Stocking Knaggs, Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Emily B. Ketcham, Lucy F. Andrews, Elizabeth Eaglesfield, Frances Riddle Stafford, Harriet A. Cook, Mrs. R. M. Kellogg, Phebe B. Whitfield and Mary B. Clay of Kentucky who was then residing in the State. Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby being present, she was invited to make the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... better believe him. Well for you, if you can believe him; for to believe him, you must understand him first; and I can tell you, you won't arrive at that understanding by looking out the word 'pietas' in your White-and- Riddle. If you do you will find those tiresome contractions, Etym. Dub., stop your inquiry very briefly, as you go back; if you go forward, through the Italian pieta, you will arrive presently in another group of ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... but one reading of the riddle, consistent with the whole character of the people: they clung to the Stuarts because they were obedient to the precepts and duties of religion, and labored under the belief, however mistaken, that from ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... chance, be it one in ten thousand, of building such a bridge? Those who have suffered and been strong, those whom we love and respect, those who have the honest faith in human nature which enables them to read aright the riddle of this strange world, those who by faith walk over burning ploughshares and dread no evil, those are the people who write the best letters of condolence. They do not dwell on our grief, or exaggerate it, although they are evidently writing to us with a lump in the ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... general set out to solve the riddle of the universe. They differ in their statement of the problem, in the purpose of the attempt, and in their methods of attempting the solution. Some will wonder how this marvellous universe ever came into existence, and will consider the question of the existence of things to ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... with a deep sense of pathos that she should have died before she had spent her money. That seemed to him a dark and pitiable mystery; and he looked from the coins in his hand to the dead woman, and back again to the coins, shaking his head over the riddle of man's life. Henry V. of England, dying at Vincennes just after he had conquered France, and this poor jade cut off by a cold draught in a great man's doorway, before she had time to spend her couple of whites - it seemed ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... letter this morning owing to an alarm of illness seizing grandfather. He had been taken with a sudden faintness. Of course we sent for the doctor, but before he arrived the faintness had passed, so he looked wise at us, like a prize riddle which had to be guessed before his next visit, left us his autograph (a wonderful hieroglyphic), and went away. Since then grandfather has been in the hands of a less taciturn practitioner, whom he calls the 'flower ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... from a Spanish plot, which was refused by the players, and was therefore given by him to Mr. Bullock, who, having more interest, made some slight alterations, and brought it upon the stage, under the title of Woman's a Riddle, but allowed the unhappy author no ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... do play 'thread the woman's needle.' An' slap the maidens a-darten drough: Or try who'll ax em the hardest riddle, Or soonest tell woone a-put us, true; Or zit an' ring, O, The bells, ding, ding, O, Upon our knee by ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... her the man had turned his back forever, that only the ashy road of the ruined remained for her to tread. And that was how the great news that Nature had looked upon her for a mother came to Joan Tregenza. Here was the riddle of the mysterious voice unraveled; here was the secret of her physical sorrows made clear. She looked wildly from one to the other—from the man to the woman; then she tottered a step away, clutching her money and her little picture to her breast; and then she rolled ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... with all my heart," said Mr. Maule, who thought that he could read the riddle which had been ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... she dropped her eyes again on the various groups beneath with Hugh and Ramsey central among them and did not even see that Hugh was answering the same riddle from Ramsey. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... the feminine mind! He had flattered himself that he had reached the end of her superficial attractions; and in a minute, by some startling metamorphosis, she was changed from a being of transparent shallows into the immemorial riddle of sex. She might be anything, or everything, except the ingenuous girl of ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... herself any one complicated physical and psychological human being really and truly 'conveys' to another by means of the simple contract known as the "plighted troth" or that of a larger deed called the called the "solemnization of matrimony", is a riddle difficult of solution; and as to how much one may claim on the strength of one or other of these indentures, that is a more difficult ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... and agitation.... Besides, he was beginning to be sick of Olga Ivanovna, and more than once after a violent outbreak of passion for her, he would look at her, as he sometimes did at Rogatchov. Lutchinov always remained a riddle to every one. In the coldness of his relentless soul you felt the presence of a strange almost southern fire, and even in the wildest glow of passion a breath of icy chill seemed to come from ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of my youth Come to me over the sea, Come in a vision to me, Come with your shimmer and song; Ye have known all of the truth, Witness to both shall ye bear; Read me the riddle of wrong, Solve me the cords of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... license of my position. Since then, for three years I have been the prisoner of my Parliament,—but now—now, and for the rest of the time granted to me on earth, I will live my life in the belief that its riddle must surely meet with God's own explanation. To me it has become evident that the laws of Nature make for Truth and Justice; while the laws of man are framed on deception and injustice. The two sets of laws contend one against the other, and the finite, after foolish and vain ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the sin-offering, and the burnt-offering. That was not it, and so he went from book to book until he had reached the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the fourteenth chapter of the book of Judges. He was just reading in that place about Samson's riddle, when his ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... your grace by what strange and happy chance this riddle has been read?" said the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... nevertheless an important step to have found that there was a relation between them. A century passed away, and Guettard's specimen, preserved at the Jardin des Plantes, waited with Sphinx-like patience for the man who should solve its riddle. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... did not cross, although it is hard for any one who has read The Riddle of the Sands to refrain. Had we been there in the nesting season I might have wandered in search of the sea birds' and the plovers' eggs, just for old sake's sake, as I have in the island of Coll, but we were too late, and The Helder had depressed us. It was off ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... primary tendency in man 'to transfer the sense of his own nature, in the radical explanation of all phenomena whatever.' Writing in the same key, Schopenhauer calls man 'a metaphysical animal.' He is speaking of the need man feels of a theory, in regard to the riddle of existence, which forces itself upon his notice; 'a need arising from the consciousness that behind the physical in the world, there is a metaphysical something permanent as the foundation of constant change.' Though not here alluding to the ghost theory, this bears indirectly ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his mind was quite clear—evidently his sleep had benefited him. He was not in a bed at all as he understood the word, but lying naked on a very soft and yielding ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... left for a short time above the horizon after sunset, it is by no means an easy object to observe on account of the mists which usually hang about low down near the earth. One opportunity, however, offers itself from time to time to solve the riddle of an "intra-Mercurial" planet, that is to say, of a planet which circulates within the path followed by Mercury. The opportunity in question is furnished by a total eclipse of the sun; for when, during an eclipse ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... mysteriously as a fairy in a nursery legend. And, lastly, she turns up in the shape of a court-page, and swaggers along London Bridge at this hour of the night, chanting a love song. Faith! it would puzzle the sphinx herself to read this riddle, I've a notion!" ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... balance between the interest on mortgages and the products of the soil. Those who, from 1802 till 1827, had merely laughed at the little man as they saw him trotting to Saint-Thibault and attending to his business, like a merchant living on his vineyards, found the answer to the riddle when the ant-lion seized his prey, after waiting for the day when the extravagance of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse culminated in the sale ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... against each of these assertions. For it was not the goddess of Fortune which pursued Bismarck in the ungainly shape of his former friend, that spiteful Prince Gortschakoff. The Frankfort assembly had left the Austrian riddle unsolved, and apparently insoluble. There was no hand in the country firm or skilful enough, no brain sufficiently hard or enlightened as to the needs of the day—not the king's, not Count Arnim's, nor ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... be up there, I own! See! curling smoke and flames right blue! To see the Evil One they travel; There many a riddle to unravel. ...
— Faust • Goethe
... direction of the broken ship's lantern. He traces the angle with his finger. The gesture ends with an accusing finger pointing at Red Joe. He whistles softly. For a moment his eye rests upon the gun, which leans against the clock. He has guessed the riddle. He advances casually, but with dirk in hand. He comes in front of Joe. Suddenly he presses the blade of his dirk against ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... traveller has travelled thither, it has travelled very quick, to have folks christened already by the name of the supposed author. But if you object that no child so lately christened could be arrived at years of maturity to be elected into parliament, I reply (to solve the riddle) that the person is an Anabaptist, and not christened till full age, which sets all right. However it be, the accident is very singular that these two names ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... all looks again! Oh, I love this old kitchen so! Baby dear, only look at it wid him pitty, pitty eyes, and him tongue out of his mousy! But who put the flour-riddle up there. And look at the pestle and mortar, and rust I declare in the patty pans! And a book, positively a dirty book, where the clean skewers ought to hang! Oh, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... figure of the unending wheel to symbolize all processes and procedures: a world, a universe, without termini. Sometimes I think them right, but then again my western mind will not have it that the riddle of the Sphinx may not be solved. Our assurance meets every challenge; mystery may make us humble; we may be baffled; but we do not despair because we know we are Gods to whom all doors must open eventually. That seems to be the real underlying ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... allegory. Argument or truth, dressed out in such fanciful garb, gained double force and acceptance. We may not be able to follow a poet in his wanderings; his local allusions may obscure to us much of his meaning; the doctrine of his allegory may be to us largely a riddle; and the connection between the body of its thought and illustration and the application, or solution, of the poetical conundrum may be past our comprehension; but the [Page 112] play of the poet's fancy, whether childish or mature, is an interesting study, and brings us closer ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... in spite of the telegram not having been delivered. Telegrams have failed to connect before. But they had not been there. If they had stayed with friends we did not know where they were now. It was a riddle. Not getting any light on the subject we decided to eat our dinner ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... of a riddle, Mr McKay. I suppose you consider a man with ten thousand a year rich, and a ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... her attentively nowadays, when she was unaware of his gaze, to try if her face offered any answer to the riddle. It could not be suggested that she was ill. Never in her life had she been looking so well. She had thrown herself, all at once, and with what was to him an unaccountable energy, into the creation and management of a flower-garden. She ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... a riddle book, Bertie, my son. I think we should get across the room now. I should be greatly obliged if you would introduce me ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... Mr. and Mrs. Martin are occupying the spare room below us, and the Lundbergs have also turned out to make room for Mr. and Mrs. Dam. Where our hosts have taken up their abode meanwhile remains a riddle for the present. (The riddle was solved in a subsequent tour of inspection of the house, when I found that the one resident couple had retired to the garret and the other to a workshop on the ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... be a simple and convenient solution of the riddle if the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type, to the realization of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But there is no warrant for such an expectation. Their dreams are generally ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... and the phenomenon was accounted for by every cause but the right one. Yet even those who most confidently solved the riddle were the most eagerly employed in investigating its true meaning. The seconds were of course applied to. Arundel Dacre was proverbially unpumpable; but Peacock Piggott, whose communicative temper was an ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... sight. Instead of trying to explain away the fundamental truth of Fatalism by superficial twaddle and foolish evasion, a man should attempt to get a clear knowledge and comprehension of it; for it is demonstrably true, and it helps us in a very important way to an understanding of the mysterious riddle of our life. Predestination and Fatalism do not differ in the main. They differ only in this, that with Predestination the given character and external determination of human action proceed from a rational Being, and with Fatalism from an irrational ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... impulsive being, rebelling against the rules of life and the general philosophy of his fellow-creatures, and shrinking with a shy, uncomprehended pride from the companionship of society. Shelley's disposition was a marked and rare one, but there is nothing of the riddle in it; for thousands, of his temperament, may always be found going strangely through the world, here and there, and the interpretation of such a character could be made extremely interesting, and even instructive, by any one capable of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... and curiosity, and loveliness, how they put us all to shame. I see them, flashing by in a subway train, golden sphinxes, whose riddles (as Mr. Cabell said of Woman) are not worth solving. Yet they are all the more appealing for that fact. For surely to be a riddle which is not worth solving, and still is cherished as a riddle, is the greatest mystery of all. What strange journeys lie before them, and how triumphantly they walk the precipices as though they ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... pasture-land, in the forest of Inglewood), meets a bold baron, who challenges him to fight, unless he can win his ransom by returning on New Year's Day with an answer to the question, What does a woman most desire? Arthur relates the story to Gawaine, asks him and others for an answer to the riddle, and collects their suggestions in a book ('letters,' 24.1). On his way to keep his tryst with the baron, he meets an unspeakably ugly woman, who offers her assistance; if she will help him, Arthur says, she shall wed with Gawaine. She gives him ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... riddle, monsieur?" she asked. "All kinds of solutions come to me, madam, but none that seem to entirely fit ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... days' debate, ministers were defeated (June 11) by the narrow figure of thirteen in a House of six hundred and thirty-seven. Mr. Gladstone did not speak, but he answered the riddle that had for long so much harassed the wirepullers, by going into the lobby with Disraeli and his flock. The general sense of the majority was probably best expressed by Mr. Bright. Since the fall of the government of Sir Robert Peel, he said, there had been no good handling of the liberal party ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... him again. Afterwards, on becoming reconciled to him, she bestows on him a dog and a dart, which Diana had once given her. The dog is turned into stone, while hunting a wild beast, which Themis has sent to ravage the territories of Thebes, after the interpretation of the riddle of the Sphinx, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... but, on the other hand, you will find but few of the great artists of the ages who have not been thrilled and haunted with the deep desire to help others, to increase their peace and joy, to interpret the riddle of the world, to give a motive for living a fuller life than the life of the drudge and the ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... immediately, for my albumess will be catechised on this subject; and how can I prompt her? Lake Leman, I know, and Lemon Lake (in a punch bowl) I have swum in, though those lymphs be long since dry. But Maggiore may be in the moon. Unsphinx this riddle for me, for my shelves have no gazetteer. And mayest thou never murder thy father-in-law in the Trivia of Lincoln's Inn New Square Passage, where Searl Street and the Street of Portugal embrace, nor afterwards make absurd proposals ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... martyrs to the front, who perish in the effort to solve the deadly riddle. We would pour out billions of money in the fight if need come. Rich men will spend all they possess rather than die, and see those they love die of it. Nations will do the same. Compromises are not considered; no one talks of reforming the Black Death. Unless ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Merle, "I've an idea that that's the handsomest women I ever saw! I think you're reading the riddle all wrong. Perhaps she's the ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... terrible experiences he had been through had aroused new strength in him. He had endured, with princely pride, all the terrors of death and of the most terrible humiliation. He had reflected in the solitude of his prison on the greatest riddle of life—on death and what is beyond. He had realized that there was nothing left for him but submission, patience, and quiet waiting. But bitter, heart-rending misfortune is a school which develops ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... reverence. But on the deeper grounds of religious faith his silence is significant. He is silent, and the doubt of Hamlet deepens his silence, about the after-world. "To die," it may be, was to him as it was to Claudio, "to go we know not whither." Often as his questionings turn to the riddle of life and death he leaves it a riddle to the last without heeding the common theological solutions around him. "We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... riddle to him, and he let the subject drift away. "Shall we go and sit in the cathedral?" he asked, when ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... where we are going, and what it is all about. It can never have been a greater puzzle than now, when we are all busily engaged in killing each other. And at every stage there have been those who have cried, "Lo, here!" and "Lo, there!" and have called men to witness that they have read the riddle and have torn the secret from the heart of ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... people arrested were a nondescript collection of tramps. Most of them had committed other offences for which the police had not arrested them. One bewildered-looking gentleman gave himself up (as if he were a riddle), but the police would have none of him, and restored him forthwith to his friends and keepers. The number of candidates for each new opening in ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... impressions but rather with an amnesia similar to that observed in neurotics for later experiences, the nature of which consists in their being detained from consciousness (repression). But what forces bring about this repression of the infantile impressions? He who can solve this riddle will ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... come, little Tiny, Let's hear what you have to tell Learned of the years you've scampered Over the hill and dell— What! Only a bark for answer? Now, Tiny, that isn't the thing Will help unravel the riddle Of wonderful, ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... answer immediately. The idea, the amazing, ridiculous idea which had burst upon me suddenly began to lose something of its absurdity. Somehow it began to look like the answer to my riddle. I realized that my main objection to the Campbell prescription had been that I must take it alone or with ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... lady swore "to take no rest on a night when the moon was full until she had gone to bed with her bridegroom." That is the kernel of the entire myth, the nave and yet apparently conclusive folk interpretation of the riddle of moon walking, at least in its most ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... ask—were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals and plants created as eggs or seed, or as full grown? To this it is sufficient to reply, was your primordial organism, or were your four or five progenitors created as egg, seed, or full grown? Neither theory attempts to solve this riddle, nor yet the riddle of the Omphalos." The latter point, which Mr. Darwin refuses to give up, is at page 483 of the "Origin," "and, in the case of mammals, were they created bearing the false marks of nourishment ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the same light by which it was written: we are referred by it, therefore, to sources of interpretation above itself. God was hidden in the sky; the book in another sky; who shall reveal God hidden in the book? After so many ages, it has become a riddle as difficult of solution as any for which it offers solution: the last and best puzzle of the exulting old Sphinx, who will never be cheated of her jest. Our Christianity misses the highest value of the book, as it indicates the resource of universal man. We use the cover as some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... thought that was uppermost in a thousand of those vigilant minds, even as it was uppermost in mine, was the riddle—how much they understood of us. Did they grasp that we in our millions were organized, disciplined, working together? Or did they interpret our spurts of fire, the sudden stinging of our shells, our steady investment of their encampment, as we should the furious unanimity of ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... night Phobar kept his telescope pointed at the probable spot, but search as he might, the heavens showed nothing new. In the morning he sought eagerly for news of any discovery made by fellow-watchers, but they, too, had found nothing unusual. Could it be that the mystery would now fade away, a new riddle of ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... these comparisons. Life is deeper and wider than any particular lesson to be learned from it; and just when we think that we have at last guessed its best meanings, it laughs in our face with some paradox which turns our solution into a new riddle. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... of Jesus: whether, in short, we may not throw the gospels into the waste-paper basket, or put them away on the fiction shelf of our libraries. I venture to reply that we shall be, on the contrary, in the position of the man in Bunyan's riddle who found that "the more he threw away, the more he had. "We get rid, to begin with, of the idolatrous or iconographic worship of Christ. By this I mean literally that worship which is given to pictures and statues of him, ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... all came Greek corruption, Greek worship, Greek vice. For years the mysteries of Dionysus and the orgies of the Maenads were celebrated on the slopes of the Aventine and in those deep caves that riddle its sides, less than a mile from the Forum, from the Capitol, from the house of the rigid Cato, who found fault with Scipio of Africa for shaving every day and liking Greek verses. The evil had first ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Blindness is but a sea-shell kindly placed Beside the ear, and in its varying tone, Who will, may make life's secret all his own. And thus misfortunes bless, for blindness brings A power to pierce the depths of hidden things, To walk where reason and fair fancy lead, To read the riddle of men's thoughts, to read The soul's arcana in each subtler tone, And make man's joys and sorrows all ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... The riddle of the modern Sphinx is, How to create a new architecture? and we find the Oedipus who shall solve it concealed in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... the wisest baffled in even guessing at this riddle, as they were a third time, when one Prosper B. Shaw came with the story that while rowing down in the drainage canal, he had come upon, floating gently along, dissevered at the knee joint, twelve ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... western gate, Luke Havergal, There are the crimson leaves upon the wall. Go, — for the winds are tearing them away, — Nor think to riddle the dead words they say, Nor any more to feel them as they fall; But go! and if you trust her she will call. There is the western gate, Luke ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... there was which puzzled myself, and I sought in my brain a key to that riddle almost as sedulously as Madame had sought a guide to useful knowledge in my toilet drawers. How was it that Dr. John, if he had not been accessory to the dropping of that casket into the garden, should have known that it was dropped, and appeared so promptly on the spot to seek it? So ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... corps was now raised to $5 a week, and all set to work to try to solve the riddle of how a girl was to pay her board bill, her basket bill, her washing bill, and all the small expenses of the theater—powder, paint, soap, hair-pins, etc.—to say nothing of shoes and clothing, out of her earnings. Clara Morris and the Bradshaws solved the problem ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... piece to complete the answer to our riddle," I affirmed,—I really thought so at the time,—"and you can get it for me. Don't bother your aunt; she will keep back all essentials, anyway. Your uncle and aunt and Felix Page all came from the same ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... me the rest. It'll be of the same quality, devil a doubt, and it doesn't help us to solve the riddle that's before us." ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... myself," the Carl gurgled through a mouthful of blackberries, "and as I am myself, how can it be myself? That is a silly riddle," he burbled. ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... guilefull & abusing, for what els is your Metaphor but an inuersion of sence by transport; your allegorie by a duplicitie of meaning or dissimulation vnder couert and darke intendments: one while speaking obscurely and in riddle called AEnigma: another while by common prouerbe or Adage called Paremia: then by merry skoffe called Ironia: then by bitter tawnt called Sarcasmus: then by periphrase or circumlocution when all might be said in ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... the facts of life seem often to us, and are felt often by some of us, to shatter it to atoms; to riddle it through and through with shot. But, if we bring the Pattern-life to bear upon the illumination of all life, and if we learn the lessons of the Cradle and the Cross, and rise to the view of human life which emerges from the example of Jesus Christ, then we get back ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... grave, and with her chin in her two cupped palms, stared out across the river at the heaped bluffs and down at the pink-and-white patch of fruit-trees. She was trying, as the young will always try, to solve the riddle of life; and she was baffled and unhappy because she could not find any answer at all that pleased both her ideals and her reason. And then she heard a man's voice lifted up in riotous song, and she turned her head toward the opening of the gorge and listened, her eyes brightening ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... hit it," assented Gladwin. "So I've come home to investigate—sleuthing expedition, you might say. Didn't want him to hear I was coming and climb out. Now you've got the answer to the gumshoe riddle. My plan is to lie low and have you look him up. Nothing else on foot, Whitney? Haven't gone into mustard or Wall street, ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... reality, living the life of the cattle men, sharing their duties and their hardships, participating in wild, daring night rides, facing appalling storms, battling with swollen torrents, bravely facing many perils, and tow eventually Tad Butler and his companions solved the Veiled Riddle of the Plains, thus bringing great happiness to others as well ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... Little is known of his boyhood. He was supposed to have been brought to the district by Highlanders who were in the habit of bringing to Crieff cartloads of split pine from Rannoch Forest, which they sold to riddle-makers to make riddle rims. During one of those visits the child is supposed to have been left. He was called Alastair, owing to his supposed Highland descent, and Bane, because of his white hair. As he grew up to manhood he showed symptoms of a wandering ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... morning I was back on time. 'Well, Mr. Riddle,' says I, when he opened the bedroom door, 'and how is ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... those who know nothing about it; but he could not approve of his selfishness, cold-blooded calculations, and least of all of the manner in which he forgot his "white gifts," to adopt those that were purely "red." On the other hand, Pathfinder was a riddle to Captain Sanglier. The latter could not comprehend the other's motives; he had often heard of his disinterestedness, justice, and truth; and in several instances they had led him into grave errors, on that principle by which a frank and ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... Lord's supper, and other solemn appointments; especially considering the nature of right church constitution, and the severity of God towards those that came unprepared to his table of old (1 Cor 11:28-30). A riddle indeed, That the Lord should, without a word, so severely command, that all which want light in baptism, be excluded church privileges; and yet against his word, admit of persons unprepared, to the Lord's ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... The riddle, nevertheless, defied solution. However much they pored over the map, it was still ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... Inverness and Brady. I anticipate no trouble, and if there is no trouble, we shall return within an hour. If we are not back within three hours, blast this entire area with atomic grenades, and riddle it with the rays. Is ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... of Monsters. Laius. Oedipus. The Oracle. Sphinx. The Riddle. Oedipus made King. Jocasta. Origin of Pegasus. Fountain of Hippocrene. The Chimaera. Bellerophontic Letters. The Centaurs. The Pygmies. Description of the Griffin. The Native Country. ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... teaches or instructs. Think of it—I! That definition should be revised to read, 'Teacher: one who, conveying certain information to others, reads in fifty faces unanswerable questions as to the riddle of existence.' 'School: a place where the presumably wise are convinced of their own folly.' Note well, my friend: I am a gray sister, in a gray serge suit that fits, with white cuffs and collar, and with chalk on my fingers. Oh, it's not what I'm required to teach, but what ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... the dispatches were in a complicated cipher which resisted all attempts at solution. The Tribune published samples from time to time, keeping interest alive in the hope that somebody might solve the riddle. Finally two members of the Tribune staff were successful in discovering the key to the cipher in a way that recalls the paper-covered detective story. The newspaper aroused and excited public interest ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... great tomb. Very few thoroughly explored this relic of the ancients, but its great antiquity, alleged by some authorities to date long prior to the creation as fixed by the Christian calendar, and the riddle associated with it, demanded that everyone should at least go and gaze on its face for a little while. Here it was customary to submit to the camera man. Many photographs were thus secured which, when posted, were of great interest to ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... said, I thought ye would ask me a riddle, Sir, and ye ask about Yu[109] and Ch'iu.[110] He that holds to the Way in serving his lord and leaves when he cannot do so, we call a great minister. Now Yu and Ch'iu I ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... to make us familiar with those types exhibited in the temple and alluded to by the inspired writers of the New Testament; to use a Puritan expression, he would enable us to plough with our spiritual Samson's heifer to expound the riddle, and thus discover the dark patterns of heavenly things (Heb 9:23,24). Among the many striking objects to which Bunyan directs our wondering eyes, a few should excite our deeper attention while we accompany him ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... gather up any bits and pieces of jewellery and such like as would please me, and if the collection isn't a good one I'll maybe blow an arm off you, jist as a mark of my displeasure. As for the rest, if you ain't good I'll riddle the brain-pan of one of yeh jist to convince the others that I ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... that system of deceit necessary to carry on his various professions, I never found anything in Melchior's conduct which could be considered as criminal. On the contrary, he was kind, generous, and upright in his private dealings, and in many points, proved that he had a good heart. He was a riddle of inconsistency it was certain; professionally he would cheat anybody, and disregard all truth and honesty; but, in his private character, he was scrupulously honest, and, with the exception of the assertion relative to Fleta's birth and parentage, he had ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... merriment, which by no means relieved me. "Shall I give you some good advice?" continued Gulab-Sing, changing his tone for a more serious one. "Don't trouble your head with such vain speculations. The day when this riddle yields its solution, the Rajput Sphinx will not seek destruction in the waves of the sea; but, believe me, it won't bring any profit to the Russian Oedipus either. You already know every detail you ever will learn. So leave the rest to ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... cry about," said Nyoda, "don't you know that wild ducks are game birds? It's a bit out of season and you mustn't shoot any more, but I must congratulate you on your aim." Sahwah was a living riddle to her. Fearless as an Indian in the woods and possessing the skill with a rifle to bring down a bird on the wing, she was so tender-hearted that she could not bear to think of having killed any living thing! Nyoda bade her cheer up and pluck the fowl ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... He looked deep into her eyes for seconds, and then she felt him drawing her irresistibly to him. She yielded herself as driftwood yields to a racing flood, no longer caring for the interpretation of the riddle, scarcely remembering its existence; heard him laugh above her head—a brief, exultant laugh—as he clasped her. And then came ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... intervene ere their hopes will be fulfilled. If their troubles are short, so may be their joys; but long troubles may bring longer happiness. Choose you which you will, my masters—I will read you a riddle; let me hear ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... different. He inquired for Rincer and the cold in his nose, told Mrs. Rincer a riddle, asked Miss Rincer when she would be ready to marry him, and paid his compliments to Miss Brett, the other young lady in the bar, all in a minute of time, and with a liveliness and facetiousness which set all these ladies in a giggle; and he gave a cluck, expressive of great satisfaction, as he ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that professed moralists and philosophers did much to help me out of the dilemma; but the riddle which history presented I found solved in the pages of Shakspeare. There the crooked appeared straight; the inaccessible, easy; the incomprehensible, plain. All I sought, I found there; his characters combine history and real life; they are complete individuals, whose hearts and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson |
