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More "Oracle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gone away somewhere," enlightened our oracle. "They went to the train last night in a taxi. They have gone somewhere to find out something about ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... going to hear her talk now," whispered Favraud; "that is a sign—equal to General Finistere's—the snuffbox tapping, I mean. The oracle is beginning to arouse! Come I let me stir her further!" and he inclined ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... a family. She made afterwards a not very happy marriage; and when her husband died just before I went to Europe, she was left alone and poor. I arranged a small house for her in the neighbourhood of the Hollow; and there she lives—a kind of mysterious oracle to the people about. And her greatest earthly pleasure, I suppose, is to have me come and see her. Gyda Boerresen is ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... and take the name of my God in vain." This has not any of the marks of being a Jewish prayer, for the Jews never prayed but when they were in trouble, and never for anything but victory, vengeance, or riches.—Author. (Prov. xxx. 1, and xxxi. 1) the word "prophecy" in these verses is translated "oracle" or "burden" (marg.) in the revised version.—The prayer of Agur was quoted by Paine in his plea for the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... not the correct account of the notion of justice; if justice be totally independent of utility, and be a standard per se, which the mind can recognize by simple introspection of itself; it is hard to understand why that internal oracle is so ambiguous, and why so many things appear either just or unjust, according to the light in which they are regarded. We are continually informed that Utility is an uncertain standard, which every different person interprets differently, and that there is no safety but in the immutable, ineffaceable, ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... the prince, 'that commerce could develop such an oracle; it is a subtle sense of fitness you express. I ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... and protected all, delivering none back— neither the servant to his master, the debtor to his creditor, nor the murderer into the hands of the magistrate; saying it was a privileged place, and they could so maintain it by an order of the holy oracle; insomuch that the city grew presently very populous." It was men, of course, who took advantage of this asylum, for who ever heard of women who would rush in great numbers to such a place? Rome was a ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... suddenly acquired a mysterious and wise significance and became oracular. She alone had the power of inspiring him to be profound. He had noticed that before, years ago, and first at their first meeting. Or was it that she saw in him an oracle, and caused him to see ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... appeared in the Tages Zeitung of August 14th last, is interesting because Reventlow is without doubt the oracle and mouthpiece of the Prussian Conservatives. He continues to attack me in this article but much of the attack is in reality praise, and, as we say in expressive slang, "every knock is a ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... into every department of human affairs; speaking from the legislator's lips, at the bar, from the pulpit,—putting in its word every where, always at hand, always sufficient, constituting itself, in virtue of its own irresistible claims and in the face of what we are told of it, the oracle, the great practical, mysterious, but universally acknowledged, oracle of our modern life; the fact that these two great branches of the modern philosophy make their appearance in history at the same moment, that they ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... then disappeared under such and such circumstances. When the Tchurtchun has obtained all the necessary information, he recites a few prayers, opens his book of divination, and finally pronounces his oracle, while the Tartars, who have come to consult him, listen to his words, kneeling, and rapt in profound devotion. Your Grand Lama, he says, is come to life again, in Thibet, at such a distance from your house; you will find ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... manifestations of intellect can be called forth only by the express will of the original Mind, independent of second causes. Genius descends upon us from the clouds precisely where we least look for it. Events may be calculated, predicted—spirits never; no earthly oracle announces the appearance of genius: the unfathomable will of the Creator suddenly calls ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... cowardly and prudential proverbs. The sentiments of a man while he is full of ardour and hope are to be received, it is supposed, with some qualification. But when the same person has ignominiously failed and begins to eat up his words, he should be listened to like an oracle. Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. And since mediocre people constitute ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... coffin and funeral service, as well as a cup of coffee for anyone who would put himself out so far as to accept their hospitality on that occasion. But now, contrary to custom, his father had not proved an oracle—he was dead and everything else had gone with him—except the land on the Point. And how was that to be turned into cash when there was no cabin on it? He would probably have to starve to death himself. Wouldn't it be simplest to run down to the shore ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... possessions, than the priests which required restitution of their owne. But (saith he) bicause the image of Christ hanging on the crosse was thought to speake these words, such credit was giuen thereto, as it had beene an oracle, that the priests had their sute dashed, and all the trouble was ceassed. So the moonks held those possessions, howsoeuer they came to them, by the helpe of God, or rather (as saith the same Polydor) by the helpe of ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... the last words with slow enunciation, like an oracle. Mr. Rhys looked up from his writing and smiled at her a little, though he ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... demonstrated. He felt the time had come—the reference here and elsewhere is always to the realm of popular magazine literature appealing to a very wide audience—for the editor of some magazine to project his personality through the printed page and to convince the public that he was not an oracle removed from the people, but a real human being who could talk and not ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... his wife's advice, and in both instances his judgment failed and hers was right. Many men have found their wives' intuitive judgment so correct that they dare not resist it, as though it were the utterings of an oracle. It is well known that such men as Bonaparte and Jackson have relied with great confidence upon their wives' opinions. So universal is this opinion among men, that all our best moralists and most sage philosophers ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... young, since of a number of adult kangaroo rats taken during the first week of January none have been found to be breeding. Two records from Vernon Bailey are as follows: May 19-June 8, 1903, young specimen in nest (Santa Rosa, N. Mex.); June 12, 1889, one female, two embryos (Oracle, Ariz.). ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... Salisbury's conduct in the affair, one would suppose that he had shut himself up in his study, and consulted the oracle: ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, November 4, 1897, No. 52 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... how that'll be exact," replied our oracle: "If the rain comes down pretty, we shan't have no hurricane; if it holds up ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... against the Boeotians was probably in a large measure due to the fact that, as the late Lord Salisbury might have said, they 'put their money on the wrong horse' during the Persian war. So also, it may be observed, did the oracle at Delphi." ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... characterize the born leader. He possessed an iron will and unflinching determination, before which obstacles had to yield, and persecution found itself powerless. His talent to grasp and appreciate the true and the beautiful rendered him the oracle of the thousands who, to this day, are proud to call themselves his disciples. To him Haskalah was not merely acquaintance with general culture, or even its acquisition. It was the realization of one's individuality as a Jew and a man. Gordon's advice, to be a Jew at home and a man abroad, found ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... cost different prices," quoth the oracle, so sententiously, that Miss Fosbrook's shoulders shook with laughing as she stood a little in the background of the eager heap in ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... those great philosophers the world hath ever had in admiration, whose works we do so much esteem, that gave precepts of wisdom to others, inventors of Arts and Sciences, Socrates the wisest man of his time by the Oracle of Apollo, whom his two scholars, [193]Plato and [194] Xenophon, so much extol and magnify with those honourable titles, "best and wisest of all mortal men, the happiest, and most just;" and as [195] Alcibiades incomparably commends him; Achilles ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... flame flared up before the nodding glass and metal of the top. His eyes looked at it, narrowed with attention, as if expecting an imperceptible sign. With his grave face he resembled a booted and misshapen pagan burning incense before the oracle of a Joss. There was no mistake. It was the lowest reading he had ever seen in ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... the sun, dost, with an equal ray, Into the palace and the cottage shine; And show'st the soul both to the clerk and lay, learned and By the clear lamp of th' oracle divine. [unlearned ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Sir Thomas Malory, than the general tone of the present Idyls. Those first experiments, charged like a full sponge with the essence and volume of primitive legend, went to their purpose without retrospection or vacillation: each short tale, whether it laughed or moaned, promulgated itself like an oracle. The teller seemed to have been listening to the voice of Fate, and whether, Guinevere swayed the bridle-rein, or Elaine's web flew out and floated wide, or Lancelot sang tirra-lirra by the river, it was asserted with the positiveness of a Hebrew chronicle, which we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... the Oracle of Delphi: the Central Doors being the Gate of the 'Adytum,' or Innermost shrine. From the left Inferior Door enter the Priestess of the Oracle, who stands in front of the Central Gate, to ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... glad, my dear Sir Oracle, that you are beginning to recollect yourself and temper your severities on our sex," said my wife. "As usual, there is much truth lying about loosely in the vicinity of your assertions; but they are as far from being in themselves ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... emphasize this declaration, He added that any one who would not hear and obey the Church should be considered as a heathen and a publican—types of all that was bad.(29) The Church, therefore, is the oracle of God, it is His mouthpiece; it possesses and guards the only revelation which God has made to His rational creatures; it alone has ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... the lime-case a question, and if it swings, this is supposed to be an answer in the affirmative; if it does not move, this is a negative reply. This seems to be a very simple trick, for the diviner can impart movement to the lime-case by means of the hand. A similar way of consulting the oracle is by the bow, which is held in the hand by the middle of the string. A simple method of divining is by means of cowries or grains of rice. The diviner plunges his hand into a bag or basket after ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... uncommon independence of mind; for, you will generally find such persons arranged under the banner of some one of the various schools of theology, morals, philosophy, or politics, and following on with ardor the devious course of their leader receiving whatever falls from his lips as the voice of an oracle, and running with enthusiasm into all his extravagances. Like the vane upon the spire, that lifts up itself with proud eminence to the clouds, they are ready to be carried about by every wind of doctrine. Whereas true independence of mind consists in ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... one, had by his mother been consigned over to the Manichaeans, but had found out how much that sect was to be abhorred, and had, therefore, avoided it. But he assured her that the child of such tears as hers could not perish. Which answer she took as an oracle ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... tug. All this within her was confusedly present—a cloud of questions out of which Maud Manningham's large seated self loomed, however, as a mass more and more definite, taking in fact for the consultative relation something of the form of an oracle. From the oracle the sound did come—or at any rate the sense did, a sense all accordant with the insufflation she had just seen working. "Yes," the sense was, "I'll help you for Milly, because if that comes off I shall be helped, by its doing so, for Kate"—a view into which Mrs. Stringham could ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... imputation—by suggestion—by allegation—by collusion— and in fact! Now, if I was one o' them Hindus I could hire a priest to sing a hymn and start me clean again from the beginning. Trouble is, I'm a complacent liar! I'll do it again, and I know it! Brandy's the right oracle for me!" ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... Mrs. Talbot, that man is never so flattered as when some woman thinks him an oracle. Besides, although yours is the best mind in any pretty woman's head I know of—in any woman's head for that matter—you still have much to learn, and I should feel very jealous if you ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... London's ills can cope? "Behold this dreamer cometh!" So of old The sons of JACOB, envious, scornful, cold, And fearful for their privilege of birth And of possession, in derisive mirth, Cried at young JOSEPH's coming. A "young man," O reverend oracle! Yet his wit outran, His wisdom far outsoared, for all their boast, The nous collective of the elder host; And PHARAOH, when his "wise men" vainly schemed, Found statesmanship in a young man who dreamed. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... has it. In this incantation, again, we have the association with moonwort; and the connection is further illustrated in an old oracle ascribed to Hecate: 'From a root of wild rue fashion and polish a statue; adorn it with household lizards; grind myrrh, gum, and frankincense with the same reptiles, and let the mixture stand in the air during the waning of a moon; ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... honest passions and his manly thoughts; His feelings kindle at thy burning words, Which speak his duty in the battle's front; His parting whisper to the maid he loves Is breathed in eloquence he learned from thee; Thou art his Oracle in every mood— His trump of victory—his lyre ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... several minutes, during which I fondled the seeds and Halicarnassus enveloped himself in clouds of smoke. Presently there was a cessation of puffs, a rift in the cloud showed that the oracle was opening his mouth, and directly thereafter he delivered himself of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... at last found him and induced him to return, for his country was going to rack and ruin, and even its capital had fallen into the enemy's hands. The loving fairy herself sends the prince back to his country; for the oracle has decreed that she shall lay upon her lover the severest of tasks. Only by performing this task triumphantly can he make it possible for her to leave the immortal world of fairies in order to share the fate of her earthly lover, as ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... caverned rock, where a mysterious 'Suffing' (something) answers, through an interpreter, any questions in any tongue, even English, receiving, in return for the revelations, offerings of beads, leaf-tobacco, and cattle, which are mysteriously removed. The oracle is doubtless worked by some sturdy knave, a 'demon-doctor,' as the missionaries call him, who laughs at the beards of his implicitly-believing dupes. A tree growing near the stream represents 'Lot's wife's pillar;' some sceptical and Voltairian ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... is that? Such an oracle really whets my curiosity. What am I to-day? What was I the yesterday of ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... in the Adages, c. 189, as Jortin observes. Blackwell, in his curious Life of Homer, after showing that the ancient oracles were the fountains of knowledge, and that the votaries of the god of Delphi had their faith confirmed by the oracle's perfect acquaintance with the country, parentage, and fortunes of the suppliant, and many predictions verified; that besides all this, the oracles that have reached us discover a wide knowledge of everything relating to Greece;—this learned writer is at a loss to account for a knowledge that he ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... fine thing to be an oracle to which an appeal is always made in all discussions. The men of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that slight tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of carrying a "settler" in the form of a fact ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... home, and with the hearty acquiescence of his wife, who only needed to know the right, to pursue it, she began a physical life in obedience to the laws laid down by the said oracle, Andrew Combe. ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... because his slippers were placed by his bed-side for contrary feet; and I have won a wager by betting that he would turn the corner of a certain street at precisely three minutes before ten in the morning. My uncle used to frequent a club in the City, of which he had become the oracle. Precisely at eight o'clock he entered the room—took his seat in a leather-backed easy chair in a particular corner—read a certain favourite journal—drank two glasses of rum toddy—smoked four pipes—and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... admonition as if what was read was addressed to him: "Go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me" [Matt. 19:21]. And by such oracle was he forthwith converted unto Thee. So quickly I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there had I put down the volume of the Apostles, when I rose thence. I seized, I opened, and in silence I read that paragraph on which my eye first fell: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... occasioned by the vast accumulation of wisdom and experience upon the brain. Hence he is apt to become narrative and admonitory, that is to say, fond of telling long stories, and of doling out advice, to the small profit and great annoyance of his friends. As I have a great horror of becoming the oracle, or, more technically speaking, the "bore," of the domestic circle, and would much rather bestow my wisdom and tediousness upon the world at large, I have always sought to ease off this surcharge of the intellect by means of my pen, and hence have ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... winked. But time has exposed the cheat. By the ruined shrine the worshipper may now see the secret steps by which the priest got to the back of the statue, and the pipe entering the back of its head through which he whispered the answers of the oracle. ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... with her devoted friend, the Comtesse de Maure, and continuing the traditions of the Hotel de Rambouillet. Her tastes had been formed in this circle, and she had also been under the instruction of the Chevalier de Mere, a litterateur and courtier who had great vogue, was something of an oracle, and molded the character and manners of divers women of this period, among others the future Mme. de Maintenon. His confidence in his own power of bringing talent out of mediocrity was certainly refreshing. Among his pupils was the Duchesse de Lesdiguieres, who said to him one day, "I ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... movements would be made at the North, with most disastrous results. "Wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine!" Mr. Paulding has already been taught by Judge Jay, that he who aspires to the fame of an oracle, without its inspiration, must resort to other expedients to prevent detection, than the clumsy one of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... king, supposing the gods were angry, inquired of the oracle of Apollo, and Apollo answered him thus: "Let the damsel be placed on the top of a certain mountain, adorned as for the bed of marriage and of death. Look not for a son-in-law of mortal birth; but for that evil serpent-thing, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... military oracle of the Administration in the first days of the war. His ability and great experience entitled him to regard and deference on all questions relating to military operations. No one appreciated his qualities more than the President, unless it was General Scott himself, who with great ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... a living oracle, to which he used to apply at all times. Here are extracts from two of his letters showing how he ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... comet's streams. And here were surfaces red and rough In the finished stuff, Where the knotted thread was proud and rebelled As the shuttle proved The fated warp and woof that held When the shuttle moved; And pressed the dye which ran to loss In a deep maroon Around an altar, oracle, cross Or a crescent moon. Around a face, a thought, a star In a ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... was an old journalist, whose face was a sealed book of Confucius, and who talked to me, patronizingly, now and then, like the Delphic Oracle. His name was Watch, and he wore a prodigious pearl in his shirt-bosom. He crept up to the editorial room at nine o'clock every night, and dashed off an hour's worth of glittering generalities, at the end of which time two or three gentlemen, blooming at the nose, and with cheeks ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... pain and pleasure, for each baby was laid on grandma's knee, its small virtues, vices, ailments, and accomplishments rehearsed, its beauties examined, its strength tested, and the verdict of the family oracle pronounced upon it as it was cradled, kissed, and blessed on the kind old heart which had room for every care and joy of those who called her mother. It was a sight the girl never forgot, because just then she was ready ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... that neither story nor character-drawing was his forte, that the dialogue is too colourless, and that though the description is often charming, it is seldom masterly. As before, there are jarring rhymes—"school" and "oracle," "Faun" and "scorn." Empedocles himself is sometimes dreadfully tedious; but the part of Callicles throughout is lavishly poetical. Not merely the show passages—that which the ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... apparent how vast his transactions had been. For years he had been known as a rising man, and suddenly he became an important man. The telegraph, the newspapers, chronicled his every movement; whatever he said was construed like a Delphic oracle. The smile or the frown of Jay Hawker himself had not a greater effect upon the market. The Southwest operation, which made so much noise in the courts, was merely an incident. In the lives of many successful men there are such incidents, which they do not care ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... an oracle anxious to be interrogated, so I questioned him further. I knew by report that the girl was fair, but I could not think of her in any fashion as a maid for Messer Simone, and I conveyed my doubts to Guido. "Is the girl to be ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... will furnish us with a piece of history not unapplicable to our present purpose. Servius Sulpicius, a gentleman of the patrician order, and a celebrated orator, had occasion to take the opinion of Quintus Mutius Scaevola, the oracle of the Roman law; but for want of some knowlege in that science, could not so much as understand even the technical terms, which his friend was obliged to make use of. Upon which Mutius Scaevola could not forbear to upbraid him with this memorable ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... with my spirit: as if they too had taken their cue from the ill-omened bodings of my Indian oracle! A storm-cloud had suddenly obscured the sun—black as the wing of the buzzard-vulture. Red shafts were shooting athwart the sky—threatening to scathe the trees of the forest; thunder rolled continuously along their ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the age, also, he has a message of kindred truth. The pulpit is erected as a witness against the generations as they come and go. It is by the preacher that Jesus Christ speaks to successive centuries. He is the true oracle of God. Against the carelessness, the covetousness, the debauchery and corruption of the nations, God would speak through him. Against the oppression of the poor, the robbery of the widow, the exploitation of the savage; against the crimes of the empires, the Almighty, through his lips, ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... reasonable number of stout great-coated yeomen, bartering or dealing for the various commodities of their farms; and on other days of the week, only a few forlorn burghers, crawling about like half-awakened flies, and watching the town steeple till the happy sound of twelve strokes from Time's oracle should tell them it was time to take their meridian dram. The narrow windows of the shops intimated very imperfectly the miscellaneous contents of the interior, where every merchant, as the shopkeepers of Marchthorn were termed, more Scotico, sold every thing that could be thought ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of their arrival, a banquet was given them by their compatriots; and from that hour, Foresti became the oracle and the consoler, the teacher, almoner, and chief of his fellow-exiles. Subsequent events drove many other Italian patriots to our shores; his purse and his counsel were ever ready for the impoverished and inexperienced, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... us another echo of the story of Minos in the shape of the reasons which led the Cretans to refuse aid to the rest of the Greeks during the Persian invasion. The Delphian oracle, which they consulted at this crisis, suggested to them that they had known enough of the misery caused by foreign expeditions. 'Fools, you complain of all the woes that Minos in his anger sent you, for aiding Menelaus, because they would not assist ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... you had that up your sleeve, young woman? I don't like it a little bit! That is why you talked so like an oracle a little while ago! ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... existence, and ceases to meet his compeers except on Sunday; nobody consults him; his experience has been monotonous, and his age is apt to grow unsocial. The old mechanic finds his tools and his methods superseded by those of younger men. But the superannuated fisherman graduates into an oracle; the longer he lives, the greater the dignity of his experience; he remembers the great storm, the great tide, the great catch, the great shipwreck; and on all emergencies his counsel has weight. He still busies himself about the boats too, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... fly at once and discover the secret, then," said Raymond, slipping Amita's arm through his. "We will consult the oracle in the ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... is an exile, bred in the desperate hopes and wild schemes of exile; he is a prince without a kingdom, always dreaming of his wrongs and his restoration; and driven by the old savage doctrine, which an oracle has confirmed, of the duty and manliness of revenge. He is, as was shown by his later history, a man subject to overpowering impulses and to fits of will-less brooding. Lastly, he is very young, and is swept away by ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... present participle of rimay, to speak, to prattle. The river and the valley were known by this name among all the ancient Indians. The oracle of a temple with an idol, which stood in the neighborhood of the present city of Lima, conferred the name. It is said that before the time of the Incas persons suspected of magic were banished to the valley of the Rimac, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the 18th day of June, 1859, the "State Banner and Delphian Oracle," published weekly at Oxbow Village, one of the principal centres in a thriving river-town of New England, contained an advertisement which involved the story of a young life, and stained the emotions of a small community. Such faces of dismay, such shaking ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... saw sitting all alone (Farmer) Farewell, false Love, the oracle of lies (Byrd) Farewell, my joy! (Weelkes) Fine knacks for ladies, cheap, choice, brave and new (John Dowland) Fire that must flame is with apt fuel fed (Campion) Flora gave me fairest flowers (Wilbye) Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet (Campion and Rosseter) ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... "The oracle speaks in poetry," laughed Eric. "That was Florence Percival, who led the class in mathematics, as I'm a living man. By many she is considered the beauty of her class. I can't say that such is my opinion. ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... civil war with their own flesh and blood. The threadbare author hates the gaudy coat; And swears at the gilt coach, but swears afoot: 10 For 'tis observed of every scribbling man, He grows a fop as fast as e'er he can; Prunes up, and asks his oracle, the glass, If pink and purple best become his face. For our poor wretch, he neither rails nor prays; Nor likes your wit, just as you like his plays; He has not yet so much of Mr Bayes. He does his best; and if he cannot please, Would quietly sue out his writ of ease. Yet, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... been introduced from outside. But it was long before Fortuna became of any real importance in Rome, and I shall leave her out of account here. She had two homes of renown in Latium, at Antium and Praeneste, and was in each connected with a kind of oracle, which seems to have been specially resorted to by women before and after childbirth. She was also very probably a deity of other kinds of fertility; and in course of time she took on the characteristics of the Greek Tyche, and became a favourite ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... spoke truth, and so the battle ended; and Frank went to his books, while Amyas, who must needs be doing, if he was not to dream, started off to the dockyard to potter about a new ship of Sir Richard's, and forget his woes, in the capacity of Sir Oracle among the sailors. And so he had played his move for Rose, even as Eustace had, and lost her: but ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... AWB], Oub, or Ob; and it is interpreted Pythonissa. The place where she resided, seems to have been named from the worship there instituted: for Endor is compounded of En-Ador, and signifies Fons Pythonis, the fountain of light, the oracle of the God Ador. This oracle was, probably, founded by the Canaanites; and had never been totally suppressed. In antient times they had no images in their temples, but, in lieu of them, used conical stones or pillars, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... giving a wealth of darkness to the full frank blue eyes, a mystery of meaning—more than brain was ever meant to fathom: richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom to Prince Ferdinand. For when nature turns artist, and produces contrasts of colour on a fair face, where is the Sage, or what the Oracle, shall match the depth ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hasten their march as he would deliver the city into their hands, on which occasion he enjoined them to put all the Christians to the sword. The epumanon then disappeared, and they pursued their way joyfully, being animated by this oracle. On a sudden the heavens cleared up, and a most beautiful woman was seen, seated on a bright cloud, and having a charming yet severe and majestic countenance, which much abated the pride and haughtiness inspired by the former vision. This was the queen of heaven, who ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... my selfe again, with thinking that peraduenture this was shee, according to the sacred Oracle and true speech, of the mighty Queene Eleutherillida: and therefore, that I should not shrinke or stoope vnder my burthen; for if I were not greatly deceiued, this was shee indeede. And hauing made thys amorous and discoursiue thought and swasiue pr[ae]suppose, abandoning all ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... then all's well. For, to tell you true, Pug, I had a kind of villainous apprehension that you had been here longer: but whatever thou sayest is an oracle, sweet Pug, and ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... aetiological myth to account for the practice. 'Wolves came and carried off the entrails from the fire; shepherds, following them, were killed by mortal vapours from a cave; thence ensued a pestilence, because they had followed the wolves. An oracle bade them "play the wolf," i.e. live on plunder, whence they were called Hirpi, wolves,' an attempt to account for a wolf clan-name. There is also a story that, when the grave of Feronia seemed all on fire, and the people were about ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... maid, or such a maid, naming all the girls one after another, shall marry, to which he answers according to his own whim, or agreeable to the intimacies he has taken notice of during the time of merriment, and whatever he says is absolutely depended upon as an oracle; and if he couple two people who have an aversion to each other, tears and vexation succeed the mirth; this they call "cutting off the fiddler's head," for after this he is dead ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... evil angels. But this was neither the whole, nor the principal part, of Pagan worship. Pallas was not, in the pure Greek mind, merely a powerful piece of ivory in a temple at Athens; neither was the choice of Leonidas between the alternatives granted him by the oracle, of personal death, or ruin to his country, altogether a ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... infinitely lower place than Man. It is difficult to believe this, when we see such range and dignity of thought on the subject in the mythologies, and find the poets producing such ideals as Cassandra, Iphigenia, Antigone, Macaria; where Sibylline priestesses told the oracle of the highest god, and he could not be content to reign with a, court of fewer than nine muses. Even Victory ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... day.—But in the field, Aye, there the Present Being makes itself felt. The personal must command, the actual eye Examine. If to be the chieftain asks All that is great in nature, let it be 55 Likewise his privilege to move and act In all the correspondencies of greatness. The oracle within him, that which lives, He must invoke and question—not dead books, Not ordinances, not mould-rotted ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... more thoughtful reader will not fail to recognise the proper tendency of certain current speculations, which are recommended to us on the ground that they accord entirely with the last discoveries of science, and embody the deliberate verdicts of the oracle within us. Notwithstanding all that has been urged in their behalf, those theories are little more than a return to long-exploded errors, a resuscitation of extinct volcanoes; or at best, they merely offer to introduce among us an array of civilising agencies, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... the moon, years by that of the sun. They praise Ptolemy, admire Copernicus, but place Aristarchus and Philolaus before him. They take great pains in endeavoring to understand the construction of the world, and whether or not it will perish, and at what time. They believe that the true oracle of Jesus Christ is by the signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars, which signs do not thus appear to many of us foolish ones. Therefore they wait for the renewing of the age, ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... eloquence renown'd, The mouth of justice, oracle of law! Another Simon is beside him found, Another Simon ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... to die in her place; likewise a custom whereby a nymph between fifteen and twenty years of age is annually sacrificed to the goddess. When besought to release the land from this tribute Diana through her oracle replies: ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... however particularize. Lloyd in his "Worthies" adds nothing to Camden's information but the epithet "comely" applied to his person, the vague statement that "his embassies in France and Germany were so well managed, that in king Edward's days he was by the council pitched upon as the oracle whereby our agents were to be guided abroad," and a hint that he soon retired from the court of Elizabeth to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... to be brought about? Therein lay all the difficulty. The philosophers were not wise enough for this. To make the princess cry was as impossible as to make her weigh. They sent for a professional beggar; commanded him to prepare his most touching oracle of woe; helped him, out of the court charade-box, to whatever he wanted for dressing up, and promised great rewards in the event of his success. But it was all in vain. She listened to the mendicant artist's story, and gazed at his marvellous make-up, till she could contain herself no longer, ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... teaching palliates educational situations without affording a solution. It is so steeped in tradition that it resorts to statistics as it would consult an oracle. We look to see it establishing precedents only to find it following precedents. When we would find in it a leader we find merely a follower. To such teaching statistical numbers mean far more than living children. Indeed, children are but objects that become useful as a means of ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... than an oracle," Hildebrand retorted. "When the wood-wench flouted him, our good King vowed that she ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... answer was to come. Twice before had they consulted that dread oracle, whose response was certain death to one of their number. Twice before had they recognised and submitted to its decree. No preliminaries needed to be discussed. These had been long ago arranged. There was nothing more to do ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... a little, felt a certain embarrassment in being publicly treated as an oracle. "If she's not nice ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... gathered three thousand warriors around him, gave them good pay, questioned the oracle with regard to a lucky day, and set out ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... depression, when the Guinea coast, having run eastward for a thousand miles and more, turned south, apparently without end. Toscanelli of Florence was a recognised authority on the geography of those days, and he was asked what he thought of the situation. No oracle ever said anything so wise as the answer of the Tuscan sage. For he told them that India was to be found not in the East, but in the West; and we shall see what came of it twenty years later, when his letter fell ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... work with which the name of Phidias was connected was the building of the temple of Theseus, called also the Theseion. This was a very important temple, and was constructed in obedience to the command of an oracle in this wise: In B.C. 470 the island of Scyros had been taken by the Athenians, and upon this island Theseus had been buried. After the battle of Marathon, in which he had aided the Athenians, Theseus was much regarded by them, and in B.C. 476 they were directed to remove ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... 't is the furthest Hour of Assyria's years. And yet how calm! An earthquake should announce so great a fall— A summer's sun discloses it. Yon disk To the star-read Chaldean, bears upon Its everlasting page the end of what Seem'd everlasting; but oh! thou TRUE sun! The burning oracle of all that live, As fountain of all life, and symbol of Him who bestows it, wherefore dost thou limit Thy lore unto calamity?[6] Why not Unfold the rise of days more worthy thine All-glorious burst ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... Little Jem's coming, had pored diligently over several wise volumes, and pinned her faith to one in especial, "Sir Oracle on the Care and Training of Children." Sir Oracle implored parents by all they held sacred never to talk "baby talk" to their children. Infants should invariably be addressed in classical language from the moment of their birth. So should they learn to speak English undefiled from their earliest ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... professes to ignore it; many of us felt drawn by a brotherhood of humanity to the late scholarly Pope, when we learned that, as death looked him in the face, he clung to Pagan Horace as a truthful and sympathetic oracle. "And we all go to-day to this singer of the ancient world for guidance in the deceptions of life, and for steadfastness in the ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... supreme felicity of these men, to stun all companies with noisy information; to still doubt, and overbear opposition, with certain knowledge or authentick intelligence. A liar of this kind, with a strong memory or brisk imagination, is often the oracle of an obscure club, and, till time discovers his impostures, dictates to his hearers with uncontrouled authority; for if a publick question be started, he was present at the debate; if a new fashion be mentioned, he was at court the first day of its appearance; if a new performance of literature ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... kinds of excitement," answered the oracle. "And this was the kind I'm best acquaint with. Oh, but it was just a ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... dreams were (and still are) invariably women, with this one remembered exception: I dreamed that Oscar Wilde, one of my photographs of him incarnate, approached me with a buffoon languishment and perpetrated fellatio, an act verbally expounded shortly before by my oracle. For a month or more, recalling this ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... did Mr. Whipple pronounce these words that Mr. Carvel stirred uneasily, and in spite of himself, as though he were listening to an oracle. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Phalaecus surrendered. Phocis was crushed. Philip took its place in the Amphictyonic Council, and was thus established as a Greek power in the very centre, at the sacred hearth, of Greece. The right of precedence in consultation of the oracle ([Greek: promanteia]) was transferred from Athens to Philip. While indignant Athenians were clamouring for the revocation of the peace, Demosthenes upheld it in his speech "On the Peace" in September. It ought never to have been made on such terms, he said. But, having been made, it had better ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... for him. The daily journals teemed with subjects of interest, and with their aid he planned innumerable campaigns. Military men were coming and going, and with these young officers the veteran was an oracle. He gave Hilland much shrewd advice; and even when it was not good, it was listened to with deference, and so the result was just as agreeable ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... gentle beauty; when from you That heavenly lesson for all hearts he drew. Eternal, universal as the sky; Then in the bosom of your purity A voice He set, as in a temple shrine, That Life's quick travellers ne'er might pass you by Unwarn'd of that sweet oracle divine. And though too oft its low, celestial sound By the harsh notes of work-day care is drown'd, And the loud steps of vain, unlist'ning haste, Yet the great lesson hath no tone of power, Mightier to reach the soul in thought's hush'd hour, Than yours, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... Mr. Webb came out of Wiltshire, not out of Yorkshire; and so forth. Esmond did not think fit to correct his old master in these trifling blunders, but they served to give him a knowledge of the other's character, and he smiled to think that this was his oracle of early days; only now no ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... to express an opinion, in which I may be quite wrong, but to which I am entirely wedded? If the custom-house officers had been coming, they would have been here now. In other words, somebody is working the oracle, and (for a good ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Bains, commonly known as Granny Bains. Having spent almost her whole life out of doors, in heat and cold, storm and rain, she had come to be intimately acquainted with all the signs foreboding change of weather, and was looked upon by her acquaintances as a perfect oracle. She had also a most retentive memory, and being of a joyous nature, with a bodily frame that never knew illness, had learnt every verse or melody that was sung within her hearing, until her mind became a very storehouse of songs. ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... of Ethiopia, being encouraged by an oracle, entered Egypt with a numerous army, and possessed himself of the country. He reigned with great clemency and justice. It is believed, that this Sabachus was the same with Solomon, whose aid was implored by Hosea king of Israel, against ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... of the "Koran" is all the work of Mohammed. He himself claimed that he spoke merely as the oracle of God. The commands and injunctions are in the first person, as if spoken by the Divine Being. The passionate enthusiasm and religious earnestness of the prophet are plainly seen in these strange writings. ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... renowned throughout all ages for destroying[31]." Now Theseus and Hercules, you know, have been the heroes of all poets, and have been renowned through all ages, for destroying monsters, for succouring the distressed, and for putting to death inhuman arbitrary tyrants. Is this your oracle? If he were to write the acts and monuments of whig heroes, I find they should be quite contrary to mine: Destroyers indeed,—but of a lawful government; murderers,—but of their fellow-subjects; lovers, as Hercules was of Hylas; with a journey at last to hell, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... rescue, they found that the heads of the slain had been cut off and carried away. Lloyd's, it appears, was carried about the island by Hau-Hau preachers, who professed to find in it a kind of diabolical oracle, and used it with much effect in disseminating their teaching. One of these prophets, or preachers, however, had a short career. Three weeks after Lloyd's death, this man, having persuaded himself and his dupes that they were invulnerable, led them against ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... This is as strange a Maze, as ere men trod, And there is in this businesse, more then nature Was euer conduct of: some Oracle Must ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... that Psyche's heart had somehow escaped love, she sent a spell upon the maiden. From that time, lovely as she was, not a suitor came to woo; and her parents, who desired to see her a queen at least, made a journey to the Oracle, and ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... locate their new colony opposite the "city of the blind." They discovered that these words meant that an earlier band of emigrants had passed by the wonderful harbor of the present city of Constantinople and had settled instead on the other shore of the Bosphorus. Taught by the oracle they chose the better place and began to build the city of Byzantium, which later ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... years. And yet how calm! An earthquake should announce so great a fall— A summer's sun discloses it. Yon disk To the star-read Chaldean, bears upon Its everlasting page the end of what Seem'd everlasting; but oh! thou TRUE sun! The burning oracle of all that live, As fountain of all life, and symbol of Him who bestows it, wherefore dost thou limit Thy lore unto calamity?[6] Why not Unfold the rise of days more worthy thine All-glorious burst from ocean? why not dart A beam of hope athwart the future years, As of wrath to its days? ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... Grecian states. The Peneus, into which poured the mountain streams, passed to the sea through a narrow gorge, the famous Vale of Tempe. In the mountainous region of Epirus were numerous streams flowing through the valleys. Within it was the ancient Dodona, the seat of the oracle. Magnesia, east of Thessaly, on the coast, comprised within it the two ranges of Ossa and Pelion. Central Greece contained eleven states. Malis had on its eastern edge the pass of Thermopylae. In Phocis, on the southern slope of Mount Parnassus, was Delphi. Boeotia ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... is this the truth with the Old or Elderly or with those Wed. Such must expect to be told of Experiences that lie behind them, rather than before them, of Good or Evil; for Fate oft allows sparingly of Incident to those of middle years, or later; and therewith she is often pleased to make her Oracle speak coldly to a Querist, of ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... dear: Great Portland near was banter'd when he strove, For us his master's kindest thoughts to move: We ne'er lampoon'd his conduct, when employ'd King James's secret councils to divide: Then we caress'd him as the only man, Who could the doubtful oracle explain; The only Hushai, able to repel The dark designs of our Achitophel: Compared his master's courage to his sense, The ablest statesman, and the bravest prince; On his wise conduct we depended much, And liked him ne'er the worse for being Dutch: Nor was he valued more than he deserved, ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... in his foresight, so skilful in medicine, was now taken into confidence, and his advice asked. Count Cagliostro summoned the spirits that waited upon him, before the cardinal, one solitary night. He asked these invisible presences what their counsel was, and the oracle answered, that the affair was one worthy of the station of the cardinal; that it would have a fortunate issue; that it put the seal upon the favors of the queen, and would usher in the fortunate ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... noise and empty rumours without difficulty and without distraction. Meet 'any six of these men in buckram,' and they will accost you with the same question and the same answer: they have seen it somewhere in print, or had it from some city oracle, that morning; and the sooner they vent their opinions the better, for they will not keep. Like tickets of admission to the theatre for a particular evening, they must be used immediately, or they will be worth nothing: ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... followers, his mighty arch yet bridges the gulf between Elizabeth and the Revolution, and is of nearer or less distant kin to Shakspeare than to Pope. His prose is the swan song of the old eloquence, as inspired and as confused as an oracle. To read it when it is at its best is to soar on wings through the empyrean and despise Swift and Addison walking in neat politeness on the pavement. There as everywhere, in his verse, in his character, in his ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... "Alceste" which exercised an influence upon subsequent composers, among the more notable being the speech of the oracle, which Mozart must have had in mind in writing the commandatore's reply to Don Giovanni; and the sacrificial march, which probably influenced the priests' march in the "Magic Flute." Gluck was forty-eight when he wrote "Orpheus," and ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... The oracle of Hawarden was as dumb to this as to my effusion to a similar purport already mentioned. Not even the proverbial postcard was sent to Tralee, so the verbosity of Mr. Gladstone was strangely checked when he found himself pinned down to facts ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... about this date, I suppose, that I read Bishop Butler's Analogy; the study of which has been to so many, as it was to me, an era in their religious opinions. Its inculcation of a visible Church, the oracle of truth and a pattern of sanctity, of the duties of external religion, and of the historical character of Revelation, are characteristics of this great work which strike the reader at once; for myself, if ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the "Lay Sermons" puts it ("Nature" 3 22), he began to be made a kind of popular oracle, yet refused ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... Tischendorf accordingly is forced, for once, to reject the reading of his oracle {HEBREW LETTER ALEF},—witnessed to though it be by Origen and Eusebius. His discussion of the text in this place is instructive and even diverting. How is it that such an instance as the present does not open the eyes of Prejudice itself to the danger of pinning its faith to the consentient testimony ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... times as far as they will in London. Here, a man who takes in the Quarterly or Edinburgh, is a literary character; the lady who has one head-dress in the year from a Bond-street milliner, becomes the oracle of fashion, "the observed of all observers;" here dinners are talked of as excellent, at which neither French dishes nor French wines were given, and a little raspberry ice would confer wide celebrity on an evening party, and excite much animadversion and surprise. Here, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... Fafnir reminds us of Python, whom Apollo overcame; and, as Python guarded the Delphic Oracle, the dying ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... apprehension, but sent to Tarascon for Dr. Raget, who was the oracle of the neighborhood; he was with the Marquis ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... Riverside regarded the famous pitcher as one of its greatest assets. He had given the quiet little village a fame that it would never have had otherwise. In the words of Sol Cramer, the hotel keeper and village oracle, Joe had ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... an account of which we get from Apulaeus and Dio Cassius. It was deep. From the orifice, which was surrounded by a balustrade, escaped so dense a vapour that animals held in it died, and men who inhaled it were stupefied. The priests who ministered to the oracle professed to be immune, but Strabo tells us that they simply held their breath when they stooped over the fumes. He who desired to consult the oracle was for a while placed on a platform above ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... stand firm on the right, yuh know, old Dennie just says straight and flat, 'Professor Burgess, I'm ashamed of you.' Dennie's a brick. And do you know, Burgess, spite of his cussed thin hide, we've got to toughen for him out here in Kansas; spite of all that, HE LIKES DENNIE SAXON. The oracle hath orked, the sibyl hath sibbed. But say, Vic, if he does come down hard on you, ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... appropriate praise that her records enable the magnanimous to silence the selfish and cowardly by appealing to actual events for the information of these truths which they themselves first learned from the surer oracle of their own reason." ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... fussy, over-anxious face appealed to his sense of pity. "Oh, yes, I believe so," he said. "They think you are trying to do your best and all that sort of thing. You don't enthuse them as my grandfather used to do; but, then, he had the grand manner, and the grand way of speaking as if he were an oracle. You have put all that aside—except when you make speeches which have been written for you by your ministers. Well, decent people respect you for it; but it has its drawbacks; the crowd prefers the other thing occasionally;—it likes still to pretend, at moments of ceremony, that it believes ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... very cordially and, on being told of her misfortune, at once agreed to assist her. So the sorceress consulted her Oracle, which told her truly anything she wanted to know, and then said to ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... Museum, Athens). A Cretan Girl (Museum of Candia, Crete). Aegean Snake Goddess (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). A Cretan Cupbearer (Museum of Candia, Crete). The Francois Vase (Archaeological Museum, Florence). Consulting the Oracle at Delphi. The Discus Thrower (Lancelotti Palace, Rome). Athlete using the Strigil (Vatican Gallery, Rome). "Temple of Neptune," Paestum. Croesus on the Pyre. Persian Archers (Louvre, Paris). Gravestone of Aristion (National Museum, Athens). Greek Soldiers in ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... a house of prayer, A palace, oracle, or spouse most fair; Or what you will: God's love is here displayed, And here his treasure safely up is laid; For his own darling none can find a place, Where he, as here, is wont to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the same zeal penitents and nuns, men rescued from the scorching furnace of life in the world, and women brought up from infancy in the shade of the cloister. M. Arnauld was a great theologian, an indefatigable controversialist, the oracle and guide of his friends in their struggle against the Jesuits; M. de Sacy and M. Singlin were wise and able directors, as austere as M. de St. Cyran in their requirements, less domineering and less rough than he; but M. de St. Cyran alone was and could be the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... enchantment, break your mystic spell, Land of the lotus, smiling land farewell! For ever it may be, what oracle can tell? ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... to ignore it; many of us felt drawn by a brotherhood of humanity to the late scholarly Pope, when we learned that, as death looked him in the face, he clung to Pagan Horace as a truthful and sympathetic oracle. "And we all go to-day to this singer of the ancient world for guidance in the deceptions of life, and for steadfastness in the ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... another boat, and sail for twelve days; and then you will arrive at a large city, called Meroe; this city is said to be the capital of all Ethiopia. The inhabitants worship no other gods than Jupiter and Bacchus; but these they honour with great magnificence. They have also an oracle of Jupiter; and they make war whenever that god bids them by an oracular warning, and against whatever country he bids them. Sailing from this city, you will arrive at the country of the Automoli, in a space of time equal to that which ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Andy, with the air of an oracle. "Well, one night a streak of moonlight, like a long white finger, came in through a crack above and lit up those two tiny huddled shapes in their crevice. It came so suddenly upon them that Little Silk Wing, under the touch of that blue-white ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a good word for him to the Queen, which would have done him no harm, I do not determine; but true it is, he had gotten the Queen's ear in a trice, and she began to be taken with his election, and loved to hear his reasons to her demands: and the truth is, she took him for a kind of oracle, which nettled them all; yea, those that he relied on began to take this his sudden favour for an alarm and to be sensible of their own supplantation, and to project his, which made him shortly after ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... XXII. An oracle said that the citadel of Troy would never be taken as long as the Palladium, or image of Pallas, remained in it. So Diomedes and Ulysses stole ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... cavern, from the nymph of Egeria, the laws which were to govern Rome. But no criticism can shake the record of that illness and that mutilation of the boy Josiah Wedgwood, which made a cavern of his bedroom, and an oracle of his own inquiring, searching, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... straggling beard a uniform dull ashen gray. No Chinese hair, it seems, ever becomes white with age. He seemed to have assumed the duties of cook for while we were there be lighted the fire in the kitchen and was busy, but was always the final oracle on any matter of difference of opinion between the younger men regarding answers to questions. Two sleeping apartments adjoining the kitchen, through whose wide kang beds the waste heat from the cooking was conveyed, ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... to think ill of them. As one woman, they were led by him, and conformed their opinions. The only seceder was Louisa Anderson, who had her brother for her oracle; and, indeed, the more youthful race, to whom Harvey was the glass of fashion, uttered disrespectful opinions as to the doctor's age, and would not accede to his being, as Mrs. Ledwich declared, "much younger ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... a narrow-minded, selfish man, caring very little for any one's comfort but his own, and at times was exceedingly cross and testy. Unfortunately, he took great interest in politics, and was quite an oracle in the village bar-room. He was bigoted and "set" in his opinions, considering all who differed from him as enemies to their country, and called them rascals and hypocrites freely. His wife had been dead about two years, when a presidential election came on. James Foster, unluckily, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... 'ot water an' cold," said Joe Dumsby in the tones of an oracle. "Just fill your mouth with bilin' 'ot water, an' dip your face in a basin o' cold, and it's sartain ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... oracle declares, temperance and fortitude, prudence and every virtue, are certain purgatives of the soul; and hence the sacred mysteries prophesy obscurely, yet with truth, that the soul not purified lies in Tartarus, immersed in filth. Since the impure is, from ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... which the name of Phidias was connected was the building of the temple of Theseus, called also the Theseion. This was a very important temple, and was constructed in obedience to the command of an oracle in this wise: In B.C. 470 the island of Scyros had been taken by the Athenians, and upon this island Theseus had been buried. After the battle of Marathon, in which he had aided the Athenians, Theseus was much regarded by them, and in B.C. 476 they were directed to remove ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... carries too great a burden and too high destinies, and it is only when the gods wish to destroy or chastise a race that they first make it mad. Not by revolutions can humanity be perfected. I might quote from an old oracle, "The gods are never so turned away from man as when he ascends to them by disorderly methods." Our spirits may live in the Golden Age, but our bodily life moves on slow feet, and needs the lantern on the path ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... and matchless eloquence braved the mob law of the North and the organized brigandage and robbery of the South in the dark days of the past, days that tried men's souls, standing in the sunlight of rejuvenated manhood, still was the oracle of the oppressed in ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... for all its members, and the Stove Circle soon had many a raw recruit drumming up trade, making house-to-house canvasses. In this way, the circulation finally reached the five-thousand mark. There were certain unions, such as that of the cloak-makers, that regarded the paper as their special oracle—swore by it, used it in their arguments, made it a vital part ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... practicable slope; there she took to the moorland, and made for Corbyknowe. Her resolve had been from the first, if Phemy would not listen, to carry her, like the unmanageable child she was, home to the mother whose voice had always been to herself the oracle of God. It was in a loving embrace, though hardly a comfortable one, and to a heart full of pity, that she pressed the poor little runaway lamb: her mother was God's vicar for all in trouble: she would bring the child to reason! Her heart ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... than the far more agreeable part of the same doctrine which taught that, as an antidote to their influence, each individual was also accompanied by a benignant spirit. "The ministration of angels," says a writer in the Athenian Oracle, "is certain; but the manner how, is the knot to be untied." It was an opinion of the early philosophers that not only kingdoms[1] had their tutelary guardians, but that every person had his particular ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... of these men, to stun all companies with noisy information; to still doubt, and overbear opposition, with certain knowledge or authentick intelligence. A liar of this kind, with a strong memory or brisk imagination, is often the oracle of an obscure club, and, till time discovers his impostures, dictates to his hearers with uncontrouled authority; for if a publick question be started, he was present at the debate; if a new fashion be mentioned, he was at court the first day of its appearance; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... battle lasted from ten in the morning to three in the afternoon; and that the English, after having seen several of their ships sunk, finally sheered off with all the sail they could carry. Barrere, the reporter and oracle of the committee of public safety, even outstripped Bon Saint Andre in the strength of lying and power of invention: he amused the national convention with an account of the victory of the republican fleet, far more fabulous than the commissioner's. Some of his statements, gross ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... read Doctor Hirtz's letter annexed to Herr Meiser's will, thought that he owed some acknowledgments to that excellent gentleman. He made a call upon him, and embraced him, addressing him as the oracle of Epidaurus. The doctor at once took possession of him, had his baggage brought from the hotel and gave him the best chamber in his house. Up to the 29th day of the month, the Colonel was cared for as a friend, and exhibited as a phenomenon. Seven photographers disputed the possession of so ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... girls one after another, shall marry, to which he answers according to his own whim, or agreeable to the intimacies he has taken notice of during the time of merriment, and whatever he says is absolutely depended upon as an oracle; and if he couple two people who have an aversion to each other, tears and vexation succeed the mirth; this they call "cutting off the fiddler's head," for after this he is dead ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... tenderest child, that my grave was not dug long years ago, in some valley, or on some hillside, that lies far, far behind us. It is enough. Thou shalt wander no more on this hopeless search. But when thou hast laid thy mother in the earth, then go, my son, to Delphi, and inquire of the oracle ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... too generous not to give Credit to his Words, shew'd himself to his People, who were transported with Excess of Joy at the Sight of their darling Prince; falling at his Feet, and kissing and embracing 'em; believing, as some divine Oracle, all he assur'd 'em. But he besought 'em to bear their Chains with that Bravery that became those whom he had seen act so nobly in Arms; and that they could not give him greater Proofs of their Love and Friendship, since ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... flared up before the nodding glass and metal of the top. His eyes looked at it, narrowed with attention, as if expecting an imperceptible sign. With his grave face he resembled a booted and misshapen pagan burning incense before the oracle of a Joss. There was no mistake. It was the lowest reading he had ever seen in ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... heart. The people at once admired and loved him. He passed for the happiest man in the world. The whole empire resounded with his name. All the ladies ogled him. All the men praised him for his justice. The learned regarded him as an oracle; and even the priests confessed that he knew more than the old arch-magi Yebor. They were now so far from prosecuting him on account of the griffin, that they believed nothing but ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... booths of the old, wooden Rialto, hung on the outskirts of the crowd before Ser Gobbo, to catch from the gossip of the more lettered ones about him the details of the morrow's festa which he might not read for himself; for the knowledge would make him the oracle of his little circle in Burano—or at least with Giovanna, when he should bestow his silken trifle for the morrow's splendor. For, of course all Venice would be there to see ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... inhabit the city of Pandion, to be mindful of Bacchus, all together throughout the wide streets to return fit thanks to the Bromian, and crowned with wreaths, to cause the odor of sacrifice to rise from the altars. In this oracle, Athens is the city of Pandion, because it was reported that under his rule the worship of Dionysus was introduced into the city. This and the other commands from Dodona and Delphi concerning Dionysus refer to the introduction of the worship of the god; for in every one the statement is absolute; ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... matter the greater was their wonder about it—they were left in all the distresses of desire unsatisfied—saw their doctors, the Parchmentarians, the Brassarians, the Turpentarians, on one side—the Popish doctors on the other, like Pantagruel and his companions in quest of the oracle of the bottle, all ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and we had a most interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who always come and join him. He is evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should think must have been in his time ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... considered to flatter, making his concealment more insinuating than his speech. He approaches with fictitious humility to the creature of his praise, and hangs with rivetted attention upon his lips, as though he spake with the voice of an oracle. He repeats what phrase or sentence may particularly gratify him, and both hands are little enough to bless him in return. Sometimes he extols the excellencies of his friend in his absence, but it is ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... stockade by Shiakar's warriors. At length a sortie became indispensable to obtain provisions, but the enemy were too numerous to justify the risk. Upon this, Amarar called his soothsayer, and required him to name a propitious moment for the sally. The oracle retired to his den, and, after suitable incantations, declared that the effort should be made as soon as the hands of Amarar were stained in the blood of his own son. It is said that the prophet intended the victim to be a youthful son of Amarar, who had joined his mother's family, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... him) and ask sheepishly:—"You think he will die?" Singleton looked up.—"Why, of course he will die," he said deliberately. This seemed decisive. It was promptly imparted to every one by him who had consulted the oracle. Shy and eager, he would step up and with averted gaze recite his formula:—"Old Singleton says he will die." It was a relief! At last we knew that our compassion would not be misplaced, and we could again smile without misgivings—but ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... in the streets, however, received her in a very different way from those of Orleans, with trouble and alarm, staring at her as at a dangerous and malignant visitor. The Brother Richard, before mentioned, the great preacher and reformer, was the oracle of Troyes, and held the conscience of the city in his hands. When he suddenly appeared to confront her, every eye was turned upon them. But the friar himself was in no less doubt than his disciples; he approached her dubiously, crossing himself, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... comprehension. To the last moment they had been sceptical, for Lady Maclaughlan had shook her head and humphed whenever the subject was mentioned. For several months they had therefore vibrated between their own sanguine hopes and their oracle's disheartening doubts; and even when the truth was manifest, a sort of vague tremor took possession of their mind, as to what Lady Maclaughlan would think ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... and beauty, bids the people follow her to the temple, there to renew their supplications. The next scene shows the temple of Apollo. The high priest and the people make passionate appeal to the god for the life of their king, and the oracle replies that Admetus must perish, if no other will die in his place. The people, seized with terror, fly from the place, and Alcestis, left alone, determines to give up her own life for that of her husband. The high priest accepts her devotion, and in the famous air 'Divinites ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... the oracle, putting her warm hand upon the heart of the patient, "only in a dead faint and chilled to the marrow of her bones, poor heart! Whatever made her run out so in this storm? Where did you find her? had she fallen down in a fit? ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... that a wise ruler who, when alive, had rendered conspicuous services should after death continue to be consulted. The fame of such a man would grow with age; his good deeds and his powers would become apotheosized; he would become an oracle whose advice might be sought and whose help be obtained in grave crises. In other words the dead king would be "deified," or at any rate credited with the ability to confer even greater boons than he was able ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Beargarden. Then his friend had suggested something about the young lord's bets. He was endeavouring to unriddle all this with a brain that was already somewhat muddled with alcohol, when Captain Green got up from his chair and standing over the Major spoke his last words for that night as from an oracle. "Square is all very well, as long as others are square to you;—but when they aren't, then I say square be d——. Square! what comes of it? Work your heart out, and ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... formed an essential part of the constitution, since it was God who ruled the nation. The oracle, in the form of a pillar of cloud, directed the wanderings of the people in the wilderness. This appeared amid the thunders of Sinai. This oracle decided all final questions and difficult points of justice. It could not be interrogated by private ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the answer was to come. Twice before had they consulted that dread oracle, whose response was certain death to one of their number. Twice before had they recognised and submitted to its decree. No preliminaries needed to be discussed. These had been long ago arranged. There was nothing more to ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... an audience loath to leave and eager to hear every word from lips which seemed then to be those of an oracle, Mr. Lincoln dwelt with great seriousness, even with solemnity, upon this subject which now wholly engrossed his mind. The contest of arms was over, but the President realized that the great pressure ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... they mistake a wheedling cant for affectionate solicitude; if they defer to pompous egotism and dogmatical assertion, when it is so convenient a foundation for all their other faith to believe their teacher is an oracle? No marvel if they are delighted with whimsical conceits as strokes of discovery and surprise, and yet at the same time are pleased with common-place, and endless repetition, as an exemption from mental ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... assumed the rigidity, yet all the softness of a highly-polished Grecian statue; and stood before me, as if by enchantment, half woman, half marble, beautiful inexpressibly. I was sorely tried. There was no action, no waving of the arms, as she spoke. Her voice came forth musically, as if from sacred oracle, that oracle having life only in words. Monsieur Manuel ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the military oracle of the Administration in the first days of the war. His ability and great experience entitled him to regard and deference on all questions relating to military operations. No one appreciated his qualities more than the President, unless it was General ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... sailor became an oracle; the others hung upon his words, and followed his brown finger on the ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Such an oracle as I am with the girls! There's nothing like it, Gustav; for every fan or bracelet you give your sisters, you'll be amply rewarded by revelations and love; and it's something to have a dear, white, undulating ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... shifting phases and the lunar varieties of that mighty changeable planet, that lovely satellite of man, Shakspeare stands not the first only, not the original only, but is yet the sole authentic oracle of truth. Woman, therefore, the beauty of the female mind, this is one great field of his power. The supernatural world, the world of apparitions, that is another. For reasons which it would be easy to give, reasons ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... that was his abode. But wherein differs your worship from ours? You have a temple; so have we. You have priests clothed in sacred robes; so have we. You have altars and sacrifices; so have we. You have an oracle and prophets; so have we. You go up to the dwelling-place of your God to worship and offer sacrifices; so do we. Wherein, then, ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous
... less sagacity than his, and scared from his side men more consistent than he had ever pretended to be. But on him they were lost. The counsel of Achitophel, that counsel which was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of God, was turned into foolishness. He who had become a by-word, for the certainty with which he foresaw and the suppleness with which he evaded danger, now, when beset on every side with snares and death, seemed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... were seen 'silent as in a picture.' Paradoxes the most daring wore the air of deliberate wisdom as he pronounced them. He foretold the future happiness of mankind, not with the inspiration of the poet, but with the grave and passionless voice of the oracle. There was nothing better calculated at once to feed and to make steady the enthusiasm of youthful patriots than the high speculations in which he taught them to engage, on the nature of social evils and the great destiny of his species. No one would ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... prophetess was then in the zenith of her reputation—the celebrated Nun of Kent—whose cell at Canterbury, for some three years, was the Delphic shrine of the Catholic oracle, from which the orders of Heaven were communicated even to the pope himself. This singular woman seems for a time to have held in her hand the balance of the fortunes of England. By the papal party she was universally believed to be inspired. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... forwards to the General Staff Marquee with the draft of my guesses, my first being that we would probably lose 35 to 45 per cent. But the General Staff have also been consulting their oracle and were clear for 50 per cent. Months of the most anxious calculations will not get a white man one whit forrarder in seeing into the brains of an Asiatic Army or in forecasting Mediterranean weather. Safest to assume that both brains and weather will behave as the German General Staff would ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... suis vatibus, i.e. by the captured Etruscan soothsayer (haruspex). 1-2. ab externis oraculis, i.e. by the Delphic Oracle. 2-3. iam in partem ... (alios) deos. Camillus had vowed to give to Apollo the tenth part of the spoils of Veii. 3-4. alios ... spectare, i.e. Juno. 'It was a Roman practice to invite the patron deity of a place ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... give you oracle for oracle. I am a Protestant in principle, but not in fact," was the ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... comprise the Strawberry spinach, which, under that name, was wont to be grown in our flower-gardens; the Good King Harry, the Garden Oracle, the Prickly, and the Round, are the varieties commonly used. The Oracle is a hardy sort, much esteemed in France, and is a native of Tartary, introduced in 1548. The common spinach has its leaves round, and is softer and more succulent than any ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Napoleon's Oraculum and Dream Book. Containing the great oracle of human destiny; also the true meaning of almost any kind of dreams, together with charms, ceremonies and curious games of cards. A complete ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... phases in the process of getting to know Townsend. To begin with, they thought he was a man inspired with the highest political wisdom and knowledge. His gifts of dialectical vaticination made them look upon him as the lively oracle of the special Providence which he himself was accustomed to say presided over the British Empire. After a time, however, they began to think that he was what they called too "viewy," too much inclined to paradox, too wild. Often, alas! the feeling in regard to him ended here, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... that? Such an oracle really whets my curiosity. What am I to-day? What was I the yesterday of ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... only oracle; Who could buy lands and pleasure at his will, Yet slighted that which silver ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... myth to account for the practice. 'Wolves came and carried off the entrails from the fire; shepherds, following them, were killed by mortal vapours from a cave; thence ensued a pestilence, because they had followed the wolves. An oracle bade them "play the wolf," i.e. live on plunder, whence they were called Hirpi, wolves,' an attempt to account for a wolf clan-name. There is also a story that, when the grave of Feronia seemed all on fire, ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... under the immediate direction of a theocracy, though in fact they were slaves to the most dangerous kind of despotism; for as often as any individual of the community pretended to think for himself, or differ in opinion from the ordinary and his band of associates, the oracle decreed that he should be instantly sent upon the mission which they had fixed in Greenland, or to the colony they had established in Pennsylvania. As these religionists consisted chiefly of manufacturers who appeared ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... twice. The historian who could not talk was not likely to appreciate the great talker who cared nothing for history: so one is not surprised to find Johnson dismissed in the famous Memoirs as merely the "oracle" of Reynolds. A much greater friend was another member of "The Club," Percy, of the Reliques of Poetry, afterwards a Bishop, with whom he often quarrelled but was always reconciled. Boswell managed the most important of their reconciliations by obtaining ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... Hermione, that if any body had any petitions, or addresses to make to the Prince, it was by her sole interest; she sat in their closest councils, and heard their gravest debates; and she was the oracle of the board: the Prince paying her perfect adoration, while she, whose charms of youth were ended, being turned of thirty, fortified her decays with all the art her wit and sex were capable of, and kept her illustrious lover as perfectly her slave, as if she had engaged him by all those ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... regarded all mankind with distrust. On the Bench, his disposition vented itself in judgments remarkable for their brevity and the irascible tone in which they were delivered. His utterance was sonorous, with the mysterious pomp and grandiloquence of an oracle, kindling up at times into solemn denunciation. His "make up" must have been perfect in its way, from the awful air of preparation for which his speeches are said to have been so remarkable. Thurlow acted with Pitt and the Whigs, and was ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... which we may as well mention that he carried out; so that in a few years Mr. Kornicker became a very vivacious gentleman, of independent property, who frequented a small ale-house in a retired corner of the city, where he snuffed prodigally, and became a perfect oracle, and of much reputed knowledge, from the sagacious manner in which he shook his head and winked on ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... perplexity, he wandered almost as by instinct to the lodgings of the Lemprieres. He had long been accustomed to regard the simple good faith and courage of Mme. de Maufant as an infallible oracle in cases of conscience. Never had so hard a need for an infallible oracle presented itself ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... in virtues pure; My friend is he—Fate willed it—true and tried. I 'll not forget Chandanaka, be sure, What time the oracle is justified. 26 ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... be translated "Why hast thou cast me thus into the town of the ever-blind, to proclaim thine oracle by the opened sense? What profits it to lift the veil where the near darkness threatens? Only ignorance is life; this knowledge is death. Take back this sad clear-sightedness; take from mine eyes this cruel light! It is horrible to be the mortal channel of thy truth." ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... who may know little more about the subject in hand than we do, and who is attempting to convey to us not only his life-philosophy, but also his aches and pains, his likes and dislikes, and the limitations of his own experience. When doleful sounds come from the oracle, we take it for granted that something is the matter with the universe, when all that has happened is that one estimable gentleman, on a particular morning, was out of sorts when he ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... bowed his head, and Dion saw him peer cautiously through the tangled locks which fell over his face to see how Pericles had taken this prophecy. The Great Archon was standing quietly beside Anaxagoras, and neither one gave any sign of being impressed by the oracle. The priest scowled ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... sons, is the oracle of Jehovah, Carrying out a plan which is not mine, Establishing a treaty contrary to my spirit, So that they heap sin upon sin; Who would set out for Egypt without asking my decision, To flee to the ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... moreover, I had the honour to sit in the General Assembly (meaning, as an auditor, in the galleries thereof), and have heard as much goodly speaking on the law of patronage, as, with the fructification thereof in mine own understanding, hath made me be considered as an oracle upon that doctrine ever since my safe and happy ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... scrupulously," Alessandro said with fervour. "We shall crown her Queen of our College of the Muses; she shall be priestess, sacred image, and oracle; and most honourably served." ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... artist;—of Talleyrand, and many other celebrities;—and of incidents which seemed to take us back to a former generation. Often at this and subsequent visits I ventured to suggest, (not professionally,) after some of these reminiscences, "I hope you have taken time to make a note of these";—but the oracle nodded a sort of humorous No.—A drive to Sleepy Hollow—Mr. Irving again managing the ponies himself—crowned our visit; and with such a coachman and guide, in such regions, we were not altogether unable to appreciate ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... to which Monk had sent them in 1651: Vol. IV. 296), Mr. James Wood of St. Andrews, old Mr. David Dickson, now Professor of Divinity in Edinburgh, and our perpetual friend Baillie. The minority, or Protesters, were led by such ministers as Mr. James Guthrie of Stirling, their first oracle, Mr. Patrick Giliespie of Glasgow University, Mr. John Livingston of Ancram, Mr, Samuel Rutherford of St. Andrews, and Mr. Andrew Cant of Aberdeen; with whom, as their best lay head, was Johnstone of Warriston. Peace-makers, such as Mr. Robert Blair of St. Andrews and Mr. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... and diffuse hopes of the new enterprise of Vasco de Gama, who had just sailed on a voyage of discovery to the Indies. Three stones were discovered near Cintra, bearing in ancient characters a Latin inscription; a sibylline oracle addressed prophetically "To the Inhabitants of the West!" stating that when these three stones shall be found, the Ganges, the Indus, and the Tagus should exchange their commodities! This was the pious fraud of a Portuguese poet, sanctioned by the approbation ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... strong opposition from the women, the transition is portrayed touchingly and in all the fullness of its tragic import, in the "Eumenides" of Aeschylus. The story is this: Agamemnon, King of Mycene, and husband of Clytemnestra, sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, upon the command of the oracle on his expedition against Troy. The mother, indignant at the sacrifice of her daughter, takes, during her husband's absence, Aegysthos for her consort. Upon Agamemnon's return to Mycene, after an absence of many years, he is murdered by Aegysthos ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... Europe, contains in its true signification something mystic and religious. The female patriarch of the household was regarded with superstitious veneration. Her sayings were wise and good, and the warrior sat at her feet on the eve of battle and gathered from her as from an oracle, the confidence and courage which nerved him for the fight; and today the picture of an aged mother sitting by the hearth, and the recollection of her counsels, is a source of comfort and strength to many a son ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... determined by Mordecai, not by himself: he was no longer confident what questions he should be able to ask; and with a reaction on his own mood, he inwardly said, "I suppose I am in a state of complete superstition, just as if I were awaiting the destiny that could interpret the oracle. But some strong relation there must be between me and this man, since he feels it strongly. Great heaven! what relation has proved itself more potent in the world than faith even when mistaken—than expectation even ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... his easy-chair, talked for twenty years, the oracle of the literary world, and Boswell, soon after his death, gave to the world the clever record of these conversations, which has aided to secure the place in literature he had obtained by his writings. Goldsmith (1728-1774), had he never written poems, would stand among the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the great oracle, of course, as to the deer respectfully peeped at in the park, or the squirrels, the hares and rabbits, in the forest, and the inhabitants of the stream above or below. It was he who secured and tamed the memorials of their visit—two starlings for Dennet and Aldonza. The birds were to be ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Now, do you suppose that with these eighteen or twenty talents alone he fed his army, won the battle of Granicus, subdued Asia Minor, conquered Tyre, Gaza, Syria and Egypt, built Alexandria, penetrated to Lybia, had himself declared Son of Jupiter by the oracle of Ammon, penetrated as far as the Hyphases, and, when his soldiers refused to follow him further, returned to Babylon, where he surpassed in luxury, debauchery and self-indulgence the most debauched and voluptuous of the kings of Asia? Did Macedonia furnish ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... enjoyment of the uproar. Jack Bartley wore a high hat—Bob never had owned one in his life—and about his neck was a tie of crimson; yellow was his waistcoat, even such a waistcoat as you may see in Pall Mall, and his walking-stick had a nigger's head for handle. He was the oracle of the maidens around him; every moment the appeal was to 'Jeck! Jeck!' Suke Jollop, who would in reality have preferred to accompany Bob and his allies, whispered it about that Jack had two-pound-ten in his pocket, and was going to spend every ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... compassion. We have succeeded in civilizing many barbarous nations and in rendering them Christian and Catholic, we may equally, with the help of God, bring others to the knowledge of the true religion, and since pretended philosophers have abandoned the faith, it must, according to the divine oracle, go to other men. If this faith is extinguished for many, who have deserved the misfortune in closing their eyes to its light, it goes to others who will render themselves worthy by allowing this divine truth to enlighten them. Thus faith ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... injured page; It has been used as ill in every age, And is constrain'd with patience all to take: 160 For what defence can Greek and Hebrew make? Happy who can this talking trumpet seize; They make it speak whatever sense they please: 'Twas framed at first our oracle to inquire; But since our sects in prophecy grow higher, The text inspires not them, but they the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... day I did not hate Nor doubt, nor quail nor curse. I, reverencing the people, did not bate My reverence of their deed and oracle, Nor vainly prate Of better and of worse Against the great conclusion of their will. And yet, O voice and verse, Which God set in me to acclaim and sing Conviction, exaltation, aspiration, We gave no music to the patent thing, Nor spared a holy rhythm to throb and swim About the name of him ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the wide extended air, executing vengeance, executing slaughter, you do I supplicate, I supplicate: suffer the offspring of Agamemnon to forget his furious madness; alas! for his sufferings. What were they that eagerly grasping at, thou unhappy perishest, having received from the tripod the oracle which Phoebus spake, on that pavement, where are said to be the recesses in the midst of the globe! O Jupiter, what pity is there? what is this contention of slaughter that comes persecuting thee wretched, to whom some evil genius casts tear upon tear, transporting ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... the mortal thing, are conformed to; society itself is not her care, nor civilization, nor anything that belongs to man above the brute. Her word, consequently, need not disturb us; she is not our oracle. It rather belongs to us to win further victory over her, if it may be, by our intelligence, and control her vital, as we are now coming to control her material, powers and ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... your grandmother is just half a century behind the age,' she said. 'I hope you are not going to allow your life in London to be regulated by an oracle ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... for him, however, by Mr. Pickwick, that he had a handsome independence to retire on, upon which he still lives at an excellent public-house near Shooter's Hill, where he is quite reverenced as an oracle, boasting very much of his intimacy with Mr. Pickwick, and retaining a most unconquerable aversion ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... terrified as a child that wakes to find itself deserted in the dark. Also an uncanny sense of terrors to come oppressed me, till I could have cried aloud if only to hear the sound of a mortal voice. Yonder was the grim statue of Fate, the Oracle of the Kings of the Sons of Wisdom, which was believed to bow its stony head in answer to their prayers. I ran to it, eager for its terrible shelter, for on either side of it were figures of human beings. Even their cold marble was company of a sort, ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... spent in this silent entreaty, the oracle seemed to have sent forth its response; and Rube, returning the stopper to its place, came walking forward to ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... another class who try to work the oracle through the Governors, but that has not ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... his temper, yet he cannot keep it. 5. Can the process be analyzed and drawn out, or does it act like a dose or a charm which comes into general use empirically? 6. It is natural and becoming to seek for some clear idea of the meaning of so dark an oracle. 7. A laboring man knows he should not go to the ale-house, and his wife knows she should not filch when she goes out charing, but, nevertheless, in these cases, the consciousness of a duty is not all one with the performance of it. 8. Or rather, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... this man, though thus greatly honoured, spake not greatly of himself; but when the oracle of God was delivered to him out of the bush, he said, Who am I, that thou dost send me? I am of a slender voice, ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... nevertheless, even now, say all this to Achilles if he will listen to you. Who knows but with heaven's help you may talk him over, for it is good to take a friend's advice. If, however, he is fearful about some oracle, or if his mother has told him something from Jove, then let him send you, and let the rest of the Myrmidons follow with you, if perchance you may bring light and saving to the Danaans. And let him send you into battle ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... Meadows! don't flatter me; tell me the truth." While he was exulting in her firmness, who demanded the truth, bitter or not, she continued: "Only don't tell me that I am forgotten!" And she looked so piteously in the oracle's face that he forgot everything in the desire to say something she would like him the better for saying; he muttered, "Perhaps he has sailed for home." He expected her to say, "And if he has he would have written to me before sailing." But instead ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... her "Memoirs of Europe towards the Close of the Eighth Century," has something very characteristic to say on this subject. Speaking of Somers under the name Cicero, she says: "Cicero, Madam, is by birth a plebeian" ... "Cicero himself, an oracle of wisdom, was whirled about by his lusts, at the pleasure of a fantastic worn-out mistress. He prostituted his inimitable sense, reason, and good nature, either to revenge, or reward, as her caprice directed; and what ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... first Viscount, was a man of light and leading in the Parliamentary party; "the oracle," as Clarendon styles him, "of those who were called Puritans in the worst sense, and steered all their counsels and designs." He deserved his nickname, Old Subtlely, for he had a clear insight into the real issues from the ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... Ostrogoths of Pannonia were supported by his powerful aid against the oppression of the neighboring Huns. The North (such are the lofty strains of the poet) was agitated or appeased by the nod of Euric; the great king of Persia consulted the oracle of the West; and the aged god of the Tyber was protected by the swelling genius of the Garonne. [6] The fortune of nations has often depended on accidents; and France may ascribe her greatness to the premature ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... fellow countrymen into a corner at the point of a logical bayonet from which they felt that there was no escape, he proposed that the question what was to be done should be referred to an oracle in which the whole country had the greatest confidence, and to which recourse was always had in times of special perplexity. It was whispered that a near relation of the philosopher's was lady's-maid to the priestess who delivered the oracle, and the Puritan party declared that the strangely ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... an Armada is at my heels, the cares of the moon do not concern me," went on Baldry, with the gravity of an oracle. "Had Nero not fiddled, perhaps ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... man as he were to sit upon our woolsack now; what would the world think, if when the mighty oracle commanded the next cause to come on, the reply should be, "Please your good lordship, there is no other!" Well ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... lie beyond it? If man is indeed, as Shakespeare describes him, 'a being of large discourse, looking before and after,' we could scarcely resist the belief, that, when once assured of the possibility of information on his head, he would, as it were, rush to the oracle, to have his absorbing problems solved, and his restless heart relieved of its load of uncertain forebodings."* [Bush's Statement of Reasons, &c., ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... to be found on the top of a frightful rock, in a frozen climate. At length, at dawn of day, he perceived the rock, which was very high and very steep, and upon the summit of it was the bird, speaking like an oracle, telling wonderful things. He thought that with a little dexterity it would be easy to catch it, for it seemed very tame. He got off his horse, and climbed up very quietly. He was so close to the green bird that ...
— The Frog Prince and Other Stories - The Frog Prince, Princess Belle-Etoile, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous
... a beast that flies," said the old priest, "even as the oracle declared. Glory to Pachacamac, even ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... the lovely Samuel was seen To grow beneath the tabernacle's shadow; Become the Hebrews' hope and oracle. May'st thou like him ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... said that the General has industriously propagated this opinion, in order that he might have more authority in civilizing a rude and ferocious people, as Lycurgus pretended to have the sanction of the oracle at Delphos, as Numa gave it out that he had frequent interviews with the nymph Egeria, or as Marius persuaded the Romans that he received divine communications from a hind. But I cannot allow myself to suppose that Paoli ever required the ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... should gradually be crushed, in proportion as the rulers sought to check the spirit of reform. Among the authors of this period may be mentioned Everaert and Machet. The refrain was much cultivated, and not, like the drama, for the expression of dissatisfaction. Anna Byns, an oracle with the Catholic party, wrote when the language was in its most degenerate state, under Margaret of Austria. She was styled the Sappho of Brabant, though her poems are all religious. They were translated into Latin, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... housekeeper at Laracor. Elsewhere Swift speaks of his "old Presbyterian housekeeper," "who has been my Walpole above thirty years, whenever I lived in this kingdom." "Joe Beaumont is my oracle for public affairs in the country, and an ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... boyhood to the threshold of youth—which was peculiar to Shelley. Most poets, probably, like most saints, are prepared for their mission by an initial segregation, as the seed is buried to germinate: before they can utter the oracle of poetry, they must first be divided from the body of men. It is the severed ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... muse! Old Homer sung unto the lyre, Tyrtaeus, too, in ancient days— Still, warmed by their immortal fire, How doth our patriot spirit blaze! The oracle, when questioned, sings— So we our way in life are taught; In verse we soothe the pride of kings, In verse the drama ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... the Athenians and the Dorians, an oracle had declared that the side would triumph whose king should fall. Codrus the Athenian king, to be more sure of sacrificing himself, assumed the dress of a peasant, and was soon killed; and the event soon spread ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... of the higher gods was invoked, through his priest, by a chief who wished to consult the oracle, or, in old Israelitic phraseology, to "inquire of," the god, a hog was killed and cooked over night, and, together with plantains, yams, and the materials for making the peculiar drink kava (of which the Tongans were very fond), was carried next day ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... gone off to Scythia, and her doings there are no secret; she is as bad as any Scythian herself,—butchering strangers and eating them! Apollo, too, who pretends to be so clever, with his bow and his lyre and his medicine and his prophecies; those oracle-shops that he has opened at Delphi, and Clarus, and Dindyma, are a cheat; he takes good care to be on the safe side by giving ambiguous answers that no one can understand, and makes money out of it, for there are plenty of fools ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... of inspirations. Let us oftener feel even the gentle southwest wind upon our cheeks blowing from the Indian's heaven. What though we lose a thousand meteors from the sky, if skyey depths, if star-dust and undissolvable nebulae remain? What though we lose a thousand wise responses of the oracle, if we may have instead some natural ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... far more than a Mason, he was a high initiate—the supreme oracle to which the secret societies applied for guidance. All this was disclosed a few years ago in the correspondence between Savalette de Langes and the Marquis de Chefdebien referred to in the previous ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Rouen died the following year, deeply lamented by the inhabitants, and generally so by France; but, above all, regretted by Louis XIIth, his sovereign, whom, to use the words of Guicciardini, he served as oracle and authority. The author of the History of the Chevalier Bayard, is still louder in his praise.—The western facade of the cathedral was not finished till 1530, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... seems to be for ever escaping from legend and folk-tale, from word and custom, some breath of a world of beauty I sigh for but am not nigh to as these are. I think if that strange woman could have found a voice for what was in her heart she would have completed her vague oracle somewhat as ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... had faults, let us remember that he was stained by no crimes and vices, in an age of violence and wickedness. Until lately he has received almost unmixed praise. The Fathers of the Church revered him. To Erasmus, as well as to Jerome and Augustine, he was an oracle. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... is. And tell me yourself, Alexandra Pavlovna, what is his position in Darya Mihailovna's house? To be the idol, the oracle of the household, to meddle in the arrangements, all the gossip and petty trifles of the house—is that a dignified position for a man ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... himself. All love the Union, and are ready to fight, perhaps to die, for it. Aye! but what does that mean? Something as antagonistic in the interpretation thereof as the decisions touching an ancient oracle, a disputed biblical text, or a knotty passage from our ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... our diplomatic oracle, "she should have petitioned the First Consul for a permission to return, to France before she entered it; but out of regard for you, if she is prudent, she will not, I daresay, be ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... government awarded him a pension of L300 a year. By this time his great intellectual gifts had begun to be appreciated, and he was the first man of letters in England. In Thackeray's phrase, he "was revered as a sort of oracle." ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... to the Corinthians and endeavour to obtain some assistance from their founders. The answer he gave them was to deliver the city and place themselves under Corinthian protection. So the Epidamnians went to Corinth and delivered over the colony in obedience to the commands of the oracle. They showed that their founder came from Corinth, and revealed the answer of the god; and they begged them not to allow them to perish, but to assist them. This the Corinthians consented to do. Believing ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... that secluded and gifted nature, had he been born a cheerful, popular, and sympathetic boy, with a dancing-school manner, instead of an awkward and shy youth (although an exceedingly handsome one), we can not tell. That is the great secret behind the veil. The answer is not yet made, the oracle has not spoken, and we must not ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... see!" answered Uncle Andy, with the air of an oracle. "Well, one night a streak of moonlight, like a long white finger, came in through a crack above and lit up those two tiny huddled shapes in their crevice. It came so suddenly upon them that Little Silk ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... prophet was not correct. The virgin mother, however, neither disbelieved the communications of Heaven, nor took any extraordinary measures, by a removal of her dwelling-place, to aid the accomplishment of a divine oracle. How she, an inhabitant of Nazareth was to be the mother of him whom so many ages had expected in Bethlehem, was indeed mysterious; and yet like Abraham, she hoped against hope; allied in faith, as ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... phantom guide-posts leads us through its varied mazes to the dwelling-place of mystery. Here the artist will do well to tarry and learn all the oracle ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... now established in Tregunter House, and several parties were formed, both at home and abroad, for my amusement. I was consulted as the very oracle of fashions; I was gazed at and examined with the most inquisitive curiosity. Mrs. Robinson, the promising young actress, was a very different personage from Mrs. Robinson who had been overwhelmed with sorrows, and came to ask an asylum under the roof of vulgar ostentation. ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... that the hated white man was killing the cattle in order that the tribes should perish of starvation. The fact, too, that raiding weaker tribes for food was punished by the British further aggravated this "offence." The priests encouraged the spirit of rebellion, and the oracle-deity, the M'limo, promised through the priests that if the Matabele would make war upon the white man his bullets in their flight should be changed to water, and his cannon shells become eggs. Horrible murders followed ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... ambitious monarch who was told by an oracle that if he could see Long Compton he would be king of England; the circle is his army, and the five "Whispering Knights" are five of his chieftains, who were hatching a plot against him when the magic spell was uttered. Local ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... men, whose chief and oracle he had been for so long, asked him what they ought to do; Cavalier replied that if they would follow him, their best course and his would be to take the first opportunity of gaining the frontier and leaving the country. They all declared themselves ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below,— The canticles of love and woe: The hand that rounded Peter's dome And groined the aisles of Christian ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... her in silence. She went on—with the unconscious manner of one accustomed to command her world, to be the oracle and guide ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mystic and religious. The female patriarch of the household was regarded with superstitious veneration. Her sayings were wise and good, and the warrior sat at her feet on the eve of battle and gathered from her as from an oracle, the confidence and courage which nerved him for the fight; and today the picture of an aged mother sitting by the hearth, and the recollection of her counsels, is a source of comfort and strength to many a son who is far away fighting the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... and in political sympathies agreed with Hearne and Carte. Walpole was a thorough Whig and a freethinker, so long, at least, as freethinking did not threaten danger to comfortable sinecures bestowed upon the sons of Whig ministers. But Cole became Walpole's antiquarian oracle. When Walpole came back from the grand tour, with nothing particular to do except spend his income, he found one amusement in dabbling in antiquarian research. He discovered, among other things, that even a Gothic cathedral could be picturesque, and ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... for itself. But the other—what can it possibly mean? For centuries has that question been reiterated; and hitherto without advancing by one step nearer to solution. Isaac Casaubon, who about 230 years since was the leading oracle in this field of literature, writing an elaborate and continuous commentary upon Suetonius, found himself unable to suggest any real aids for dispersing the thick darkness overhanging the passage. What he says is this:—'Parum satisfaciunt mihi interpretes ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Syrian named Eunus—a man of great craft and courage; who having passed through many scenes of life, had become acquainted with a variety of arts. He pretended to have immediate communication with the gods; was the oracle and leader of his fellow-slaves; and, as is usual on such occasions confirmed his divine mission by miracles. When heated by enthusiasm and desirous of inspiring his followers with courage, he breathed flames ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... moment Cousin Jim was silent, turning the thing over with his cigar. Maria Angelina sat still as a mouse, fearful to breathe lest the bewildering revelations cease. Cousin Jane, over her second cup of coffee, had the air of a humorous and superior oracle. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... consulting the oracle is ten cents," said Philo Gubb, "but I'll make a special exception ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth, for a long winter afternoon, a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, and ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... she would have been more impressed had she not seen Keith and Mrs. Brindley in the taxi, Keith talking earnestly and Mrs. Brindley listening as if to an oracle. Said she: "Perhaps I'll adopt some ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... science, he completed an Introduction to the Jurisprudence of Holland, a work which as soon as published became thenceforward a text-book and an oracle in the law courts and the high schools of the country. Not forgetting theology, he composed for the use of the humbler classes, especially for sailors, in whose lot, so exposed to danger and temptation, he ever took deep interest, a work on the proofs of Christianity ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... school, he could not even now admit that such monstrous things could be. With a necromantic operation taking place before his eyes; with the unholy perfume of the secret incense all but suffocating him; with the dreadful Oracle dully gleaming in the shadows of that temple of evil—his reason would not accept the evidences. Any man of the ancient world—of the middle ages—would have known that he looked upon a professed wizard, upon a magician, who, according to ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... to become narrative and admonitory, that is to say, fond of telling long stories, and of doling out advice, to the small profit and great annoyance of his friends. As I have a great horror of becoming the oracle, or, more technically speaking, the "bore," of the domestic circle, and would much rather bestow my wisdom and tediousness upon the world at large, I have always sought to ease off this surcharge of the intellect by means of my pen, and hence have inflicted divers gossiping ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... fellow, who, by thrusting himself forward on every occasion, and being loudest in every complaint against the government, had acquired an authority among those rude people. Thomas Flammoc, too, a lawyer, who had become the oracle of the neighborhood, encouraged the sedition, by informing them that the tax, though imposed by parliament, was entirely illegal; that the northern nobility were bound by their tenures to defend the nation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... meet the cost of coffin and funeral service, as well as a cup of coffee for anyone who would put himself out so far as to accept their hospitality on that occasion. But now, contrary to custom, his father had not proved an oracle—he was dead and everything else had gone with him—except the land on the Point. And how was that to be turned into cash when there was no cabin on it? He would probably have to starve to death himself. Wouldn't it be simplest to run down to the shore and throw himself ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Harriet, though beautiful, egotistical, and self-satisfied, was not quite weak enough for him. She had some genuine self-respect amidst much false pride, and if she did not talk like an oracle, neither would she babble like one crazy; she would not permit herself to be treated quite as a doll, a child, a plaything; she expected to be bent to like ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... wished Margaret had not advised her against such a manner of proceeding; she believed it was her friend's words that seemed to make such a simple action impossible, in spite of all the internal urgings. But a friend's advice is only thus powerful, when it puts into language the secret oracle of our souls. It was the whisperings of her womanly nature that caused her to shrink from any unmaidenly action, not ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... spread before I reached home, and sufficiently accounted for our visit to Jersey, and the temporary postponement of my last trip to England before our marriage. My mother, Johanna, and I, kept our own counsel, and answered the many questions asked us as vaguely as the Delphic oracle. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... had she asked the question, that she waited, almost expecting a reply, but there was no voice and none to answer her; and she was turning away with a sickening sense of mockery at her own folly in seeking the empty shrine whence the oracle of her life had departed, when her eye fell on the engraving over the mantel-piece. It was the one thing for which Mr. Drake had begged as a memorial of Joe Brownlow, and it still hung in its old place. It was of the Great Physician, consoling and ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... both fairly often, he never mentions Boswell, and Johnson only once or twice. The historian who could not talk was not likely to appreciate the great talker who cared nothing for history: so one is not surprised to find Johnson dismissed in the famous Memoirs as merely the "oracle" of Reynolds. A much greater friend was another member of "The Club," Percy, of the Reliques of Poetry, afterwards a Bishop, with whom he often quarrelled but was always reconciled. Boswell managed the most important of their reconciliations ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... pulling out his watch and consulting its face as if it were an oracle. I had no means of knowing—what I learned later—that he was making a swift calculation upon the arriving and departing hours of certain railroad trains. None the less, he agreed somewhat reluctantly to the further postponement; but when the turnkey ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... joy; then, that mysterious recognition of Atonement, of sacrifice, of purifying lustration (mystery which lies hid in the core of all religions), smoothes the frown on the Past, removes the flaming sword from the future. The Orestes escapes from the hounding Furies, and follows the oracle to the spot where the cleansing dews shall descend on the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... then?" rejoins the oracle, surveying him with calm, indulgent contempt. "Don't you know that the devil helped him, or he could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... or follow To the Oracle of Apollo— Here he speaks out of his pottle, Or the tripos, his tower bottle: All his answers are divine, Truth itself doth Bow in wine. Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers, Cries old Sam, the king of skinkers; He the half of ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... by the one who was regarded as the highest authority on literature in Scotland. If a writer was praised in The Lounger, his fame was assured. He went into the world with the hall-mark of Henry Mackenzie; and what more was needed? The oracle had spoken, and his decision was final. His pronouncement would be echoed and re-echoed from end to end of the country. And this great critic claimed no special indulgence for Burns on the plea of his mean birth or poor education. He saw in this heaven-taught ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... counceller is the pillar of a realme, in whose wisedome and care, vnder God and the king, stands the safety of a kingdome; he is the watch-towre to giue warning of the enemy, and a hand of prouision for the preseruation of the state: hee is an oracle in the king's eare, and a sword in the king's hand, an euen weight in the ballance of justice, and a light of grace in the loue of truth: he is an eye of care in the course of lawe, a heart of loue in the seruice of ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... landed on a deserted island, where they found the ruins of a city. Here there was an ancient temple of Diana, and an image of the goddess, which image was endued with the power of uttering oracular responses to those who consulted it with proper ceremonies and forms. Brutus consulted this oracle on the question in what land he should find a place of final settlement. His address to it was in ancient verse, which some chronicler has turned into English ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... circulating libraries, where daily are seen to congregate the 'reading men' of our schools. But, in revenge, there was not a milliner's shop, or a lingere's, in all our quartier Latin, which he did not industriously frequent, and of which he was not the oracle. Nay, it was said that his victories were not confined to the left bank of the Seine; reports did occasionally come to us of fabulous adventures by him accomplished in the far regions of the Rue de la Paix and the Boulevard Poissonniere. Such recitals were, for us less favored mortals, like tales ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which could not either be evolved out of similar principles, by the same process, or at least brought under the same forms of thought, by perceived or imagined analogies? And so it was. For more than a century men continued to invoke the oracle of their own spirits, not only concerning its own forms and modes of being, but likewise concerning the laws of external nature. All attempts at philosophical explication were commenced by a mere effort of the understanding, as the power of abstraction; ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a house of mourning may account for it. Fitful and versatile I know thee to be; changeable with scene and circumstance. Thy views are just what any eloquent companion pleases to make them. She thou lovest is thy deity; her lips thy oracle. And hence my cheerful omens of the future; the confidence I have in the wholesome efficacy of my government. I, that have the will to make thee happy, have the power too. I know I have; and hence my promptitude to ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... for us another echo of the story of Minos in the shape of the reasons which led the Cretans to refuse aid to the rest of the Greeks during the Persian invasion. The Delphian oracle, which they consulted at this crisis, suggested to them that they had known enough of the misery caused by foreign expeditions. 'Fools, you complain of all the woes that Minos in his anger sent you, for aiding Menelaus, because they would ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... I was just reflecting how foolish is all this thing—the tomb—the epitaph. I think I would 'av none—no, no epitaph. We regard them first for the oracle of the dead, and find them after only the folly of the living. So I despise. Do you think your house of Knowl down there is what ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... Sir Oracle, that you are beginning to recollect yourself and temper your severities on our sex," said my wife. "As usual, there is much truth lying about loosely in the vicinity of your assertions; but they are as far from being in themselves the truth ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... best thing I could do concerning the Book you wanted was to send your Enquiry to the Oracle itself:—whose ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... to this sage opinion with the sententious solemnity of an oracle, or the portentous gravity of "an ass"—as modern slang might put it—the youth resumed his pipe and continued ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... with those Wed. Such must expect to be told of Experiences that lie behind them, rather than before them, of Good or Evil; for Fate oft allows sparingly of Incident to those of middle years, or later; and therewith she is often pleased to make her Oracle speak coldly to a Querist, ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... spoon, line and skiff I had been using and who was the fishing oracle of that region, could hardly believe his eyes. I kept that country inn, and the neighborhood as well, supplied with fish for ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... have been doing nothing unusual, how have these rumours and slanders arisen?" I will tell you what I take to be the explanation. It is due to a certain wisdom with which I seem to be endowed—not superhuman at all like that of these gentlemen. I speak not arrogantly, but on the evidence of the Oracle of Delphi, who told Chaerephon, a man known to you, that there was no wiser man than Socrates. Now, I am not conscious of possessing wisdom; but the God cannot lie. What did ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the attitude which a sibyl might be supposed to assume, while listening to the occult mandates of the mysterious oracle, every ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... was confusedly present—a cloud of questions out of which Maud Manningham's large seated self loomed, however, as a mass more and more definite, taking in fact for the consultative relation something of the form of an oracle. From the oracle the sound did come—or at any rate the sense did, a sense all accordant with the insufflation she had just seen working. "Yes," the sense was, "I'll help you for Milly, because if that comes off I shall be helped, by its doing so, for Kate"—a view into ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... of Jehovah formed an essential part of the constitution, since it was God who ruled the nation. The oracle, in the form of a pillar of cloud, directed the wanderings of the people in the wilderness. This appeared amid the thunders of Sinai. This oracle decided all final questions and difficult points of justice. It could not be interrogated by private persons, only by the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Dean. He was honoured by the populace as the champion, patron, and instructor of Ireland; and gained such power as, considered both in its extent and duration, scarcely any man has ever enjoyed without greater wealth or higher station. He was from this important year the oracle of the traders, and the idol of the rabble, and by consequence was feared and courted by all to whom the kindness of the traders or the populace was necessary. The Drapier was a sign; the Drapier ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... your mystic spell, Land of the lotus, smiling land farewell! For ever it may be, what oracle can tell? ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... statue; and stood before me, as if by enchantment, half woman, half marble, beautiful inexpressibly. I was sorely tried. There was no action, no waving of the arms, as she spoke. Her voice came forth musically, as if from sacred oracle, that oracle having life only in words. Monsieur Manuel had ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... You talk like an oracle. I guess we'll run up my red parasol on the end of an oar for a danger sign. Bert could see that from the terrace." She glanced shorewards as she spoke, and he saw her face change momentarily. "Why," she said quickly, "I thought we were close ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... great a respect on the vulgar and their superstitions to pique one's self on sincerity with regard to them. If the thing were worthy of being treated gravely, I should tell him [the young man] that the Pythian oracle with the approbation of Xenophon advised every one to worship the gods—[Greek: nhomo pholeos]. I wish it were still in my power to be a hypocrite in this particular. The common duties of society usually require it; and ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... important year, the oracle of the traders, and the idol of the rabble, and by consequence was feared and courted by all to whom the kindness of the traders or the populace was necessary. The Drapier was a sign; the Drapier was a health; and which way ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Trost in Trauer, and quoted the text of Scripture Auge um Auge, Zabn um Zahn, after which he did not again allude to his wife's decease. In his last years, when my father managed the estate, and he only lived with us and criticised, he came to have the reputation of an oracle. The neighbours sent him their sons at the beginning of any important phase in their lives, and he received them in this very arbour, administering eloquent and minute advice in the deep voice that rolled round the shrubbery and filled me with a vague sense of guilt as I played. ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... so the battle ended; and Frank went to his books, while Amyas, who must needs be doing, if he was not to dream, started off to the dockyard to potter about a new ship of Sir Richard's, and forget his woes, in the capacity of Sir Oracle among the sailors. And so he had played his move for Rose, even as Eustace had, and lost her: but ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... live close to the banks where cod are found, and but little time is required in proceeding to the scene of their labour, therefore there is no necessity for being in a hurry, and there is lots of time for palaver. Every boat has an oracle in it, who speaks with an air of authority. He is a great talker, and a great smoker, and he chats so skilfully, that he enjoys his pipe at the same time, and manages it so as not to interrupt his jabbering. He can smoke, talk, and row at once. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... I remember—I've got it down; don't worry me," impatiently spoke the oracle, cutting short the interruption. "So far you might suit: but in other respects—I hardly ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... "industry must be our oracle, and reason our Apollo," as Sir T. Browne says; but surely it is no unreasonable estimate; yet how far do we fall short of it? General culture is often deprecated because it is said that smatterings are useless. But there is all the difference in the world between having a smattering ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... threshold of youth—which was peculiar to Shelley. Most poets, probably, like most saints, are prepared for their mission by an initial segregation, as the seed is buried to germinate: before they can utter the oracle of poetry, they must first be divided from the body of men. It is the severed head ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... early for young, since of a number of adult kangaroo rats taken during the first week of January none have been found to be breeding. Two records from Vernon Bailey are as follows: May 19-June 8, 1903, young specimen in nest (Santa Rosa, N. Mex.); June 12, 1889, one female, two embryos (Oracle, Ariz.). ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... who whumles them outright. I speak in a figure. But all these are as dust in the balance to the wearisome man of ponderous acquirements, the solemn blockhead who usurps the pas, and if he happen to be rich, fancies himself entitled to prose and palaver away, as if he were Sir Oracle, or as if the pence in his purse could ever fructify the cauld parritch in his pate into pregnant brain. There is a plateful of P's for you at any rate, Tom. Beautiful exemplification of the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... their own flesh and blood. The threadbare author hates the gaudy coat; And swears at the gilt coach, but swears afoot: 10 For 'tis observed of every scribbling man, He grows a fop as fast as e'er he can; Prunes up, and asks his oracle, the glass, If pink and purple best become his face. For our poor wretch, he neither rails nor prays; Nor likes your wit, just as you like his plays; He has not yet so much of Mr Bayes. He does his best; and if he cannot please, Would quietly ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House of Commons as an immediate representative of the people, whether the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty can subsist. The Colonies draw from you, as ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... into? No, it cannot be said you are." That hard-faced gentleman a wit! Why, Nature wrote on his fanatic forehead fifty years ago, "Wit never comes, that comes to all." I should be as scandalized at a bon-mot issuing from his oracle-looking mouth as to see Cato go down a country-dance. God love you all! You are very good to submit to be pleased with reading my nothings. 'T is the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense and to have ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... much in natural history that needs interpreting. We explain a fact, we interpret an oracle; we explain the action and relation of physical laws and forces, we interpret, as well as we can, the geologic record. Darwin sought to explain the origin of species, and to interpret many palaeontological ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... married M. Firmiani, receiver-general in the department of Montenotte. M. Firmiani died in Greece about 1822, and she became Mme. de Camps in 1824 or 1825. At this time she dwelt on rue du Bac and had entree into the home of Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, the oracle of Faubourg Saint-Germain. An accomplished and excellent lady, loved even by her rivals, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, her cousin, Mme. de Macumer—Louise de Chaulieu—and the Marquise d'Espard. [Madame Firmiani.] She welcomed and protected Mme. Xavier Rabourdin. [The ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... is that reason, at once both common and superior to all limited and imperfect reasons of mankind? Where is that oracle, which is never silent, and against which all the vain prejudices of men cannot prevail? Where is that reason which we have ever occasion to consult, and which prevents us to create in us the desire of hearing its voice? Where is that lively light which lighteth every ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... loss or gain, in coins stamped with every sort of effigy. And here precisely is that which constitutes the inflexible rigour of the calculus, the luminous certainty before which every cultivated mind is forced to bow. Algebra is the oracle of the absolute truth, because it reveals nothing but what the mind had hidden in it under an amalgam of symbols. We put 2 and 2 into the machine; the rollers work and show us 4. That ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... then, seeing that Psyche's heart had somehow escaped love, she sent a spell upon the maiden. From that time, lovely as she was, not a suitor came to woo; and her parents, who desired to see her a queen at least, made a journey to the Oracle, and ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... walled cities lay; Where in long weariness and fearful doubt, The townsmen keep their watch by night and day. The fields they have abandoned all about, And for a remedy, their last assay, To the oracle, demanding counsel, fly, Which to the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... describes in Book III. chap, xiv., in earlier times, and of the pupils of the Academy in the fourth century. The lawgiver was not an ordinary politician. He was a state doctor, called in to prescribe for an ailing constitution. So Herodotus recounts that when the people of Cyrene asked the oracle of Delphi to help them in their dissensions, the oracle told them to go to Mantinea, and the Mantineans lent them Demonax, who acted as a "setter straight" and drew up a new constitution for Cyrene. So again the Milesians, Herodotus tells us, were long troubled by civil discord, till ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... to ask: 'Was it not possible to avert this annexation which loomed before every mind, brooding like a shadow upon the country?' He went to Sir Theophilus; he asked his question; and at length the oracle spoke. Without moving a muscle of his wonderfully impassive countenance, without even raising his eyes to look at the interlocutor, Sir Theophilus calmly murmured: 'It is too late!—too late!' And so, without the authorization of the home ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... told me that but twice in his married life had he acted counter to his wife's advice, and in both instances his judgment failed and hers was right. Many men have found their wives' intuitive judgment so correct that they dare not resist it, as though it were the utterings of an oracle. It is well known that such men as Bonaparte and Jackson have relied with great confidence upon their wives' opinions. So universal is this opinion among men, that all our best moralists and most sage philosophers advise all married men to consult ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... in a grove, consecrated to Apollo, and situated between Colophon and Lebedos, in Ionia. The god had an oracle there. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... for is glorious, no doubt, but what shall lead to it must be a terror to all. Were you told of the kingdom of which you speak by an oracle, or is it only a picture drawn by your imagination, a vision, and the offspring of your ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... must not expect immediate returns. It is only the lowest caste that is now reached, and the Christianizing of India must come, eventually, from the highest,"—words which we shall be very ready to take as opinion, but very slow to receive as oracle, since, from the time when the Founder of Christianity was upon the earth, and the common people heard him gladly, while the higher classes thrust him out of their synagogues, till the present day, the history of Christianity has been the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... prevailed, and began interpreting the language of the leaves, not greatly to my own advantage or that of any being in the universe. I was no prophet of good, but full of melancholy bodings, and something that bordered upon despair. Had I but commanded an oracle, as ancient visionaries were wont, I should have ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... again with new broils; he told her, that all the world made their court to Hermione, that if any body had any petitions, or addresses to make to the Prince, it was by her sole interest; she sat in their closest councils, and heard their gravest debates; and she was the oracle of the board: the Prince paying her perfect adoration, while she, whose charms of youth were ended, being turned of thirty, fortified her decays with all the art her wit and sex were capable of, and kept her illustrious lover as perfectly her slave, as if she had engaged ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... self-sacrifices was perpetuated by the name of a spring of water on the plain of Marathon, the spring Macaria. The Heracleidae then endeavoured to effect their return to Peloponnesus. Hyllus, the eldest of them, inquired of the oracle at Delphi respecting their return; he was told to return by the narrow passage and in the third harvest. Accordingly, in the third year from that time Hyllus led an army to the Isthmus of Corinth; but there he was encountered by an army of Achaians and Arcadians, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... metaphysicians, she found fierce denunciation of predecessors, ingenious refutations of principles which they had evolved from rigid analysis of the facts of consciousness, and an intolerant dogmatism which astonished and confused her. One extolled Locke as an oracle of wisdom; another ridiculed the shallowness of his investigations and the absurdity of his doctrines; while a third showed conclusively that Locke's assailant knew nothing at all of what he wrote, and maintained ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... matter to their grandfather, who advised them to settle it by augury,—or by watching and forming conclusions from the flight of birds. This long continued the favorite Roman mode of settling difficult questions. It was easier than the Greek plan of going to Delphi to consult the oracle. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... hot," notwithstanding that this was his first offense. Odds were taken that he would have fourteen years. "At all events," said one of the small officials, in answer to eager inquiries, "more than he could do on his head." With this enigmatical reply of the oracle its astonished questioners were ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... need not lower the great Father of Neoplatonism in our eyes, as a moral being. All accounts of him seem to prove him to have been what Apollo, in a lengthy oracle, declared him to have been, "good and gentle, and benignant exceedingly, and pleasant in all his conversation." He gave good advice about earthly matters, was a faithful steward of moneys deposited with him, a guardian of widows and orphans, a righteous and loving man. In his practical ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... For a pound of 'clean white rags' the ladies could get ten shillings! If you had lived then, and had your mother's rags to-day, what heaps of money you could have made! It was hard, too, for us newspaper men to get news. I was looking yesterday at a copy of the 'Portsmouth Oracle,' published in 1805. That was in this wonderful century. What did it say on the 26th of January? 'News by telegraph?' and did it tell us what the Hottentots were doing yesterday? No; it said, 'By the mails,' ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... define, save perhaps a German. The traditions of the people themselves are generally denied, because they are not in harmony with foregone conclusions. The meaning of ancient manuscripts is disfigured, and, in fact, sacrificed to fiction, if only the latter proceeds from the mouth of some favorite oracle. ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... Ccapac were originated the ten ayllus mentioned above. From his time began the idols huauquis, which was an idol or demon chosen by each Inca for his companion and oracle which gave him answers[58]. That of Manco Ccapac was the bird indi already mentioned. This Manco Ccapac ordered, for the preservation of his memory, the following: His eldest son by his legitimate wife, who was his sister, was to succeed to the sovereignty. If there was a second ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... then, Lu is a good girl, and he's her minister,—a Delphic oracle. She thinks the sun and moon set somewhere round Mr. Dudley. Oh! I mean to show him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... last words with slow enunciation, like an oracle. Mr. Rhys looked up from his writing and smiled at her a little, though he ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... of his voice the puppies ceased their play, sat up panting a moment, and then in a tumultuous bunch rushed upon La Mothe. Charlemagne vouched for him, Charlemagne who was their oracle as grown-up brothers so often are, and they could let loose the exuberance of their puppydom without a fear that a sudden cuff would teach their youth that wild delights find an end in sorrow. Over each other they sprawled ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... national spirit, and diffuse hopes of the new enterprise of Vasco de Gama, who had just sailed on a voyage of discovery to the Indies. Three stones were discovered near Cintra, bearing in ancient characters a Latin inscription; a sibylline oracle addressed prophetically "To the Inhabitants of the West!" stating that when these three stones shall be found, the Ganges, the Indus, and the Tagus should exchange their commodities! This was the pious fraud of a Portuguese poet, sanctioned by the approbation ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... in that," said the Angel. "But tell me how the oracle is worked—for it may come ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... in her, the one she had always known, and a new abhorrent being to which it found itself chained. She had once picked up, in a house where she was staying, a translation of the EUMENIDES, and her imagination had been seized by the high terror of the scene where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour's repose. Yes, the Furies might sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the dark corners, and now they were awake and the iron clang of their wings was in her brain . . . She opened her eyes and saw the streets ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... profession; I suppose he means not a little honour, for the matter of his instructions is not very important. His great antiquity is visible through the gravity and simplicity of his style. The most acute of all his sayings concerns our purpose very much, and is couched in the reverend obscurity of an oracle. [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. The half is more than the whole. The occasion of the speech is this: his brother Perses had by corrupting some great men ([Greek text which cannot be reproduced], great bribe-eaters he calls them) gotten from him the half of his estate. ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... Judges, the Idol of Micah was consulted as a kind of oracle.[125] Gideon made, in his house and his city, an Ephod, accompanied by a superstitious image, which was for his family, and to all the people, the occasion ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... to me?—and I at the pass where my need is uttermost. Shall I go to her this afternoon, and unburden my soul—or shall I not? You have left me where you found me—in the same fine, free, and liberal state of vacillation. Discredited oracle!" ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... said, intently studying his foot as though he were reading some mystic signals wigwagged from the gods, "mind, Davy, that you don't fall into the hands of the Professor. If the Professor catches you, Davy—" The foot stopped wiggling. The oracle was silent. Did it fear to reveal to me so dreadful a fate as mine if I fell into the Professor's clutches? I waved a hand defiantly to the seer and I rode on. Rode on? I was dragged on by four stout horses through the village ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... interest. They witnessed the arrangement of the pulleys, and the manufacture of the thunders. They saw the natural faces and heard the natural voices of the actors. Distant nations looked on the Pope as the Vicegerent of the Almighty, the oracle of the All-wise, the umpire from whose decisions, in the disputes either of theologians or of kings, no Christian ought to appeal. The Italians were acquainted with all the follies of his youth, and with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... exquisite thing called modern "spiritualism." The amount and quality of "faith" are, indeed, pleasingly diversified when come to examine individual professors thereof; but it always based upon the principle that man is a light to himself; that his oracle is within; so clear either to supersede the necessity—some say even possibility—of all external revelation in any sense of that term; or, when such revelation is in some sense allowed, to constitute ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... his mighty arch yet bridges the gulf between Elizabeth and the Revolution, and is of nearer or less distant kin to Shakspeare than to Pope. His prose is the swan song of the old eloquence, as inspired and as confused as an oracle. To read it when it is at its best is to soar on wings through the empyrean and despise Swift and Addison walking in neat politeness on the pavement. There as everywhere, in his verse, in his character, ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... shall suffer death at the altar unless some one offers to die in her place; likewise a custom whereby a nymph between fifteen and twenty years of age is annually sacrificed to the goddess. When besought to release the land from this tribute Diana through her oracle replies: ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... demanded the reason of the Parliament's delay to register an edict they had received from him against the "Lutherans"—doubtless the last—establishing the inquisitorial commission of three cardinals. "Cest edict estoit sorti de l'oracle dudict cardinal de Lorreine." Baum, Theodore Beza, ii. 31, note, etc., has already called attention to the gross inaccuracies of Browning, in his description of the incidents of the Mercuriale, as well as of the king's visit to parliament. (Hist. of the Huguenots, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Leonatus, doth import so much: The peece of tender Ayre, thy vertuous Daughter, Which we call Mollis Aer, and Mollis Aer We terme it Mulier; which Mulier I diuine Is this most constant Wife, who euen now Answering the Letter of the Oracle, Vnknowne to you vnsought, were clipt about ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... makes the nymphs and swains of Alexander Pope dull and artificial. There are flies in this delicious ointment, one must admit, touches of corruption which a degenerate paganism condoned and palliated, but we must remember, as an extenuation of the Greek attitude, that the oracle of Delphi protested against them. The cyprus plains of Theocritus yet echo with the call of the cicada, and the anemones still bloom. The pipes of Pan are not all silent. The world would lose some of its beauty if Theocritus and ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... and Jason, in his impetuous and hopeful youth, besought the oracle, whose prophetic utterances seemed to imply that his future and his fortune lay in some distant land, and that it would be wise for him to seek it at once. Jason, like his illustrious predecessor, resolved to go over the sea in search of the golden fleece. It was the most adventurous thing he ever ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... had sent his queen to prison, commanded Cleomenes and Dion, two Sicilian lords, to go to Delphos, there to inquire of the oracle at the temple of Apollo if his queen had been unfaithful ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... can Warrant 'em the better. She's a great Preserver of Maiden-heads; for tho' she Exposes 'em to every new Comer, she takes care that they shall never be lost: And tho' never so many get it, yet none carries it away, but she still has it ready for the next Customers. She thinks no Oracle like that of Fryar Bacon's brazen-Head, and is very forward to tell you that Time Was when the best Gentlemen wou'd have prefer'd her before any Lady in the Land: But when She repeats Time's Past, She makes ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... we are / but yet without synne. But now this remaynith as yet to be discussed / which theis men do take as for an oracle / and ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... It needs no oracle to assure these women that they are traveling along a road that has only one ending. Love is as old as the hills, and the older it gets, like the wise old hills, a wiser old love it becomes. It exacts its price, and its price is an equal love. There never was a love born—except maternal ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... of Brutus' birth his parents were frightened by an oracle predicting that he would be the cause of the death of both parents, and only after long wanderings would attain the highest pitch of glory. This prophecy was duly fulfilled. Brutus' mother, a niece of Lavinia, died at his ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... Agrond, were descendants of Lydos the son of Atys, whence this whole nation was called Lydian, having been before called Meonian. From these the Heracleidai, descended from Heracles and the slave-girl of Iardanos, obtained the government, being charged with it by reason of an oracle; and they reigned for two-and-twenty generations of men, five hundred and five years, handing on the power from father to son, till the time of Clandaules the ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... after time that he is not an Egyptian governor, but a tributary ally and vassal of the Pharaoh, and that he had received his royal power, not by inheritance from his father or mother, but through the arm (or oracle) of "the Mighty King." As "the Mighty King" is distinguished from the "great King" of Egypt, we must see in him the god worshipped by Ebed-Tob, the "Most High God" of Melchizedek, and the prototype of "the Mighty God" of Isaiah. It is this same mighty king, Ebed-Tob assures the Pharaoh ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... fiddler asks who such a maid, or such a maid, naming all the girls one after another, shall marry, to which he answers according to his own whim, or agreeable to the intimacies he has taken notice of during the time of merriment, and whatever he says is absolutely depended upon as an oracle; and if he couple two people who have an aversion to each other, tears and vexation succeed the mirth; this they call "cutting off the fiddler's head," for after this he is ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... the death of the French King; but upon his explaining himself, I found his sorrow did not arise from the loss of the monarch, but for his having sold out of the Bank about three days before he heard the news of it. Upon which a haberdasher, who was the oracle of the coffee-house, and had his circle of admirers about him, called several to witness that he had declared his opinion, above a week before, that the French King was certainly dead; to which he added, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... end of the hall, in another picture, is the Athenian Codrus, who, having heard from the oracle that the victory would fall to that side whose King should be killed by the enemy, laid aside his robes, entered unknown among the enemy, and let himself be slain, thus giving the victory to his people by his own death. Domenico painted him seated, with his nobles round him as he puts ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... He was by no means sorry, on his part, to be something of an oracle; he from whom the sub-lieutenants, new-comers at Saint-Cyr, fled ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... follow freely the development of their barbarous institutions; the worship of the botuto would no doubt become of some political importance. That mysterious society of the initiated, those guardians of the sacred trumpet, would be transformed into a ruling caste of priests, and the oracle of Tomo would gradually form a link between ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... gratitude maintains him. The statue is incomparable, the finest of all mounted figures, unless that of Marcus Aurelius, who rides benignant before the Roman Capitol, be finer: but I was not thinking of that; I only found myself staring at the triumphant captain as if he had an oracle on his lips. The western light shines into all his grimness at that hour and makes it wonderfully personal. But he continued to look far over my head, at the red immersion of another day—he had seen so many go down into the lagoon through ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... duty is taken as a guide, and how vigorously and decisively a man marches along it! Peter had no hesitation, and his resolved answer comes crashing in a straight course, like a cannon-ball. The Council had a much more ambiguous oracle to consult in order to settle their course, and they hesitate accordingly, and at last do a something which is a nothing. They wanted to trim their sails to catch popular favour, and so they could not do anything thoroughly. To punish or acquit was the only alternative for just judges. But they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... his only oracle; Who could buy lands and pleasure at his will, Yet slighted that which ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... themselves with sending the images of the Aeacidae, the tutelary heroes of their island. Subsequently, however, they entered into an alliance, and ravaged the sea-board of Attica. The Athenians were preparing to make reprisals, in spite of the advice of the Delphic oracle that they should desist from attacking Aegina for thirty years, and content themselves meanwhile with dedicating a precinct to Aeacus, when their projects were interrupted by the Spartan intrigues for the restoration of Hippias. In 401 B.C. Aegina was one of the states ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... few days of their arrival, a banquet was given them by their compatriots; and from that hour, Foresti became the oracle and the consoler, the teacher, almoner, and chief of his fellow-exiles. Subsequent events drove many other Italian patriots to our shores; his purse and his counsel were ever ready for the impoverished and inexperienced, who regarded him with filial admiration; while to the more educated he was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years' voluntary concealment. This might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle, as for example:— ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... a sort of men whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pool, And do a wilful stillness entertain; With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion, As who should say, "I am Sir Oracle, "And when I ope my lips let no dog bark." SHAKESPEARE, Merchant ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... caught his death of cold by superintending the laying down of three pipes of port, might ever afterwards be heard, upon such interesting occasions, walking about the damp cellars after nightfall in pattens. Hopkins, the oracle of the college "tap," maintained that the frogs were something "off the common;" and strengthened his opinion by reference to a specimen which he had selected—a lank, black, skinny individual, which really looked ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... nurse had said; yet it sufficed to take her from her bed, down the stairs, in pursuit of the voice—straight out into the newly articulate world. She moved, frail and undismayed, to the source of revelation. She did not cower back and demand that the oracle be served up to her by a messenger. A will like that is ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... had given her. It happened that about this time somebody in the village who had been robbed consulted a cunning man of great repute in the neighbourhood, and so alarmed was the thief at the bare idea of what this oracle might utter, that the stolen property was secretly restored. The girl upon hearing of this restitution resolved to have recourse to the cunning man, and invited her lover to escort her to his abode. After endeavouring ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... to Rouen died the following year, deeply lamented by the inhabitants, and generally so by France; but, above all, regretted by Louis XIIth, his sovereign, whom, to use the words of Guicciardini, he served as oracle and authority. The author of the History of the Chevalier Bayard, is still louder in his praise.—The western facade of the cathedral was not finished till 1530, twenty ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
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