"Baffled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that he, the questioner himself had set him on, but the words stuck in his throat. The consummate art with which his patron had led him to this point, and managed the whole conversation, perfectly baffled him. He did not doubt that if he had made the retort which was on his lips when Mr Chester turned round and questioned him so keenly, he would straightway have given him into custody and had him dragged before a justice with ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... a more fortunate effort to ascend the sandstone range which had yesterday so baffled our efforts; and having commenced the ascent at 6 A.M. reached the summit at 10, but the poor little ponies were dreadfully exhausted. Having now established ourselves upon this narrow elevated tableland the next thing was to descend on the other side. The prospect to the southward and eastward ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... I was baffled and realized that it was a waste of effort to attempt to theorize about the snarled web in which I found myself enmeshed. One thing was apparent enough, and that was Meeker did his best to keep me out of the Kut Sang, as he said, and I reached ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... "It's that Miss Archer then, is it?" Her next move was to arrest poor Quimby in the hall, intending to put him through a series of interrogations regarding the antecedents of his friend, and the length of his acquaintance with Miss Archer. But in this she was baffled, for at the first question, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... up at her, baffled, inarticulate. "Oh, of course," he agreed helplessly, "we want to do the best ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... he stood almost without movement. He was seeking, seeking in every direction. But the rosy twilight baffled him. Unaga buried her secrets deeply, and only was there the perfume in the air which she could not conceal. This was the key with which Steve meant to open the door of her ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... forth with great caution into the night, but we always spotted the man we wanted, and almost invariably arrested him elsewhere, having followed him from his kennel. In each case my uniformed officers found a dark and empty cellar, and retired apparently baffled. But the coincidence that on the night of every raid some member there present was secretly arrested in another quarter of Paris, and perhaps given a free passage to Russia, never seemed to awaken suspicion in the minds of ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... panther he had caught and could not tame; he hadn't even caught her, since she might escape at any time. He took precautions not to alarm her. When she brushed against him he trembled. Continually she baffled and puzzled him, and he never could tell of what she was thinking. She represented a whole set of new and undetermined values for which he had no precedents, and unlike every woman he had known—including his wife—she had an integrity of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that? He assumes it because he is prejudiced in favor of the enemy. How does he know they have done everything the Act of Parliament requires? And, if they have, Law is not invincible. When Law defies Morality, it gets baffled, and trampled on in ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... very much you would introduce me. No, on second thoughts, I had rather you did n't. I will speak to her bravely myself, as a friend of her cousin." Madame Grandoni and Rowland exchanged glances of baffled conjecture, and Christina flung off her burnous, crumpled it together, and, with uplifted finger, tossing it into a corner, gave it in charge to her poodle. He stationed himself upon it, on his haunches, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... me, anyhow? I began a series of cautious experiments, designed to discover the trouble. My arms were weak and of a strange, flabby limpness, but they moved. So did my left leg; but when I came to the right one I was baffled. It wouldn't stir; it was heavily encased in something. Good heavens! now I knew! It was in ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the vast change that had come over his armament during the few weeks since he sailed down among the Western Isles, conquering and winning to his side the island princes as vassals of his flag. He returned as a baffled invader, and encountered many severe rebuffs from the islanders as well as further disasters from the winter storms. The fatigues of that expedition and his bitter disappointments sank deep into his old heart, and never again did he see the home that he had left. Landing in Orkney ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... baffled," replied Ralph reassuringly. "I have thought it all out. It would be dangerous for you to leave the yacht because, in view of to-morrow's race, neither your brother nor I could accompany you. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... which he submitted to his irreversible doom, and final loss of all good. His power of action and of suffering was equal. He was the greatest power that was ever overthrown, with the strongest will left to resist or to endure. He was baffled, not confounded. He ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... sniffed and walked on without speaking. Dr. O'Grady was not the kind of man who is easily baffled. He turned round ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... because it is cruelty to insult the depressed, and folly to engage with desperation, but because we consider all their outcries, menaces, and boasts, as nothing more than advertisements in our favour, being evidently drawn up with the bitterness of baffled malice and disappointed hope; and almost discovering, in plain terms, that the unhappy authors have seventy thousand London Magazines mouldering in their warehouses, returned from all parts of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... she found, to exaggerate his contempt for human nature and his disbelief in the reality of human virtue. A perfectly honest man was the only kind of man he never could understand. Such a man perplexed and baffled his calculations, acting on them as the sign of the cross acts on the machinations of a demon. The superiority which so clearly shone in his conversation was not that of a mind cultivated by study and by society; it was ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... meet." They slip out of countries, or towns—or rooms even,—just before we arrive, leaving us with an inexplicable feeling of having been cheated of something that was rightfully and divinely ours. That's the way I still feel about little Miss By-the-Day. Perhaps you, too, have been baffled by the will-o'-the-wispishness of that whimsical young person. Perhaps you, too, tried to find ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... Completely baffled, I descended into the room again and turned on the current. Immediately the shadow appeared on the film, and this time, in consequence of the room now being quite dark, I noticed that it was surrounded by a phosphorus-colored glow. The figure was certainly that of a man, although ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... embittered labourer complained, one day, as Georgie rode the pony straight through a pile of sand the man was sieving. "I will when I grow up," the undisturbed child replied. "I guess my grandpa owns it now, you bet!" And the baffled workman, having no means to controvert what seemed a mere exaggeration of the facts could only mutter "Oh, pull down ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... been since I last drank. In this, however, I was not successful. It seemed but a short while to me, but excited as I had been, and confused in my ideas, it might have been an hour, or even more. I was completely baffled in any ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... divide the empire. Constan'tius was appointed to govern the western parts, and died at York, in Britain, A.D. 396, appointing Con'stantine, his son, as his successor. Gale'rius was seized with a very extraordinary disorder, which baffled the skill of his physicians, and ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... and which we have seen and passed several times without giving it a thought. We go farther down the mountain and beat about to the right and left, and get entangled in brush and arrested by precipices, and finally, as the day is nearly spent, give up the search and leave the woods quite baffled, but resolved to return on the morrow. The next day we come back and commence operations in an opening in the woods well down on the side of the mountain where we gave up the search. Our box is soon swarming with the eager bees, and they go back toward the summit we have passed. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... off, the dogs accompanying us willingly, in spite of the cries and calls of the baffled horsemen on the other side of the tree. Issuing from the gorge, we struck into the forest, and heard our pursuers cursing us and the dogs as they tried to follow us. By the help of my arm Uncle Moses managed to struggle along, and after about a quarter of an hour we came to the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... returned Carl; "I have indeed heard of such a thing, and that it was hidden in the bosom of the Hartz by a princess of the olden time; but I never was mad enough to think of so wild a chase as a search after riches, which has baffled the wisest of our ancestors, must surely prove."—"Belike then," replied the forester, "thou art well to do in the world, and therefore needest not to replenish thy wallets with gold,—travelling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... impersonal in his attitude toward government, and that very impersonality was the characteristic which most baffled the American people. Mr. Wilson had a genius for the advocacy of great principles, but he had no talent whatever for advocating himself, and to a country that is accustomed to think in headlines about political questions ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... the wagon tried his best to find out where the two were going and what they were going for; but the man from the East baffled his curiosity in a most dexterous manner, so that, when the two rode away from the two-roomed log house where the kind-hearted people lived, they left no clue to their identity or mission beyond the fact that they were going quite a journey, and had got a ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... by opposing armies. Nor did Richelieu seek to maintain the peace of Europe by force alone. Never was there a more astute and profound diplomatist. His emissaries were in every court, with intrigues very hard to be baffled. He equalled Metternich or Talleyrand in his profound dissimulation, for European diplomacy has ever been based on this. While he built up absolutism in France, he did not alienate other governments; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... not to be baffled, I prayed the Lord to help me get some scholars. I went forth praying every step of the way, the following Saturday afternoon; and canvassing just one short street near our home, I received the promise of nineteen children ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... only with classes, only with general laws; and so long as these classes are constantly reduced to "species of one," and these laws are set at nought by incalculable and singular influences, she must be constantly baffled and find all her elaborate plant of formulas and generalisations useless. Of course, there are generalisations possible in literature, and to such I may return presently; but scientific criticism of literature must always be a contradiction in terms. You may to some considerable ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... tied under his arms; the helpless limbs sank huddling on the floor; then Mark looked up; at the window a few feet from him was a face, more horrible than he had supposed a human face, if it was human indeed, could be. It was deadly white, and hatred, baffled rage, and a sort of devilish malignity glared from the white set eyes, and the drawn mouth. There was a rush from behind him; the old hound, who had crept up unawares into the room, with a fierce outcry of rage sprang on to the window-sill; Mark ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Powhatan with baffled look and stealthy stride Sudden vanished from the room, leaving squaws. Side by side the English stood with pointed weapons, Eyes fixed on the open door whence swiftly came Savage warriors rushing madly on their prey. Fell the foremost dead; a second leaped and fell; Halted ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... all, from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made to secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet my fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult. Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself the question, May not my condition after all be God's work, and ordered for a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission my duty? A contest had in fact been going on in my mind for a long time, between the clear consciousness ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... and hair that rustled like the sedge-grass, I rose and woke up the obedient gas, which flashed tremulously on the scales of an enormous rattlesnake coiled round the mice's cage, tightening his folds as he whizzed his infernal warning, and darting out his lightning tongue with baffled fury at the trembling group in the middle of the cage. This I saw by the first flash. Grasping a sword from among the weapons with which the walls were studded, I made a pass to sever the monster; but the Mangouste was quicker than I, as he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in which they eyed one another, and their glances were almost as the glances of baffled men. They had not looked for such a tone from him, and they questioned with their eyes and minds the wisdom of going further. At last, with a half-sigh, Fabrizio da Lodi turned ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... changing, and the "Rose Algier," now but half manned and in unseaworthy condition, was unfit to prowl around a dangerous reef in the hurricane season. So, without having accomplished the object of so much exertion and anxiety, Phips was obliged to return to England, a baffled but not ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... It baffled description. Well, they drifted apart; but often afterwards, when that young laddy was studying his Manual of Military Law in his lonely dug-out, the image of Sister Carruthers glowed on the printed page. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... was decorated with lamps and Chinese Lanterns in a manner that baffled description. Thousands of these Chinese Lanterns hung from the trees and twinkled among the foliage like so many coloured fire-flies. The drives from the gates to the building had rows of these coloured lanterns ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... if really he had had a chance to marry Edith, could have taken the type-writer instead, baffled speculation. Thorpe gave more attention to this problem, during dinner, than he did to the conversation of the table. His exchange of sporadic remarks with the young Duchess beside him was indeed ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... will find in Pit'S whole behaviour; whenever he wanted new advancement, he used to go off He has openly met with great discouragement now; though he and we know Mr. Pelham so -well, that it Will not be surprising if, though baffled, he still carries his point of secretary of state. However, the old corps resented this violently, and rushed up their old anger: Mr. Pelham was inclined to give way, but Lord Hartington, at the head of the young Whigs, divided the House, and Pitt had the mortification of being ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... chivalry sallied, Smote and far into the North swept him discomfited forth, Therefore, from root unto hole, from hole into burgeoning branches, Tendril and tassel and cup now let the ichor leap up: Therefore, with flowering drift and with fluttering bloom avalanches, Snowdrop and silver thorn laugh baffled winter to scorn; Primrose, daffodil, cowslip, shine back to my shimmering sandals, Hyacinth host, o'er the green flash your cerulean sheen, Lilac, your perfumed lamps, light, chestnut, your clustering candles, Broom and laburnum, untold torches of tremulous gold! Therefore ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... Wogan was baffled; he was angered. "Have I ever told you lies?" he asked passionately, and she answered, "Yes," and steadily looked ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... Rochester, both as holding a station among the authors of the period, grievous to the vanity of one who aimed, by a levelling and dividing system, to be the tyrant, or at least the dictator, of wit; and also as the friend, and even the confidant, of Mulgrave, by whom the witty profligate had been baffled and humiliated. Dryden was therefore to be lowered in the public opinion; and for this purpose, Rochester made use of Elkanah Settle, whom, though he gratified his malice by placing him in opposition to Dryden, he must, in his heart, have ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... that was a big sawmill and cotton-gin town ahead of him, silhouetted along the top of a high bank. He headed straight for it, and found his boat inexplicably slowed up and rebuffed. Strangers on the river always do find themselves baffled by the big New Madrid eddy, which even power boats engage with difficulty of management. He landed at last against a floating dock, and found that ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... that here, in this lonely cove, we were probably much nearer the solution of the mystery that had baffled Scarterfield, ourselves, the police, and everybody that we knew. And so, apparently, did Miss Raven, who suddenly turned on Baxter with a look that was half ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... supernatural power. If, in the face of these facts, it be pretended that these miracles are attested, we shall be compelled, at least, to agree that, according to the Bible account, they have been entirely useless, that the Deity has been constantly baffled in all his projects, and that he could never make of the Hebrews a people ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... me to go," Elinor said. And Lily, puzzled and baffled, found herself again looking ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... some years upon the heels of his rival's rapid ascent, Lincoln had entered the House as Douglas left it for the Senate, but at the end of the term he retired from politics baffled and discouraged. Tortured with the keen apprehension of a form and grace into which he could never mould his crudeness, tantalized with a sense that there must be a way for him to get a hold on his ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... light. But the boat's crew are seasoned hands, to whom this dread sight is familiar, and orders are quietly obeyed, the boat backing, circling and darting ahead like a sentient thing under their united efforts. So the infuriated mammal is baffled and dodged, while thrust after thrust of the long lances are got home, and streamlets of blood trickling over the edges of his spouthole give warning that the end is near. A few wild circlings at tremendous speed, jaws clashing and blood foaming in torrents from the spiracle, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... fiercely; "I don't propose you shall undo what's being done for you. Let me hear from you"—jerking his finger toward the square—"and I'll not answer for what I'll do." But in spite of his admonition he read such determination in her eyes, he felt himself baffled. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... more religion than many other girls, but she wanted to be true; the inconsistency of human nature baffled and perplexed her; she was not more ready to renounce the world than Sara was, but she wished to know the inner meaning of things, and in this I longed to help her. I could not help thinking of her tenderly and pitifully as I walked down the road leading to the little Norman church. I was ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sap up to his positions. Let him discover where the attack impended. Even then all his resistance should be overborne. And it seems now that this same deliberation which was so punctiliously observed, when speed appeared an essential to success, baffled the enemy almost as much as it mystified the troops. However, the ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... flowers. These sugar-maple blooms hang on slender stems; they come with the first leaves, and are very different in appearance from the flowers of other maples. The observer will have no trouble in recognizing them after the first successful attempt, even though he may be baffled in comparing the maple leaves by the apparent similarity of the foliage of the Norway, the sugar and the sycamore maples at certain ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... advanced Listening Posts, and by their new device gained temporary footing in it. A strong stream of water, apparently from a hose was directed suddenly upon the men in the Listening Post from the enemy position. While the men were baffled and blinded by the rush of water, the post was bombed and the two listeners retired on the main post for support. Immediately a counter-attack was organised and led by Company Sergeant-Major Miller of "A" Company, ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... fellow, in his triumph, could not avoid rising in the wagon, shouting and waving his hat defiantly at his baffled pursuers. The daring act came near costing his life, for it was instantly followed by the discharge of several guns, and the singing of the bullets about his ears caused him to duck back into his seat as suddenly as he ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... not easily baffled. After all, this key must have been sent to us for a purpose. The lady could not bring us that of the door, because this murderous step-father of hers would most certainly have it in his pocket. Yet this other ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... its metaphysical speculation, it may well give pause to the reader who makes his first approach to Browning through it, and send him back,—if he begins, as is likely, with the feeling of one challenged to an intellectual task,—baffled by the intricacy of its ways and without a comprehension of what it contains or leads to. Mr. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... drink a mug of ale beneath the shade of the doors was not happy in his choice of subjects. He would only talk of the pernicious effects of beer on the constitutions of the aged, and he listened with ill-concealed impatience to various points which the baffled ancient ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... Dan, baffled, turned and began to walk up and down the room. "No, there never is any news in this confounded hole," he answered, venting his irritation on the place. "Oh, by the way, though, I am forgetting. I was at the Pettericks' to-day. That girl Bertha ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... that fair chiselled face, and wondered whether she could be truly "content"; and the purity and peace in her deep, calm eyes baffled him sorely. She rose, and laid her hand ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... his side. The two men's glances countered, held each other, one calm, dignified, unafraid; the other, murderous, searching, baffled. Presently, McTurpin turned and strode away. Windham looked after the departing gambler. "'Fraid I've spoiled his morning," ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... was no doubt that his handsome roguery had caught the woman's fancy. She was at the dangerous age, when even the most ferro-concrete-natured of women are apt to run riot. She was comprehensible, and pardonable. But the man baffled me. He was obviously marrying her for her money; but how in the name of Diogenes and all the cynics could he manage to look ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... see tyranny baffled and foolishness put to shame; but the French King and his ministers will be unfairly judged by all those who take not into consideration the difficulties of their position. It is not to be doubted that there has long existed a determination, and that plans have been laid, to destroy ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Sphinx—which has baffled all inquisitive inquirers for centuries without number, stands in the sand only a. short distance from Cheops. Imagine, if you can, with what feelings one gazes upon it. It is as old as the Pyramids, perhaps older, and there ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... such as that of Betty Blackwell, have alarmed the public and baffled the police before this— disappearances that have in their suddenness, apparent lack of purpose, and inexplicability much in common with her case. Leaving out of account the class of disappearances for their own convenience—embezzlers, blackmailers, ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... burning things, avid like beasts of prey. But the restored apricot-colored pillars are not afraid of their impending fury—fury of a beast baffled by a tricky little woman, almost it seems to me; and still less afraid are the white pillars, and the brilliant paintings that decorate the ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... now followed rapidly for a half-mile when, as the pursuers had feared all along, it made a sudden bend to the river, upon the banks of which it was totally lost. Not to be baffled in this manner, a canoe was produced with which three crossed the river. The entire day was spent by these upon one bank, while the two other Indians and Teddy pursued the search for traces of ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... orders to his caretaker at "The Barracks" to investigate at that end, and returned to the State capital, distracted, baffled, not knowing what step to take next. The session had not closed for the day when he arrived at ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... active, that it never failed her; it served always in the place of knowledge. She spoke so agreeably of the things she did not know that no one wished her to understand them better; and when her ignorance was too visible, she got out of it by pleasantries which baffled the pedants who tried to humiliate her. She was so contented with her lot that she looked upon knowledge as a very useless thing for a woman. She said: 'I have done without it so well that I have never felt the need of it. If my granddaughter is stupid, learning will make her conceited and insupportable; ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... happy and satisfied. Yes, even Margaret. This infant opened up a spring of consolation in her heart, which she could not have believed existed there. On this child she could pour out some of her repressed affections, and on him did she rest her baffled hopes. He beguiled her into the future, from which she had hitherto recoiled. That helpless, unconscious little creature, cradled on her arm, and knowing nothing of its resting-place, was more powerful ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... with bright silver fourchettes from plates of Sevres porcelain, and each guest touched his lips afterward with a glass of refined vermeuth. Three descriptions of soup came successively, an amber Julien, in which the microscope would have been baffled to detect one vegetable fibre, yet it bore all the flavors of the garden; a tureen of potage a la Bisque, in which the rarest and tiniest shell-fish had dissolved themselves; and at the last a tortue, small ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... I was by the mystery of the case, I began to see that he was gradually arriving at an explanation which had baffled everyone else. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... with him, and find a home for them. Bill did not belong to the extended fraternity of scapegraces. He was neither wild nor worthless, in the ordinary sense of those terms, but there was a faith in him, the origin of which baffled his most penetrating friends, that he was to get money somehow without working for it by any of the common methods. Unlike many a professor of better principles, Bill had carried that faith into practice. Under its influence, he had engaged in every scheme for making fortunes ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... which he had attained, and for the power of his supporters, that he was permitted to depart from Oxf. and retire to Lutterworth, where, worn out by his labours and anxieties, he d. of a paralytic seizure on the last day of 1384. His enemies, baffled in their designs against him while living, consoled themselves by disinterring his bones in 1428 and throwing them into the river Swift, of which Thomas Fuller (q.v.) has said, "Thus this brook has conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... playing just such tricks as these—he raised the one cry which he knew would startle Mr. Grey more than any other in the world, and when the diamond fell from his hand, as he knew it would, he rushed forward and, in the act of picking it up, made that exchange which not only baffled the suspicions of the statesman, but restored to him the diamond, for whose possession he was now ready to barter half ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... his beloved son would be the coming Buddha. Though all suggestions of death were banished from the royal palace, though the city was bedecked with flowers and gay flags, and every painful object removed from sight when the young Prince Siddartha visited it, yet the decrees of destiny were not to be baffled, the "voices of the spirits," the "wandering winds" and the devas, whispered the truth of human sorrows into his listening ear, and when the appointed hour arrived, the Suddha Devas threw the spell of slumber over the household, steeped in profound lethargy the sentinels (as ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... next morning with the hope of reaching Missolonghi before sunset, they were still baffled by adverse winds, and, arriving late at night in the port, did not land till the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... for any kind of unusual lighting, and we must have that diffusion for the dinner scene so as to make the candle effect seem real," Mr. Vandeford was saying with great animation to Miss Adair and with a total lack of sentiment under the same young moon that had baffled him Friday night ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... crushed. That was the end. The trucks disappeared. Even Tammany has not ventured to put them back, so great was the relief of their going. They were not only a hindrance to the sweeper and the skulking-places of all manner of mischief at night, but I have repeatedly seen the firemen baffled in their efforts to reach a burning house, where they stood four and six deep in the wide "slips" ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... made far more noise. The entire world hung for months over this obscure problem—the most obscure, it seems to me, that has ever challenged the perspicacity of our police or taxed the conscience of our judges. The solution of the problem baffled everybody who tried to find it. It was like a dramatic rebus with which old Europe and new America alike became fascinated. That is, in truth—I am permitted to say, because there cannot be any author's vanity ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... which has hitherto baffled all conjectures, because it seems by its traits, its carriage, its odd splendour, and its inappropriateness, to personify the magic, the romantic feeling, or, if you prefer, the misrepresentation of the picture; I mean that little witch-like personage, child-like and crone-like at the same time, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... citadel to the plain, and forum stretch'd below; And now the twain had reach'd the gate where Juno's partial ward The only bolts that closed their way propitiously unbarr'd, When I, too wise with Saturn's seed in open fight to join, Contrived a scheme that baffled hers, a plan entirely mine; I oped (in opening lies my strength) a gate where waters slept, And from the solid rock straightway a stream impetuous leapt; To the hot spring such sulphurous steams my timely aid supplied That eager Tatius quail'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... passed by a natural transition to the curious story that her father had told me. It was a queer affair, that ill-drawn will, with the baffled lawyer protesting in the background. It almost seemed as if there must be something behind it all, especially when I remembered Mr. Hurst's very singular proposal. But it was out of my depth; it was a case for a lawyer, and ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... manner remained absent, but I who knew his moods so well recognized that this abstraction was no longer real. It was a pose which he often adopted when in reality he was keenly interested in his surroundings. It baffled me, however, as effectively as it baffled others, and whilst at one moment I decided that he was studying Colonel Menendez, in the next I became convinced that Madame de Staemer was the subject upon his mental ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... movements still. He stood for some moments in quiet, then walked about the tree; she could feel the baffled rage that shook him. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... and vain regrets be stilled; Now rest in Him who is the complement Of whatsoe'er transcends our mortal doom, Of baffled hope and unfulfilled intent; In the clear vision and aspect of whom All longings and all hopes ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... be seen in the path that led down the hill; but here, at the spring, without any sign of their having retraced themselves, they suddenly vanished. For once the hunter's clear-seeing eye and his dog's keen-scenting nose were utterly baffled. Those Manitou moccasins being, as you must remember, charmed, could be worn and leave no trace of their wearer behind them that sight of man or scent of dog could discern, be it footprint on the ground ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... pain at the back of her neck and a deep wrinkle from it between her eyebrows. They had been harder of late, these headaches, and lasted longer, and this one not only failed to yield to the practised massage of her kindly housemaid, but baffled the nearest doctor and left her, finally, a pallid, shaken creature, who saw written on every wall in the little apartment, as she dragged herself ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... though he limped rather painfully, showed nothing of the baffled fury which was reducing his weight at the rate of ounces a day. His uncle Francis, the Bishop, when he tackled him in the garden on the subject of Intemperance—for Uncle Francis, like thousands of others, had taken it for granted, on reading the report of the encounter ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... State—but could not at first see their way clear. They sent for Trudaine, Prevot des Marchand, Councillor of State, to give an account to them of the state of the Hotel de Ville funds. He declared that they had never been so well paid, and that there was no cause of complaint against the government. Baffled upon this point, they fastened upon a edict, recently rendered, respecting the money of the realm. They deliberated thereon, deputed a commission to examine the matter, made a great fuss, and came to the conclusion that the edict would, if acted ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... removed her veil, and there was Miss Darcy, in a truly pitiable condition. The baffled villain, little thinking how he had run into a trap of his own making, stood one second a mask of terror. I made for him instantly, sword in hand, but he ran with the speed of lightning through the ostler's yard and was lost in the beech woods behind. I gave directions for search ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... but just boxed him right and left, the boys fairly screaming with joy, until I finally gathered all my strength and gave him one resounding cuff that sent him full length to grass, the most abject-looking, baffled ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... of my very hand," reiterated Jan, springing up; and fetching his whip, he gave three tremendous clacks with it, the signal to April, that could be heard a mile away in the still air, to bring back the oxen; and the baffled enemy picked up his lamb and ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... any avail; they were baffled at every turn, and soon this search for a vanished man became, to one of the two now so strenuously engaged in it, the most sinister and disturbing of the many problems with which he had had to deal ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... to which I beg permission to refer, that I may perfect the picture. On the 3d day of July, 1863, the last assault of the Confederate troops upon the heights of Gettysburg failed, and again General Lee was among his baffled and shattered battalions as they sullenly retired from their brave attempt. The history of that battle is yet to be written, and the responsibility for the result is yet to be fixed. But there, with the painful consciousness that ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... are the facts?" it was demanding, with the causticity of baffled helplessness. "I am assured that there is no other key in existence; yet my safe has been unlocked. I am given to understand that without the password it would be impossible for an unauthorized person to tamper with my property. My password, deliberately ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... that on the table there lay a gold watch and appendages. Nobody was in the apartment: the gentleman who occupied it had only a few moments before gone to his bed-chamber for a brief space. Quick as lightning a diabolical thought flashed through the brain of the villain, who had been baffled in his original intentions. He recollected that he had seen a trunk in Harvey's room, and that the keys hung in the lock. An inconceivably short space of time served for him to seize the watch, to deposit it at the bottom of Harvey's trunk, and to quit ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... how their ingenuity baffled him once. He had slipped in quietly, as usual, at dusk one evening by our courier automobile from the Dutch border. But someone passed the word around that night. And all the next day, and for the remaining few days of his stay there went on a silent greeting and thanking ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... a soft, complacent, cooing note, as expressive of perfect content as the purring of a well-fed tabby, stretched cosily upon the earth-rug before a cheerful winter evening fire. This transfer was effected so quickly, that Johnny was baffled in an ill-bred attempt which he made to pry into the domestic concerns of the affectionate pair, and he could not get even a transient glimpse of ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... with the waves, Whole fathoms down; while, amorous of his beams, Each scaly, monstrous thing leaps from its slimy caves. And now, Phraerion, with a tender cry, Far sweeter than the land-bird's note, afar Heard through the azure arches of the sky, By the long-baffled, storm-worn mariner: "Hold, Zophiel! rest thee now—our task is done, Tahathyam's realms alone can give this light! O! though it is not the life-awakening sun, How sweet to see it break upon such ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... the quiet, patient little woman nearly every day for a week, and at the end of that time was forced to confess that she was growing steadily worse, and that there was something wrong with her that quite baffled his skill. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... Baffled in their previous search, and smarting under the sense of their intolerable wrongs, the party regarded this as a providential deliverance of their arch-enemy into their hands. Here was the chief cause of all their woes, the man who, more ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... the dull, awful sound of bodies precipitated down rocks. Then as I looked towards the sea I thought I saw the fleet of Gryffith Ab Cynan steering from Ireland to Aber Menai, Gryffith, the son of a fugitive king, born in Ireland, in the Commot of Columbcille, Gryffith the frequently baffled, the often victorious; once a manacled prisoner sweating in the sun, in the market-place of Chester, eventually king of North Wales; Gryffith, who "though he loved well the trumpet's clang loved the sound of the harp better"; who led on his ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... freedom's battle, once begun, Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son, Though baffled ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... man did not rouse from his reverie. He continued to gaze with a baffled expression at the tiny form, so like a whimsical caricature of humanity. He showed that he had heard the woman's remark by saying, to himself rather than to her, "Dead? What's that? Merely another name for ignorance." ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... been utter and complete. But a few weeks before it had seemed that Spain was his, and that the forces at his disposal were ample to crush out the insurrection in Barcelona, and to sweep into the sea the handful of the invaders. But all his plans had been baffled, all his hopes brought to naught by the genius and energy of one man, in spite of that man being thwarted at every turn by the imbecile German coterie who surrounded the king, and by the jealousy and ill will of ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... so poor, so low, The hearts which are so cramped and dull, The baffled hopes, the impulse slow, Thou takest, touchest all, and lo! They blossom ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... by turns divide, Now to the teeth, now breast, the enchanted wight. The fruitless blow Orrilo does deride, While the two baffled warriors rage for spite. Let him who falling silver has espied (Which mercury by alchymists is hight) Scatter, and reunite each broken member, Hearing my tale, what he has ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... He was utterly unmanned, or it might have gone hard with me yet; and I considered him hesitating, as, indeed, there was cause. The man was a double-dyed traitor: he had tried to murder me, and I had first baffled his endeavours and then exposed and insulted him. Was it wise to place myself any longer at his mercy? With his help I should doubtless travel more quickly; doubtless also far less agreeably; and there was everything ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have seen Unholy shapes lop off my shining thoughts, Which I had thought nursed in thine emerald light; And they have lent me leathern wings of fear, Of baffled pride and harrowing distrust; And Godhead with its crown of many stars, Its pinnacles of flaming holiness, And voice of leaves in the green summer-time, Has seemed the shadowed image of a self. Then my soul blackened; and I rose to find And grasp my doom, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... adverted to the value of the discoveries in themselves, and in the influence they would have on the regions beyond. He spoke also of the help which Livingstone had derived as an explorer from his influence as a missionary. The journey he had performed successfully had hitherto baffled the best-furnished travelers. In 1834, an expedition under Dr. Andrew Smith, the largest and best-appointed that ever left Cape Town, had gone as far as 23 deg. south latitude; but that proved to be the utmost distance they could reach, and they were compelled to return. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... home, every pulse beating to madness. Again I addressed her, imploring another meeting; but received a firm denial. So far from being baffled at this addition to the obstacles which presented themselves, it but increased my determination to surmount them. To overcome her duty to her parents, to induce her to trample on her vows to God, to defy ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Heartsick and baffled at last he took his way slowly, looking back many times, and leaving many messages for Sam. He felt as if he simply could not go hack to even so uncomfortable a bed an he called his own in his new lodgings without having found some ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... battle began the British infantry-squares unflinchingly bore the attack of Ney's cavalry, and drove them back again and again with their volleys, until successive reinforcements had made the numbers on both sides even. At the close of the day the French marshal, baffled and disheartened, drew back his troops to their original position. The army-corps of General d'Erlon, which Napoleon had placed between himself and Ney in order that it might act wherever there was the greatest need, was first withdrawn ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... drove him from his anchorage at Basseterre, and then repulsed his repeated attacks. The next purpose of the French was to combine with the Spaniards for an attack on Jamaica. Sir George Rodney, having returned to his command with reinforcements, baffled this plan by the series of operations which culminated in the battle of the 12th of April 1782. (See SAINTS, BATTLE OF.) No further operations of note occurred in the West Indies. At home Howe relieved Gibraltar for the last time in September and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a blue sweater. He was neither a Raffles nor one of the chefs from Hell's Kitchen. The police would have been baffled had they attempted to classify him. They have not yet heard of the respectable, unassuming burglar who is neither above ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... undertaking merely by the interpretation of a name. He had besieged the strong city of Tyre, and for several weeks battered it with all his power; but all in vain. His engines and attempts were still baffled by the Tyrians, which made him finally resolve to raise the siege, to his great grief; foreseeing the great stain which such a shameful retreat would be to his reputation. In this anxiety and agitation of mind he fell asleep and dreamed ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... a struggle with the world as few men would have gone through with. Cut off from all friends and relations by his avowal of atheism, and baffled again and again in seeking to earn his living, he had more than once been on the very brink of starvation. By sheer force of will he had won his way, had risen above adverse circumstances, had fought down obstacles, and conquered opposing ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... harmonica with a clock-spring reed, a magnet, and a wire. It was a most absurd toy in appearance. It was unlike any other thing that had ever been made in any country. The young professor had been toiling over it for three years and it had constantly baffled him, until, on this hot afternoon in June, 1875, he heard an almost inaudible sound—a faint TWANG—come from the ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... him, Cassius addresses himself skilfully to this weakness;—he poises the name of Caesar with that of Brutus, and, at the last, he clinches his patriotic appeal, with an appeal to his personal sentiment, of baffled, mortified emulation; for those writings, thrown in at his window, purporting to come from several citizens, 'all tended to the great opinion that Rome held of his name;' and, alas! the Poet will not tell us that this did not unconsciously wake, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... disappeared, retired for the night. Early the next morning the Guebres repaired thither with the intention of digging out the prophets; but, to their confusion, they found the whole plain covered with similar heaps of stones, so that all their endeavors to find the original pile were completely baffled, and they returned to Dzedjin disappointed. There is now a small mosque, said to cover the exact spot where Sin and Lam sank into the ground, which is called Seracheh, to which people resort to ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... even the painter laughed outright, and yet he was a little sorrowful, too, because he could not be even as these youths. But Cynthia sat serene, the eternal feminine of all the ages, and it is no wonder that Bob Worthington was baffled as he looked at her. He lapsed into an awkwardness quite as bad as that of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... keep off the invader by land. How impotent and powerless man would be to scale these jagged walls or climb these towering mountains! How absolutely impossible to reach by land, how simple and easy to reach through the air! The North Pole and Aerial Navigation had been cousin problems that baffled man for so long, and their solution had ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... discovered the great Principle of Animal Life, which had hitherto baffled the subtlest anatomist. Provided only that the great organs were not irreparably destroyed, there was no disease that he could not cure; no decrepitude to which he could not restore vigour: yet his science was based on the same theory as that ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
