1 It was of white marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to hover.
2 For the white leprous face of the sphinx was towards it.
3 Above me towered the sphinx, upon the bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous, in the light of the rising moon.
4 I remember running violently in and out among the moonlit bushes all round the sphinx, and startling some white animal that, in the dim light, I took for a small deer.
5 I found a groove ripped in it, about midway between the pedestal of the sphinx and the marks of my feet where, on arrival, I had struggled with the overturned machine.
6 In three strides I was after him, had him by the loose part of his robe round the neck, and began dragging him towards the sphinx.
7 If you want your machine again you must leave that sphinx alone.
8 As I approached the pedestal of the sphinx I found the bronze valves were open.
9 Yes, the enigma will utter its word, the sphinx will speak, the problem will be solved.
Les Misérables 4 By Victor HugoContext Highlight In BOOK 7: CHAPTER IV—THE TWO DUTIES: TO WATCH AND TO HOPE 10 Admitting that the gigantic and gloomy insurrection of June was composed of a wrath and of an enigma, one divined in the first barricade the dragon, and behind the second the sphinx.
Les Misérables 5 By Victor HugoContext Highlight In BOOK 1: CHAPTER I—THE CHARYBDIS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT ANTOINE AND... 11 He gazed intently at the sphinx.
Les Misérables 5 By Victor HugoContext Highlight In BOOK 6: CHAPTER IV—THE IMMORTAL LIVER 68 12 He once gave her a ring with a sphinx engraved on the stone.
13 And that sphinx had the pale face and shining eyes of the very Natasha of whom he had just been thinking.
14 Natasha was lying looking steadily straight before her at one of the mahogany sphinxes carved on the corners of the bedstead, so that the countess only saw her daughter's face in profile.
15 So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of "swift" and "slow" in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.