The palpable obscure. [ Milton ]

Aiming at brevity, I became obscure. [ Horace ]

I give the fight up; let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me,
I want to be forgotten even by God. [ Robert Browning ]

In avoiding to be diffuse, I become obscure. [ Boileau, after Horace ]

He, who would free from malice pass his days,
Must live obscure, and never merit praise. [ Gay ]

A wise God shrouds the future in obscure darkness. [ Horace ]

A son of the earth; a man of obscure or low origin. [ Pers ]

Can we not seek the author of life but in the obscure labyrinth of theology? [ Voltaire ]

No man at bottom means injustice; it is always for some obscure distorted image of a right that he contends. [ Carlyle ]

The most brilliant flashes of wit come from a clouded mind, as lightning leaps only from an obscure firmament. [ Bovee ]

Style is only the frame to hold your thoughts. It is like the sash of a window; if heavy, it will obscure the light. [ Emerson ]

In the career of female fame, there are few prizes to be obtained which can vie with the obscure state of a beloved wife or a happy mother. [ Jane Porter ]

Merit is never so conspicuous as when coupled with an obscure origin, just as the moon never appears so lustrous as when it emerges from a cloud. [ Bovee ]

What is grief? It is an obscure labyrinth into which God leads man, that he may be experienced in life, that he may remember his faults and abjure them, that he may appreciate the calm which virtue gives. [ Leopold Scheffer ]

Observation made in the cloister or in the desert will generally be as obscure as the one and as barren as the other; but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over-fearful of a little dust. [ Colton ]

We know much of a writer by his style. An open and imperious disposition is shown in short sentences, direct and energetic. A secretive and proud mind is cold and obscure in style. An affectionate and imaginative nature pours out luxuriantly, and blossoms all over with ornament. [ Beecher ]

If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together - a main plot and an underplot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress. [ Colton ]

Few have borrowed more freely than Gray and Milton; but with a princely prodigality, they have repaid the obscure thoughts of others, with far brighter of their own - like the ocean, which drinks up the muddy water of the rivers from the flood, but replenishes them with the clearest from the shower. [ Colton ]

The shortest way to arrive at glory should be to do that for conscience which we do for glory. And the virtue of Alexander appears to me with much less vigor in his theater than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure employment. I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates I cannot. [ Montaigne ]

Some authors write nonsense in a clear style, and others sense in an obscure one; some can reason without being able to persuade, others can persuade without being able to reason; some dive so deep that they descend into darkness, and others soar so high that they give us no light; and some, in a vain attempt to be cutting and dry, give us only that which is cut and dried. We should labor, therefore, to treat with ease of things that are difficult; with familiarity, of things that are novel; and with perspicuity, of things that are profound. [ Colton ]