"Abyss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... niggardly and inadequate expression of contrition—was it not?—conceded to a life whose sins outnumbered its years. Yet the slight thread of hope drawn therefrom has been able since to hold back Cecil Tresilyan from the abyss of utter desperation. She forbore to press him farther then, seeing his increasing weakness, and trusting, perhaps, that a more favorable opportunity ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... cloister which a monkish chronicler defined as 'a sadness or loathing and an immoderate distress of mind, caused by mental confusion, through which happiness of mind was destroyed, and the mind thrown back upon itself as from an abyss of despair.' ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... appeals to the one faculty of memory, and to that mainly by means of birch-rods, increase the rebellion, and the sense of restraint is brought to a climax when at last old Andreas dies. Then "the dark bottomless Abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned open; the pale kingdoms of Death, with all their innumerable silent nations and generations, stood before him; the inexorable word NEVER! now ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... danger of the stormy seas. Those isles are compass'd by th' Ionian main, The dire abode where the foul Harpies reign, Forc'd by the winged warriors to repair To their old homes, and leave their costly fare. Monsters more fierce offended Heav'n ne'er sent From hell's abyss, for human punishment: With virgin faces, but with wombs obscene, Foul paunches, and with ordure still unclean; With claws for hands, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... wagging his head, "you are a man of quick intelligence. We were made to understand each other." He turned away. He could bear no longer that expressionless and motionless stare, which seemed to have a sort of impenetrable emptiness like the black depth of an abyss. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... like a man who has looked into an abyss and stepped back from the edge, outwardly calm but mentally shaken. The commonplaces of life seemed for the moment to hold deeper meanings. He did not hear Eve's answer, he paid no heed to Lillian's next remark. He saw her smile and turn to the red-haired man; finally ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... soul. So must the gods feel as they look down upon the affairs of mortals, seeing how they destroy themselves by ignorance and folly, seeing how they walk into the future as a blind man into a yawning abyss. ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... points one could look down from fifty to one hundred feet to the water, foaming and lashing and rushing upon its way. For a part of the distance the bank was almost perpendicular, and here the passer-by was protected from falling into the abyss by a railing that was spiked ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... a brief retrospective glance at the FACTS mentioned in the foregoing pages. They seem to teach us that, in ages so remote as to be well nigh lost in the abyss of the past, the Mayas were a great and powerful nation, whose people had reached a high degree of civilization. That it is impossible for us to form a correct idea of their attainments, since only the ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... his future? It seemed dark and distressing. Her constant presence his only happiness; her constant presence impossible. He seemed on an abyss. ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the Turks since the appearance of the Goeben in the Dardanelles had been committed under the pressure of Germany, but the efforts of the Turks to evade responsibility for these acts could not prevent them from falling into the abyss into which they were rolling. The events on the Russo-Turkish frontier, while covering Russian arms with fresh glory, will bring Russia nearer to the realization of the political and economic problems bound up with the question of Russia's ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... fortunate; we had observed the scouts with a white hood over their boat, looking keenly down (vide our quotation from Theocritus) into the deep blue sea, and watching with all-eyed attention for the apparition of some giant shadow which should pass athwart the abyss, and give the signal for a new chase, while their comrades were hauling in an immense miscellaneous take of fish, the acquisition of the morning. We shot the outpost, (placed to prevent larger vessels from entering the fishing preserves and injuring the nets,) and remarked our boatmen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... were sliding back to the roof. Others leaped from the colossal torch. In an instant, it seemed, the whole pyre was swathed in flames. As it toppled, the last wretched form was seen to poise and plunge with it into the glowing abyss. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... timidity, his lack of resourcefulness, his conscience. As I have said, they are not. The vast majority of those who appear in the public haunts of sin are there, not to engage in overt acts of ribaldry, but merely to tremble agreeably upon the edge of the abyss. They are the same skittish experimentalists, precisely, who throng the midway at a world's fair, and go to smutty shows, and take in sex magazines, and read the sort of books that our vice crusading ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... well); we have walked with him the lanes of "Mellow England"; journeyed "In the Carlyle Country"; marveled at the azure glaciers of Alaska; wandered in the perpetual summerland of Jamaica; camped with him and the Strenuous One in the Yellowstone; looked in awe and wonder at that "Divine Abyss," the Grand Canon of the Colorado; felt the "Spell of Yosemite," and idled with him under the sun-steeped skies of Hawaii ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... marble, white, motionless, and now as a fall of lightest snow, with movement in all its atoms, and scarce so much cohesion as would hold them together; and again they could not discern if this course were from above or from beneath, whether the water rose from the abyss or dropped from the height. The ear could give the brain no assurance of the sound that felled it, and whether it were great or little; the prevailing softness of the cataract's tone seemed so much opposed to ideas of prodigious force or of prodigious volume. It was only when the sight, so idle ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... they had tossed into the abyss of Time the cup of trembling, and had drunk of the chalice of peace. Over the grave into which, this day, they had thrown the rock-roses and sprigs of the karoo bush, they had, in silence, made pledges to each other, that life's disguises ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in constitutional right, and yet denied the power of the Government to prevent its own destruction. The threats of an imperious band of traitors, operating upon the fears of a weak old man, who was already implicated in the treason, drove him to the verge of the abyss into which he was willing to plunge his country, but from which, at the last moment, he drew back, dismayed at the ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... edge of dawn I woke from a dream with a jerk as I slid down an endless black abyss. The abyss was my bed's edge and I found myself on the floor. When I went to rise again, I had to clutch things to stand up. I was so weak I sat on the bed breathing heavily. I tumbled backward into bed again and lay in a daze during which dream-objects ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... in the sun's bright rays, I wondered how many centuries it took to chisel that mighty water way fifty-two miles through this tortuous mountain. Perpendicular walls of fully 2000 feet are standing sentinels above this silvery water which goes roaring and foaming through the narrow abyss. ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... "Let the abyss groan. Why should we trouble ourselves. Let us close our ears to the cries of distress we are not able to relieve. It was said of old time, 'Many are called, but few chosen.' Our ancestors placed a mythical interpretation ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... during these forty-nine days was to invite one hundred and eight Buddhist bonzes to perform, in the main Hall, the High Confession Mass, in order to ford the souls of departed relatives across the abyss of suffering, and afterwards to transmute the spirit (of Mrs. Ch'in); that, in addition, an altar should be erected in the Tower of Heavenly Fragrance, where nine times nine virtuous Taoist priests should, for nineteen days, offer up prayers for absolution from ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... seat of a horse 'bus elbow to elbow with the driver, staring down over the brink of the abyss upon ears and necks—that low, distant space where the horses look so tiny and so ineffectual and ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime. And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread 20 Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the highth of this great Argument I may assert th' Eternal Providence, And justifie the wayes of God to men. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Sophia, in the distant hope of discovery and revenge. At the end of four years, some youths, climbing by a ladder in search of pigeons' nests, detected the fatal secret; and, as Andronicus felt himself touched and bound by the excommunication, he trembled on the brink of the abyss which had been so treacherously dug under his feet. A synod of bishops was instantly convened to debate this important question: the rashness of these clandestine anathemas was generally condemned; but as the knot could be untied ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the unspoken. The little town with the pink and white houses Looses its hold on the ridge of hills And floats among cloud tops. A shaggy donkey, cropping grass in the sequestered church yard, Walks, with a leisurely air, Into a wind driven abyss. ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... love. The soul's abyss, Christ saw, the heart of night, the purse, the end; Knew all, a Man, and knowing stui could bend With soul unpoisoned ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... we are to meet again?" said Stanton, shrinking under the full-lighted blaze of those demon eyes. "I never," said the stranger, in an emphatic tone,—"I never desert my friends in misfortune. When they are plunged in the lowest abyss of human calamity, they are sure to ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... rock along the face of the cliff. The vast black wall above us rose sheer up, and I could feel rather than see that it went as sheer down, though my sight could not penetrate the darkness which filled the deep abyss below. We had been climbing about three hours when suddenly the ledge seemed to die out. My guide stopped, and unwinding his rope from his waist, held it out to me. I obeyed his silent gesture, and binding it around my body gave him the end. He wrapped ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... a small fort built at Fantaua, and on one of its highest points stands a guard-house. The path leading to it is over a small ledge of rock, skirted on each side by a yawning abyss. Persons affected with giddiness can only reach it with great difficulty, if indeed they can do so at all. In this last case, they are great losers, for the prospect is magnificent in the extreme, extending over valleys, ravines, and mountains without number (among ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... he and Nell had fallen into an abyss from which there was no escape, and these thoughts, linked with the horrors which he witnessed on the streets of Omdurman, disheartened him completely. His customary energy gave way to total passive submission to fate and a dread of the ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... hurriedly, the same way she had taken, back to the house; then into the dell crept the boy. Guy's Oak, vast and venerable, with gnarled green boughs below, and sere branches above, that told that its day of fall was decreed at last, rose high from the abyss of the hollow, high and far-seen amidst the trees that stood on the vantage-ground above,—even as a great name soars the loftier when it springs from the grave. A dark and irregular fissure gave entrance to the heart of the oak. The boy glided in and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exudation that broke out all over his body very much as if he had just become aware of escaping by a hair's breadth some imminent and terrible disaster. In truth that was precisely his feeling,—as if he had been capering madly on the brink of some fearful abyss which he could not see until it was revealed to ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... either in common to all men or privately to Christians. There were, furthermore, many and frequent earthquakes, so that many cities throughout Cappadocia and Pontus were thrown down; and some even were dragged down into the abyss and swallowed by the gaping earth. From this, also, there arose a severe persecution against the Christian name. This arose suddenly after the long peace of the previous age. Because of the unexpected and unaccustomed evil, it ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... there is a fall, or abyss (gouffre), which extends seven or eight hundred paces to the foot of two rocks. There is a depth of eighteen fathoms of water here. I think that I am the only one who has ever sounded at this place. The falls are no sooner passed than the river suddenly ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... standing upon the dizzy abyss that leads to loss of caste. There was no doubt of Amiria's beauty, there was no doubt of her passionate affection, but there was a feeling at the back of his mind that his regard for her was merely a physical attraction. He admired every ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... apart. They looked. The old school time was in each mind. They saw it as a shore-bank in grey outline across morning mist. Years were between; and there was a division of circumstance, more repelling than an abyss or the rush of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... will come in the long torment of the reign of Tiberius; in the infamy that will pursue him to posterity. After having been pitilessly hated and persecuted in life, this man and this woman, who had personified two social forces eternally at war with each other, will both fall in death into the same abyss of unmerited infamy: tragic spectacle and warning lesson on the ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... arms, I descended below their junction, to contemplate the cascade they formed when united, down the precipice of 120 feet; the noise of the fall was such that my own voice was scarcely audible, but a thick mist which rose up to the clouds from the abyss, admitted of a ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... knew that the air shuddered, and as they skirted the grounds along the way to the foot-bridge the roar grew in their stunned ears. There, projected out into the night, were the cables of steel holding the frail platform over the abyss of night and terror. Beyond was Canada. There was light enough in the sky to reveal, but not to dissipate, the appalling insecurity. What an impious thing it seemed to them, this trembling structure across the chasm! They advanced upon it. There were gleams on the mill ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... moment her arms were about his neck, and she whispered encouragingly, whilst caressing him, "Papa, now that I have not been thrust down that fearful abyss, believe me, we shall be very ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... besiegers, like incarnate fiends, plied their works. The Tartars, as ever, were victorious, and Kief, with all its thronging population and all its treasures of wealth, architecture and art, sank in an abyss of flame and blood. It sank to rise no more. Though it has since been partially rebuilt, this ancient capital of the grand princes of Russia, even now presents but the shadow ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... and threatened a twelve-hour close confinement to the perpetrators—one was amazed to identify with the latter persons outwardly in human shape, instead of malformed and sooty fiends from the bottomless abyss. I doubt whether anything to range with this occurs in any other criminal cauldron in the world; and therefore, with stopped nostrils, have I tried to give some faint ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... hold by, no truth, no divine help; her marvellous powers and passions in full strength,—all trained to drag her down,—not one aspiring, maddened by new thoughts, limitless opportunities opening before her,—she will plunge into such an abyss of sin as has been undreamt ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... delightful. His Satan, as he calls the most active of the enemies who had thus ruined his paradise, planned new operations against him, by trying, on the grounds of some neglected formality, to oust him from his fellowship. 'Here,' cries Pattison, 'was a new abyss opened beneath my feet! My bare livelihood, for I had nothing except my fellowship to live upon, was threatened; it seemed not unlikely that I should be turned into the streets to starve. Visitatorial law, what it might contain! It loomed before me like an Indian jungle, out of which ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... marching orbs It makes in viewless canopy of sky; In deep abyss of earth it hides ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... Cecil's ardent enthusiasm went far beyond all that the speaker urged upon him. As he listened, pausing as it were on the threshold of an unknown future, he wondered if he should ever hear a sermon again,—he, so soon to be swallowed by darkness, swept, self-yielded, into the abyss of savagery. ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... prick up their ears at these speeches, and looked shrewdly at their boy more than once. As for Isoult, she knew not where to turn. She seemed to be quavering over an abyss. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... Calander esquiring a Princess dedicated to Fatal Enchantment—that Kismet was a quaint fallacy, one with that whimsical conceit of Orient fatalism which assigns to each and every man his Day of Days, wherein he shall range the skies and plumb the abyss of his Destiny, alternately its lord and ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... it's the same for every one—for me, too—for your father," she said earnestly, and sighed. They looked together into the abyss and, as the elder of the two, she recovered ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... seaward cliff of the crag where they would be safe from shrapnel which was now bursting occasionally in the vicinity. Mac endeavoured to do so, but so steep was the cliff that he only managed to make a ledge sufficiently wide to sit on, while his legs dangled over the abyss below, and the sun blazed on him in undiluted fury. But the greatest discomfort was the steady fall of a stream of powdered clay from the constructors of perches and paths higher up. A veranda of Turkish bayonets with Turkish rifles roofed crossways on them, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... room for maneuver. spare room, elbow room, house room; stowage, roomage[obs3], margin; opening, sphere, arena. open space, free space; void &c. (absence) 187; waste; wildness, wilderness; moor, moorland; campagna[obs3]. abyss &c. (interval) 198; unlimited space; infinity &c. 105; world; ubiquity &c. (presence) 186; length and breadth of the land. proportions, acreage; acres, acres and perches, roods and perches, hectares, square miles; square inches, square yards, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... design; Dig the gulf and draw the line; Fire beneath your feet the mine: Deeply, when the wide abyss Yawns between your land and this, ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... an ordinary ship's boat could take at a single trip, even in the calmest of weather; and Lance was in the act of remarking to Captain Staunton that he thought enough had now been collected to satisfy their every want, when a weird, unearthly moan smote upon their ears from the depths of the abyss. The sound, though not particularly loud, was so startling, echoing and reverberating, as it did, among the cavernous recesses far below, that the work was brought to a sudden standstill, and the three bewildered men felt their hair bristling ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... insensibly to decline, by reason of the immeasurable avarice and extortions of the court of Rome, which disgusted the clergy as well as laity, in every kingdom of Europe. England itself, though sunk in the deepest abyss of ignorance and superstition, had seriously entertained thoughts of shaking off the papal yoke [n]; and the Roman pontiff was obliged to think of new expedients for riveting it faster upon the Christian world. For this purpose, Gregory IX. published his decretals [o], which are ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... said the King, "how widely do you err! You follow the vain precepts of a man; we believe and worship Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: you worship mortal man. After death our souls are received into Paradise, and enjoy everlasting life, but yours descend to the abyss of hell. Wherefore our faith is evidently best. Accept then baptism, or ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... deprive the poor lad of the bliss of returning into the absolute nothingness whence he had crept—to commit a horrible crime against immortal society, and creep back again, with a heart full of love and remorse and self-abhorrence, into the black abyss. Therefore, why should he not let them tell their lies and utter their silly incantations? Aloof and unharmed he stood, safe on the shore, all ready to reach the rescuing hand to Helen, the moment ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... What would Madeline have said and done had he attempted such an iniquity? And he thought of her flashing eyes and terrible scorn, of the utter indignation of all the Staveley family, and of the wretched abyss into which the offender ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... no, but these alone, Who forced you with her to contend; And still her bitter tears she blends with yours, In wretchedness that knows no end. Oh that some pity in the heart were born, For her, who hath all other glories won, Of one, who from this dark, profound abyss, Her weak and weary feet could guide! Thou glorious shade, oh! say, Does no one love thy Italy? Say, is the flame that kindled thee extinct? And will that myrtle never bloom again, That hath so long consoled us in our pain? ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... slowly and in silence. Camille was too ashamed and penitent to speak; too full of terror too at the abyss of crime from which he had been saved. The ancients feigned that a virgin could subdue a lion; perhaps they meant that a pure gentle nature can subdue a nature fierce but generous. Lion-like Camille walked by Josephine's side with his eyes bent on the ground, the picture ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... resolution spared them this infamy; they joined hands, and chanting their national songs, moved in a solemn dance round the rocky platform. As the song ended, they uttered a prolonged and piercing cry, and cast themselves and their children down into the profound abyss beneath. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... followed, and a light seemed to break forth amidst the gloom—a light that lightened the dark path of life and portended to usher in a new and happier day. The last look of Hubert Tracy received interpretation, and as Phillip Lawson thought over and over of the deep abyss into which he was so nearly to be plunged, tried hard to feel kindly towards the perpetrator of ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... them. There is only one living painter who can treat a portrait as a Venetian artist of 1550 A.D. would have done it, and how differently in the mastery of his material! If we go to the work of wider range, the Campo Santo of Pisa, the Stanze, the Sistine Chapel, the distance becomes an abyss; the simplest fragment of a Greek statue of 450 B.C. shows us that the best sculpture of this century, even the French, is only a happy child-work, not even to be put in sight of Donatello or Michael Angelo. The reason ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the old world were passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up beyond the western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the fair earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness of the universe. In the fabric of habit which they had so laboriously built for themselves, mankind were to remain no longer. And now it is all gone—like ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... below his grasp, and he realised with a spasm of the diaphragm that now there was no retreat. What—this was his thought—what if this was the mouth of a well? Or a mediaeval trap for fools? He had seen such things in French castles. In the pitch darkness he could not guess whether he hung above an abyss or had the ground within an ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... immeasurably, but the mysterious cord that linked their beating hearts was unbroken, though it sang like a bowstring in the gusty horror that swept between, and stretched to attenuation as the elder spirit sank, groaning, into the abyss of its own wickedness. Hot tears gushed from her eyes, her little throat was swollen with the choking sobs, and her narrow, rag-covered chest heaved with tumultuous agony. But after he was taken away, when the iron door which to her was, indeed, the door of the tomb, had closed between them ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... own, still stand hopelessly beyond his reach. The thing that troubled him was the knowledge of his own impetuous emotions—with the shield of Madame Alta withdrawn was it not possible that a sudden passion might plunge him headlong even into the abyss of marriage? ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... mangled carcass of the deer lay. Thick masses of snow had drifted over its edge until a solid wreath was formed, projecting several feet beyond it. On this wreath the young man stood with the points of his long snow-shoes overhanging the yawning abyss; to turn round was impossible, as the exertion requisite to wield such huge snow-shoes would, in all probability, have broken off the mass. To step gently backwards was equally impossible, in consequence of the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... God and the dread hereafter never entered, had encased his spiritual being in a sort of brazen armor, through which no ordinary blow of conscience could penetrate. Still he had fearful glimpses of recent events, and his soul, hanging as it was over the abyss of eternity, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... all the old dissensions, and introduced new elements into the strife of parties. By every opinion she held on religion, on the relations of prince and subject, on the fundamental principles of life, Mary was separated as by an abyss from the party represented by Knox. If we may judge from the language which each used of the other, Knox and she failed to find one point on which genial intercourse was possible. As the minister of St. Giles (then the only Reformed church in Edinburgh), Knox believed that Mary was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... held before him. While it flickered he saw that the entire floor of the cavern had fallen away, and knew that had he not instantly regained his footing in the passage he would have plunged into the abyss that lay beneath him. ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... condescension of His majesty seeing that in so short a time He left so great an impression and so great a blessing on my soul! O my Lord, consider who she is upon whom Thou art bestowing such unheard-of blessings! Dost Thou forget that my soul has been an abyss of sin? How is this, O Lord, how can it be that such great grace has come to the lot of one who has so ill deserved such things at Thy hands!' He who can read that, and a hundred passages as good as that, and ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... how ever and anon, startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall, like a rocket, bursting in the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how, through the curdling wreaths of the restless crushing abyss below, the blue of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through white rain-cloud; ... their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract, ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... I must give my oath to let the past go without explanation, why I am ready, my dear; nothing can undo it now, and I am grown too old to want money except for her." "I cannot," I murmured, "I cannot find courage to present the subject to him so. I do not know my husband's mind. It is a fathomless abyss to me. Let me think of some other way. Oh, madam! if you were out of the house, and could then come——" Suddenly a thought struck me. "I can do it; I see the way to do it—a way that will place you in a triumphant ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... that would be infamy—the greatest infamy of a guilty woman, the sharing of her heart—a thing that debases her. One may fall, perhaps, because there are ditches along the wayside and it is not always easy to follow the right path. But if one falls, that is no reason to throw oneself in the abyss. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... from the burden of the flesh, that they may be in joy and felicity with God. "Absent from the body," they are for ever "present with the Lord." Death is no longer a dark and dreadful phantom, rising from the abyss, to drag down his victims and gorge himself upon them. He is an angel, pure and bright, sent to summon God's beloved to their Father's house above. That which men naturally dread as the crown and climax of all evils, becomes an object of wistful longing, for God's servants have "a desire ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... with her. She realized that she was a great sinner. It seemed that she was standing on the brink of a horrible precipice, and her sins, like so many tormenting spirits, were ready to cast her headlong into the abyss of destruction. Whither could ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... unusual with the interesting. Romance is a shy bird, and not to be hunted with a brass band. Where is the heart of life, if not at one's elbow? At the farthest, one has only to turn the corner of the street. It is useless to look for prodigies in the abyss, but every stream has its straws that float; I have determined to watch ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... as the entrance, and twice I went under entirely alone. If you fancy the sea pouring down from the moon, you still have no idea of this glorious huge heap of tumbling waters. It is worth crossing the Atlantic to see it.... As I stood upon the brink of the abyss when I first saw it, the impulse to jump down seemed all but an irresistible necessity, and but for the strong arm that held mine fast I think I might very well have taken the same direction as the huge ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... suddenness upon a light, iron bridge which spans, at a giddy height, a desolate gorge. This spidery viaduct slowly and safely crossed, we skirt, for a while, the mountain side, still overhanging a perilous abyss. Every car has a platform, and at this point many passengers instinctively seek the side away from the precipice, which would in case of accident benefit them little, for there is no standing room between the train and a sheer ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... inevitably lead him. They are too startling for himself, as well as for his readers, in their naked deformity; and with a noble inconsistency he clutches at these 'dogmas' to save himself from sinking into the abyss of moral scepticism. ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... he threw off his hat and coat, and ran to another part, where the height was still more dreadful! Indeed, Louisa, it excites horror to look at the place! But he seems to be superior to fear. He plunged down what might well be called an abyss; and, after rising for a few seconds to breathe, dived again ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... not say. One salient, awful fact she began gradually to realize, that if she sank back upon the pillows she was lost. Little it would profit her to save her body. She had no choice between her present precarious foothold and the abyss, and wounded as she was she would have to fight. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... it appeared to Ransom, while at the same time he wished immensely the crisis were over. Everything that surrounded him referred itself to the idea with which his mind was palpitating, the question whether he might not still intervene as against the girl's jump into the abyss. He believed that all Boston was going to hear her, or that at least every one was whom he saw in the streets; and there was a kind of incentive and inspiration in this thought. The vision of wresting ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... King and offered his services. The court sneered at him as a dupe. The Queen wrote, "We make use of Mirabeau, but we do not take him seriously." When Mirabeau awoke to his predicament, he broke out in mixed wrath and scorn: "Of what are these people thinking? Do they not see the abyss yawning at their feet? Both the King and Queen will perish, and you will live to see ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... were entrenched on a height of land stretching for nearly six miles from the St. Charles River, to the southeast of the fortress, as far as Montmorency River, where its current rushes wildly forward for its tremendous leap of over two hundred and fifty feet into a deep and rocky abyss, and forms that glistening sheet of billowy foam which, seen from a distance, resembles a snowdrift suspended in air. The fortifications of Quebec had been strengthened for some years back, and its defences were entrusted to ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... words a swift change came to David's face. His cheeks paled and his eyes dilated in terror. It was as if ahead of him he saw a yawning abyss, eager ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... though thy sight be dim, Doubt for them is doubt of Him. * * * * * Still Thy love, O Christ, arisen Yearns to reach those souls in prison, Through all depths of sin and loss Sinks the plummet of Thy Cross. Never yet abyss was found Deeper ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... from the box, of which it is the guardian, the book of spells; when he reads a page of the spells he knows what the birds of the sky, the fish of the deep, and the beasts of the hill say; the book gives him power to enchant "the heaven and the earth, the abyss, ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... himself that her majesty would after all not persist in her fell resolution. To do so, he vowed, would only be boiling milk for the French papists, who would be sure to make the most of the occasion in order to precipitate the king into the, abyss, to the border of which they had already brought him. He so dreaded the ire of the queen that he protested he was trembling all over merely to see the pen of his secretary wagging as he dictated his despatches. Nevertheless it was his terrible duty to face her in her ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... candlesticks, and the abbey lands into the bargain, what will it all be but an empty pageant, like the Tournament of Eglington Castle, separated from the reality of Catholic truth and unity, by the abyss of three hundred years of schism? The question then is, have you, the Church of England, got the picture for your frame? have you got the truth, the one truth; the same truth as the men of the middle ages? The Camden Society says yes; but the whole Christian ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... the plot now woven round our feet. We could but follow the path, though we knew with what an evil purpose it was made: that it was as phantom as the rest. At one place it invited us to cross, upon two shaking pine trunks, the abyss of a cataract; in another it invited us to climb, in spite of our final weariness, a great barrier of rock that lay between an upper and a lower jasse. We continued upon it determinedly, with heads bent, barely hoping that perhaps at last we should emerge from this haunted ground, but the ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... way which could be traversed dry shod. Through their translucency, as behind thick glass, were seen marine monsters twisting and squirming, terrified at being surprised by daylight in the mysterious depths of the abyss. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... of amazement escaped me. I looked over into a fearful abyss. Below was a fertile valley, but so deep was it that the river looked only like a silver thread, and the trees but an inch in height. I was standing on the edge of a huge granite cliff that went down sheer into the valley, its face almost as flat as ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... in our own heart of a sympathy, which we could not 'deny,' with the sadly questionable hero of the German epic, 'Reynard the Fox.' With our vulpine friend, we were on the edge of the very same abyss, if, indeed, we were not rolling in the depth of it. By what sophistry could we justify ourselves, if not by the very same which we had just been so eagerly condemning? And our conscience whispered to us that we had been swift to detect a fault in another, because ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... rivalling the very hues of heaven, flourish in perpetual bloom. There is nothing austere or sombre, as in northern climates, even in this scene of elemental strife; tranquillity and repose seem to sleep on the very edge of the abyss of waters. Neither time, nor the sight of the Cordilleras, nor a long abode in the charming valleys of Mexico, have been able to efface from my recollection the impression made by these cataracts. When I read the description of similar scenes in the East, my mind sees again in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... star over there! Was it not the one she and her sister used to choose when wishing from their bedroom window at Millville! How long ago that seemed; how wide and dreadful life's abyss between! ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... they whispered seemed but the logical conclusion of his entire career. He put his foot upon the edge of the wharf and looked down into the dark abyss. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... She bent over him, and looked down upon him. She laid the shears upon the floor, clasped her withered hands together, and gazed upon the boy. He lay still. His eyes were closed; but the delay of his fate and the snip of the shears in his hair bad roused him somewhat from his abyss of terror. He opened his eyes wide enough to see what was going on. He could not see the old woman's face, but he saw her kneeling, and he saw her thin hands clasped before her, like one in ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... serve, to the natural rock. Planks are laid transversely across these cables, and a passage is thus secured, which, notwithstanding the light and fragile appearance of the bridge, as it swings at an elevation sometimes of several hundred feet above the abyss, affords a tolerably safe means of conveyance for men, and even for such heavy burdens as ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... unblushingly subscribed to proclamations placing them on an equality with the men of the Revolution of 1793." The Moniteur, Napoleon's Parisian organ, said in August, 1809, after the conclusion of the war, "The mighty hand of Napoleon has snatched Germany from the revolutionary abyss about to engulf her."] ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... shown when he one day so far forgot himself as to complain loudly and bitterly that she would not even love a child of his if she had one, and that he therefore thought it fortunate that she was not a mother. Astonished and saddened, I suddenly gazed into an abyss which was hidden here, as is often the case, under the appearance of a tolerably happy married life. About this time, and just as my visit, which had already lasted three weeks, was drawing to a close, I received a letter from my wife that could not have had a more unfortunate effect ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... a story; a word acts as a flash of lightning, which displays some gloomy neighbourhood, where a tower is standing, with dreadful faces at the window; or where, at your feet, full of eternal voices, one abyss is beheld dropping out of another in the lurid light of torment. In the present volume a story will be found which tells a long tragedy in half-a-dozen lines. Dante has the minute probabilities of a Defoe in the midst of the loftiest and most generalising poetry; and this feeling ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... overthrow: here still, as in the morning of time, meet together at Midsummer, upon the snowy foreheads of the ancient mountains, the rose-tint of morning and the rose-tint of evening for a brotherly kiss; still roar as then the mountain torrents which hurl themselves into the abyss; still reflect the ice-mirrors of the glaciers the same objects—now delighting, now awakening horror; and still to-day, even as then, are there Alpine tracts which the foot of man never ascended: valleys of wood, "lonesome cells of nature," upon which ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... across it to the golden belt of sand dunes, tapering like the waist of an hour-glass where the olive plain touches the sea at Jaffa; beyond, lies the deep blue of the Mediterranean. Eastwards is a sheer abyss falling into the Jordan Valley, where that river, like a silver thread, winds its way along until it falls into the Dead Sea. Beyond, as if across a fifteen-mile moat, rise abruptly the mountains of Moab. The map of Palestine might be aptly compared ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... as he spoke, struck a heavy blow on the floor with his foot, when there came a low rumbling sound like the roar of the wind through some subterraneous abyss, or the distant moan of the sea, driven on by the rushing tempest. The whole assembly stood aghast, save the king and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... main precipice they rush down a descent of some feet, and rebound in foam from a bed of rocks on the edge of the fall. They are then precipitated down perpendicular cliffs of about forty-five feet in height, into an abyss studded with rocks, which nearly choke the passage, leaving only a small opening in the centre, through which the water, after whirling for some time in the bason, rushes with tremendous impetuosity, sweeping through a broken rocky channel and a succession of falls for more than half a ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... wild and awful in the extreme. I hardly dared to watch the great waves thundering along as if seeking to devour our tiny craft. Now the schooner hung poised for a moment on the edge of a mountainous wave; the next instant it seemed to be dashing headlong into a fathomless, black abyss. The wind tore on with a fierce shriek, and we scudded before it under bare ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... footing in the Church. It is clear, I say, that the historians are mine, and that the adversary's raids upon history are utterly without point. No impression can they make unless the assertion be first received, that all Christians of all ages had lapsed into gross infidelity and gone down to the abyss of hell, until such time as Luther entered into an unblessed ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... able to attain to [the knowledge and understanding of] any of these things. But here we have everything in richest measure; for here in all three articles He has Himself revealed and opened the deepest abyss of his paternal heart and of His pure unutterable love. For He has created us for this very object, that He might redeem and sanctify us; and in addition to giving and imparting to us everything in heaven and upon earth, He has given to us even His Son and the Holy Ghost, by whom to bring ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... to the world proclaim His omnipotence and glory, By the wondrous Purgatory Which shall bear thy sainted name. Lest thou think the promise vain Of this miracle divine, I will take this shape malign, Which came hither to profane Thy devotion, and within This dark cavern's dark abyss Fling it,— there to howl and hiss In the everlasting ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... pieces the stubbornest materials, and extort from them their most hidden and refractory truth. In his Humor he sports with the highest and lowest; he can play at bowls with the Sun and Moon. His Imagination opens for us the Land of Dreams; we sail with him through the boundless Abyss; and the secrets of Space, and Time, and Life, and Annihilation hover round us in dim, cloudy forms; and darkness, and immensity, and dread encompass and overshadow us. Nay, in handling the smallest ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... diverse sides with hues that rivaled those of the rainbow. Across the chasm they could clearly see the trees and hills; yet these were fully thirteen miles distant, for here is one of the widest portions of the great abyss. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... inly bleeds Has naught to fear from outward blow; Who falls from all he knows of bliss, Cares little into what abyss." ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... there were any gods or any world there was a great empty space where the world now is. It was called by the curious name Ginnungagap, which means a yawning abyss. ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... of years, Is bearing us, our hopes and fears, With all we are or crave, Into that fathomless abyss— A world of endless woe or bliss, Beyond the ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... his horse getting into his stride long before the sound of his hoofbeats was swallowed up in the abyss of the night. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the light. They ran a short course under the sun, then back Into a pit they plunged, once more as black As at their birth; and I stood thinking there How white, had the day shone on them, they were, Heaving and coiling. So by the roar and hiss And by the mighty motion of the abyss I was bemused, that I forgot my friend And neither saw nor sought him till the end, When I awoke from waters unto men Saying: "I shall ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... the gulches is always solemn. You canter along a bright breezy upland, and are suddenly arrested by a precipice, and from the depths of a forest abyss a low plash or murmur rises, or a deep bass sound, significant of water which must be crossed, and one reluctantly leaves the upper air to plunge into heavy shadow, and each experience increases one's apprehensions concerning the next. Though in some gulches the kukui ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... on a low stool at her mistress feet. She did not answer my lady's question immediately, but sat for some time looking vacantly into the red abyss in the hollow fire. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Ground they stood, and from the Shore They view'd the vast immeasurable Abyss, Outrageous as a Sea, dark, wasteful, wild; Up from the bottom turned by furious Winds And surging Waves, as Mountains to assault Heavens height, and with ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... difficult passes, swept by chilling winds. In this cold wilderness many of the natives found an icy grave, and during their passage a terrible earthquake shook the mountains, the earth in one place being rent asunder. Choking sulphurous vapors issued from the cavity, into whose frightful abyss a village of several hundred ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... forget that picture, the cold, bleak, snow-covered mountains towering above them, the black abyss of Sheol between them; neither would hesitate to take life, neither possessed a fear of death; but with every muscle alert and every nerve alive these two wild things stood facing each other, mutually observing a truce because of—what? Because, in spite of the fighting instinct ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... say no more. I walked by his side in silence, feeling the miserable conviction that there was an abyss in the shape of a family secret between my husband and me. In the spirit, if not in the body, we were separated, after a married life of barely ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... are curved to the left, two-thirds to the right; they run more often upward than downward. They do not commonly lie in a single plane. Sometimes a Form has twists as well as bends, sometimes it is turned upside down, sometimes it plunges into an abyss of immeasurable depth, or it rises and disappears in the sky. My correspondents are often in difficulties when trying to draw them in perspective. One sent me a stereoscopic picture photographed from a wire that had been bent into the proper shape. In one case the Form proceeds at first ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... balancing upon a precipice, saved from the hopeless downfall, only because the man put out no hand to pull her over, a woman is not likely to delay in doubt when at last he offers his hands, his eyes and his voice to drag her into the ultimate abyss of ecstasy. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... shrieks and yells and crashes of the fighting. Gods! But it was a hateful task, smashing down that splendid handiwork of the men of the past. But it was better that it should crash down to ruin in the abyss below, than that Phorenice should profane it ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... Persephone, whom usherest thou thus to the laughterless abyss of Death? what hard fate snatched Ariston from the fresh air at seven years old? and the child stands between his parents. Pluto delighting in tears, are not all mortal spirits allotted to thee? why gatherest thou the unripe grapes ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... however, amidst their meanness, marks of dignity and power. They resemble Jesus Christ. He humbled Himself so far as to take the form of a servant, but frequently exercised the rights of a sovereign. From the abyss of humiliation to which He condescended, emanations of the Godhead were seen to proceed. Lord of nature, He commanded the winds and seas. He bade the storm and tempest subside. He restored health to the sick, and life to the dead. He imposed silence on the rabbis; He embarrassed Pilate on ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... crimsons with anger and her heart flutters with fear, the woman glories in Joseph's guilty love, sweet incense to her vanity, evidence of her peerless beauty's infernal power. She retreats a step as from the brink of an abyss, but farther she cannot fly, for there is a charm in her companion's voice, potent as old Merlin's mystic chant—tones low and sweet as music in dreams by maids who sleep in Dian's bosom, yet wilder, fiercer than trumpets blown for war. As a sailor ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... passage, he seized the iron ring, and drew up the trap door of the 'Coal Hole,' from which the Corporal so providentially escaped. Then, with a deep curse, he cast the old libertine into the dark abyss, closed ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... some calm, still lake, whereon Sinks the snowy-bosomed swan, And the glistening water-rings Circle round her moving wings When my upward gaze is turning Where the stars of heaven are burning Through the deep and dark abyss, Flowers of midnight's wilderness, Blowing with the evening's breath Sweetly in their Maker's path When the breaking day is flushing All the east, and light is gushing Upward through the horizon's haze, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... might cost him. It cost him dear, as he discovered at the end of the first year, on noting that his disbursements had considerably exceeded his large income. It was very evident that if he went on in this way, each twelvemonth would deepen an abyss where in the one hundred and sixty thousand francs a year, left him by his father, would finally be swallowed up. But he had plenty of time to reflect upon this unpleasant possibility ere it could come to pass! And, besides, he found his present life so ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... wiser than we. Once man throws off restraint there is no happiness, there is only misery. One step leads to another; if he would be logical he must go on, and before long, for the descent is very rapid indeed, he finds himself in an abyss of darkness and doubt, a terrible abyss indeed, where nothing exists, and life has lost all meaning. The Reformation was the thin end of the wedge, it was the first denial of authority, and you see what it has led to—modern scepticism and ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... exactly before them, was the river. It is here contracted from a grand stream to the width of scarcely a hundred and fifty feet. Roaring fiercely through the rock-bound pass, it plunged, in one leap of about a hundred and twenty feet, perpendicularly into the dark abyss below, the snow-white sheet of water contrasting superbly with the dark cliff that walled the river, while the graceful palms of the tropics, and wild plantains, perfected the beauty ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... is not much, and we are yet terribly behindhand, especially as regards secondary teaching, which is considered less important than primary teaching.[255] But we are scrambling out of an abyss of ignorance, and it is something to have the desire to get out of it. We must remember that Germany has not always been in its present plethoric state of musical prosperity. The great choral societies only date from the end of the eighteenth century. Germany in the time of Bach was poor—if ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... During four days I had seen not one sign of present life on the Norway coast, only hills, hills, dead and dark, and floating craft, all dead and dark; and my eyes now, I found, had acquired a crazy fixity of stare into the very bottom of the vacant abyss of nothingness, while I remained unconscious of being, save of one point, rainbow-blue, far down in the infinite, which passed slowly from left to right before my consciousness a little way, then vanished, came back, and passed slowly again, from ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... which they were then encamped for the night,) is nearly half a mile, and exhibits before us a fine rolling track as far as we can see. Neither birds, beasts, nor insects—I would there were no such barranca!" On the tenth he says, "on the brink of the abyss—the heaviest crags we can hurl down, return no sound from ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... meaning at all. It was a black sphere, alive with shrieks. But then on the surface of it there was to be seen a little needle-point of light, and this widened to a detail of unreal landscape. It was the world; the train was going to escape from this cauldron, this abyss of howling darkness. If a man looks through the brilliant water of a tropical pool, he can sometimes see coloring the marvels at the bottom the blue that was on the sky and the green that was on the foliage of this detail. And the picture shimmered in the heat-rays of ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... of them, or do you find any of their books securing the respectful attention of those competent to judge concerning them? I think not; and I think also you know as well as I do why it is that they have sunk back into the abyss from which they for a time emerged: it is because after the most careful and patient examination by the ablest and most judicial minds of many countries, their arguments were found so untenable that they ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... said to the genteel and correct young Flintskinners. "He entered the world with every prospect in life, and see in what an abyss of degradation his fatal habits have plunged him! At school he was flogged and disgraced, he was disgraced and rusticated at the university, he was disgraced and expelled from the army! He might have had the living ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... chamber, and embraces her with frantic passion, she pushes him backwards towards the balcony, and throws him over the parapet into the abyss, from whence his mutilated remains are dragged by his companions. They at once arm themselves against the presumed treachery, and call for vengeance; tumult and confusion fill the courtyard: the interrupted wedding feast threatens to end in a night of slaughter. The venerable head of the house ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... deputy, "just sit down on the blade of that oar, and refresh yourself in the cool breeze." If the ghost is unwary enough to accept the invitation, he has no sooner seated himself on the blade of the oar with his legs dangling over the abyss, than the deputy-deity tilts up the other end of the oar and precipitates him into the deep water, far far below. A loud smack is heard as the ghost collides with the water, there is a splash, a gurgle, a ripple, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer |
