"Desert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stepped forth, even Feshnavat, my father, and called me by name, and knew me by a spot on the left arm, and made himself known to me, and told me the story of my dead mother, how she had missed her way from the caravan in the desert, and he searching her was set upon by robbers, and borne on their expeditions. Nothing said he of the sorceries of Goorelka, and I, not wishing to provoke the Princess, suffered his dread to exist. So I kissed him, and bowed my head to him, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her. I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a current broad and deep, which ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... her involuntary power of inspiring affection in her own sex. Impulsive girls she could keep in awe; but old women, notably two aunts who had never paid her any attention during her childhood, now persecuted her with slavish fondness, and tempted her by mingled entreaties and bribes to desert her father and live with them for the remainder of their lives. Her reserve fanned their longing to have her for a pet; and, to escape them, she returned to the Continent with her father, and ceased to hold any correspondence ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... try to be exact and absolutely sincere. I may avail myself of that privilege - old while I write, and dead when I shall be read. I am of a very amorous nature and the thought of friend or sweetheart was always an oasis in the desert of my thoughts. Even amidst the most important cares and duties such thoughts were ever of unspeakably greater interest and importance to me. They were never dull or tedious, never bored me, and were my consolation in times of gloom and discouragement. The pain ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... least his father's, which is the same thing, or even better. For his father lived in a gloomy study with severe books, bound in divinity calf, all about him; and was no more conscious of the existence of the beautiful garden than if it had been the Desert of Sahara. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... her in a convent [parthenon], to be brought up, and henceforth he devoted himself outside his house to ascetic discipline, taking heed to himself and training himself patiently. For there were not yet many monasteries in Egypt, and no monk at all knew of the distant desert; but every one of those who wished to give heed to themselves practised the ascetic discipline in solitude near his own village. Now there was in the next village an old man who had lived from his youth the life ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Deb. "My cousin did speak to me on the subject, and I told him at once that I would never consent to your doing so, and that I felt sure your father would not do so either. What! To throw away the brilliant prospects which through my means have been opened out to you? What! Desert your family and me, your affectionate aunt, and the kind friend who so generously consents to become your patron from the regard he has for me? What! Go and run all the risks of a turbulent ocean, and perhaps lose your life, and cause sorrow to those who ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... Pedro, his buckskin pony, into Balaam's pasture. This was green, the rest of the wide world being yellow, except only where Butte Creek, with its bordering cottonwoods, coiled away into the desert distance like a green snake without end. The Virginian also turned his horse into the pasture. He must stay at the ranch till the ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... This station was more than two miles distant, a long, straight walk by the river, and then a mile or so across fields and by narrow lanes to an arid spot, where some newly-built houses were arising round a hopeless-looking little loop-line station in a desert of agricultural land. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... like the prodigal, who had planned to suggest as his only possible desert, a place among the hired servants, but was so lifted into realisation of sonship by the father's welcome, that perforce ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... rational man, it is the Xanthe Desert. Whatever else he might unwittingly be, S. Nuwell Eli considered himself a practical, rational man, and it was across the bumpy sands of the Xanthe Desert that he guided his groundcar westward with that somewhat cautious proficiency that mistrusts ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... boldly claim. The pyramids stand yet, it happens, but where are all those cities that used also to stand in old Egypt, proud and strong, and dating back beyond men's memories or traditions,—turned into sand again and dust that is like all the rest of the desert, and blows about in the wind? Yet there cannot be such a thing as life that is lost. The tree falls and decays, in the dampness of the woods, and is part of the earth under foot, but another tree is growing out of it; perhaps it is part of its own life that is springing again from ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... too, of retiring often to mountain solitudes and by-places on the sea, partly for the resting of his exhausted energies. Sometimes also he called his disciples off in this manner, saying, "come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest awhile." Not that every disciple is, of course, to retire into solitudes and desert places, when he wants recreation. Jesus was obliged to seek such places to escape the continual press of the crowd. In our day, a waking rest ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... brave, high-minded man. In that character you pity poor Mr. Little, but you blame him a little because he fled from trouble, and left his wife and child in it. To you, who are Guy Raby—mind that, please—it seems egotistical and weak to desert your wife and child even for the grave." (The widow buried her face and wept. Twenty-five years do something to withdraw the veil the heart has cast over the judgment.) "But, whatever you feel, you utter only ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... life of life's best hours Found, as it cannot now find, words; Though desert sands were sweet as flowers And flowers ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... punishment for my sin; either my rebellious behaviour against my father, or my present sins, which were great; or even as a punishment for the general course of my wicked life. When I was on the desperate expedition on the desert shores of Africa, I never had so much as one thought of what would become of me; or one wish to God to direct me whither I should go, or to keep me from the danger which apparently surrounded me, as well from voracious creatures as cruel savages: ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... that I would never desert my own father no matter how poor he was, and then he told me that he was only my foster father, just as he was Charlie's. That my own father had been his best friend when they were boys. Later on, my father became a worthless, drunken wretch and my mother had to do sewing to take care ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... King to his fathers' place, Where the tombs of the Sun-born stand: Where the gray apes swing, and the peacocks preen On fretted pillar and jewelled screen, And the wild boar couch in the house of the Queen On the drift of the desert sand. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... degrees lost sight of the sun, till it grew quite dark; insomuch that, instead of choosing what place he would go to, he was forced to let the bridle lie upon the horse's neck, and wait patiently till he alighted, though not without the dread lest it should be in the desert, a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... could bring Your Majesty's anger upon me. Yet, sooner would I face Your Majesty's wrath than suffer aught of harm that I could stay to fall upon Robin Hood and his band; for to them I owe life, honor, everything. Should I, then, desert him in his ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... woods, undress myself in a secluded spot and indulge in the voluptuous pleasures of defecation. I would sometimes combine with this a bath in a stream. I would exhaust my imagination in the effort to invent specially enjoyable variations, longed for a desert island where I could go about naked, fill my body with much nourishing food, hold in the excrement as long as possible and then discharge it in some subtly-thought-out spot. These practices and ideas often caused erections ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... way!" he cried, as he turned to the board, applied one notch of power, and shut off the attractor. The Skylark slowed down a trifle in its mad fall, the other vessel continued on its way—a helpless hulk, manned by a corpse, falling to destruction upon the bleak wastes of a desert world. ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... could not, and that is a fact. I let her go and I promised to say nothing, more is the shame to me. She told me that if I would side with her she would marry me and make me king of this country, but thank goodness I did find the heart to say that even to marry her I could not desert my friends. And now you can do what you like, I deserve it all. All I have to say is that I hope that you may never love a woman with all your heart and then be so sorely tempted of her,' and ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... after what fashion it were possible to serve God with as few impediments as might be, and was informed that they served God best who most completely renounced the world and its affairs; like those who had fixed their abode in the wilds of the Thebaid desert. Whereupon, actuated by no sober predilection, but by childish impulse, the girl, who was very simple and about fourteen years of age, said never a word more of the matter, but stole away on the morrow, and quite alone set out to walk to the Thebaid desert; and, by force of ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... with William on the subject of the new education laws, had written to tender his resignation of the office of chancellor, the empress at once indicted an autograph letter, in which, with expressions of mingled pathos and dignity, she appealed to him so strongly not to desert her husband, or to subject the latter to the anxiety, the trouble, and even the odium of another ministerial crisis, that he at once traveled down to Huebertuesstock, where the emperor was staying, and informed him that he withdrew his resignation, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... feet. He had forgotten now that he had ever sneered at marriage. It seemed to him now that there was nothing in life to be compared with that beatific state, and that bachelors were mere wild asses of the desert. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... that the cardinal virtues "are given to us through the grace of God."(1124) And St. Gregory the Great says that the Holy Ghost does "not desert the hearts of those who are perfect in faith, hope, and charity, and in those other goods without which no man can attain to the heavenly fatherland."(1125) St. Thomas shows the theological reason for this by pointing to the parallel that exists ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... he could trust to go after the fellows, either. Such herd guards as he had would decide to desert their protector and take up the idle life which their fellow pseudomen had adopted. A few of them had gone out and done just that. Their memories of the protection and privileges granted them were short and undependable. ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... across the great desert, meeting in succession the white-robed Arab, the savage Kurd, the docile Yeeside, and the melancholy Turk. John said we must have a staff, and a score of guides, and no end of menials, and must put on the dignity, or it ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... as she ran away, and Demi's mind was so distracted by this event that when Franz asked him where the desert of Sahara was, he mournfully replied, "In the nursery," and the whole ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... holiness drove men and women out of the tumult of the world, out of great cities, into desert places, in order that they might dedicate themselves to a pure and perfect life. There they built for themselves huts, and formed a state, whose law was labour and devotion to God. No earthly possession was enjoyed ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... letter to Johnson, asking him to employ his pen in favour of Dodd. Mr. Allen, the printer, who was Johnson's landlord and next neighbour in Bolt-court, and for whom he had much kindness[409], was one of Dodd's friends, of whom to the credit of humanity be it recorded, that he had many who did not desert him, even after his infringement of the law had reduced him to the state of a man under sentence of death. Mr. Allen told me that he carried Lady Harrington's letter to Johnson, that Johnson read it walking up and down his chamber, and seemed much agitated, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... appeal, uttered with trembling lip and moist eyes, Sir George replied in character. He declined to desert Mrs. Gaunt, until he had seen her safe home; but, that done, he would ride back to Carlisle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... antlered elks were seen in troops upon the bluffs and hills, and bears of different kinds went lumbering along the shores. Beautiful antelopes with their large luminous eyes looked at them for a moment and then went flying over the prairies like the gazelles in the desert. ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... desolate country in those days: geographers still described it as The Great American Desert, and in looks it certainly deserved the title. Never was there anything as lonesome as that endless stretch of snow reaching across the world until it cut into a cold gray sky, excepting the same desert burned to a brown tinder by ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... trees? It is idle to make a bid! La Grenadiere will never be in the market; it was brought once and sold, but that was in 1690; and the owner parted with it for forty thousand francs, reluctant as any Arab of the desert to relinquish a favorite horse. Since then it has remained in the same family, its pride, its patrimonial jewel, its Regent diamond. "While you behold, you have and hold," says the bard. And from La Grenadiere you behold three valleys of Touraine and the cathedral towers aloft in air like a bit of ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... sort of choked up and winked back the tears and said in that soft-spoken Southern way of hers, 'Oh, don't leave me, Tippy!' She's taken to calling me Tippy, just as Georgina does. 'When you talk about it I feel like a kitten shipwrecked on a desert island. It's all so strange and dreadful here with just sea on one side and sand ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... derogatory to his manly dignity. He knew that his big limbs were made for more active pursuits than walking over a hillside at a woman's pace, or driving a pony-cart into Dartmouth. At the same time he saw that he could not now desert her without a feeling of shame in addition ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... been written in his old age; and that passion causes him thus to open his first book:—"Love was the inventor, and is still the maintainer, of every noble science. It is chiefly that which hath made my flowers and trees to flourish, though planted in a barren desert, and hath brought me to the knowledge I now have in plants and planting; for indeed it is impossible for any man to have any considerable collection of plants to prosper, unless he love them: for neither the goodness of the soil, nor the advantage of the situation, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... are the incidents of their warfare. As a rule the gods of Egypt are serene and good beings; here only dualism shows itself. Osiris is the good power both morally and in the sphere of outward nature, while Set is the embodiment of all that the Egyptian regards as evil,—darkness, the desert, the hot south wind, sickness, and red hair. It is not the case that Set was an imported god and belonged to Semitic invaders, but these invaders found him more suited to their notions of deity than any other god of Egypt, and sought to make him supreme, in which, however, they could not succeed. ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... refreshed by a few hours on grass, proved to be a good traveller. The two men took a road-gait and held it steadily till they reached a telephone-line which stretched across the desert and joined two outposts of civilization. Steve strapped on his climbing spurs and went up a post lightly with his test outfit. In a few minutes he had Moreno on the wire and was in touch with ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... rejected. If mankind were to resolve to agree in no institution of government, until every part of it had been adjusted to the most exact standard of perfection, society would soon become a general scene of anarchy, and the world a desert. Where is the standard of perfection to be found? Who will undertake to unite the discordant opinions of a whole community, in the same judgment of it; and to prevail upon one conceited projector to renounce his ...
— The Federalist Papers
... them for the most ungrateful, the most degenerate child which this earth has ever seen. In this almanac there is the story of a son who, at the risk of his life, fetches draughts of water from the hands of robbers for his parents languishing in the desert. I am not able to offer you even a little liquor, a little ginger brandy with aniseed, which I am ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... it, whatever happens, and it would only put the difficulty off a few weeks at most. I feel so stupid about the whole thing. I like her too much. I'm so afraid of saying anything to hurt her, that I can't finesse. All my wits desert me. I ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Zealand, one after the other, have slept under the waters for longer or shorter periods of time. Three centuries ago the island of Schouwen was inundated by the sea, when all the inhabitants and cattle were drowned and it was reduced to a desert. The island of North Beveland was completely submerged shortly after, and for several years nothing was to be seen but the tips of the church-steeples peeping out of the water. The island of South Beveland shared the same fate toward the middle of the fourteenth century,—the island of Tholen suffered ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... to think it was beautiful. If I wrote a limerick, I'd want someone to think it was clever. I want appreciation, consideration, sympathy, affection! I'm starving for love, I'm dying for it, and I'd go across the desert on my knees for the man who ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... been the true nature of her first feeling for the Irish-American, suffering and meditation had deepened and strengthened it into a mature and genuine passion. As the wise men of old found wisdom in cave or desert, so Rosa in her solitude had learned the truth about herself. Now, in the hour of her extremity, thoughts of O'Reilly acted as a potent medicine. Her hungry yearning for him and her faith in his coming stimulated her desire to live, and so ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... not one but had kept by him a slave who should kill him when his hour had come; anarchy had been continuous; but now Rome was at rest and its sovereign wished to laugh. Made up of every nation and every vice, the universe was ransacked for its entertainment. The mountain sent its lions, the desert giraffes; there were boas from the jungles, bulls from the plains, and hippopotami from the waters of the Nile. Into the arenas patricians descended; in the amphitheatre there were criminals from Gaul; in the Forum philosophers from Greece. On the stage, there ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... however, but the scouts watched the excitement created, and reported the results at frequent intervals. Muro knew they would not desert the village, as they would not be likely to leave it at the mercy of their enemies, at least ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... snow, and through the rushes and reeds, from which they keep the ice. When the noise is over and the beavers think that their enemies have gone, they go back to the house. If the invaders have much destroyed the house, the beavers desert it entirely and live in these kitchens until the spring freshets come and melt and carry away ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... or feigned to repent, this somewhat provocative eulogy of the Great Republic: "Somebody has sent me some American abuse of Mazeppa and 'the Ode;' in future I will compliment nothing but Canada, and desert to the English."—Letter to Murray, February 21, 1820, Letters, 1900, iv. 410. It is possible that the allusion is to an article, "Mazeppa and Don Juan," in the Analectic Magazine, November, 1819, vol. xiv, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... return. If memory has its pleasures, has it not also its glimpses of regret?—and who can say that the former compensate for the latter? Even now I see her as she used to step out on the veranda,—the lithe Indian girl, rivalling the choicest "desert- flower" of Arabia in the rich darkness of her eyes and hair, and in the warm mantling of her golden-ripe complexion,—unutterably graceful in the thorough-bred ease of her elastic movements,—Zosime MacGillivray, perfect type and model of the style and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... and as I loved her dearly, I started at once, almost in despair, but still with something of hope,—with a shade of hope,—that I might put myself in the way of enabling her to become my wife. I did not desert her." ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... Hough, with all your cold, implacable control. The moment will come, born out of this abnormal time. I can't explain, but I feel. There's a work-shop in this hell of Benton. Invisible, monstrous, and nameless! ... Nameless like the new graves dug every day out here on the desert.... How few of the honest toilers dream of the spirit that is working on them. That Irishman, Shane, think of him. He fought while his brains oozed from a hole in his head; I saw, but I didn't know then. ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... of the wind, the lure of the hills. I'll follow you, follow you far; Ye voices of winds, and rain and sky, To the peaks that shatter the evening star. Wealth, honor, wife, child—all I have in the city's keep, I loose and forget when ye call and call And the desert winds around me sweep. ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... creaked beneath Lucy's grasshopper weight; when down she sat in doleful resignation, having undressed her cousin, sent her chaussure to dry, and dismissed the car, with a sense of bidding farewell to the civilized world, and entering a desert island, devoid of the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seeking wine in the house. Just when the girl seemed to be sinking into a swoon they brought a short draught of Syrian wine in an earthen cup; for little Alric was not wise, but he would have found wine in the sandy desert, and he had gone straight to a corner where a leathern bottle with a wooden plug was hung ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... such an age and character that he exerted a vast ascendency over all within his influence. Without him, Edward never would have conquered the Lancaster party, and he knew very well that if Warwick, and all those whom Warwick would carry with him, were to desert him, he should not be able to retain his kingdom. Indeed, Warwick received the surname of King-maker from the fact that, in repeated instances during this quarrel, he put down one dynasty and raised up the other, just as he ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Hartzman put the matter succinctly, and told the truth faithfully, when he said: "The first time I met her, I told her all I'd ever done that could be told, and all I wanted to do; including a resolve to carry her off to some desert place and set up a Kingdom of Two. I don't know how she did it. I was like a tap, and poured myself out; and when it was all over I thought she was the best talker I'd ever heard. But yet she'd done nothing except look at me and listen, and put in a question here and there, that was like ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... Tillietudlem burghs, if I could but get at his throat for such a purpose! Hang him! aye, as high as Haman! In this there would be no regret, no vacillation of purpose, no doubt as to the propriety of the sacrifice, no feeling that I was so treating him, not for his own desert, but for my advantage. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Africa is three and a half times as large as the United States, and that while there are no cities as large as New York and Chicago, there are many centers of very dense population; if we omit entirely from the consideration the Desert of Sahara and make due allowance for some heavily wooded tracts in which live no people at all; and if we then take some fairly well-known region like Nigeria or Sierra Leone as the basis of estimate, we shall arrive at some such figure ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... an intense, glowing epic of the great desert, sunlit barbaric, with its marvelous atmosphere ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... not clear what this can be. Browning published nothing between 1855 ('Men and Women') and 1864 ('Dramatis Personae'), and there is no long poem in the latter, unless 'A Death in the Desert' and 'Sludge the Medium' may be so described. The latter is not unlikely to have been written now, when Home's performances were rampant. His next really long poem was 'The Ring and the Book,' which certainly had ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... I therefore looked round me, and found myself in a wild and ancient forest, where the axe appeared never to have been wielded. I still pressed forward a few steps, and beheld myself in the midst of desert rocks which were overgrown only with moss and lichens, and between which lay fields of snow and ice. The air was intensely cold; I looked round—the wood had vanished behind me. I took a few strides more—and around me reigned the silence of death; the ice whereon I stood boundlessly ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Paris where I shall be this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and they dance to the self-same time and tune as the trained steed, Black Raven. What may be the speciality of these waves as they come rushing on, I cannot desert the pressing demands made upon me by the gems she wore, to inquire, but they are charged with something about Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he first went a seafaring and was near foundering (what a terrific sound that word ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... of housekeeping was her clear and speedy attainment in that new scene. Strange how she made the desert blossom for herself and me there; what a fairy palace she had made of that wild moorland home of the poor man! From the baking of a loaf, or the darning of a stocking, up to comporting herself in the highest scenes or most ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... years old. Few churches built as early as the reign of Henry VIII. can compare with this. It is dedicated to St. Giles, and statues of him and of twenty-nine other saints embellish niches in the tower. Alongside of St. Giles is the hind that nourished him in the desert. The bells of Wrexham peal melodiously over the valley, and in the vicarage the good Bishop Heber wrote the favorite hymn, "From Greenland's Icy Mountains." Then the Dee flows on past the ducal palace of Eaton ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... sitting beneath the pyramid, with their faces toward the desert, enjoying the cool night air, when they first began to speak of Adela Gauntlet. Hitherto Arthur had hardly mentioned her name. They had spoken much of his mother, much of the house at Hurst Staple, and much also of Lady Harcourt, of whose separation from her husband they were of course aware; ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... allies consented to retreat, except the eighty men who came from Mycen and the 700 Thespians, who declared that they would not desert Leonidas. There were also 400 Thebans who remained; and thus the whole number that stayed with Leonidas to confront two million of enemies were fourteen hundred warriors, besides the helots or attendants on the 300 Spartans, whose number is not ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... gives esteem, and then he gives desert; He either finds equality, or makes it. Like death, he knows no difference in degrees, But frames and ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... Like every aspect of life, and like most persons, it is a hint and suggestion of something high and poetic. It is an oasis of repose in the desert of our American hurry. ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... Babylonia and Assyria was carried on probably by caravans, which traversed the Syrian desert by way of Tadmor or Palmyra, and struck the Euphrates about Circesium. Here the route divided, passing to Babylon southwards along the course of the great river, and to Nineveh eastwards by way of the Khabour and the Sinjar mountain-range. ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... closing up later to four hundred yards. The fight was obstinately sustained on both sides, and, notwithstanding the commanding position of the batteries, strong hopes were felt on board the fleet of silencing the guns, which the enemy began to desert, when, at 4.30 P.M., the wheel of the flag-ship St. Louis and the tiller of the Louisville were shot away. The two boats, thus rendered unmanageable, drifted down the river; and their consorts, no longer able to maintain ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... from being either a dupe or a renegade. Ah! said I in the days of my enthusiastic youth, shall I not hear the tolling for the second vespers of the republic, and our priests, dressed in white tunics, singing after the Doric fashion the returning hymn: Change o Dieu, notre servitude, comme le vent du desert en un souffle rafraichissan! . . . . . But I have despaired of republicans, and no longer know either ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... we were safer than we could have dared to hope. The town of Albany was at that time much concerned in contraband trade across the desert with the Indians and the French. This, as it was highly illegal, relaxed their loyalty, and as it brought them in relation with the politest people on the earth, divided even their sympathies. In short, they were like all the smugglers in the world, spies and agents ready-made for either party. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cave, and following him through another archway, she found herself in a vast desert of sand and rock. The sky of it was of rock, lowering over them like solid thunderclouds; and the whole place was so hot that she saw, in bright rivulets, the yellow gold and white silver and red copper trickling molten from the rocks. But the heat ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... miserable, over-crowded, brawling England. This, I think, was, or should have been, the real lesson and message of Kingsley for the generations to come. Like Scott the scion of an old knightly line, he had that drop of wild blood which drives men from town into the air and the desert, wherever there are savage lands to conquer, beasts to hunt, and a hardy life to be lived. But he was the son of a clergyman, and a clergyman himself. The spirit that should have gone into action went into talking, preaching, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... analyse the most complex sentences, and yet could not analyse the poorly cooked and still more poorly served corn bread and fat meat that they and their families were eating three times a day! It is little trouble to find girls who can locate Pekin or the Desert of Sahara on an artificial globe, but seldom can you find one who can locate on an actual dinner table the proper place for the carving knife and fork or the ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... of the "Waldeck" had picked up this fine animal, who, being not very sociable, seemed to be always regretting some old master, from whom he had been violently separated, and whom it would be impossible to find again in that desert country. S. V.—those two letters engraved on his collar—were all that linked this animal to a past, whose mystery one would ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... far beyond any desert or hope of mine, but I said boldly, "I am no gentleman, but just a plain, few-acred yeoman, who has tried to serve ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... Clara, with great spirit; "but that is what you will never do. You made a bargain that was unworthy of a gentleman; but you are a gentleman for all that, and you will never desert a man whom you have begun ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... savage and civilized man. It is the difference between a wild and tame animal; and part of the interest in beholding a savage is the same which would lead every one to desire to see the lion in his desert, the tiger tearing his prey in the jungle, or the rhinoceros wandering over the wild ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... your views as to the source of light, afford me new scope for satisfactory thinking—a sort of treasure one can always carry about, and, unlike other treasures, is most valuable in the solitude of a desert. The beauty of your theory as to the nature of the source of light is, that it rather supports all preconceived notions respecting the soul, heaven, and an ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... they will give you such a covenant to digest as the presbytery of Scotland would have been ashamed to offer to Charles the Second. They left their native land in search of freedom, and found it in a desert. Divided as they are into a thousand forms of policy and religion, there is one point in which they all agree: they equally detest the pageantry of a king and the supercilious ...
— English Satires • Various
... in wedlock, Torquil.' My child thought not thus: she loves Ferquhard, and weeps away her colour and strength in dread of the approaching battle. Let her give him but a sign of favour, and well I know he will forget kith and kin, forsake the field, and fly with her to the desert." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... trained, or he cannot do his work; and as civilization advances, it becomes exceedingly difficult to train the individual without social cooperation. A Paul or a Mahomet may discipline his own soul in the Desert of Arabia; he may there learn the lessons that may later make him a leader of men. But for the average man and indeed for most of the exceptional men, the path to effectiveness lies through social and professional discipline. Here is where the frontier stage ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... he made his way overland throughout the length of North Africa, visiting the sites of the ancient cities of Barbary and Cyrenaica. He also travelled through Egypt, ascending the Nile to Wadi Halfa and crossing the desert to Berenice. While in Egypt he was attacked and wounded by robbers. Crossing the Sinai peninsula he traversed Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Turkey and Greece, everywhere examining the remains of antiquity; and returned to Berlin ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... his determination not to desert his old shipmate Colin, and Bill remained equally firm under the torture; while the Krooman, knowing that his only chance of liberty depended on remaining true to the white slaves, and keeping in their company, could not be ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... truly. Here we are travelling through desert together like the children of Israel. Some pick up more manna and catch more quails than others and ought to help their hungry neighbors more than they do; that will always be so until we come back to primitive Christianity, the road to which does ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... saint exists (or does not exist and so on) after death is a jungle, a desert, a puppet show, a writhing, an entanglement and brings with it sorrow, anger, wrangling and agony. It does not conduce to distaste for the world, to the absence of passion, to the cessation of evil, to peace, to knowledge, to perfect enlightenment, to nirvana. Perceiving this objection, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Royal grace To one of less desert allows This laurel greener from the brows Of him ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... replied, "It is so indeed. Many hundred years ago, this place, where stand the abbey and the town, was a howling wilderness. Not far off, however, lived a venerable hermit, Patrick by name, who often sought the desert for the purpose of therein exercising his austerities. One day he lighted on this cave, which is of vast extent. He entered it, and wandering on in the dark, lost his way, so that he could no more find how to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... desired now with unwonted strength. He did not know why—he did not analyze himself nor the situation—but all the others seemed gathered up in her. She was fair to him, desirable!... He thirsted, quite with the mortal honesty of an Arab, day and night and day again without drink in the desert, and the oasis palms seen at last on the horizon. In his self-direction thitherward he was as candid, one-pointed, and ruthless as the Arab might be. He had no deliberate thought of harm to the woman before him—as little as the Arab would have of hurting ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... activity. Thus, in later ages, the monk of Africa, willingly persuading himself that any intervention to improve Nature is a revolt against the providence of God, spent his worthless life in weaving baskets and mats, or in solitary meditation in the caves of the desert of Thebais; but the monk of Europe encountered the labours of agriculture and social activity, and thereby aided, in no insignificant manner, in the civilization of England, France, and Germany. These things, duly considered, lead to the conclusion that human life, in its diversities, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... minister's, and instinctively exercising a magnetic power over a spirit so shattered and subdued that it could hardly hold itself erect. "Doth the universe lie within the compass of yonder town, which only a little time ago was but a leaf-strewn desert, as lonely as this around us? Whither leads yonder forest-track? Backward to the settlement, thou sayest! Yes; but, onward, too! Deeper it goes, and deeper into the wilderness, less plainly to ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... more than seven times Security hast render'd me, and drawn From peril deep, whereto I stood expos'd, Desert me not," I cried, "in this extreme. And if our onward going be denied, Together trace we back our ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... hall, and a wild dash into the freedom of the narrow street when the door was opened. Then Oscar moderated his transports, and kept pretty close to his master as together they began to wander through the desert wilds of London. ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... arisen on the ruins of the past. Many centuries, with their burden of human hopes and fears, have sped away into the past, since 'Hundred-gated Thebes' sheltered her teeming population, where now are but a mournful group of ruins. Yet today, far below the remorseless sands of her desert, we find the rude flint-flakes that require us to carry back the time of man's first appearance in Egypt to a past so remote that her stately ruins become a thing of yesterday in comparison to them." (footnote Von Hellwald: Smithsonian ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... a couple of bronchos handy; handy to slap the packs and saddles on and be off and away whenever the fever for chasin' pockets came over me. Great pocket country down there, to the east and along the desert." ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... enterprise," said Lee. "I have plenty of brave men, but can think of only one whom I can recommend for such a duty as this. His name is John Champe; his rank, sergeant-major, but there is one serious obstacle in the way,—he must appear to desert, and I fear that Champe has too high a sense ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... send me another most painful trial which lasted for three days. Never had I understood so well the bitter grief of Our Lady and St. Joseph when they were searching the streets of Jerusalem for the Divine Child. I seemed to be in a frightful desert, or rather, my soul was like a frail skiff, without a pilot, at the mercy of the stormy waves. I knew that Jesus was there asleep in my little boat, but how could I see Him while the night was so dark? If the storm had really broken, ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... he found himself standing in front of the United States Hotel, his mind made up to desert the affectionate young creature, who, in a moment of thoughtlessness, had set her will in opposition to his,—to leave the city, under an assumed name, by the earliest lines, and go, he knew not nor cared not where. Blind passion was his prompter and guide. In this feverish state he entered ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... at this time of year are brilliant; one can even see to read, and every object in the desert is almost as clearly visible as by day. But I was quite startled by the whiteness of the glow that rested on the mummy, the face of which was immediately opposite mine. The remains—those of Met-Om-Karema, lady of the College of the god Amen-ra—were swathed in bandages, some of which ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... says Paley, who comes across a watch recognises in the relation of its parts evidences of workmanship. But he does not see in the breaking of a wave on the shore, or in the piling up of sand in the desert, or in a pebble on the beach, the same tokens of workmanship. In the very act of attempting to prove that some things are made, the theist is compelled to assume that all things are not made. He can only gain a victory at the price of ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... only for what money would buy. He wanted it because it would enable him to do greater work. "I was often stopped, in my expeditions," he told Dr. Baker, "for the want of a hundred pounds." He was always writing: in the house, in the desert, in a storm, up a tree, at dinner, in bed, ill or well, fresh or tired,—indeed, he used to say that he never was tired. There was nothing histrionic about him, and he never posed, except "before fools and savages." He was frank, straightforward, and outspoken, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... woman, Though I could not well observe her, Who in life's despairing struggle, Hand to hand with death contended. Scarcely was I heard, when she Summoning up her strength addressed me,— "Blood-stained murderer mine, come back, Nor in this last hour desert me Of my life."—"I am," said I, "Only one whom chance hath sent here, Guided it may be by heaven, To assist you in this dreadful Hour of trial."—"Vain," she said, "Is the favour that your mercy Offers to my life, for see, Drop by drop the life-stream ebbeth, Let this hapless one enjoy ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... presently, and he must needs go with her. At the best, he had expected this. It was not likely that, even if he could have obtained speech with his wife, she could have been prevailed upon immediately to desert the father whose fortunes she had elected to follow, and return to shore with the husband she had abandoned. Her mind must have been poisoned, her judgment perverted, before she could have left him thus of her own free will; and it would need the light of calm reason to set ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... combatants to a mile of front is infinitely less than during the German war. Further, since an immense proportion of these combatants on both sides have no wish to fight at all, being without patriotic or political convictions and very badly fed and clothed, and since it is more profitable to desert than to be taken prisoner, desertion in bulk is not uncommon, and the deserters, hurriedly enrolled to fight on the other side, indignantly re-desert when opportunity offers. In this way the armies of Denikin and Yudenitch swelled like mushrooms and decayed with similar rapidity. Military events ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... that she had been involved in an affair with a real estate agent who had afterward left town. It was said that the man, a tall, fine- looking fellow, had been in love with Mary and had wanted to desert his wife and go away with her. One night he had driven to Mary's house in a closed buggy and the two had driven into the country. They had sat for hours in the covered buggy at the side of the road and ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... the four great pyres that were placed there to light the encampment, High on platforms raised above the people, were kindled. Flaming aloof, as it were the pillar by night in the Desert Fell their crimson light on the lifted orbs of the preachers, Fell on the withered brows of the old men, and Israel's mothers, Fell on the bloom of youth, and the earnest devotion of manhood, Fell on the anguish and hope in the tearful eyes of the mourners. Flaming aloof, it stirred ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... induced to desert less profitable branches of their business, in order to supply this extraordinary demand, the masters, in other trades, soon found their men leaving them, without being aware of the immediate reason: some of the more intelligent, however, ascertained the ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... since she was a little kid, Charles, as you express it with that elegance of diction and refinement of thought that seem never to desert you. Accordingly—er— [impatiently] Now I have forgotten what I was going to say. That comes of your provoking me to be sarcastic, Charles. Adolphus: will you kindly tell me ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... pleasing than wise or useful. By a Club, due to one's own judgment and persistency. By a high spade, entailing trouble or cost. By a low spade, at the cost of another's misfortune; or not wholly our desert rather than another's; ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... plausibility of events dependent mainly or entirely on character. For example—to cite a much disputed instance—is it plausible that Nora, in A Doll's House, should suddenly develop the mastery of dialectics with which she crushes Helmer in the final scene, and should desert her husband and children, slamming the door ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... wonder if she really believed me. We were married three days later. I never told her what her life with me would be like—that one day I would desert her, fearing and hating her rivalry for the very source of my life, and the ghastly chain would continue. I couldn't. I loved her so, Morris, can you understand that? I couldn't betray her then and ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad
... course upon a trackless sea. O, tiny craft, bearing a nation's seed! Frail shallop, quick with unborn states! Autumn was mellow in the fatherland when they set sail, And winter deepened as they neared the West. Out of the desert sea they came at last, And their hearts warmed to see that frozen land. O, first gray dawn that filtered through the dark! Bleak, glorious birth-hour of our northern states! They stood upon the shore like new created men; On barren solitudes of sand they stood, ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... one day, for another, for a third, and on the fourth day right after sunset, he came to a lake. The lake was smooth like glass; the water was on a level with the shores; everything around was desert. The water was covered with the rosy evening glow and the green shores with the thick reeds were reflected in it. Everything seemed as if in a dream. The air did not move; the reeds did not stir, there was no rustle upon the light ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... something Lynda had always expected, always dreaded, but which she had always known must come some day? She was prepared now—terribly prepared! Everything depended upon her management of the crucial moments. Her kindness did not desert her, nor her merciful justice, but she meant to shield Truedale with her life—hers and Nella-Rose's, if necessary. "Why—have you—come?" she asked again, and Nella-Rose, taking for granted that this pale, strange woman did know all about her—knew everything and every ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... excessive. Vengeance, which once meant an indignant vindication of justice, now signifies the most furious and unsparing revenge. Revenge emphasizes more the personal injury in return for which it is inflicted, vengeance the ill desert of those upon whom it is inflicted. A requital is strictly an even return, such as to quit one of obligation for what has been received, and even if poor or unworthy is given as complete and adequate. Avenging and retribution give a ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... place in Parliament stand up as almost the defender of that wild outburst of lawlessness, and John of Argyle turn from the royal presence to prepare his hounds, as he said, against the Queen's threat of turning the rebellious country into a desert. These proud Scotsmen had supported the Union: they had perceived its necessity and its use: but there was a point at which all their susceptibilities took fire, and Whig lords and politicians were at one with every high-handed ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... exert themselves strenuously to support the association, or the persons to whom I allude will divide its ranks, and finally destroy the association itself. For my poor part, I will not be an idle spectator of such a struggle. 'Tis true that the people may be induced to desert me, but I never will desert the people. I perceive that it is—I will not use the proper term—but I will say, most unhandsomely suggested that, in the event of the Whigs coming into power, the repeal cause is to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Bononia. The spot was not far from the camp, with a river surrounding it. Caesar, it is said, contended earnestly for Cicero the first two days; but on the third day he yielded, and gave him up. The terms of their mutual concessions were these; that Caesar should desert Cicero, Lepidus his brother Paulus, and Antony, Lucius Caesar, his uncle by his mother's side. Thus they let their anger and fury take from them the sense of humanity, and demonstrated that no beast is more savage than man, when possessed with ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... in the woods began again. They seemed to have no relation to the regularly spaced bursts of smoke along a little smear in the desert earth two thousand yards away—no connection at all with the strong voices overhead coming and going. It was as impersonal as the drive of the ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... responsibility will be at an end; the rest will take place on neutral ground," returned the Gascon with a smile at once mysterious and ferocious; "yes, on a desert island; and since this tender couple love one another, love each other to death, there will be time for them to prove ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... decisive moment during the American Civil War, had finally gone against Conservatism when Lee surrendered at Appomatox. Russell's Reform Bill of 1866 was defeated by Tory opposition in combination with a small Whig faction which refused to desert the "principle" of aristocratic government—the "government by the wise," but the Tories who came into power under Derby were forced by the popular demand voiced even to the point of rioting, themselves to present a Reform Bill. Disraeli's measure, introduced with a number of "fancy franchises," ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... been there. A somewhat similar institution used to flourish on the outskirts of Calcutta, and there is a story that if you go into the heart of Bikanir, which is in the heart of the Great Indian Desert, you shall come across not a village but a town where the Dead who did not die but may not live have established their headquarters. And, since it is perfectly true that in the same Desert is a wonderful city where all the rich money lenders retreat ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... farm wood-lots, or in rough range pasture. Of course the kinds and amounts of produce per acre vary with the climate, particularly with sunshine and rainfall; possibly the proportion of the area of the United States that is true desert and infertile mountain land is greater than that of any other equal area in the temperate zones. The actual productive capacity per acre of the lands of America cannot be expressed in a very helpful way as a general average per acre, but each area must be carefully studied in respect to ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... become more painful.—And, indeed, I soon did recollect it as such with agony, when his sudden death (for he had recourse to the most exhilarating cordials to keep up the convivial tone of his spirits) again threw me into the desert of human society. Had he had any time for reflection, I am certain he would have left the little property in his power to me: but, attacked by the fatal apoplexy in town, his heir, a man of rigid morals, brought his wife with him to take possession ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the thousand ant-hills. Then suddenly the rainy season sets in. Torrents fill the rivers, and the sandy plain is a sheet of water. Almost as suddenly the rain ceases, the streams dry up, sucked in by the thirsty ground, and as though literally by magic a luxuriant vegetation bursts forth, the desert blossoms as a rose. Insects, lizards, frogs, birds, chirp, frisk and chatter. No plant or animal can live unless it live quickly. The struggle for existence is ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... in behalf of the British Government, that should any of the British subjects, now prisoners of war in the hands of Captain Jones, desert or abscond, either from the fort on the Texel or otherwise, in consequence of the first article, an equal number of American prisoners shall be released, and sent from England to ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Of course it had; how could it be helped? The place was no longer a desert, with never a soul for miles; and, moreover, Oline was there. What had Oline to do with it? Ho! and, to make things worse, Brede Olsen had made an enemy of her himself. No means of getting round ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert. The club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard in the hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard balls. As 'every one' was out of town perhaps the servants, in the extravagance of their leisure, ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... "A desert wild Before them stretched bare, comfortless, and vast, With gibbets, bones, and carcasses defiled." ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sections the sediment passed through was similar in composition to the ordinary Nile mud of the present day, except near the margin of the valley, where thin layers of quartzose sand, such as is sometimes blown from the adjacent desert by violent winds, were observed to alternate with ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... "no one can live on earth after he has caught a glimpse of the celestial delights of this abode. You have lived, my dear Graceful; life has nothing more to teach you. You have passed in four days through the desert where I languished eighty years, and henceforth nothing can ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... states back East weren't infested with the same sort of idiots—I've had Hinckley make me a report on it since that night. It means that women and children and sweaty breadwinners have furnished the money for all these things we're so proud of having built, including the Mt. Desert cottages and the Wyoming hunting-lodge. It means that we've got to be able to read our book of the Black Art backwards as well as forwards, or the Powers we've conjured up will tear piecemeal both them and us. God! it makes me crawl to think of what ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... was churning its way furiously through brown Arizona. The day had been hot, with a palpitating heat which shimmered over the desert waste. Defiantly the sun had gone down beyond the horizon, a great ball of fire, leaving behind a brilliant splash of bold colors. Now this, too, had disappeared. Velvet night had transformed the land. Over the distant mountains ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... led it into the mountains and across the desert. And on the terrible return trip he knew, with an abiding sense of guilt, that he alone could have checked the murderous and cowardly impulse of Quade. He alone could have overruled Quade and Lowrie; or, failing to overrule them he should at least have stayed with the cripple and ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... you know what I must confess already, and have a world of scorn in store for me. Do not judge me harshly. Whatever the end may be, and my sense of ill-desert is heavy indeed, I shall begin on the basis of absolute truth. You shall know the worst. I've asked your father for the privilege of winning your love;" and then he hesitated, not knowing how to ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... see the fire. But to them she did not seem old; her strength and eagerness were still upon her, and that silver needlework with which time broiders all men had in her its special beauty, setting her aloof in the unabandoned dream which the young so often desert as their youth deserts them. Those of her age, seeing that unyouthful gleam of her hair combined with the still-youthful dream of her eyes, felt as though they could not touch her; for no man can ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... duty, and do not think that I misunderstand your motive or feel the shadow of humiliation or unkindness. Make me obey if you can, punish me if I disobey; but obey you, when you tell me, for my own life's sake or for any other, to desert you in the hour of need, of danger, and of sorrow, I neither will nor can." I cut short the scene, bidding her a passionate farewell in view of the probability that we should not meet again. I closed the door behind me, having called her whom at this ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... march to put his hand on her chair and kiss her brow. "Motherling, I will restrain myself, so you will give me your word not to desert us." ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... another week or two, or even a month more. It wouldn't be the thing to desert Jernyngham; and, as we're mixed up in it, I feel it would be better to see the matter through." He smiled at his wife with cumbrous gallantry. "Then, though you always look charming, you're now unusually fresh and fit; there's no doubt that ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... which had hitherto blocked the way towards improvements; but they were called upon to overcome these very difficulties, and their independent position and great attainments rendered them exceptionally competent to do so. Why then did their powers desert them? It would seem as if they had no real power. They left matters to take care of themselves and, now, we are confronted by the "celebrated" Berlin orchestra in which the last trace of the traditions of Spontini's strict discipline have faded away. Thus ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... others; but when they are taken up among the angels they induce anxieties that disturb the happiness of the angels; and in consequence they are sent away; and when sent away they betake themselves to desert places, where they lead a life like that which they lived in the world. [2] Man can be formed for heaven only by means of the world. In the world are the outmost effects in which everyone's affection must be terminated; for unless affection puts itself forth ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... said Sally reprovingly. "Can't you realize that we're practically castaways on a desert island? There's nothing to do till to-morrow but talk about ourselves. I want to hear all about you, and then I'll tell you all about myself. If you feel diffident about starting the revelations, I'll begin. Better start with names. Mine ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... treason. It is needless to go into details; but such was the drift of general demoralization that the chief founders and pre-eminent representatives of the party, Chase, Seward, Sumner and Greeley were obliged to desert it more than a year before the end of Gen. Grant's first administration, as the only means of maintaining their honor and self-respect. My Congressional term expired a little after Grant and Babcock had inaugurated ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... Rhiming, Drinking, Besides ten thousand Freaks that died in thinking; Blest Madman, who could every Hour employ In something new to wish or to enjoy! In squandering Wealth was his peculiar Art, Nothing went unrewarded but Desert. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the 17th General Hospital at Ramleh, and was placed on a low basket arrangement in a big marquee, with its sides rolled up so that the least hot of any stray breeze might find its way in. The floor was the desert sand. It was in these days that the shamefully inadequate preparations for the wounded were most felt, yet the sufferers themselves did not complain, and the hospital staffs and the civilian population of Egypt went to work in that scorching heat to make ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... such as Dessau was when I lived there as a child and as a boy, one lived as in an enchanted island. The horizon was very narrow, and nothing happened to disturb the peace of the little oasis. The Duchy was indeed a little oasis in the large desert of Central Germany. The landscape was beautiful: there were rivers small and large—the Mulde and the Elbe; there were magnificent oak forests; there were regiments of firs standing in regular columns like so many grenadiers; there were parks such as one sees in England only. The town, ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... my bliss shall bide:[FN257] Wot I not which of three gave me most to 'plain, * So hear them numbered ere thou decide: Those Sworders her eyne, that Lancer her fig- * -ure, or ring-mail'd Locks which her forehead hide. Quoth she (and I ask of her what so wights * Or abide in towns or in desert ride[FN258] ) To me, 'In thy heart I dwell, look there!' * Quoth I, 'Where's my heart ah ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... portable-secretary and the hand-organ in a box. These made such a pyramid of luggage, that riding ourselves was out of the question. What with the trunks and the cordage to keep them staid, our wagon looked like a ship of the desert. To crown all, it began to rain steadily. "Now, then," said Picton, climbing up on his confounded travelling equipage, "let's get on." With some difficulty I made a half-seat on the corner of my own trunk; Picton ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... another New-England man, William Eaton, led an army of nine Americans from Egypt to Derne, the easternmost province of Tripoli,—a march of five hundred miles over the Desert. He took the capital town by storm, and would have conquered the whole Regency, if he had been supplied with men and money from our fleet. "Certainly," says Pascal Paoli Peek, a non-commissioned officer of marines, one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... repentance and foretelling our destruction by flood or earthquake. If the young men boast their knowledge of the ledges and sunken rocks, I speak of pilots who knew the wind by its scent and the wave by its taste, and could have steered blindfold to any port between Boston and Mount Desert guided only by the rote of the shore—the peculiar sound of the surf on each island, beach and line of rocks along the coast. Thus do I talk, and all my auditors grow wise while they ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of some enterprising individuals, no part of it beyond 30 leagues from the coast had been seen by an European. Various conjectures were entertained upon the probable consistence of this extensive space. Was it a vast desert? Was it occupied by an immense lake—a second Caspian Sea, or by a Mediterranean to which existed a navigable entrance in some part of the coasts hitherto unexplored? or was not this new continent rather divided into two or more islands by straits communicating from the unknown parts of ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... offerings laid upon the shrine of your genius. At each succeeding book that I have given to the world, I have paused to consider if it were worthy to be inscribed with your great name, and at each I have played the procrastinator, and hoped for that morrow of better desert which never came. But 'defluat amnis',—the time runs on; and I am tired of waiting for the ford which the tides refuse. I seize, then, the present opportunity, not as the best, but as the only one I can be sure of commanding, to express ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... no travellers on the road, and but little posting—but had acquired a new trade as a depot for hunters and hunting men. The landlord let out horses and kept hunting stables, and the house was generally filled from the beginning of November till the middle of April. Then it became a desert in the summer, and no guests were seen there, till the pink coats flocked down again ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... home he had to stop several times; all his strength seemed to run out of his limbs; and in the movement of the busy streets, isolated as if in a desert, he remained suddenly motionless for a minute or so before he could proceed on his way. He reached ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... breadth of from half a mile to a mile of muddy water, tenanted by uprooted trees, and bristling with formidable snags. On either side a continuous forest confines the view, thus depriving the scene of that solemn grandeur which the horizonless desert or the boundless main is calculated to inspire. The signs of human life, like angels' visits, are few and far between. No beast is seen in the forest, no bird in the air, except from time to time a flight of water-fowl. At times the eye is gratified by ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... to work in the dawn, we leave behind us the desert-like town; all day it drowses, haunted by a few figures of old age and infirmity—but the mill is alive! We have given up, in order to satisfy its appetite, all manner of flesh and blood, and the gentlest morsel between its merciless jaws is the ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... desert. Dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and 1 year's confinement ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... him that I could not help. But then it made me feel undutiful to my dear mother, and then there was the further difficulty to be faced. It would have been all very well to live with my nephews if we had been in a desert island, but I could not expect them not to make friends of their own; and if mine chose to drop me, how would it be for me, at my age, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wise And good so well, they will not grudge the price. 'Tis not all Kingdomes joyn'd in one could buy (If priz'd aright) so true a Library Of man: where we the characters may finde Of ev'ry Nobler and each baser minde. Desert has here reward in one good line For all it lost, for all it might repine: Vile and ignobler things are open laid, The truth of their false colours are displayed: You'l say the Poet's both best Judge and Priest, No guilty soule abides ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... we made at Jalula where men were afraid, For death was a difficult trade, and the sword was a broker of doom; And the Spear was a Desert Physician who cured not a few of ambition, And drave not a few to perdition with medicine bitter and strong: And the shield was a grief to the fool and as bright as a desolate pool, And as straight as the rock of Stamboul when their cavalry thundered along: For the coward was ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... the Iroquois League, the larger portion of the nation had followed Brant to Canada—all the Caniengas, the greater part of the Onondaga nation, all the Cayugas, the one hundred and fifty of our own Oneidas. And though the Senecas did not desert their western post as keepers of the shattered gate in a house divided against itself, they acted with the Mohawks; the Onondagas had brought their wampum from Onondaga, and a new council-fire was kindled in Canada as rallying-place ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... heathen folk hold this realm, possess it with joy, if they may it win. And if they all are heathen, and thou alone Christian, they will never long have thee for king, except thou in thy days receive the heathen law, and desert the high God, and praise their idols. Then shalt thou perish in this world's realm, and thy wretched soul sink to hell; then hast thou dearly bought the love of thy bride!" Then answered Vortiger—of each ...
— Brut • Layamon
... perchance, some huge-and turreted fortress, or a pile of misshapen battlements, rising beyond the hills like the grim castles of romance, or the air-built shadows of fairy-land.... Night was fast closing; I was alone, out of the beaten track, amidst a desert and thinly-inhabited region; a perfect stranger, I had only the superior sagacity of my steed to look to for safety and eventual extrication ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... avocation. Only it required a self-discipline of which, unfortunately, he was incapable. In all pursuits requiring dexterity, all sciences, the first steps are laborious, wearisome, and apparently thankless, and the Canaan which they promise is reached only after weary wandering through the desert. Prince Louis did not possess the self-denial requisite for it. So he continued his life devoted to purely external things and meanwhile was as much bored as Jonah in the whale. He undertook long journeys and disappeared ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau |
