"Desert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ignorant of this, I have dissembled too long. It was thy barbarous hand that brought the objets of my fondness into this lamentable condition; and thou hast the cruelty to come and insult a despairing lover." "Yes," said I, in a rage, "it was I that chastised that monster, according to his desert; I ought to have treated thee in the same manner; I now repent that I did not; thou hast too long abused my goodness." As I spoke these words, I drew out my cimeter, and lifted up my hand to punish her; but regarding me stedfastly, she said with a jeering smile, "Moderate thy ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... accumulation of means for an easy life under the oppressions of an Austrian tariff, which exacted that goods manufactured in Lemberg should be sent for inspection to the Vienna custom house before being exposed to sale. There are, however, a few very splendid chateaux, like oases in the Desert of Sahara; they can be counted readily on one's fingers; among them few patriots; no conspirator, much less an insurgent or crippled invalid, ever called to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... on this occasion, for he heard enough to learn that a large proportion of the crew intended, as soon as they saw a favourable opportunity, to seize the long-boat—which contained nearly all the provisions that had been got up from the hold— and desert the ship ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... confided to us. If we accept them in a spirit worthy of our race and our traditions, a great opportunity comes with them. The islands lie under the shelter of our flag. They are ours by every title of law and equity. They cannot be abandoned. If we desert them we leave them at once to anarchy and finally to barbarism. We fling them, a golden apple of discord, among the rival powers, no one of which could permit another to seize them unquestioned. Their rich plains and valleys would be the scene of endless strife ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... other boot and was continually chewing the pieces of leather. Seeing what hunger had led us to, I must confess that I began to have terrible fears. Vitalis had often told me tales of men who had been shipwrecked. In one story, a crew who had been shipwrecked on a desert island where there was nothing to eat, had eaten the ship's boy. Seeing my companions in such a famished state I wondered if that fate was to be mine. I knew that the professor and Uncle Gaspard would never eat me, but of Pages, ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... have changed all that, and their implement of warfare has been the hideous but necessary dredger. No longer need vessels of heavy tonnage desert the Tyne for the Wear, as they were perforce driven to do during the first half of the nineteenth century, for the Wearsiders had set about deepening and widening their river long before the Tynesiders did the same by theirs. Considerable and continuous ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... few hours were for me fraught with fearful anxiety and uncertainty,—yes, uncertainty,—for (to my shame, let it be recorded) I actually debated in my own mind whether or not to desert these unfortunate boys of mine, who could not themselves ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... yet—not yet! for chance (what Dillaway lyingly called chance)—in his moments of remorse at these reflections, when God had hoped him penitent at last, and, if he still continued so, might save him—sent help in the desert! For, as he reelingly trampled along on the rank herbage between this forest and that sea of sand, just as he was dying of exhaustion, his faint foot trod upon a store of life and health! It was ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... obey them. They who will yield to no such conditions may be hermits, but cannot be generals and statesmen. If a man will walk straight forward without turning to the right or the left, he must walk in a desert, and not in Cheapside. Thus was he enforced to do many things which jumped not with his inclination nor made for his honour; because the army, on which alone he could depend for power and life, might not otherwise be contented. And I, for mine own ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... particular. I hope my Countrymen are not all ungrateful. Some of them, I have been taught to believe are so; otherwise the publick Character of an old Servant would not have been aspersd, nor wd it have been said, as I am informd it has, that he had been bribd to desert his Country. It is his honorable Lot to have Enemies. Honorable, because he flatters himself his Enemies are among the weak & the wicked. I leave my own Character, under God, in the Care of my virtuous fellow Citizens. I ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... here, in this lone dwelling-place Of desert-storm, of cold, and desolation, There was prepared for me a consolation: Three of ye here, O friends! did I embrace. Thou enteredst first the poet's house of sorrow, O Pustchin! thanks be with thee, thanks, and praise Ev'n exile's bitter day from thee could borrow The light and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... or misfortune is universally regarded as the evidence of divine approval or disapproval. Even Jesus' disciples on seeing a blind man by the wayside, raised the question: "Did this man sin or his parents?" Among the Arabs of the desert the tribal mark, either tattooing or a distinctive way of cutting the hair, insures the powerful protection of the tribe. Each tribesman is under the most sacred obligation to protect the life of a member of his tribe, or to avenge, if need be with his own life-blood, ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... said Mr. Hodgson, a stout, sun-browned fellow, who looked more like a hunter than a clergyman. "We have been talking over the matter, and we are not going to desert you until the new men come. And as to breakfast, here are Mr. Litchfield and myself ready to serve as stewards, assistants, cooks, or in any culinary capacity. We both have camped out and are not green hands. So you must let us help you, and we shall ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... is Roland," Blancandrin spake, "Who every race would recreant make. And on all possessions of men would seize; But in whom doth he trust for feats like these?" "The Franks! the Franks!" Count Ganelon cried; "They love him, and never desert his side; For he lavisheth gifts that seldom fail, Gold and silver in countless tale, Mules and chargers, and silks and mail, The king himself may have spoil at call. From hence to the East he will ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... with several of his own company. An inmate of Libby Prison and a sharer from choice of the apartment where his men were confined. As an officer, he was entitled to better quarters than the filthy pen where the poor privates were, but Mark Ray had a large, warm heart, and he would not desert those who had been so faithful to him, and so he took their fare, and by his genial humor and unwavering cheerfulness kept many a heart from fainting and made the prisoners' life more bearable than it could have been without him. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... grassy concise nothing ginger faraway kettle shadow next mercy scrub hilltop internal recite shoestring narrative thunder seldom harbor jury eagle windy occupy squirm hobby balloon multiply necktie unlikely supple westbound obey inch broken relish spellbound ferment desert expect ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... from you!" she answered. But this expressed only a little of what she felt. The rest was that she had never been loved before. She had believed it, but this was different; this was the hot wind of the desert, at the approach of which the others dropped dead, like mere sweet airs of the garden. It wrapped her about; it lifted her off her feet, while the very taste of it, as of something potent, acrid and strange, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... lovers are suddenly interrupted by the exultant voice of the Hebrew people in the distance, which recalls Elcia. What a delightful and inspiriting allegro is the theme of this march, as the Israelites set out for the desert! No one but Rossini can make wind instruments and trumpets say so much. And is not the art which can express in two phrases all that is meant by the 'native land' certainly nearer to heaven than the others? This clarion-call always moves me so deeply that I cannot ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... (fig. 2.) It was politely sent me by Dr. John Houstoun, an intelligent surgeon of the British Navy, with the following memorandum: "From an ancient town called Chiuhiu, or Atacama Baja, on the river Loa, and on the western edge of the desert of Atacama. The bodies are nearly all buried in the sitting posture, [the conventional usage of most of the American nations from Patagonia to Canada,] with the hands either placed on each side of the head, ...
— Some Observations on the Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines • Samuel George Morton
... successful inroads the Romans derived no real or lasting benefit; nor did they attempt to preserve such distant conquests, separated from the provinces of the empire by a large tract of intermediate desert. The reduction of the kingdom of Osrhoene was an acquisition of less splendor indeed, but of a far more solid advantage. That little state occupied the northern and most fertile part of Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and the Tigris. Edessa, its capital, was situated about twenty ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... have not yet quite succeeded—though there are great hopes—and you do not know how it sunk with your departure. What adds to my regret is having seen so little of you during your stay in this crowded desert, where one ought to be able to bear thirst like a camel,—the springs are so few, and most ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... them, while they were traveling through the wide extent of deep sands, as it is said to have done when Cambyses led his army that way, blowing the sand together in heaps, and raising, as it were, the whole desert like a sea upon them, till fifty thousand were swallowed up and destroyed by it. All these difficulties were weighed and represented to him; but Alexander was not easily to be diverted from anything he was bent upon. For fortune having hitherto seconded him in his designs, made ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... until the loss was entirely counterbalanced, would not repair the injury, even though the eggs showed at the end of incubation exactly the correct amount of shrinkage. A man might thirst in the desert for a week, then, coming to a hole of water fall in and drown, but we would hardly accept the report of a normal water content found at the post-mortem examination as evidence that his death was not connected with ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... swell feed the steward puts on, too, considerin' where we was. Nothin' dry about it, either; for, while Mr. Ellins ain't a great hand to overdo irrigation, he's no guide to the Great Desert. There was silver ice buckets on the floor, and J. Dudley Simms lost a side bet to Professor Leonidas Barr on namin' the vintage. He was five ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... again or think again of Mrs. Van Brandt. But, my dear, your heart is closed to every woman but one. Be happy in your own way, and let me see it before I die. The wretch to whom that poor creature is sacrificing her life will, sooner or later, ill-treat her or desert her and then she must turn to you. Don't let her think that you are resigned to the loss of her. The more resolutely you set her scruples at defiance, the more she will love you and admire you in secret. Women are like that. ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... looked behind her. Back there, somewhere, were her hot little room and her still hotter bed; but between her and them lay a horrid desert of blackness across which one must feel one's way with outstretched, shrinking arms; while before her, out on the sun-parlor roof, were the moonlight and the cool, ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... Tobias Clutterbuck remained with the young man, who resolutely refused to leave the platform. The major knew of a snug little corner not far off where he could have put in the time very comfortably, but he could not bring himself to desert his companion even for a minute. I have no doubt that that wait of two hours in the draughty station is marked up somewhere to the old sinner's ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... think it my duty to do so. You should be warned that the very worst that can happen must be expected. I have not heard directly from Mr. Day for a fortnight, and then but a brief message came. He was then well and free, but spoke of being probably obliged to desert his post, after all. ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... and attached the child; always more easily won by these methods than by any severe exercise of authority. And his delight in our walks was to tell Harry of the glories of his order, of its martyrs and heroes, of its brethren converting the heathen by myriads, traversing the desert, facing the stake, ruling the courts and councils, or braving the tortures of kings; so that Harry Esmond thought that to belong to the Jesuits was the greatest prize of life and bravest end of ambition; the greatest career ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... over which the troops advanced was a rolling desert, blasted, twisted, swept clear of all vegetation. What the Germans could not destroy they had carried away with them. There remained only frazzled stumps of trees, dead bodies ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... emperor by his adherents at Fu-chau, in Fo-kien, but they were speedily driven from that province (where the local histories, as Mr. G. Phillips informs me, preserve traces of their adventures in the Islands of Amoy Harbour), and the young emperor died on a desert island off the Canton coast in 1278. His younger brother took his place, but a battle, in the beginning of 1279 finally extinguished these efforts of the expiring dynasty, and the minister jumped with his young lord into the sea. It is ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... I may see such a blessed Change in our Affairs, but Seasons and Aspects are a little unpromising; and what discourages me the more is, another dreadful Quality of our People, that of their being so ready to desert and forsake their Country, which they leave as sillily as Birds quit their Nests, upon every little Fright or Disturbance, or just to gratify a wandering Humour, and to chuse a Situation they like better. Our Noblemen and Gentlemen ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... he was in his own room, and she was in hers, and the promenade deck was as barren as the desert of Sahara. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the Golpho Triste: here they got ashore in a canoe, and, marching along the coast with all the speed they could, they directed their course towards Golpho Triste, the common refuge of the pirates. Being upon his journey, and all very hungry and thirsty, as is usual in desert places, they were pursued by a troop of an hundred Spaniards. Brasiliano, perceiving their imminent danger, encouraged his companions, telling them they were better soldiers, and ought rather to die under their arms fighting, as it became ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... and I could not consent to desert Almah, even if by doing so I should save her life. My own nature revolted from it. Still it was not a thing which I could dismiss on the instant. The safety of Almah's life, indeed, required consideration; but then the thought came of her wonder ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... massing of large areas. Exclusive of Alaska, about three-fifths of the national domain has been sold or subjected to contract or grant. Of the remaining two-fifths a considerable portion is either mountain or desert. A rapidly increasing population creates a growing demand for homes, and the accumulation of wealth inspires an eager competition to obtain the public land for speculative purposes. In the future ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... soldiers the horses and mules, cotton and corn, clothing and provisions, and all sorts of valuables; and in most cases were ready to suffer themselves before they would reveal the hidden property. To be sure there were masters who abused their slaves, and some of these were naturally ready to desert at the first opportunity; but in the main the slave owner was more kind to his human property than the considerate soldier was to his horse, and the negro as a race is appreciative ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... that this was no haunt for human beings; and as they tramped on, following the windings of the valley, the impression grew stronger and stronger that theirs were the first, possibly might prove to be the last, human feet that had ever traversed this stony desert. ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... simple farmer, at a word from the Invisible God, marched, with family and stock, through the terrible desert to a distant land to live among a people whose language he could neither speak nor understand! Not bad that! But later he did even better, marching hot foot against the combined armies of five kings, flushed with recent victory, to rescue one man! His army? ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd
... when the paschal lamb is eaten, and they are saved by its blood, as mankind is saved by the blood of the Lamb of God. The ransomed people miraculously pass through the Red Sea, foreshadowing the Christian's regeneration by baptism; as they wander afterwards in the desert, manna descends from heaven to feed them, and water gushes from the rock to quench their thirst, and to prefigure that sacred food and those streams of grace which are to be the salvation of all men. Almost every interruption of the laws of nature bespeaks the advent of the Redeemer, ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... redoubts on Dorchester Point, and two smaller ones on their flanks. They were all raised during last night, with an expedition equal to that of 'the genii' belonging to Alladin's wonderful lamp. From these hills they command the whole town, so that we must drive them from their post or desert the place." ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... the Horatii and Curiatii, which looked much grander in the light of the torches than in the day, and, driving hastily through Albano, came upon the Campagna once more. It was still more like a desert in the night than in the day, for it was an interminable ocean, and the masses of ruins, coming darker than the rest, seemed like ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... of English and had not a dollar. They would gladly return to France could they manage the tickets. It was impossible. Something must be done. A concert or two must be given. Camilla would surely succeed if she had a hearing. The American must not desert them utterly. He might, at least, act as their business agent and assist them ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... with their myriad tongues, Shouted of liberty; And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud, With a voice so wild and free, That he started in his sleep and smiled At their ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... were the Continental troops to privations of every sort, it would have been hazarding too much to move them under these circumstances against a powerful enemy. In a desert or in a garrison where food is unattainable, courage, patriotism, and habits of discipline enable the soldier to conquer wants which, in ordinary situations, would be deemed invincible. But to perish in a ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... charge His angel legions Watch and ward o'er thee to keep; Though thou walk through hostile regions, Though in desert ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... exposed. I feel that I am giving you a right to treat me with levity: But I rely upon your love, upon your honour! The step which I am on the point of taking, will incense my Relations against me: Should you desert me, should you betray the trust reposed in you, I shall have no friend to punish your insult, or support my cause. On yourself alone rests all my hope, and if your own heart does not plead in my behalf, I am undone ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... calculate the consequences. I have already been asked to pledge my word that England would enter into no negociation in which their interests were not included, and, could they be brought to imagine that we should desert them, the ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... out with one reach of my arms, just as I saw Williams and Peterson stagger in with Mrs. Daniver between them. In some miraculous way we got beyond danger, and met my pirates, dancing and shouting a welcome to our desert isle. Their advent, thereon, gave the two womenfolk a fervent wish to embrace, sob and weep extraordinarily. I had said nothing to Helena and ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... or two places excepted, varies from three to six miles in width. In other words, almost the whole population of the country is massed in the flood-plain and delta of the Nile; the remaining part is a desert producing ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... been possible for him to have got away, but not for Dan. The Irishman was wearing an American naval uniform. To desert Dan, of course, never entered ...
— Young Glory and the Spanish Cruiser - A Brave Fight Against Odds • Walter Fenton Mott
... Roy in his somewhat didactic manner, "is the sort of fellow I'd pick out to be cast away on a desert island with. He isn't so scintillant, you ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... desires, this shameful fall was inexorably doomed, might you not see humiliation in power itself, obscurity in renown, gloom in the present, despair in the future? And would it not seem to you nobler even to desert the camp than to ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... die, and if I went could do no worse. I spent thirty days at your Invalids' Hotel and Surgical Institute, and came away like a new man, comparatively speaking. I found the Institution all it had been represented, and I may truthfully say, that the time spent there was to me as an oasis in a desert to a weary and thirsty traveler; for those were among the happiest days of my life. No pains were spared to make each patient comfortable and at home. I cannot recommend your Institution too highly, for I feel that to your treatment I owe my life. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... out any day, and would not stop for a moment. Everybody has to get his own, except an Irish landlord. But I think we should fare ill all together. Your brother is behaving nobly, and I don't think we ought to desert him. Of course you ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... and you have only to hold on. The pass is 6000 feet high, and we ascended still higher. Fortune favoured us. It was a lovely day and the clouds lay in a great sheet a thousand feet below. The peak, clear in the blue sky, rose up bare and majestic 5000 feet out of as desolate a desert clothed with the stiff retama shrubs (a sort of broom) as you can well imagine. [(The Canadas, which he calls] "the one thing worth seeing there.") It took us three hours and a half to get up, passing for a good ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... thighes, and short legs, and yet being equall vnto vs in stature: for that length which is wanting in their legs is supplied in the vpper parts of their bodies. Their countrey in olde time was a land vtterly desert and waste, situated far beyond Chaldea, from whence they haue expelled Lions, Beares, & such like vntamed beasts with their bowes, and other engines. Of the hides of beasts being tanned, they vse to shape ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... a sacrifice, offer the seediest; Which accounts for a theory known to my hearers Who live in the wild by the wattle beguiled, That a "stag" makes quite good enough mutton for shearers.) Be that as it may, as each year passed away, A scapegoat was led to the desert and freighted With sin (the poor brute must have been overweighted) And left there—to die as ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... giant who held apart heaven and earth. Virgil identifies him with the mountains which lie in North Africa between the sea and the desert of Sahara. Atlas was the father of Maia, the mother of Mercury. The latter is called 'Cyllenius' from his ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... dangers, and courageously braved the vicissitudes of fate. His star had risen with mine. Will not mine sink with his? Oh, Junot, how could you leave me now, when you knew that I stood so greatly in need of you? Junot, this is the first time that you desert me, and forget your plighted faith. I am on the eve of a great and doubtful war, surrounded by enemies—and my friends are deserting me and escaping into the grave!" He paused, bowing his head lower upon his breast, and wrinkling his forehead in his grief. A sad silence ensued, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... though Spaine gave him his first ayre and vogue He would be call'd, henceforth, the English rogue, But that hee's too well suted, in a cloth Finer than was his Spanish, if my oath Will be receiv'd in court; if not, would I Had cloath'd him so! Here's all I can supply To your desert who have done it, friend! And this Faire aemulation, and no envy is; When you behold me wish myselfe, the man That would have done, that, which ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... meaning, and less comprehension! What impertinence it is for a woman like yourself,—vain, weak and worldly,—to assert your own will—your own thought and opinion—in the face of the Most High! What! YOU will desert the Church? YOU whose ancestors have for ages been devout servants of the faith? YOU, the last descendant of the Counts Hermenstein, a noble and loyal family, will degrade your birth by taking up with the rags and tags of humanity—the scarecrows of life? And by your sheer stupidity and ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... I would have given a round sum for the rags of the shipwrecked mariner to cover me. Here I was in the condition of a primeval savage, on a desert spot, without a dwelling in sight, and prevented, by the want of clothing, from seeking out the habitations of men. I ran to the highest ground in the neighbourhood, and that was close to the water's edge, and looked around me in every direction. On the shore which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... like a fish upon dry land. Lord Melbourne hardly feels equal to the exertion, and therefore thinks that he shall establish himself for the present at Melbourne, where he will be within reach of Trentham, Beau Desert,[137] Wentworth,[138] and Castle Howard,[139] if he likes to go to them. The only annoyance is that it is close to Lord and Lady G——, whom he will be ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... indeed, all but abandoned his practice at the Bar, never putting himself forward for the ordinary business of a Chancery barrister. But, nevertheless, he spent the largest half of his life in his chambers, breakfasting there, reading there, writing there, and sleeping there. He did not altogether desert the lodge at Fulham, and the two girls who lived there. He would not even admit to them, or allow them to assert that he had not his home with them. Sometimes for two nights together, and sometimes for three, he would be at the villa,—never remaining there, however, during ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... prosperity. Commerce and industry dwindled away, and civilization abandoned those countries which for so long it bad preferred to all others. They became insalubrious and sterile; the territory that had supported so many millions of men became nothing more than a desert. On the hill of Fort St. Michel wild horses cropped the ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... conveyed, more than treble or quadruple that number are harnessed to the vehicle. M. de Lesseps [2] gives an almost incredible account of this. He is speaking of the voracity of these poor beasts, in the midst of the snowy desert, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... feet high. Down these he hurried with impatience; and, seating himself on some rocks under the centre of the falls, he enjoyed the sublime spectacle of this stupendous object; which, since the creation of the world, had been lavishing its magnificence on the desert, unknown to civilization. For ninety or a hundred yards from the left cliff, the water falls in one smooth, even sheet, over a precipice of at least eighty feet. The remaining part of the river precipitates itself ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... Morgan, since that doesn't prevent you from capturing it. But I know of some brave fellows who are awaiting these sixty thousand francs, you so disdainfully kick aside, with as much impatience and anxiety as a caravan, lost in the desert, awaits the drop of water which is to save it from ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... augmentation prove necessary. Get together then the forty oldest men under my command. Let them cumber themselves with nothing in the way of offence except one tall spear each, and see that every man is provided with water and dates for twenty days' sustenance of horse and man in the desert." ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... "The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows, The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows. What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare, Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... of our social life is not to banish woman back to the house and the hearth, as our "domestic life" fanatics prescribe, and after which they lust, like the Jews in the Desert after the fleshpots of Egypt. On the contrary, the whole trend of society is to lead woman out of the narrow sphere of strictly domestic life to a full participation in the public life of the people—a designation that will not then cover the male sex only—and in the task ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... BAY, MASSACHUSETTS, May 24, 18—.—Theosophists and others at Onset Bay Camp Grounds have been greatly excited of late by a message which has been received from the Mahatmas, Koot Hoomi, and his partner, who are summering in the desert of Gobi. The message is of considerable length, and contains much that is purely ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... a patched and ragged Cinderella of the desert. Upon her slim, ill-poised figure the descending sun slanted a shaft of glory. It caught in a spotlight the cheap, dingy gown, the coarse stockings through the holes of which white flesh peeped, the heavy, broken brogans that disfigured the feet. It beat upon a small ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... aptitude and his memory were prodigious; so that he was able to start on his peregrinations by the 15th of April, the date at which he usually opened the spring campaign. Two large commercial houses, alarmed at the decline of business, implored the ambitious Gaudissart not to desert the article Paris, and seduced him, it was said, with large offers, to take their commissions once more. The king of travellers was amenable to the claims of his old friends, enforced as they were by the ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... lived at the other side of the county, so that she could not expect him to come to Slane on her account; but surely something more important would bring him eventually, and then she might hope to see him. She knew he would not desert her. And she had some manuscript ready to confide to him now if he should repeat his offer; but she was too diffident to send it to him ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... noble old trees, that had bordered the avenue and shaded the lawn, was left standing; many lay prostrate upon the ground, while others had been used for fuel. Of the house naught remained but a few feet of stone wall, some charred, blackened beams, and a heap of ashes. The gardens were a desert, the lawn was changed to a muddy field by the tramping of many feet, and furrowed with deep ruts where the artillery had passed and repassed; fences, hedge-rows, shrubbery—all had disappeared; and the fields, once cultivated with great care, ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... 'this was a capricious burlesque of true philanthropy.' I reply that it served its purpose—of proclaiming my arrival in London and of clearly demonstrating the purpose of my coming! You ask who are my accomplices! I answer—they are as the sands of the desert! You seek to learn who I am. Seek, rather, ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... sudden vividness as he took his seat in an ill-lit, shabbily upholstered box in the second tier of the New Theatre. He seemed almost to hear again the echoes of that despairing cry which had rung out so plaintively across the desert of empty benches from somewhere amongst the shadows of the auditorium. Several times during the performance he had glanced up in the same direction; once he had almost fancied he could see a solitary, bent ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... know, is a feature of Japan, growing in importance every day. It was only invented seven years ago, and already there are nearly 23,000 in one city, and men can make so much more by drawing them than by almost any kind of skilled labour, that thousands of fine young men desert agricultural pursuits and flock into the towns to make draught-animals of themselves, though it is said that the average duration of a man's life after he takes to running is only five years, and that the runners fall victims in large numbers to aggravated forms of ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... comparisons between themselves and their republican neighbours. "What makes it more serious," he said, "is that all the prosperity of which Canada is thus robbed is transplanted to the other side of the line, as if to make Canadians feel more bitterly how much kinder England is to the children who desert her, than to those who remain faithful. It is the inconsistency of imperial legislation, and not the adoption of one policy rather than another, which is the bane of ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... king:—the song of the wanderer, who denies that he ever had a home and yet remembers it, and the pain of the recollection is heard in the song. No one knows or understands, perhaps not even the player, who merely divines it and meditates thereon. It is the desert wind, of which no one knows whence it comes and whither it goes; the driving cloud, of which no one knows whence it arose, and whither it disappears. A homeless, unsubstantial, immaterial bitterness ... a flowerless, echoless, roadless ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... gradually, very gradually, her self began to wake, began to release itself from the spell of place, and to struggle forward, as it were, out of the shattering grip of the silence. And she burned with indignation in the chill air of the desert. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... feature in the foreground of that magnificent landscape, they found them far from unpleasing. Some such pair is in the foreground of every famous American landscape; and when I think of the amount of public love-making in the season of pleasure-travel, from Mount Desert to the Yosemite, and from the parks of Colorado to the Keys of Florida, I feel that our continent is but a larger Arcady, that the middle of the nineteenth century is the golden age, and that we want very little of being a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... instinct with which women are usually credited seems too often to desert them on the only occasions when it would be of any real use. One would say it was there for trivialities only, since in a crisis they are usually dense, fatally doing the wrong thing. It is hardly too much to say that most domestic tragedies are caused by the feminine intuition of men and the ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... vessel glided over the waters, she gazed into their depths, seeing only a sun-scorched desert, waste and bare, where no wave murmured, no breeze sighed. Again she saw a loved form on the burning sands: the dear dead, denied even ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... constantly refused to be a "judge or a divider," she would have been constantly troubled with quarrels too paltry to be referred to me, and which were the sooner forgotten that the litigants were not drawn on further and further into the desert of dispute by the mirage of a justice that could quench no thirst. Only when any such affair was brought before me, did she use her good offices to bring about a right feeling between the contending parties, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... remembered to present Miss Linda as a coming naturalist. She got her start from her father, who was one of the greatest nerve specialists the world ever has known. She knows every inch of the mountains, the canyons and the desert. She always says that she cut her teeth on a chunk of adobe, while her father hunted the nests of trap-door spiders out in Sunland. What should I have said when describing a suitable ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... words had expressed itself in her eyes and in the alternating colour and pallor of her face. It was the first time in her life any man had told her that she was refined and graceful and flower-like; that she was, so to speak, wasting her sweetness on the desert air, and the speech was both pleasant and painful to her. The long dark lashes swept her cheek; her lips set tightly to repress the quiver which threatened them; but when he had completely broken down, she raised her eyes to his with a look so grave, ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... pursue truth, and never weary of striving to settle accounts with himself and the world. No matter what happens to the right or to the left of him,—be it a chimaera or fancy that makes him happy, let him take heart and go on, with no fear of the desert which widens to his view. Of one thing only must he be quite certain: that under no circumstances will he discover any lack of worth in himself when the veil is raised; the sight of it would be the Gorgon that would kill him. Therefore, if he wants ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... through me. I could always pray; and I could be quiet and trust; and I could be full of faith, hope and love; and anybody with those is not unhappy. And God is with his people; and he can feed them in a desert. And with that, I went down to my stateroom, to sob my heart out. Not altogether in sorrow, or I think I should not have shed a tear; but with that sense of joy and riches in the midst of trial; the feeling of care ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... course, this sublime suitor must die, or desert me, to show how I would behave under the trial.—Katy," continued my aunt, after a little pause, with a smile and slight blush, "I have half a mind to tell you a little romance of my early days, when I was just your age. It may be useful to you at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... their airy speculations, and faithfully follow examples. What examples? The examples of bankrupts. But defeated, baffled, disgraced, when their breath, their strength, their inventions, their fancies desert them, their confidence still maintains its ground. In the manifest failure of their abilities, they take credit for their benevolence. When the revenue disappears in their hands, they have the presumption, in some ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... all will desert you, if the Englishwoman whom he loves is not speedily removed. Even to-night he may give papers into her hand, and your secret will ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... just like the Swiss Family Robinson, and Leila on the Desert Island. It's as good as being shipwrecked, without any of the bother," interrupted Mellicent gushingly. "Now, then, we must make a tent, and examine the trees to see which are good to eat, and catch crabs and lobsters, and shoot the birds as they fly past, and Professor Reid shall ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... M.D. uncle," as she sometimes called him, were like oases in a desert to the suffering child, for he invariably made her forget herself, and always left her bright and happy with something pleasant to think about and talk over with her mother ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... had been less onerous the Bourbons might have had fewer, or at least less noble, followers. The French nobles had been more faithful to them than the English to the Stuarts, for Cromwell had no luxurious court or rich appointments which he could hold out to those who would desert the royal cause. No words can exaggerate the self-abnegation of those men. I have seen a supper party under my father's roof where our guests were two fencing-masters, three professors of language, one ornamental ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... departed from the half-way house at the period to which I refer; and as we drove up to the door, amid the liveliest strains of the editorial bugle, our jovial host welcomed us with his heartiest greeting. This spot is truly an oasis in the desert, affording a few acres of tolerable land, and some excellent garden-ground which, in the season, produces abundance of grapes, peaches, apples, figs, and various kinds of vegetables. A deep brook runs at the bottom of the garden which ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... the caravan reached us than our attention was drawn to the faces of the camels probing the distance. You know how a camel examines the air as he goes along—he is continually stretching forth his head and smelling the air, and he can do this easily with his long neck. As camels live in the desert they must keep smelling the air to find out its humidity. Every time the air is very humid they know that water is nearby. That is why we call camels the examiners of space; in your country you would call ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... answered, "Thou knowest best and I am at thy commandment;" so he bade fetch two swift horses and bestrode one himself, whilst his wife mounted the other. Then they took what they could of gold and went forth, flying through the night to the desert of Karman;[FN138] while Isfahand entered the city and made himself king. Now King Azadbakht's wife was big with child and the labour pains took her in the mountain; so they alighted at the foot, by a spring of water, and she bare a boy as he were the moon. Bahrjaur ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Shakespeare avowedly presents the middle-class people of an English town. In other comedies English characters and customs appear through the thin disguise of Italian names; in the histories there are comic scenes drawn from English life; but only here does Shakespeare desert the city and the country for the small town and draw the larger number of his characters from the great middle class. {164} A tradition has come down to us, one which is supported by the nature of the play, that Queen Elizabeth ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... region. It affords pasturage in patches. Robinson describes Wady Feiran, northwest of Sinai, as well watered, with gardens of fruit and palm trees; and he was assured by the Arabs that in rainy seasons grass springs up over the whole face of the desert. The whole northeastern part of the wilderness, where the Israelites seem to have dwelt much of the thirty-eight years, is capable of cultivation, and is still cultivated by the Arabs in patches. (2.) The Israelites undoubtedly marched not in a direct line, but ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... saw that he had all the qualities to make him a leader of slavers or pirates. In extreme danger he was the boldest and most confident of them all, and he stood by his men. They could see that he would not desert them, that their fortune was his fortune. He was wounded, Robert did not yet know how badly, but he never yielded to his hurt. He was a figure of strength in the boat, and the men drew courage from him to struggle ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... were still confident. They felt sure that none of their original votes, numbering three hundred and more, would desert them, and that it would be impossible for the rest of the convention, divided among so many candidates, to agree, and that they would in the end get ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... is the spot it best loves, and where it grows to the stateliest height. Sometimes, however, it falls into the sea itself, and then the loose husk buoys it up, so that it floats away bravely till it is cast by the waves upon some distant coral reef or desert island. It is this power of floating and surviving a long voyage that has dispersed the coco-nut so widely among oceanic islands, where so few plants are generally to be found. Indeed, on many atolls or ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen |
