"Empty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... living evidences of the growth and the greatness of the nation. Here then, no doubt, the stranger begins at last to think that he can really understand the practical value of the representative principle. Thus far he has only been bewildered by what he has seen and heard of the empty stretches of land which are {140} endowed with a right to have representatives in the House of Commons, but now he begins to acknowledge to himself that a people with such great manufacturing communities can send up to London representatives ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... down to loose her she rared till she fetched some o' de furn'ture down on her haid, an' dar was a nice table broke ter kindlin' wood, an' I hed ter pay him five dollars fer it. An' jes' as I put de pocket book up agin—an' it was plum' empty—roun' de corner come de cow, wid her eyes on fire, an' she jes' strewed us bofe ober de groun' like we was dead chickens afore she runned inter de shed. An' massa, sho's yo's bawn, she hooked an' tossed ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... darkness, an advance up the hill, and the figure of Christ more bowed. Another composition, the "Sleep (death) of the Virgin," is all sweetness and peace, but no less powerful. A remarkable invention is the etomasia, a splendid empty throne prepared for the Second Advent. The stories of the Old Testament are put into relation with the Gospel by way of type and anti-type. There are allegories: the anchorite life contrasted with the mad life of the world, the celestial ladder, &c., and fine impersonations, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... witch rose up from the hearth at last and faced the betrothed. She was terrible to view in her witless old age; her face drawn into furrows and dull as lead, her bleared eyes empty of sight or conscience, and her thin hair scattered before them. It was despair, not sorrow, that Prosper read on such a face. Now she peered upon the hand-locked couple, now she parted the hair from her eyes, now slowly pointed a finger at them. Her ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... to her chin in lingerie, and Constance hovered in the vicinity. So there was no privacy there, and that was the reason Virginia evaded them, side-stepped Gussie Vetchen at the desk, eluded old Classon in the palm room, and fled like a ghost through the empty corridors as though the deuce were at her heels instead of ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... hand, there are few of the cathedral or parish churches of England which do not continue to testify to the Puritan army's destructive hatred of everything savoring of the rule of either Pope or bishop.[1] The empty niches, where some gracious image of the Virgin or the figure of some saint once looked down; the patched remnants of brilliant stained glass, once part of a picture telling some Scripture story; the mutilated statues of noted men; the tombs, hacked and hewed by pike and ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... and whether there had been other tenants in the meanwhile. He looked at me queerly for a minute, and told me the Herberts had left immediately after the unpleasantness, as he called it, and since then the house had been empty.' ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... find all the best goods sold; and that, perhaps, before they had any thing ready, the trumpet would sound which was to call them all out of the city, and then they would have to come back to him empty-handed and disgraced. ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... the whistle of sharp wings against the sky; of the clatter of wild geese which made sleep impossible, and the yelp of prairie wolves snapping up through the darkness; of thunder and lightning, of tempest and rain, of storm and blizzard and snow and cold—cold that crackled in the empty heavens like breaking glass and withered the cheek like fire; of Indians, none too certain, slipping like moccasined ghosts down the twilight, or peering unexpectedly through cabin windows; of hardship ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... edge of the forest had been witnessed by none. Quickly his mental faculties readjusted themselves. He rose to his feet, and for a few moments stood hesitatingly. He had no weapon; but as his hand rested upon the empty knife-sheath at his belt, there came to him a thought of the way in which Mukee had avenged Cummins' wife, and he turned again upon the trail. He no longer touched the low- hanging bushes. He was no ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... noxious creatures, and kill them only, But let your mouths be empty of blood, and satisfied with ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... disappeared to? She must have seen—Suddenly I remembered that at the very moment David was falling a heartrending shriek had sounded in my ears. Was it not she? But in that case why did I not see her? Before the hovel in which Latkin lived was an empty space covered with nettles and surrounded by a broken, tottering fence. I had hardly got over this fence—for there was no gate or entrance—before my eyes were greeted with this sight: On the lowest step in front ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Carbury, Felix was a vicious young man, peculiarly antipathetic to himself, to whom no respect whatever was due. Nevertheless the dinner was put off, and the waggonette was sent. But the waggonette again came back empty. That evening was spent by Roger, Lady Carbury, and ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... rubbed down after their day's work, and others were coming in. The men were talking and laughing, and there was no sign of strange animals, so I went around to the back of the yard. Here they were, in an empty cow stable, under a hay loft. There were two little ponies tied up in a stall, two goats beyond them, and dogs and monkeys in strong traveling cages. I stood in the doorway and stared at them. I was sorry for the dogs to be shut up on such a lovely evening, but I ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... exquisite patience. But somehow the benefit must redound to society and to practical knowledge, or these abstracted hermits will seem at first useless and at last mad. The logic of nonsense has a subtle charm only because it can so easily be turned into the logic of common sense. Empty dialectic is, as it were, the ballet of science: it runs most ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... be gathered the nearly empty bottles into one place and shouted for his boy to come and ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... when these were among the things he mourned for not having done, but that time was long past. He guessed at their pleasures, and knew them to be without salt. Life, said he, is as unpleasant as a plate of cold porridge. Somehow the world was growing empty for him. He wondered was he outgrowing his illusions, or his appetites, or both? The things in which other men took such interest were drifting beyond him, and (for it seemed that the law of compensation can fail) nothing was drifting towards him ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... a heavy premium that your father refused to pay it, and said he'd take precautions instead. It was a mad thing, and no one but him would have dared to do it. And now, what are you going to do with an empty mill, whose hands have all struck, and whose head is lying unconscious?' inquired ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... President Comonfort, with empty coffers, and scarcely any real political power, had felt it necessary to make some great effort to get popularity for himself and his government. He had therefore adopted the policy of attacking the fueros, the extraordinary privileges of the two classes of priests and soldiers, which ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... had, however, got hold of Marian's small box of clothing, which had been saved when so many things were washed out of the boat. He had also saved a saucepan, some hooks and lines, an axe, a saw, a small auger, a few nails, and some other articles, which had been thrown into an empty cask. They had now no longer any dread of immediate starvation for themselves, but their anxiety about us was by no means lessened; and having sufficient provisions to last them for several days, they felt more eager ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... then three, and at last five to one, whose food and clothing grew scantier with the days, while the bounties of a continent replenished their opponents,—keeping that tenuous line unbroken till very starvation unfitted soldiers to handle muskets which must be used empty if at all, because ammunition was spent! And when we recall that all this was accomplished not because the Union army was cowardly, ill-led, or asleep, but in spite of Grant's relentless push and an ably led army as brave, wary, and determined ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... work from their mind and take exercise in walking for relaxation, but retain fatigue in the mind, which, though they see various objects, does not apprehend them, but often when they meet friends and relations and are saluted by them, they are no more conscious of them than if they had met empty air. ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... the field are set before the worker, who then packs the fruit into the basket from the left. As the baskets are filled, they are placed on a flat ledge or shelf in front of the packer and are then taken off by an attendant. Empty baskets are usually held in store on a higher shelf convenient to the packer and from time to time are replenished by the attendant. Figure 46 shows a packing-table of the kind just described. Sometimes the packing-table is circular and revolves, the packers sitting about the table. The baskets ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... on this floor, which was quite empty, I saw on the wall near the doorway the mark of another bullet which had rested near and was found by the police. It was a bad aim, and showed, therefore, that the person who fired it was unused ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... a nice time they ate the ice cream box empty sixteen times and it filled right up again, and they ate the candy box empty seventeen times and it filled right up again, and Dickie and Mamma and Daddy Dorn gave everybody all the golden pennies they could carry home and emptied the penny box eighteen ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... lagoon disappeared as if it were engulfed in a sort of a subterranean cavern, or rather, it turned over upon itself, so that from the shore to the center of the lake the bed was quite empty. But in a few moments the water reappeared, and mounting toward the center of the enormous basin, it formed an immense column, which, roaring and flecked with foam, reached so high that it intercepted the sunlight. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... the car he disappeared into the shadows. The other one came piling out of a window, and streaked it across the porch and down the lawn. Allison made for him; but he changed his course, and came straight toward the car. I guess they thought it was empty. And then the other one came flying out from behind the bushes, and made for Allison; so I just leaned out of the car and shot. I don't know how I ever had the nerve, for I was terribly frightened; but he would have got Allison in another minute, and Allison didn't see him coming. ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... now began to suspect her company, proposed our taking the first box we saw empty, bespeaking a supper, and waiting till Mr. Branghton ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... lightning, and enveloped the king in so dense a mist, that it took all sight of him from the assembly. Nor was Romulus after this seen on earth. The consternation being at length over, and fine clear weather succeeding so turbulent a day, when the Roman youth saw the royal seat empty, though they readily believed the Fathers who had stood nearest him, that he was carried aloft by the storm, yet struck with the dread as it were of orphanage, they preserved a sorrowful silence for a considerable time. Then a commencement having been made ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Aos at the present day the custom seems to be becoming obsolete; sleeping houses are provided for bachelors, but are seldom used except by small boys. Unmarried girls sleep by twos and threes in houses otherwise empty, or else tenanted ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... delight in holding a kind of indiscriminate levee in the main street of the village, greeting old neighbors, shopkeepers, and farmers alike, and remembering most of them by their Christian names. In those days the merchants were accustomed to leave their empty packing-boxes on the sidewalk in front of their shops, and it was no uncommon sight to see this Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States seated carelessly on a dry-goods box, while he chatted with a group of admiring villagers. His conversation ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... the beautiful American smiled again at him. Then she got up, and swept down the dining-hall, swinging her rosy draperies. The two men followed her, and Thesiger was left alone in that vast place, seated at his table, and staring into a half-empty wineglass, to the embarrassment of the waiter ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... An empty sky, a world of heather, Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom: We two among them wading together, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... intense interest. Seeing that I had at length got their attention, I went on with my words: "Yes, I know where all the children are. They have gone from your camp-fires and wigwams. The hammocks are empty, and the little bows and arrows lie idle. Many of your hearts are sad, as you mourn for those little ones whose voices you hear not, and who come not at your call. I am so glad that the Great Spirit gives me ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... from the earth to a point about a quarter of a million miles from the sun's surface—a distance about that of the moon from our sphere—the observer would traverse the uniformly empty spaces of the heavens, where, but for the rare chance of a passing meteorite or comet, there would be nothing that we term matter. Arriving at a point some two or three hundred thousand miles from the body of the sun, he would enter the realm of the ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... examining each corner of his empty study, then took his sapphire-tipped golden staff from under his arm, placing it carefully on a rack built into his chair arm, where it would be convenient to his ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... to the platform and entered an empty compartment. Frau Rupius had a small bag of cherries in her hand, and she ate them slowly, one after another, throwing the stones out of the window. When the train began to move out of the station she leaned back and closed her eyes. Bertha looked out of the window; she felt very ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... little holes, and one can't help noticing it, especially as your shoes are such a bright yellow. That stuff that looks like lace at the bottom of your petticoat has got all draggled. I should cut it off and throw it away. Then I'd empty all that scent down the drain, and wear any sort of gloves except those kid ones you have ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... one by the other as an unpleasant duty. Again they fight and are separated. They are motored by a lady to the Hampshire coast, and there they fight on the sands until the rising tide cuts them off. An empty boat turns up to rescue them from drowning; in it they reach one of the Channel Islands. Again they fight, and again the police come. They escape from them, but remain on the island in disguise, and make themselves an opportunity to pick a quarrel and so fight a duel upon ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... sense of the miseries under which the race suffers. Verbally, indeed, Voltaire still makes his bow to the optimist theory, and the two poems appeared together in 1756; but his noble outcry against the empty and complacent deductions which it covers, led to his famous controversy with Rousseau. The history of this conflict falls beyond my subject, and I must be content with this brief reference, which ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... solitary preparation, during which he had interchanged no word, and maintained an abstinence which might have rivalled an old eremite of Engedi, Tancred had kneeled before that empty sepulchre of the divine Prince of the house of David, for which his ancestor, Tancred de Montacute, six hundred years before, had struggled with those followers of Mahound, who, to the consternation and perplexity of Christendom, continued to retain it. Christendom cares nothing ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... and Robert's heart fluttered, but when they came to the ravine they found it empty of everything save the bushes, and the scouts and guides, plunging into it, crossed to the other side. The light horsemen of Virginia followed, after them Gage's regulars and then the main army drew on its red and blue length, expecting to cross in ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the cottage of some man who takes the lead, and sit, with doors and windows shut, crammed together to pray and listen to others pray. Any of them who wishes can, as it were, ascend the pulpit here. This is why in so many parishes the pews of the parish church are comparatively empty so far as agricultural labourers are concerned. The best of clergymen must fail to fill ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... fair; he is still debating, however, whether the most appropriate name will be Victoria, Concord, or Peacetown; that is yet unsettled; we must leave the fair city unnamed for the present; but it is already thickly populated—with empty dreams and literary drivellings. He has also pledged himself to an account of coming events in India, and a circumnavigation of the Atlantic; nay, the pledge is half redeemed; the preface to the India is complete; the third legion, the Celtic contingent, and a small Moorish ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... Something had crashed up against Slovatsky's chin. Red rage shook him. He raised his sledge-hammer right for a slashing blow. Moran was directly in the path of it. It seemed that he could no more dodge it than he could hope to escape an onrushing locomotive, but it landed on empty air, with Moran around in back of the Russian, and peering impishly up under his arm. It was like an elephant worried by a mosquito. Then Moran's lightning right shot out again, smartly, and seemed just to tap the great hulk on the side of the chin. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the chaotic and unclassed parts of human nature, the parts that are left over, and will always be left over, by every rationalistic system of life. This does not merely account for the revolt of the vices and of that empty recklessness and horseplay which is sometimes more irritating than any vice. It accounts also for the return of the virtue of politeness, for that also is a nameless thing ignored by logical codes. Politeness has indeed about it something mystical; ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... seeing us as we were in discovering its presence. My men had been firing their cartridges away during the day at rocks, at fish in the river, and so on, so that when their rifles were really needed the magazines were all empty, and gave the anta plenty of time to hop away gracefully into the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of them then went together into a small blue chamber, the walls of which were ornamented with gold stars placed helter-skelter. The room was entirely empty save for an hour-glass near twice ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... beckons again," said Robert, "and, as sure as we are here, the skies have turned somewhat darker. The warriors in the fleet or on the shore cannot possibly tell the canoe is empty." ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... forgetting that there has been no material improvement that has not spiritualised the world, and that there have been few, if any, spiritual awakenings that have not wasted the world's faculties in barren hopes, and fruitless aspirations, and empty or trammelling creeds. What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism, it saves us from monotony ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... passenger train had left here at four A. M., on last Saturday morning, as usual, and had stopped there for breakfast. The conductor, William A. Fuller; the engineer, I. Cain, both of this city; and the passengers were at the table, when some eight men, having uncoupled the engine and three empty box-cars next to it, from the passenger and baggage-cars, mounted the engine, pulled open the valve, put on all steam, and left conductor, engineer, passengers, spectators, and the soldiers in the camp hard by, all lost in amazement, and dumbfounded ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... if he did not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoonwise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy's memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the circle preliminary to scalping him. He was naturally a very nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this bread-faced steward; the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... thirty yards from Heritage's window. Leon was telling some story volubly, pointing now to the Tower and now towards the sea. The big man nodded as if satisfied. Heritage noted that his right arm was tied up, and that the mackintosh sleeve was empty, and that brought him enlightenment. It was Loudon the factor, whom Dickson had winged the night before. The two of them passed out of view in the ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... down the stream and some little distance from the shore. We soon found this was very near a logging camp, and as no one had been living there for a year, we moved camp down there and occupied one of the empty cabins. We began to set dead-fall traps in long lines in many different directions, blazing the trees so we could find them if the snow came on. West of this about ten miles, where we had killed some deer earlier, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... drunk—declared openly that he would shoot me at sight. The waiter contrived to draw the cartridges from his revolver, and to give me a hint as I entered. And sure enough my man stood up, took aim, and pulled the trigger of the empty weapon. I hit him on the jaw, and let it rest at that. But if I hadn't treated that waiter right, I might have ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... strength of Berenger and Humfrey the poor fellow could never have been carried up and up, nearly to the top of the keep, then along a narrow gallery, then down again even to the castle hall, now empty, though with the candle-sticks still around where the bier had been. Aime knelt for a moment where the head had been, hiding his face; Osbert rested in a chair; and Philip looked wistfully up at his own sword hung over ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... darkness, and one by one relieved her of her precious charge. Look closely and you will see their little yellow legs and beaks, or part of a mangled form, lying about on the ground. Or, before the hen has hatched, he may find her out, and, by the same sleight of hand, remove every egg, leaving only the empty blood-stained shells to witness against him. The birds, especially the ground-builders, suffer in like manner ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... removed from conversation as far as possible." Very true; or, at least, very likely. But since Sterne had this ideal, let us grant him full liberty to make his spoon or spoil his horn, and let us judge afterwards concerning the result. The famous blackened page and the empty pages (all omitted in this new edition) are part of Sterne's method. They may seem to us trick-work and foolery; but, if we consider, they link on to his notion that writing is but a name for conversation; they ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Every animal added seems a new ecstasy to the Maker; every life added, a new embodiment of his love. He would swarm the earth with beings. There are never enough. Life, life, life,—faces gleaming, hearts beating, must fill every cranny. Not a corner is suffered to remain empty. The whole earth breeds, and ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... big, empty room echoed back her footsteps as she went to her desk to lay down book and slate before taking off her wraps. Nor did Emmy Lou dream the eye of the little boy peeped through the crack of the door from Miss ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... woodshed, and brought out branches of acacia brambles, and dry boughs of pine, and logs of oak; dragging them forth with fury. He piled them in the empty yawning space of the black hearth, and built them one on another in a pile; and struck a match and fired them, tossing pine-cones ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... came down in the morning were posted two new orders of the Military Revolutionary Committee, directing that all shops and stores should open as usual, and that all empty rooms and apartments should be put at the disposal ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... preparations for Mr. Buxton's reception that they were not aware of the very presence of that gentleman himself on the scene. He had found the front door open, as is the wont in country places, and had walked in; first stopping at the empty parlor, and then finding his way to the place where voices and sounds proclaimed that there were inhabitants. So he stood there, stooping a little under the low-browed lintels of the kitchen door, and looking large, and red, and warm, but with a pleased ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... effort has to take in hand all the circumference of our being, and to fix thoughts that wander, and to still wishes that clamour, and to empty hearts that are full of earthly loves, and to clear a space in minds that are crammed with thoughts about the transient and the near, in order that the mind may keep in steadfast contemplation of Jesus, and the heart may be bound to Him by cords of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... visitors intend to go pigeon shooting is warmly applauded, and each white man is at once provided with a guide, for, unless he has had experience of the Samoan forest, he will return with an empty bag, as, however plentiful the birds may be, their habit of hiding in the branches of the lofty tamanu and masa'oi-trees render them difficult of detection. The natives themselves are very good shots, and very rarely fail to bring ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... over-reacheth his neigbbour, therefore Dabitur is gone, and our Lord God will bless no more so richly. Beloved, said Luther, he that intendeth to have anything, the same must also give; a liberal hand was never in want nor empty. ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... that I 'm in no sort of danger of misunderstanding you. I hooked too many melons myself as a boy not to sympathize perfectly. But you must really let me carry the melon home for you. What would the girls say, if you returned empty-handed?" ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... assure us that desolation like this will not one day be the lot of our own country?" Some traveller like himself will sit by the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuyder Zee, amid silent ruins, and weep for a people inurned and their greatness changed into an empty name. Has a mysterious Deity pronounced a secret malediction against ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... commending his statuesque proportions, and hinting that he has a friend—a Royal Academy sculptor—who may one of those days make a drawing of his proportions. Further, to elicit the confidence of the vain and empty-headed Jeames, Bucket declares that his own father was successively a page, a footman, a butler, a steward, and an innkeeper. As Bucket moves along London streets, young men, with shining hats and sleek hair, evaporate ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... bedroom of a second-class hotel and getting up every morning at five o'clock because you like lying in bed late. Is that your way of mortifying the flesh? Got a soul, eh? Get rid of it. The soul! That unhappy word has been the refuge of empty minds ever since the world began. You're just like a man I used to know at Newcastle. You can't think what an ass he was. A sort of eugenical crank, who talked about the City Beautiful where everybody would lead regenerated lives like a flock ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... She surveyed the empty yard, threw her apron over her head, as stricken people used to do in Lynn in the hour of misfortune, and sat down on the log at the ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... one to a captain whose ship was caught in a trap; for there, about a mile away, and spreading from side to side of the fiord, whose blue waters touched its foot, was another grand glacier, which looked from the distance like a frozen cataract, flowing down from high up in the mountains, to empty its solid waters into ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... due Mr. Funk for rice, sugar, biscuit, tea, and other things which Doctor Arnica said his mother must have. There was the doctor's bill. The flour-barrel was getting low, and the meal-bag was almost empty. Paul saw the wolf every night as he lay in his bed, and he wished he ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Let Fortune empty her whole quiver on me, I have a soul, that, like an ample shield, Can take in all, and verge enough for more. Fate was not mine: nor am I ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... conduct in the case of Wilkes was not the most foolish act in a career of folly, but it certainly served as an illuminating preface to a chronicle of wasted time. No proofs of the wit that endeared him to his contemporaries have been preserved; his fame for an unalterable urbanity is but an empty memory; his record is only rescued from oblivion by the series of incredible follies which began with the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Donovan craned over as they passed, and saw, half-buried in the soft ground, the battered brass of one of their own shell cartridges. The heavy shell had landed fairly on top of the spot where their gun had stood, where the empty cartridge cases had been flung in a heap from the breech. If they had been ten or twenty seconds later in getting clear, if they had taken a few seconds longer over the coming into action or limbering up, ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... elements of a supernatural religion have fast disappeared from the various creeds. One by one the different Churches have drifted away from their Christian moorings and taken to the high seas of Rationalism. Assailed by the storms of unbelief they are breaking on the rocks of religious indifference. Empty churches are the natural outcome of empty creeds. "The dominant tendencies are indeed increasingly identified with those currents of thought which are making way from the definiteness of the ancient Faith, toward Unitarian vagueness." If Bishop Kinsman, Anglican ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... The physician was obliged to use a slight degree of force in administering nourishment and medicine, but neither was of any avail. The man died within twenty-four hours after being received. His pockets were empty, but two small leathern wallets were found under his pillow; and these formed the package which the director left in my charge. They were full of papers in a foreign language, he said, and he supposed I might be able to ascertain the stranger's name ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... a-plunging about away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs—where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... father of Heracles, and Megara, the hero's wife, are in Theban territory waiting for news. They are in grave danger, for Lycus, a new king, threatens to kill them with Heracles' children, as he had already slain Megara's father. He has easy victims in Amphitryon, "naught but an empty noise", and Megara, who is resigned to the inevitable. Faced with this ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... because of your diseased throat, but because of your evil conscience. You stopped the singing in a country of songs, oh ill majesty! How could we now sing our songs while our homes are transformed into empty caves? How could we sing, seeing our bread in strangers' hands and cold stones in ours? How could we sing now, when all our past protests against you and all our dead are disturbed in their graves? You covered our country with sins and crimes, and it is not ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... stuff broke out in delicate, aromatic bubbles beneath her nostrils. There was a stinging but refreshing feeling in her mouth and throat. She said "champagne" sleepily to herself, and with a word of thanks returned an empty glass. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... lights were out and there came no answer to their repeated calls, so they judged she must be empty. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... ruined road that had once been the lordly approach to his fastness. Below they passed an abandoned palace of vast extent, a palace with great terraces and the still traceable outline of gardens, though there were green things pushing between the terrace steps, and trees thrust out of the empty windows. Here from a belvedere of which the skull-like vestige still remained, the negro Emperor Christophe, after fourteen years of absolute rule, had watched for a time the smoke of the burning of his cane-fields in the plain below, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... It is not empty optimism that moves me to a strong hope in the coming year. We can, if we will, make 1935 a genuine period of good feeling, sustained by a sense of purposeful progress. Beyond the material recovery, I sense a spiritual recovery as well. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... strength, at the end of our will-power, at the end of our nervous tension, and, when the door opened, we said: "We will send some one," and fled. From there we went to the mayor's office, riding in a cab that jolted us and shook our heads about like empty things. And an indefinable horror seized upon us of death in a hospital, which seems to be only an administrative formality. One would say that in that abode of agony, everything is so well administered, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... unconscious of Billy's irony. She was one of the many millions who always accept the current humbug in whatever form he comes. Let us not, however, speak lightly of the humble humbug. Have you ever considered how empty this world would be without his cheering presence? You notice I give the noun "humbug" the masculine gender. The feminine members of our race have faults, but great, monumental, world-pervading humbugs are masculine, one and all, from the old-time witch doctor and Druid priest down ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... her head—she should unquestionably have had her hands slapped—there was a beautiful and complete picture of Gail being insolently alluring to three empty chairs and a luncheon ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... her disposal, we then have to empty ourselves, and strip the soul, so that Christ if He will may enter it; we have to purify the house, to cleanse it with the disinfectant of prayer and the sublimate of Sacraments; in a word, to be ready when the Guest shall come and bid us to empty ourselves wholly ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... has the fairest claim to disease,' said Emilius, 'I will not examine. At least your inconceivable frivolousness, your hunger and thirst after stop-gaps for every hour you are awake, your wild-goose chase after pleasures that leave the heart empty, seem not to me altogether the healthiest state of the soul. In certain things, at all events, you might make a little allowance for my weakness, if it must once for all pass for such: and there is nothing in the world that so jars through and through me as a ball with its ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... taken the historic position of being the first incumbent of his office to recognize officially our determination to secure a complete democracy, thereby testifying his conviction as to its power and growth, and WHEREAS his seriousness, honesty and friendliness converted what might have been an empty form into an official courtesy, historic alike for him ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... his head—a declaration of righteousness, a cross between a Caesar by Gerome, and an archbishop of a provincial town, set all my natural antipathy instantly on edge. Hugo is often pompous, shallow, empty, unreal, but he is at least an artist, and when he thinks of the artist and forgets the prophet, as in "Les Chansons des Rues et des Bois," his juggling with the verse is ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... a chink of moonlight peering through fell on the bed. This was empty. Barbara stood uncertain, listening. In the heart of that darkness there seemed to be, not sound, but, as it were, the muffled soul of sound, a sort of strange vibration, like that of a flame noiselessly licking ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... since it can't be otherwise! Especially if, as I hear, Your Excellency my Lady Sophia has agreed to everything; it is for you to give orders and for me to obey them: authority belongs to you alone. Only I warn you that we must not grant merely an empty liberty, in words alone, like that under the Muscovites, when the late Pan Karp freed his serfs and the Muscovite starved them to death with a triple tax.224 So it is my advice that according to the ancient custom we make the peasants nobles and proclaim that we bestow on them our ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... young man were really worthy of his high calling and the name he bore; now surely he would speak and show that his mind was set on higher things. Likely he would say something that would set Wee Andra thinking and put some solemn truths in his empty head. ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... buoyancy of which is thus increased. The outstanding feature of the "Drachen-Balloon" is incorporated in the airship. This is the automatic operation of the safety valve on the gas-bag directly by the air ballonets. If these ballonets empty owing to the pressure of the gas within the envelope, a rope system disposed within the balloon and connecting the ballonets and the gas-valve at the top is stretched taut, thereby opening the gas-valve. In this manner the gas-pressure becomes reduced until the ballonets are enabled to exercise ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... of our time, to have in short either animal or intellectual pleasure, and for what? that we may go on living the same slavish life till we die, in order to provide for a rich man what is called a life of ease and luxury; that is to say, a life so empty, unwholesome, and degraded, that perhaps, on the whole, he is worse off than we the workers are: and as to the result of all this suffering, it is luckiest when it is nothing at all, when you can say that the wares have done nobody any good; for oftenest they have done many people harm, and ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... movement is always there. Indeed, at times it seems that the less artistic the theme, the more artistic the fulfilment, the painter being impelled to give the utmost values of touch and movement to just those figures which are liable to be read off as mere empty symbols. Thus, on the figure representing political disorder—the Centaur—in the "Pallas," Botticelli has lavished his most intimate gifts. He constructs the torso and flanks in such a way that every ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... it full in case of siege. In front of each segment was a kind of demi-lune, and—as though this was not precaution enough—two walls, each over 4300 yards long, were built in front of the demi-lunes, the ditch which separated them being connected at one end with the Khuzur, and allowed to empty itself into a stream on the south. The number of inhabitants sheltered behind these defences was perhaps 300,000 souls;* each separate quarter of the city was enclosed by ramparts, thus forming, as it were, a small independent town, which had to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... be for the patrons to decide absolutely nothing. It is, and will always be, for the gentlemen of the hanging committee alone, duly chosen, to decide whether empty space be preferable to poor pictures—whether, in short, it be their duty to cover walls, merely that walls may be covered—no matter ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... a good table, she will renew the furniture, and the carriages; she will always keep in her drawer a sum of money sacred to her well-beloved and ready for his needs. But of course, in the actual circumstances of life, the drawer will be very often empty and monsieur will spend a great deal too much. The economies ordered by the Chamber never weigh heavily upon the clerks whose income is twelve hundred francs; and you will be the clerk at twelve hundred francs in your own house. You will laugh in your sleeve, because you ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... entrancing beauty, who used to teach the piano in a boarding-school. One evening, after four years of marriage, four years of torture, during which the unhappy man suffered every sort of humiliation, Jorance came home to find the house empty. His wife had gone without a word of explanation, taking their little ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... of silk and cotton. One single circumstance was disagreeable to me in an acoustic point of view—I could hear the slightest whisper of the prompter as distinctly as though some one had been behind me reading the play. The curtain had scarcely fallen before the whole house was empty, and yet there was no crowding to get out. This first drew my attention to the numerous and excellently ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... with some small spleen, A most confounded ass I've been; The glory seems an empty breath, And I am nearly bored to death With Reason, Consciousness, and Will, And other things beyond my skill, Discussed in books all darkly planned And more in number than the sand. Yet that M.A. still haunts my sight, With something of ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... houses is by some method that will empty rooms of the vitiated air and bring in a supply of pure air by small ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... he, setting down a pile of empty plates, "this is what one might call a ghost coming out of its box to upset the ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... Barclay presented his glass, which was again filled to the brim. In the next moment it was empty. So eager was he to get it to his lips, that he even spilled a portion of the wine in lifting it hurriedly. Suddenly his old, and as he had thought, extinguished desires, came back upon him, roused into vigorous activity, like a giant awakening refreshed ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... a chair and her arms went around Mary Rose. She had never realized how empty they had been until ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... bare shoulder, found the flesh surprisingly cold and the girl seemed not to feel my touch. I swung her around to face me, and her black, empty eyes looked off into the far distance. Her lips were tightly compressed, slightly cyanosed. The pupils of her eyes were inordinately dilated, as ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... houses; facing these were a number of buildings of a miscellaneous description—sheds and stables; and beyond these a plot of waste ground on which could be seen, looming weirdly through the dusk, a number of empty carts and waggons with their shafts resting on the ground or reared up into the air. Threading their way carefully through these and avoiding as much as possible the mud, pools of water, and rubbish which covered the ground, they arrived at a large gate fastened with a padlock. Applying ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... See, through that channel, empty now, The scanty rain its tribute pours,— Which cooled the lip and laved the brow Of ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... occurred with the entrance of Sandy Joyce, who took the empty place at the table on Bill's right. Birdie was hovering near, and, as Sandy took his seat, she suddenly dumped a fresh cup of coffee before the gambler. She giggled coyly as the cup ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... cruelties upon them. We shall go into no metaphysics to show the absurdity of this pretence. The man who robs you every day, is, forsooth, quite too tender-hearted ever to cuff or kick you! True, he can snatch your money, but he does it gently lest he should hurt you. He can empty your pockets without qualms, but if your stomach is empty, it cuts him to the quick. He can make you work a life time without pay, but loves you too well to let you go hungry. He fleeces you of your rights with ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Empedocles, that the embryo is not an animal, yet whilst it remains in the belly it breathes. The first breath that it draws as an animal is when the infant is newly born; then the child having its moisture separated, the extraneous air making an entrance into the empty places, a respiration is caused in the infant by the empty vessels receiving of it. Diogenes, that infants are nurtured in the matrix inanimate, yet they have a natural heat; but presently, when the infant is cast into ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... of the Mecanique Celeste supposed, like Newton, that light consists of material molecules of excessive tenuity and endued in empty space with a velocity of 77,000 leagues in a second. However, it is right to warn those who would be inclined to avail themselves of this imposing authority, that the principal argument of Laplace, in favour of the system of emission, consisted in the advantage which it afforded of ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... suffering terribly. Also he felt strangely empty inside, because something that he had carried around with him for a long time seemed to have suddenly moved out ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... come ashore, the captain of the life-saving service entered the breeches buoy and caused himself to be hauled through the smother to the wreck. After an interval, a signal jerked back. The buoy was pulled in empty and the surf car substituted. In it were piled various utensils of equipment. One man went with it, and several more on its next trip, until nearly the whole crew were ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... upon this single life! forgo it. We read how Daphne, for her peevish [flight,] Became a fruitless bay-tree; Syrinx turn'd To the pale empty reed; Anaxarete Was frozen into marble: whereas those Which married, or prov'd kind unto their friends, Were by a gracious influence transhap'd Into the olive, pomegranate, mulberry, Became flowers, precious stones, ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... of Tuesday the under jailer, going to Miss Catheron's cell with her breakfast, found, to his astonishment and dismay, that it was empty and his prisoner flown. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... Barrant returned to the empty lounge, where Mrs. Pendleton sat in partial darkness with tearful face. All the other guests had retired, and a lurking porter yawned longingly in the passage, waiting for an opportunity to put out the last of the lights and get ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... of chastity unless we ruthlessly cast aside all the unnatural and empty forms of chastity. If chastity is merely a fatiguing effort to emulate in the sexual sphere the exploits of professional fasting men, an effort using up all the energies of the organism and resulting in no achievement greater than the abstinence it involves, then it is surely an unworthy ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of the empty spaces colored his narratives as he drew from memory half-finished pictures of the mad riot of primitive forces when the ice broke up and the floods hurled the thundering floes among the rocks; and of tangled woods sinking into profound silence in the stinging frost. Moreover, he unconsciously ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... of shots, and with a gasp he crumpled up against her. For a moment it was pandemonium. Standing over Gaston's body she fired her last shot and flung the empty revolver in the face of a man who sprang forward to seize her. She turned with a desperate hope of reaching Gaston's horse, but she was hemmed in, and for a second she stood at bay, hands clenched and teeth set, braving the ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... through. Then he dropped down on to a shelf, and lowered himself gingerly on to the floor. There was no time to stay to look at his many hurts, he merely regarded the biggest scratch with rueful eyes, and then began to look around for provender. The pantry was remarkably empty—not a sign of cakes, not a bit of jelly, not a remnant of fowl anywhere. He cut a great piece off a loaf, and carefully wrapped some butter in a scrap of newspaper. There was some corned beef on ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner |
