"Incessant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and ever without power to realise them. But Schiller was no ordinary character, and did not act like one. Beneath a cold and simple exterior, dignified with no artificial attractions, and marred in its native amiableness by the incessant obstruction, the isolation and painful destitutions under which he lived, there was concealed a burning energy of soul, which no obstruction could extinguish. The hard circumstances of his fortune had prevented the natural development of his mind; his faculties had ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... were prudent—but he was not without means to his end. The Duchess early gave symptoms of ill-health. In Florence she was the strongest of all her father's family, but at Ferrara she became delicate and a victim to incessant sickness. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... writer!—for the press, perchance, may afford him a support which, though temporary and precarious, will hold him up until he can stand upon more stable ground. But in the reigns of Good Queen Bess and Gentle Jamie there was no press. There was, however, an incessant demand for new plays. Play-going was the chief intellectual recreation of that day for all classes, high and low. It filled the place of our newspapers, our books, our lectures, our concerts, our picture-seeing, and, in a great measure, of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... while almost simultaneously there was a vivid flash of lightning that seemed to blind us for the time, and then a deafening roar of thunder, followed so closely by others that it was like one rolling, incessant peal. ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... grew our incessant urging on of the willing Spider, for his continued efforts at extermination. At the end of two hours, the metamorphosed barn was nearly stripped of its flooring—nine huge rats lay dead, as trophies of our own ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... whose temper could not have been sweet under the best of conditions. It will be understood, then, that it developed into something very bad indeed under the worrying influence of a master like Mr. Hurst, who was never satisfied, and whose method of dealing with those he employed was one of incessant bullying. He was, moreover, subject to delusions about being cheated, and his ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... often that it seemed as if he had been vainly attempting to light the same cigarette for the last three hours. The soldiers were attentively looking at his back and were all morbidly anxious to help him. It was cold and damp, and they felt an incessant, nauseating gnawing in the pit of the stomach. It was not fear but an indefinite anguish, a ...
— The Shield • Various
... banks of the river there are many large banks of sand much elivated above the plains on which they ly and appear as if they had been collected in the course of time from the river by the almost incessant S. W. winds; they always appear on the sides of the river opposite to ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... occupied with healing up the ravages of war, and laying broad the foundations of an empire more civilized than that which he had overthrown. This peaceful occupation formed a contrast to the life of incessant turmoil in which he had been hitherto engaged. It seemed, too, better suited to his own advancing age, which naturally invited to repose. And, if we may trust his chroniclers, there was no part of his career in which he took greater satisfaction. It is certain there is ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... boundless Extend of Continent, swarming with Millions, will tamely submit to live, move and have their Being at the Arbitrary Will of a licentious Minister, they basely yield to voluntary Slavery, and future Generations shall load their Memories with incessant Execrations—On the other Hand, if we arrest the Hand which would ransack our Pockets.... Posterity will acknowledge the Virtue which ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... giving the natives large quantities of powder and ball as a present at the conclusion of a trip. They, of course, being thus supplied with ammunition, shot the deer and buffaloes without intermission, and drove them from the country by incessant harassing. ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... now deprived of the free-will of a servant-mistress. In the horrible situation in which she now found herself, the hope of having a child came into her mind; but she soon recognized its impossibility. The marriage was to Jean-Jacques what the second marriage of Louis XII. was to that king. The incessant watchfulness of a man like Philippe, who had nothing to do and never quitted his post of observation, made any form of vengeance impossible. Benjamin was his innocent and devoted spy. The Vedie trembled before him. Flore felt herself deserted and utterly helpless. She began to fear death. Without ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... others, in the midst of perfectly free relations, should have made its appearance; but now, when centuries of the most varied deeds of violence have passed for accumulations of money, when these deeds of violence are incessant, and merely alter their forms; when, as every one admits, money accumulated itself represents violence; when money, as a representative of direct labor, forms but a very small portion of the money which is derived from every sort of violence,—to say nowadays that money represents ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... Xenophon for the examinations. Everything not actually devotional seemed to him at these times under a ban, and it is painful to see how a mind of great scope and power was cramped and contracted, and the spirits lowered by incessant self-contemplation and distrust of almost all enjoyment. When, at another time, he had to examine on "Locke on the Human Understanding," the metaphysical study acting on his already introspective mind produced a sense of misery and anguish that he could hardly endure. It is pleasant, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... incense of this sort of homage, she slept quietly, as a woman who has accomplished her mission on earth. This existence, which lasted seven years, did not weary her nor seem monotonous, for she adored the incessant excitement of society, but sometimes she felt that she desired something different. The men of her world, political advocates, financiers, or wealthy idlers, amused her as actors might; she did not take them too seriously, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... Thus beneath my feet to tread thee; [He throws PATRICK on the ground and places his foot upon him. The two actions signifying How the heavier scale descendeth. And that, Patrick, thou may'st see How I value or give credit To thy threats, thy life I spare. Vomit forth the flame incessant Of the so-called word of God, That by this thou may'st be certain I do not adore his Godship, Nor his miracles have dread of. Live then; but in such a state Of poor, mean, and abject service, As befits a useless hind In the fields; and so as shepherd ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... twenty years of age, Mrs. Sheldon; an orphan with a younger sister and two younger brothers to support, and nothing but her two busy hands to depend upon. She is a sewing-girl and a skilful workwoman, so that by incessant labor over her machine, day after day, she is able to keep her little family together, and, more than all, to send them to school. She realizes the disadvantages of her own ignorance, and she feels a noble ambition to educate those orphan children. ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... embraced the doctrines of Christianity. Nor can it be deemed incredible, that the mind of an unlettered soldier should have yielded to the weight of evidence, which, in a more enlightened age, has satisfied or subdued the reason of a Grotius, a Pascal, or a Locke. In the midst of the incessant labors of his great office, this soldier employed, or affected to employ, the hours of the night in the diligent study of the Scriptures, and the composition of theological discourses; which he afterwards pronounced in the presence of a numerous and applauding audience. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... peace, seeing that nothing did her any good, but rather made her worse. I was therefore forced to desist, and only admonished the parents to seek for help, like the Canaanitish woman, in true repentance and incessant prayer, and with her to sigh in constant faith, "Have mercy upon me, O Lord, Thou Son of David, my daughter is grievously vexed of a devil," Matthew xv.; that the heart of our Lord would then melt, so that he would have mercy on their child, and command Satan to depart ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... spangled with yellow flowers and red and blue, look even more brilliant than if the sun were shining on them. Every cup and blade of grass is drinking. But the scene changes; the mist has turned into rain-clouds, and the steady rain drips down, incessant, blotting out the view. Then, too, what a joy it is if the clouds break towards evening with a north wind, and a rainbow in the valley gives promise of a bright to-morrow! We look up to the cliffs above our heads, and see that ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... possible that the constant repetition of stimuli of an ordinary character may produce sufficient change to give rise to unusual reactions, and this particularly when there is lack of the restoration which repose and sleep bring. We know into what a condition one's nervous system may be thrown by the incessant noise attending the erection of a building in the vicinity of one's house or the pounding of a plumber working within the house, this being accentuated in the latter case by the thought of impending financial disaster. ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... now completely invested, all hopes of assistance had been cruelly disappointed, and the garrison and inhabitants were left to their own resources. The troops were exhausted by incessant duty and insufficient to man the lines. Many of the guns were dismounted, the shot nearly expended, and the bread and meat almost entirely consumed. The works of the besiegers were pushed very near the defenses of the town, and the issue of an assault was extremely ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... for battle made under circumstances so truly awful. On that very day the sun suffered a partial eclipse: birds, in clouds, the precursors of a storm, flew screaming over the two armies, and the rain fell in torrents, accompanied by incessant thunder and lightning. About five in the afternoon the weather cleared up; the sun in full splendour darted his rays in the eyes ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... wonder what on earth it was all about. These phases of subconscious activity differ from dreams proper in the absence of visual images. The ideas are embodied in words, heard with the mind one might say. The source may be the same as that of the night visions but it is evident that during the day the incessant stimulation of the eye from without leaves no opportunity for the emergence of the secondary visual images pertaining to subconscious ideas, which, we are told by Dr. Morton Prince, furnish the perceptual elements of the dream. The other senses are sometimes represented. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... bear without bursting, then it is placed on ashes less hot, and covered with the same, and after a few minutes is pronounced cooked and ready for the table. The old lady did the cooking, and kept up an incessant chattering and swearing the while. We noticed how kind they were to the poor diseased buck, giving him little tit-bits of half-raw rat's flesh, which he greatly preferred to any food we fed him. They were strange, primitive people, and yet kind and ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... struggling with a "composition." Her flushed cheek and frowning brow showed that her difficulty was genuine and not an artless device to draw him to her side. She was really powerless to put her thoughts in writing, and the inability seemed characteristic of her quick impressionable mind, and of the incessant come-and-go of her sensations. He thought of Anna Leath's letters, or rather of the few he had received, years ago, from the girl who had been Anna Summers. He saw the slender firm strokes of the pen, recalled the clear structure of the phrases, and, ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... that she was able, through her self-sacrifice, to keep from want a large band of poor relatives and friends. The society she mixed with was various, but, for the most part, obscure. There were occasional visits from the now triumphant Mrs. Siddons; there were incessant propositions—but alas! they were equivocal—from Sir Charles Bunbury; for the rest, she passed her life among actor-managers and humble playwrights and unremembered medical men. One of her friends was William Godwin, who described her to Mrs. Shelley as a "piquante mixture between ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... strong place, and there seemed no hope that its walls would fall. It was allied with Fiden, another city halfway between it and Rome, which was taken by means of a mine in the year 426. A peace with Veii ensued, after which the incessant war began again, and fortune sometimes favored one side and sometimes the other. The siege of the city can be fittingly compared to that of Troy, Seven years had passed without result, when of a sudden, in the midst of ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... endured their jests. In the streets they were taught to walk in silence, their hands folded in their cloaks, their eyes cast down, their heads never turning to right or left. Their gymnastic and military training was incessant; wherever they met, we are told, they began to box; under the condition, however, that they were bound to separate at the command of any bystander. To accustom them early to the hardships of a campaign, they were taught to steal their food from the mess-tables of their elders; if they were ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... from Government into proprietary right in land has brought the land under the operation of the ordinary Hindoo law, and each member of a joint family can now enforce partition of the land as well as of the stock upon it. The evils resulting from incessant partition are obvious, but no remedy can be devised. The people insist on partition, and will effect it privately, if the law imposes obstacles to a formal ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of the Spanish prisoners, silently advanced to the attack. This party having taken up its position, the main body moved forward, cheering and firing in the air, to intimate to the Spaniards that their chief reliance was on the bayonet. The enemy, meanwhile, kept up an incessant fire of artillery and musketry in the direction of the shouts, but without effect, as no aim could be ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... presumptuous hope, for we have the certainty of success. We owe this certitude to our army of all ranks and to our sailors, who, joined to the British Navy, secure for us the control of the seas, and to the troops who have repulsed in Morocco incessant aggressions. ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... to return to Gibbon. What a mind it must have been which first planned, and then, with the incessant labour of twenty years, carried out that enormous work! There was no classical author so little known, no Byzantine historian so diffuse, no monkish chronicle so crabbed, that they were not assimilated and worked into their ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bear it much longer, this incessant quarrelling when we meet, and your unkindness during the short time that you are with me. Why not let it all end? it would be better for both of us. I do not love you less when I write these words; if ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... adopt, but determined to go to Dumbartonshire immediately, to learn the best and worst. Even if she were to be told that her father's lifeless body had been found on a distant shore, or in the bottom of some abandoned ship, it would be a relief from incessant ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... the top of the tallest upright branch and tightly clinging to it, a small cradle, gently rocking in the warm breeze. No one was at home, and I sat down to wait. This movement did not meet the approval of a certain small tenant of a neighboring tree, for I was saluted by a sharp, low, incessant cry; now it came from the right side, now from the left. I turned quickly, caught a glimpse of yellow, the flit of a wing, and then—nothing. In a moment the sound began again, and thus it tantalized me till my neck became ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... with the name "Gaffney" painted in red letters upon the window and two billiard cues in yellow crossed beneath it. They entered and were greeted by a babble of voices, an incessant clicking of balls and the thick odor of poor tobacco. Here and there games of more than ordinary interest were going on; the principals were, as a rule, fox-like young men who wore no coats and staked their handling of their cues against the world ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... miles, there being no banks in Shetland except at Lerwick; and (2) that the settlement with the men would take up a long time and detain them from the prosecution of the fishing, which, during the summer months, requires incessant activity. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... snorting with fear and pain, galloped with flying reins up and down the road. The ground was strewn with dead and dying, and the snow was trampled and bloody. The onset of the dragoons was pitiless, incessant, furious; no quarter being given. The state wanted these wretches extirpated, and whenever an encounter took place the conflict was sure to be a sanguinary one. Soon the shattered ranks of the ruffian band scattered for the sand-hills, ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... Jennie G. Ford of Kearney, for some time member of the executive committee, was one of the leading advocates in Buffalo county. Always aiding and inspiring others to effort, she was an incessant worker in the causes dear to her heart. She was president of the Nebraska Woman's Christian Temperance Union from 1882 to 1884. She died June 18, 1885, leaving in the hearts of all who had known her, tender ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... alibi; he should not have used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have done all things otherwise; poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... course until they reached the mouth of a river which they called the Ouabache, or Wabash, none other than the beautiful Ohio.[67] Here they found the advanced settlement of Shawanese, who had been pushed toward the southwest by the incessant attacks of the Iroquois. But by this time, fired with the hope of ascertaining the outlet of the Mississippi, they postponed their visit to these people until ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... have as little trouble as possible with the child committed to her charge, and at the same time to flatter the mother, from whom she expects her reward. The appearance of extravagant fondness for the child, of incessant attention to its humour, and absurd submission to its caprices, she imagines to be the surest method of recommending herself to favour. She is not to be imposed upon by the faint and affected rebukes of the fond mother, who exclaims, "Oh, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... thoughtful in the Consulate and Empire, Thiers is so far from putting the work of Sieyes on the British level, that his one purpose is to display the superiority of a government which is the product of much experiment and incessant adaptation to the artificial outcome of ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... gone so far as to confess that he knew, but the most pathetic appeals as to the owner's identity had fallen on obdurate, if not deaf, ears. Not the smallest hint would he give on the subject, and though those incessant visits to the house, those searchings for furniture, the bestowal of it in suitable places, the superintendence of the making of the garden, the interviewings of paperhangers, plumbers, upholsterers, painters, carpenters and so forth occupied a great deal ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... clever satire was our mutual friend, Barbour Lathrop, with whom I had been associated in journalism in San Francisco and who is famous from the Bohemian Club literally around the globe and in many of its most out-of-the-way islands as a most entertaining, albeit incessant, story-teller and conversationalist. Pretty nearly all subjects that interest humanity have engaged his attention. He could no more rest from travel than Ulysses; and he brought to those he associated with all ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... conceited. Still, I had few enemies, and it seemed of much more consequence who could knock down another boy than who could gain a place above him. I feel sure I could have done a great deal more at school than I did, but it was partly my music and partly my incessant headaches that ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... article, has continued the speculation by giving two interesting anecdotes. "The observation concerning 'heavy hours,' and the want of elasticity in the intellectual faculties of men of letters, when the mind is fatigued and the attention blunted by incessant labour, reminds us of what is related by persons who were acquainted with the late sagacious magistrate Sir John Fielding; who, when fatigued with attending to complicated cases, and perplexed with discordant depositions, used to retire ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of cloud. Now and then another car passed him, specter-like amid the grayness. Silent figures, magnified by the mist, came and went like shadow pictures on a screen. From the far distance sounded the incessant moan ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... the child. There was no distortion of the features nor any choreic movements of the extremities; indeed, the whole affection consisted in the nodding and shaking movements of the head referred to. These were almost incessant, sometimes slow and almost rhythmical, then for a minute or two rapid and irregular, seeming to fatigue the little fellow, and accompanied by a fretful, whimpering cry. The child had been subjected to a variety of treatment, but without any benefit or effect of any kind. Upon the most careful ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... persons who happened to be near him, and was saved from further violence only by arrest at the hands of the sergents-de-ville. Along the rue des Reservoirs, the Rue de la Pompe, the Place Hoche, the Rue de Hoche, and the Avenue St. Cloud Rochefort was greeted with incessant shouts of "A bas l'assassin; a pied le brigand; a mort!" The people wanted to have him out of the omnibus, and it was with difficulty the cavalry prevented them from dragging him out and inflicting summary execution. The cavalcade ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... an apergetic shock to it and sent it kiting among its fellows. At these times the Callisto recoiled slightly also, the resulting motion in either being in inverse ratio to its weight. There was constant and incessant movement among the individual fragments, but it was not rotary. Nothing seemed to be revolving about anything else; all were moving, apparently swinging back and forth, but no collisions took place. When the separate particles got more than a certain distance apart they reapproached one ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... mainly by wandering sinners. This home of a great doctor was open-hearted and receptive, frank and refined. The sleeping dogs, heaving gently in fawn-coloured beatitude, set upon it the best hall-mark. It was a house—judging at least by this room—for happy rest. Yet it was the abode of incessant work, as the great world knew well. This sanctum alone was the shrine of lotos-eating. The doctor sometimes laughingly boasted that he had never insulted it by even so much as writing a post-card ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... we endure," wrote Collingwood, "lessens the security of the country. The last cruise disabled five large ships and two more lately; several of them must be docked." "I have hardly known what a night of rest is these two months," wrote he again; "this incessant cruising seems to me beyond the powers of human nature. Calder is worn to a shadow, quite broken down, and I am told Graves is not much better."[1] The high professional opinion of Lord Howe was ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... marks of blood were still to be discerned on the chaussee which leads through the village of Pantin; the elm trees which line the road were cut asunder, or bored through with cannon shot, and their stems riddled in many parts with the incessant fire of the grape shot. The houses in La Villette, Belleville and Pantin, were covered with the marks of musket shot; the windows of many were shattered, or wholly destroyed, and the interior of the rooms broken by the balls which seemed to have ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... her own experience goes, humanity does not seem to be troubled by intellectual doubts. She is inclined to think that it is even sick of such discussions, and is apt to describe them roughly and impatiently as "mere talk." Humanity, as she sees it, is immersed in the incessant struggle of moral evolution. ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... These incessant solicitations affected his nerves. So much so, indeed, that he cursed the impudence of one woman and called her a rude name. She did not seem to mind. While he was still in the generous afterglow produced by a bit of plain-speaking, another one had ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... Revolution? This fear haunted Bonaparte; the knowledge that in France these Bourbons, exiled, without soldiers or money, were still more the masters then he, exasperated him. He felt that he was in their home, and their nonchalance, contrasted with his incessant agitation, indicated both insolence ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... history of every species of ordinary men—men who have been denied what they call good luck. This good luck is nothing less than unyielding will, incessant labor, contempt for an easily won celebrity, immense learning, and that patience which, according to Buffon, is the whole of genius, but which certainly is the half ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... principally from the two small daughters of the lodge-keeper, who were being hauled and pushed towards the house by the panting and dishevelled Claude and Wilfrid, whose task was rendered even more arduous by the incessant, if not very effectual, attacks of the captured maidens' small brother. The governess, fives-bat in hand, sat negligently on the stone balustrade, presiding over the scene with the cold impartiality of a Goddess of Battles. A furious and repeated ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... life of the nation. A great favorite, partly because of its pictures of old Russian customs, is "The Voevoda" or "The Dream on the Volga" (1865). "Vasilisa Melentieff" is popular for the same reasons (1868). Ostrovsky's nervous organization was broken down by the incessant toil necessary to support his family, and these historical plays were written, with others, to relieve the pressure. His dramas were given all over Russia, and he received more money from private than from the government theaters. But towards the end ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... will not wear that, for it is too slight a tissue, it hides nothing and I am now too thin for it to become me. All the lines in my throat show, and my elbows are quite sharp—altogether I am much thinner. That comes of incessant worry, annoyance, and anxiety. How angry I was yesterday at the council, because my husband will always give way and agree and try to be pleasant; whenever a refusal is necessary I have to interfere, unwilling as I am to do it, and odious as it is to me always to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the especial favourite feeding-place of the ewes and lambs. The day after a good burn thousands of sea-gulls flock to the black ground. Where they spring from I cannot tell, as I never see one at any other time, and their hoarse, incessant cry is the first sign you have of their arrival. They hover over the ground, every moment darting down, for some insect. They cannot find much else but roasted lizards and, grasshoppers, for I have never seen ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... well that awful night. Never before had a storm raged on the Rito with such fury. Frightful had been the roar of the thunder, prolonged like some tremendous subterranean noise. Incessant lightning had for hours converted night into day, and many were the lofty pines that had been shattered or consumed by the fiery bolts from above. The wind, which seldom does any damage at such places, had swept through the gorge and over the mesas with tremendous force, and lastly the peaceful, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... heart-sinking and misgiving that old Kearney heard it was Miss Betty O'Shea's desire to have some conversation with him after breakfast. He was, indeed, reassured, to a certain extent, by his daughter telling him that the old lady was excessively weak, and that her cough was almost incessant, and that she spoke with extreme difficulty. All the comfort that these assurances gave him was dashed by a settled conviction of Miss Betty's subtlety. 'She's like one of the wild foxes they have in Crim Tartary; ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Protestant smelt sweet to him. Even in these latter times, so late as the reign of Louis XIV., it is notorious that hundreds of thousands of innocent people were put to the most cruel death. In some instances, they were burnt in their houses; in others they were shut into lower rooms, while the incessant noise of kettle-drums over their heads, day and night, drove them to raving madness. To enumerate all the infernal means employed by this tyrant to torture and kill the people, would fill a volume. Exile was the lot of those who escaped the ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... the two little girls went off further to the dam of the pond; Lavretsky took up his position near Lisa. The fish were continually biting, the carp were constantly flashing in the air with golden and silvery sides as they were drawn in; the cries of pleasure of the little girls were incessant, even Marya Dmitrievna uttered a little feminine shriek on two occasions. The fewest fish were caught by Lavretsky and Lisa; probably this was because they paid less attention than the others to the angling, and allowed their floats to swim back right up to the bank. ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... been a great statesman or reformer, had not his imagination, stimulated by a torrential fluency of language, overborne his will. He was like a boat (the comparison would have pleased him) built for strength and speed, but immensely oversparred. His life was a scene of incessant bustle. Glancing through his poems, letters, diaries, and pamphlets, his translations from Greek, Spanish, German, and Italian, and remembering that he died at thirty, and was, besides, feverishly ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... the ground; their dreadful volleys swept away the head of every formation; their deafening shouts overpowered the dissonant cries that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd as slowly, and with a horrid carnage, it was pushed by the incessant vigour of the attack to the farthest edge of the height. There the French reserve, mixing with the struggling multitude, endeavoured to restore the fight, but only augmented the irremediable disorder, ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... who urged that the victorious army of the Peninsula under Wellington himself should be sent across the Atlantic to dictate terms. But England was not in the mood for more fighting. After twenty years of incessant war she saw at last the hope of peace. She saw also that the capture of Washington had not, as had been hoped, put an end to American resistance, but had rather put new life into it. To go on meant to attempt again the gigantic task which she had let drop as much from weariness as from defeat a generation ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... estate. There was but little opportunity to interrogate him through the morning hours: the flow of coal through the chutes was too rapid and constant, and the grinding and crunching of the rollers, and the rumbling and hammering of the machinery, were too loud and incessant. ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... had not stopped until he reached Paris. Reason enough for being weary, especially when one has travelled in eager haste to reach one's destination, and when one's mind has been continually beset by impatient thoughts, making the journey ten times over in incessant doubt and ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... on the stone and watched the Mohar, who slowly and silently paced backwards and forward in front of her. This incessant to and fro of her companion at last became unendurable to her sensitive and irritated nerves, and suddenly raising her head from her hand, on which she had rested it, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... much to say that in a week the tinker had taken up a position in the Craffroe household only comparable to that of Ygdrasil, who in Norse mythology forms the ultimate support of all things. Save for the incessant demands upon his skill in the matter of solder and stitches, his recent tinkerhood was politely ignored, or treated as an escapade excusable in a youth of spirit. Had not his father owned a farm and seven cows in the county Limerick, and had not he himself three times ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... portrait to C. E. Thompson; went to the theatre; studied human nature in the smoking-room at Parker's; and relaxed himself generally. He must have stayed with his family at Doctor Peabody's on West Street, for he speaks of the incessant noise from Washington Street, and of looking out from the back windows on Temple Place. This locates ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... but the sullen roar of the rising night wind is all that can be heard. His hand shakes, his face assumes a livid hue, yet he tells himself that surely this deadly silence is better than what he listened to last night. Then a ghostly moaning, almost incessant and unearthly in its sound, had pierced his brain. It was more like the cry of a dying brute than that of a man. Sir Adrian slowly starved to death! In his own mind Arthur can see him now, worn, emaciated, lost to all likeness of anything fair ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... the fire, which had been completely swept away by the wind. For the first half-hour of its duration the storm was a dry one, that is to say, it was unaccompanied by rain; and while the tempest raged about them Dick and Earle lay prone, side by side, watching the marvellous scene revealed by the incessant lightning flashes. And Earle afterwards confided to Dick—and, still later, to many others—that what he then beheld more than repaid him for all that the entire journey cost him, not only in money, but also in toil and privation. For although the flickering ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... frightful one. The vast, tree-like cloud, kindled throughout its length by almost incessant flashes of lightning; the fiery glare that gleamed upward from the glowing lava; the total darkness that overspread the surrounding country as the dense mass of volcanic dust floated outward, a darkness only relieved by the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... conditions of bustle which to healthy people are cheerful and stimulating. I am sure that if people had to choose between living where the noise of children never stopped and where it was never heard, all the goodnatured and sound people would prefer the incessant noise to the incessant silence. But that choice is not thrust upon us by the nature of things. There is no reason why children and adults should not see just as much of one another as is good for them, no more and no less. Even at present you are not compelled to choose ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... so-called authorities, are constantly examined. The drift of modern discussions is followed. Investigations, sometimes of a very special character, are carefully prosecuted. All this is done upon a plan, and with the incessant supervision of the director, upon whose learning, enthusiasm, and suggestiveness, the success of the seminary depends. Each such seminary among us has its ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... fruits of their enforced toil but had been left unpaid. Thus, for an inconsiderable deficit of about $1,330,000, the whole population of one of the richest provinces is thrown into abject misery; a deep-rooted hatred naturally arises between the people and their rulers; and incessant war ensues between the authorities and their subjects. Besides which, an extremely dangerous class of smugglers have recently arisen, who even now do not confine themselves to mere smuggling, but who, on the very first opportunity presented by ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... my own sphere. Shall we not then stand in the same line? Count Savaron de Savarus, Ambassador I know not where, may surely marry a Princess Soderini, the widow of the Duc d'Argaiolo! Triumph restores the youth of men who have been preserved by incessant struggles. Oh, my Life! with what gladness did I fly from my library to my private room, to tell your portrait of this progress before writing to you! Yes, the votes I can command, those of the Vicar-General, of the persons I can oblige, and of this client, make ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... and see how easy it would be for the wife and mother to reduce all to order in her turbulent household. But I am at the same time conscious of the difficulties that beset the wife and mother in the incessant, exhausting, and health-destroying nature of her duties, and how her mind, from these causes, must naturally lose its clear-seeing qualities when most they are needed, and its calm and even temper when its exercise is of most consequence. Too little ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... slight but continual variations in the colour, form and structure of all animals, has furnished individuals adapted to these changes, and who have become the progenitors of modified races. Rapid multiplication, incessant slight variation, and survival of the fittest—these are the laws which ever keep the organic world in harmony with the inorganic and with itself. These are the laws which we believe have produced all the cases of protective resemblance ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... with ceaseless fury, by day and night alike, for more than a month. On the moving picture screen of time this vast conflict stands out without parallel in the world's annals, the most unyielding, incessant battling ever known. ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... bowed he seemed to be making you a present of his legs; when he sat down, he twitched first on one side, then on the other, thrust his hands into his pockets, then took them out, and looked at them, as if in astonishment, then seized upon a pen, by which they were luckily provided with incessant occupation. Meanwhile, there was what might fairly be called a constant play of countenance: first he smiled, then looked grave; now raised his eyebrows, till they rose like rainbows, to the horizon of his pale, straw-coloured hair; and ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... medical opinion was given that little Arthur might, with great care and incessant watching ("which it is plain he will have, Mrs. Grey," added the old doctor, bowing and smiling), grow up ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... conversation with sympathetic illustrative gestures not caring two straws whether anyone observed her, just as she did not care whether anyone observed that she was breathing; and, just as she could not stop breathing, so she appeared unable to stop her gestures. She was as incessant and as resourceful as the orchestra in ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... a friend told Bishop Cumberland (1632-1718) he would wear himself out by his incessant application, "It is better," replied the Bishop, "to wear out than to rust out."—HORNE: Sermon on the Duty of Contending ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... delirious age, when pomps And fashions rage throughout the land, and half Of all the people know not why they live, But live to feast on sensual delights, And deck the body with insipid show; When they who are not would be great and high; And, if their fortune doth not bear them on With the incessant speed they seek, then fraud Is called to aid, until the bubble bursts, Because the pressure is beyond the means; And they are cast, in anguish and despair, Unto the depths of ruin, there to lie With jeers of many pouring on to them. ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... his nose. The insect turned neither to the right nor to the left. It rested between its two buzzing wings, on the slightly hooked edge of that learned nose, so well formed to carry spectacles. It cleared the little furrow produced by the incessant use of that optical instrument, so much missed by the poor cousin, and it stopped just at the extremity ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... homeward current in the traffic of the streets. Cyclists overtook him in whole flocks, and raced in shoals in front of the trams, which looked as if they squirted them away from the lines as they worked their way along with incessant, deafening ringing, bounding up and down under the weight ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of his batteries and also erected two new ones. When the work on the latter was finished all opened in another tremendous cannonade, lasting for fully an hour. The bank of smoke was heavier than ever, and the roaring in Ned's ears was incessant, but he felt no awe now. He was growing used to the cannon fire, and as it did so little harm he felt ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... essay by a careful enumeration of all those points upon which, during the course of thirteen years of incessant labour, Mr. Darwin has modified his opinions. It has often and justly been remarked, that what strikes a candid student of Mr. Darwin's works is not so much his industry, his knowledge, or even the surprising fertility of his inventive genius; but that ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... restrictions against excesses and frauds; and we have had, as the appropriate commentary, three tremendous cataclysms, in which the whole continent was submerged in commercial ruin, besides a dozen lesser epochs of trying vicissitude. The history of our trade has been that of an incessant round of inflations and collapses; and the amount of rascality and fraud perpetrated in connection with the banks, in order to defeat the restrictions upon them, has no parallel but in the sponging-houses. A Belgian philosopher, from the study of statistics, has deduced a certain order in disorder,—or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... London had seemed bustling the night before, what was it now by broad daylight, with the full sun shining on the countless passengers! I could scarcely keep still myself, with the excitement of watching such incessant movement. ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... days of incessant toil in tracking, poling and yulowing along the tortuous and mud-bound channel of the Kan, where sailing, owing to the low water and consequent towering banks which shut off the wind, was seldom possible, the small fleet emerged on the Poyang lake. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... came down in torrents. The thunder booming in the distance, then sharply exploding like a piece of ordnance directly overhead, the crack of the solid oak as the thunderbolt tore it to splinters, the incessant streaming of the lightning across the sky, the soughing of the wind—all these made a scene terrifically grand, and would have induced almost any one to have sought the shelter offered him, convinced that the only danger at such a time was from ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... ecclesiastics—forgetting what they have told us, that grace is the gratuitous present of God, bestowed or withheld at his sovereign pleasure, they nevertheless indulge their wrath against all those who have not received the gift of faith; they keep up one incessant anathema against all unbelievers, and nothing less than absolute extermination of heresy can appease their anger wherever they have the strength to accomplish it. So that heretics and unbelievers are made accountable for the grace of God, although they never received it; they ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... Bristol, August 12, 1774. He was expelled from Westminster School for writing an article against school flogging. Later he studied at Balliol College, Oxford. He was an incessant worker, laboring at all branches of literature, from his famous nursery story, "The Three Bears," to "The Life of Nelson." He was appointed Laureate in 1813. His most successful long poems are "Thalaba," and "The Curse of Kehama." He died ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... noise of guns proclaimed that the engagement had begun. The boom of the cannon of the ships was answered by an incessant fire from the far more numerous artillery of the fortress, while now and then a heavy explosion, close at hand, told of the bursting of the bombs from the ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... democratic movement has made. Every step toward democracy has been stubbornly opposed by the few, who have yielded to the popular demand, from time to time, only what necessity required. The constitution of the present day is the outcome of this long-continued and incessant struggle. It reflects in its form and character the existing distribution of political power within ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... other accomplishments was almost parallel with this. From inarticulate gabble he trained his tongue to definite speech; his vocabulary expanded with astonishing rapidity, and, contrary to his previous habit, he made incessant use of it. He was now as remarkable for loquacity as formerly for the opposite characteristic; and his keenness of observation and retentive memory were a theme of general admiration. In a word, he used his five senses to ten times better ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... seemed to live, live in weird manifestation. It had been left open, and now it was swinging and slamming to and fro jerkily, and shuddering from top to bottom. Half in plan, half in mere irritation at this senseless, incessant jigging, I sprang toward it and with one nervous pull tore it, hinge and all, from the rotten woodwork. I heaved it over the side, went in head first after it, took a few strokes and lay, belly down, upon it. Just then the lorcha began to rise by the head; the bowsprit ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... party of Americans took possession of an advanced post in Roxbury, upon which the British kept up an incessant fire.] ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... throbbed upon the tin roof above her. Sometimes she would turn upon her pillow, stuffing the blankets about her ears; but, muffled by the bedclothes, she heard always the incessant melancholy sound. She heard it beating on the naked roof, rushing tumultuously to the overflowing pipes, dripping upon the wet stones of the gutter below, sweeping from the earth dead ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... for Cromwell in his old days. His complaint is incessant of the heavy burden Providence has laid on him. Heavy; which he must bear till death. Old Colonel Hutchinson, as his wife relates it, Hutchinson, his old battle-mate, coming to see him on some indispensable business, much against his will,—Cromwell 'follows him to the door,' in ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... party it was. For men, there were a number of officers, and the newspaper man, Dr. Frank Powell, now of La Crosser for women, the wives of two of the officers, the daughters of General Augur, May, and myself. There was sunshine, laughter, and incessant chatter, and when one is young and fond of horseback-riding, and a handsome young officer rides by one's side, physical fatigue is apt to vanish ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... commodious omnibus, and full of a most jovial company. I sat half-way along one of the two lengthy seats, and opposite me was a red-faced man, with large shiny eyes and greasy hair. On one side of me was a jolly country girl of about twenty-five, on the other a thin, dry-looking man. There was an incessant din of conversation and singing; we were leaning towards one another, and saying what jolly fellows we were, we should never part. A bottle was always going round, and every now and then the postilion ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... removing, one after another, all irritations, and closing all discussions with foreign countries, roused incessant obstruction, which could be overcome only by patience and bargaining in executive patronage, if indeed it could be overcome at all. The price actually paid was not very great except in the physical exhaustion of Hay and Pauncefote, Root and McKinley. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... of men and beasts. The horns of the cattle, the high hats, with a long, hairy nap, of the wealthy peasants, and the head dresses of the peasant women, appeared on the surface of the throng. And the sharp, shrill, high-pitched voices formed an incessant, uncivilized uproar, over which soared at times a roar of laughter from the powerful chest of a sturdy yokel, or the prolonged bellow of a cow fastened to the wall of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... all the different voices, that the silence of any one can never fail to be immediately perceived. The low, mellow warble of the Blue-Bird seems a sort of echo to the louder voice of the Robin; and the incessant trilling or running accompaniment of the Hair-Bird, the twittering of the Swallow, and the loud and melodious piping of the Oriole, frequent and short, are sounded like the different parts of a regular band of instruments, and each performer seems to time his part as if by design. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... the limit of clear visibility, the two men studied the incessant battle being waged beneath them. They saw not one, but fully a thousand of the globular craft high in the air and grouped in a great circle around an immense fortification upon the ground below. They saw no airships in the line of battle, but noticed that many such vessels were ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... studious companions, has been wholly without advantage to the publick: neighbourhood, where it does not conciliate friendship, incites competition; and he that would contentedly rest in a lower degree of excellence, where he had no rival to dread, will be urged by his impatience of inferiority to incessant endeavours ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... staff had just arrived from a steamboat anchored below McAllister; that the general was extremely anxious to see me on important business, but that he was lame from an old Mexican-War wound, and could not possibly come to me. I was extremely weary from the incessant labor of the day and night before, but got up, and again walked down the sandy road to McAllister, where I found a boat awaiting us, which carried us some three miles down the river, to the steamer W. W. Coit ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... carried on her chat with an imaginary circle of admirers, twisting this way and that, fanning, fidgeting, twitching at her draperies, as she did in real life when people were noticing her. Her incessant movements were not the result of shyness: she thought it the correct thing to be animated in society, and noise and restlessness were her only notion of vivacity. She therefore watched herself approvingly, admiring the light on her hair, the flash ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... that some of her lovers equal the Belvidere Apollo in beauty, but that she never has yet seen that being, who was perfect enough to be entitled to the possession of her affections. Do not smile. Madame Ris a disciple of Diana, even slander pays incessant homage to her chastity. Rumour has whispered, in every corner of Paris, that her husband is only admitted to the honour of supplying the finances of her splendid and costly establishment. Madame R—— ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... All kinds of provisions and stores had already reached Fort George; but the means of transport were lamentably deficient, and the impossibility of bringing up supplies compelled the army to a fatal inaction. On the 15th of August, after a fortnight's incessant exertion, there were only ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... atheism, manifested by a total indifference to all ceremonies, except so far as they were shows, was the result, the whole community falling into an unbelieving and godless state. The form of superstition through which the national mind had passed was essentially founded upon the recognition of an incessant intervention of many divinities determining human affairs; but such a faith became extinct by degrees among the educated. How was it possible that human reason should deal otherwise with all the contradictions and absurdities of a thousand indigenous and imported deities, each asserting his inconsistent ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... tribulation which came and went was probably connected with the dreadful and incessant horrors of his money trouble. The gigantic Brocken spectre projected from himself upon the wide ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and not without effect, for when Beaujeu fell the Canadians began to flee and the Indians quailed in their covers before the cannon fire of the English. But the French fighters were rallied back to their hidden recesses, and they now kept up an incessant and destructive fire. In this distressing situation the English fell back into the plain. Braddock rode in among them, and he and his officers persistently endeavored to rally them, but without success. The Colonial troops adopted the Indian method, ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... from Abel. Certainly Abel himself could not have done better with the fox trapping, which at this season was the chief employment. Bobby kept the house, too, so well supplied with rabbits and ptarmigans, through his incessant hunting, that presently there were enough hanging frozen in the porch to last till the coming ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... this lunatic are connected with the current of our story, we are compelled to exhibit the most striking of them. Margaritis went out as soon as it rained, and walked about bare-headed in his vineyard. At home he made incessant inquiries for newspapers; to satisfy him his wife and the maid-servant used to give him an old journal called the "Indre-et-Loire," and for seven years he had never yet perceived that he was reading the same number over and over again. Perhaps a doctor would have observed ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... by them, now easily dissipating and shining through them, makes the drama of the moonlight night to all watchers and night-travellers. Sailors speak of it as the moon eating up the clouds. The traveller all alone, the moon all alone, except for his sympathy, overcoming with incessant victory whole squadrons of clouds above the forests and lakes and hills. When she is obscured he so sympathizes with her that he could whip a dog for her relief, as Indians do. When she enters on a clear field of great extent in the heavens, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... tyrant soul of mine, Don't you know That in slow, but sure decay, I am wasting day by day, While you grow None the better for the strain On my nerves and on my brain, For my head's incessant pain, And my sick ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... almost spontaneously the dictates of the victorious spirit within. The hours of sleep are curtailed under judicious control, until that mysterious sentence which compels us to pass a third of our existence in unconscious helplessness is in part repealed. The soul, habituated to incessant and self-collected action, wakes and lives, while ordinary Christians slumber, and as it were are dead. The infliction of other severe bodily pains co-operates in the purifying process, and enables the mind to disregard the dictates of nature to an extent which to many Catholics seems almost ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... Manor, had himself been at rest for some five years; his widow and three children still lived together in the home they had long occupied. Joseph came of a family of mechanics; his existence was that of the harmless necessary artisan. He earned a living by dint of incessant labour, brought up his family in an orderly way, and departed with a certain sense of satisfaction at having fulfilled obvious duties—the only result of life for which he could reasonably look. With his children we shall have to make closer acquaintance; ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... student who tackles his Herrick as a schoolboy is expected to tackle his Horace, in a spirit of pertinacious and stolid straightforwardness, will probably find himself before long so nauseated by the incessant inhalation of spices and flowers, condiments and kisses, that if a musk-rat had run over the page it could hardly be less endurable to the physical than it is to the spiritual stomach. The fantastic and the brutal blemishes which deform and ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... within the limits of the longitude of 61 deg. in the Atlantic Ocean, and that of 100 deg. in Central Mexico, and from the North American lakes to the West Indies. Over this wide area, an appearance presented itself, far surpassing in grandeur the most imposing artificial fire-works. An incessant play of dazzlingly brilliant luminosities was kept up in the heavens for several hours. Some of these were of considerable magnitude and peculiar form. One of large size remained for some time almost stationary ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... gigantic bin within the elevator itself, rushing down the confines of the chute to plunge into the roomy, gloomy interior of the hold with an incessant, metallic roar, persistent, steady, inevitable. No men were in sight. The place was deserted. No human agency seemed to be back of the movement of the wheat. Rather, the grain seemed impelled with a force of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... truly and profoundly glad that you are thinking of some general work on Geographical Distribution, or so forth; I hope to God that your incessant occupations may not interrupt this intention. As for my book, I shall not have done the accursed proofs till the end of November (238/4. The proofs of the "Descent of Man" were finished on January 15th, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... upward glance at his hostess' face and then repeated slowly, "Yes'm, dat sutny is de trufe. I ain't nevah t'ought o' that befo'. Hit ain't no ha'dah lookin' out fu' two dan hit is fu' one," and though he was usually an incessant talker, he lapsed ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... had made not the slightest impression on her. The same freshness, the same robust, energetic slenderness, the identical flames of arrogant vitality in her green eyes. Instead of withering under the incessant parching of passion's flame, she seemed to grow ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... were the same as those to which his father had succumbed, and they supposed it was an unknown disease in the family. They gave up all hope of recovery. Indeed, his state grew worse and worse; he felt an unconquerable aversion for every kind of food, and the vomiting was incessant. The last three days of his life he complained that a fire was burning in his breast, and the flames that burned within seemed to blaze forth at his eyes, the only part of his body that appeared to live, so like a corpse was all the rest of him. On the 17th of June 1670 ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to the weaker defenses of the American left, where were no redoubts and entrenchments like those on the right. By this time British ships were throwing shells among the Americans. Charlestown was burning. The great column of black smoke, the incessant roar of cannon, and the dreadful scenes of carnage had affected the defenders. They wavered; and on the third British charge, having exhausted their ammunition, they fled from the hill in confusion back to ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... running on the theatre. Owing to failing health and to his unfortunate love affair, he now found it more difficult to concentrate his mind than formerly, and the incessant work of earlier years was no longer possible; so that the easy road to fortune offered by a successful play became doubly attractive. "Richard Coeur d'Eponge," however, never appeared; and except several fragments, which are ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... to be a grand festa this evening, to-day being the eve of the [Greek: genethlion tou prodromou], or birth of St. John the Baptist. There was an incessant firing of muskets and petards; which proved that the gunpowder had not been all expended upon King Otho. Towards night, every one lighted a large bonfire before his house, and the favourite amusement seemed ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... and to protect and save this sister—a gentle woman, who had watched like a mother over his own infancy—the whole length of his life was devoted. What he endured, through the space of nearly forty years, from the incessant fear and frequent recurrence of his sister's insanity, can now only be conjectured. In this constant and uncomplaining endurance, and in his steady adherence to a great principle of conduct, ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... shoulders stooped, the back bent forward from the waist, and the hands, yet retaining hints of care, trembled at the ends of bony, jerky arms. And, in the half-light of the veranda, the sodden features smirked and grinned, scowled and leered, with an incessant twitching at the corners of the mouth ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... to be sober because it was too early in the day to get drunk; but of Jesus he had nothing to say except that he was the Christ foretold by the prophets as coming from the seed of David, and that they must believe this and be baptized. To this the other apostles added incessant denunciations of the Jews for having crucified him, and threats of the destruction that would overtake them if they did not repent: that is, if they did not join the sect which the apostles were now forming. A quite intolerable young speaker named Stephen delivered an oration ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... flat-looking wall, that had been run up by the present owner of the property to portion off this division of the grand old drawing-room of the mansion. Some employed the time in eating their bread and cheese, with as measured and incessant a motion of the jaws (and almost as stupidly placid an expression of countenance), as you may see in cows ruminating in the first meadow you ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... trembling of the building, Regina began to descend the stairs, guided by the incessant flashes of lightning, but when about half-way down a terrific peal of thunder so startled her that she missed a step, grasped at the balustrade but failed to find it, and rolled helplessly to the floor of the vestibule. Stunned and mute ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... be afraid of the eyes and ears of spies, your majesty will permit me to speak freely to you. My king, great events are maturing; while impenetrable darkness still seems to surround us, morning is gradually dawning, and the day of retribution is not distant. Europe is utterly tired of war, and this incessant bloodshed; she has practised forbearance until it is exhausted and converted into an intense indignation. Thanks to his unscrupulous machinations, Napoleon has hitherto succeeded in bringing about wars between the different nations of Europe in order to derive benefits for France alone from these ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... cannot be honestly passed over in silence. It could nowhere be mentioned less invidiously than under the roof of an institution which is at once an effort to create high tastes in working men and a proof that such tastes can be created. The period of transition from high to low wages and from incessant toil to comparative leisure must be one of peril to masses whom no Mechanics Institute or Literary Society as yet counts among its members. It is the more so because there is abroad in all classes a passion for sensual enjoyment and excitement produced by the vast development of wealth and at ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... was wonderment in them as if perhaps the truth were dawning. Certainly for days he followed the dog around, plainly apprehensive that he would run off again. And Frank, far more ready to forget grievances than to remember them, began to watch him in his incessant play, even to take ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... wealth,—not for individuals, but for their monasteries. Monastic life became less dreamy, less visionary, but more useful, recognizing the bodily necessities of men. The religious duties of monks were still dreary, monotonous, and gloomy,—long and protracted singing in the choir, incessant vigils, an unnatural silence at the table, solitary walks in the cloister, the absence of social pleasures, confinement to the precincts of their convents; but their convents became bee-hives of industry, and their lands were highly cultivated. The monks ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... (this being Saturday), and at the mountains of copper piled up on tables in front of the house. There is a feeling of vastness, of solitude, and of dreariness in some of these great haciendas, which is oppressive. Especially about noon, when everything is still, and there is no sound except the incessant buzz of myriads of insects, I can imagine it like what the world must have been before ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... in the decision, arrived at by Campbell-Bannerman, who, when Gladstone formed his Home Rule Cabinet in 1886, entered it as Secretary of State for War. He went out with his chief in the following August, and in the incessant clamour for and against Home Rule which occupied the next six years he took ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... been abolished, Whig, Tory, and Radical, embracing in discrepant union; and all the Journals of the Nation could have been jumbled into one Journal, and the Philosophy of Clothes poured forth in incessant torrents therefrom, the attempt had seemed possible. But, alas, what vehicle of that sort have we, except Fraser's Magazine? A vehicle all strewed (figuratively speaking) with the maddest Waterloo-Crackers, exploding distractively ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... are occasionally called forth in the progress, are such as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree fervid and active, to which materials were supplied by incessant study and unlimited curiosity. The heat of Milton's mind may be said to sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of science, unmingled with its ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... India tell the same story, whether in their recorded or unrecorded history. Tropical Africa lacks a history; but all that has been pieced together by ethnologists and anthropologists, in an effort to reconstruct its past, shows incessant movement,—growth, expansion and short-lived conquest, followed by shrinkage, expulsion or absorption by another invader.[127] To this constant shifting of races and peoples the name of historical movement has been ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... past the figure of the woman, and disappeared in the brilliant light of the cabin. The door closed. I remained standing there. Manuel, at her disappearance, raised his voice to a tremendous, incessant yell of despair, as if he expected ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... always without speaking, for they seemed to know the prices of the things they wished to buy and always laid down the exact sum of money needed. And indeed, how could the seven companions of the Enchanted Head have spent eighty years of incessant feasting on an island of the sea, without sometimes purchasing supplies ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... despair of arresting its motion endeavor to obstruct by difficulties and impediments; they vainly seek to counteract its effect by contrary efforts: but it gradually reduces or destroys every obstacle, until by its incessant activity the bulwarks of the influence of wealth are ground down to the fine and shifting sand which is the basis of democracy. When the law of inheritance permits, still more when it decrees, the equal division of a father's property among all his children, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... conviction, required action. The nature of the action she did not know, but something urged her to reach him if she could. For she believed him mad. Great torture of spirit had overtaken her under her loss; but upon this extreme grief, ugly and incessant, obtruded the thought of Abel, the secret of his present refuge and the impulse to approach him. Her personal suffering established rather than shook her own high standards. She had promised the boy never ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... advising her as to her answer; he told her she must be guided by her own feelings, and was herself the only person capable of judging what she had best do. The discussion of the Queen's business is now become an intolerable nuisance in society; no other subject is ever talked of. It is an incessant matter of argument and dispute what will be done and what ought to be done. All people express themselves tired of the subject, yet none talk or think of any other. It is a great evil when a single subject of interest takes possession of society; conversation, loses all ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... approach to the duelling ground only served to redouble his gayety. To one unacquainted with the object of this drive, the menace of dire peril impending over this young man, with his continuous flow of conversation and incessant laughter, would ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... made a question whether Richardson's romances are poetry; and the answer perhaps is, that they are not poetry, because they are not romance. The interest is worked up to an inconceivable height; but it is by an infinite number of little things, by incessant labour and calls upon the attention, by a repetition of blows that have no rebound in them. The sympathy excited is not a voluntary contribution, but a tax. Nothing is unforced and spontaneous. There is a want of elasticity and motion. The story does not "give an echo ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... against those vernal influences working in this generous nature surrounding her and working in her own blood. All the primitive instinct of her womanhood called aloud in her that she must wed—must wed. And the strident voice of the great, painted city coming up to her, urgent, incessant, carried the same message, as did the radiant sea, whose white lips kissed the indented coast-line as though pale and hungry with love. While the man before her, by his very abnormality and a certain secretness inevitable in ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Ginckle was again becoming straitened for provisions, for the proclamations which he issued failed to inspire the peasantry with any confidence. He now erected a battery, of thirty-five guns, against King's Island; and, after an incessant cannonade of some days, a breach was effected in the wall between the abbey and Ballsbridge. Preparations were made for crossing the arm of the Shannon and assaulting the breach; but the works constructed for crossing the river were repeatedly destroyed by the ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... morning—he made me a kind offer of his assistance in procuring for me three or four men to attend me in the surveying and this being the only thing I was in need of, every matter has been soon arranged. I am only at present to regret that a heavy rain and thick mist which has been incessant ever since my arrival here, does put an insuperable obstacle to my wish of proceeding immediately to the survey. Should the weather continue bad, as there is every appearance it will, I shall be much at ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker |
