"Oblivion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the subject was to all of them so painful a one, that they could not bear to have it brought forward even as the text of a sermon. They only wanted to forget all about it as soon as possible, and let it sink into complete oblivion. ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... was in the champagne. She had her little moment of exhilaration, of self-delighting ease and vivacity—then dizziness, then awful nausea, and awful fear, and oblivion. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... street, lined by its hitching posts and saddled horses, the square buildings with their ugly signs, unfinished yet old, the lounging, dust-gray men at every corner—these awoke in me a significance that had gone into oblivion overnight. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... seeming impossibilities. "It is the half a neck nearer that shows the blood and wins the race; the one march more that wins the campaign: the five minutes more of unyielding courage that wins the fight." Again and again had the irrepressible Carter Harrison been consigned to oblivion by the educated and moral element of Chicago. Nothing could keep him down. He was invincible. A son of Chicago, he had partaken of that nineteenth century miracle, that phoenix-like nature of the city which, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... disagreeable either. Very few men are afraid of death in the abstract. Very few men believe in hell, or are tortured by their consciences. They are doubtful about after-death, hesitating between a belief in eternal oblivion and a belief in a new life under the same management as the present; and neither prospect fills them with terror. If only one's "people" would be sensible, one ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... of the Romans, waged against the barbarians of the East and of the West, relating separately the events of each one, to the end that the long course of time may not overwhelm deeds of singular importance through lack of a record, and thus abandon them to oblivion and utterly obliterate them. The memory of these events he deemed would be a great thing and most helpful to men of the present time, and to future generations as well, in case time should ever again place men ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... gathered by contemplating things as they really exist. It may be observed, that the oldest poets of many nations preserve their reputation, and that the following generations of wit, after a short celebrity, sink into oblivion. The first, whoever they be, must take their sentiments and descriptions immediately from knowledge; the resemblance is therefore just, their descriptions are verified by every eye, and their sentiments acknowledged by ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... was like a curtain let down between the prying, clattering world without and the strange peace within: the old man in his perfect sleep; the young, misused wife in that passing oblivion borrowed from death and as tender ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... contemplations which do not forcibly influence our present welfare. When this vacuity is filled, no characters can be admitted into the circulation of fame, but by occupying the place of some that must be thrust into oblivion. The eye of the mind, like that of the body, can only extend its view to new objects, by losing sight of those ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... prevented the completion of my work at that time. More recently, after despairing of the hope that some more capable member of my old command, the Rockbridge Artillery, would not allow its history to pass into oblivion, I resumed the task, and now present this volume as the only published record of that company, celebrated as it was even in that matchless body of men, the Army of ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... seen the black last of him, and the very name of Croker already begins to be a memory. But why should one repine?" Lemon's sneer was deepening. "In every age the other great have come and ruled and gone to that oblivion beyond. They arose to fall and be forgot. It is the law. Then why not Mr. Croker? True, even while we consent, there comes that natural sadness which I now observe to sparkle so brightly in every present eye. What then? We console ourselves as did Chief Justice Crewe full two centuries ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... did not, however, inform my companions, for I felt that I should only add to their grief by so doing. The Indians continued sleeping till a late hour. They seemed to have the power of thus steeping their misery in oblivion. A night's rest had somewhat restored Manco, but he was evidently fretting at the thought of the inactivity to which his wound would consign him. "But what would you do if you were able to move about," I asked. "The Inca is a prisoner, and will, I fear, suffer death, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... which require neither genius nor learning, nor indeed any other talent, except a good memory, or an exact journal. I know likewise, that writers of travels, like dictionary-makers, are sunk into oblivion by the weight and bulk of those who come last, and therefore lie uppermost. And it is highly probable, that such travellers, who shall hereafter visit the countries described in this work of mine, may, by detecting my errors ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... seemed rushing through a blurred green and black aisle of the forest with a gale in her face. Then, with a sharp jolt, a break, Calico plunged to the sand. Carley felt herself propelled forward out of the saddle into the air, and down to strike with a sliding, stunning force that ended in sudden dark oblivion. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... bottom of my heart whoever he was. If all the miserable wretches in pain of body and mind, whose comforter he has been, could meet together to sing his praises, what a chorus it would be! I have had six delicious hours of oblivion; I have woke up with my mind composed; I have written a perfect little letter to Midwinter; I have drunk my nice cup of tea, with a real relish of it; I have dawdled over my morning toilet with an exquisite sense of relief—and all through the modest little bottle of Drops, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... and hot for some time, and then once more oblivion came over him, this time with no painful nightmare full of absurdities, but a deep heavy dreamless sleep, from which he started up in horror with that appalling roar ringing in his ears and dying away ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... of our Government to conceal and bury this affair in oblivion, it furnished matter both for conversation in our fashionable circles, and subjects for our caricaturists. But these artists were soon seized by the police, who found it more easy to chastise genius than to silence tongues. The declaration ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... husbands at evening, tired and uncommunicative, to eat hurriedly and then go again into the streets or, the blessing of utter physical exhaustion having come to them, to sit for an hour in stockinged feet before crawling away to sleep and oblivion. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... had papered just as our nursery had been papered. Even the old kettle was rescued from oblivion, and stood on the hob. It was so old that any jumble sale would have been pleased to have it. The kettle-holder hung on the wall, with its cat on a green ground, which had been lovely in the day of its youth. One of us had worked it; Nannie of course knew which. The tea-set was there with ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... shared his gay and mirthful hours, who listened enraptured to his eloquence and flashes of wit, which as Hamlet says 'were won't to set the table in a roar,' have endeavoured by giving to the world his literary labours, or even a sketch of his life, to preserve his memory from oblivion. Henry Cooper was the son of an eminent counsellor of Norwich, a gentleman of powerful mind, whose legal knowledge has rendered him one of the first consulting men of the day. Even at his present advanced age of near eighty, he may be seen early of a morning taking ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... difference between men and women. To have wandered troubles our consciences little, when we have come to the right path again; their pride stands so strong in constancy as sometimes (I speak in trembling) even to beget an oblivion of its falterings and make what could not have been as if it had not. But now was not the moment for excuse, and I took my pardon with all gratitude and with full allowance ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... arc as accurately acquainted with the life of Shakspeare as with that of Chaucer, though divided from each other by an interval of two centuries, and (what should have been more effectual towards oblivion) by the wars of the two roses. And yet the traditional memory of a rural and a sylvan region, such as Warwickshire at that time was, is usually exact as well as tenacious; and, with respect to Shakspeare in particular, we may presume it to have been full and circumstantial through the generation ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Parish is the mother of all the other Parishes in California, and because here in this new edifice, where there is a tablet to his memory, and where he is buried, the General Convention was held in 1901, a council of the Church which will ever be memorable. It is well also to rescue from oblivion the memory of a man who laid the foundations of the Church in California on the enduring principles of the ancient creeds. May we not learn also from the facts of his life, which show how faithful and accomplished he was, that the men who are to be heralds of the Cross in new fields ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... cleared place with his light, and they all crowded up behind him. A bed of ashes smouldered, and around it, in deep oblivion of well-earned sleep, lay thirteen blanketed braves, a trusty weapon—tomahawk or sword—at ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... multitude, numerous as insects in the summer air. AEneas, with surprise, inquired who were these. Anchises answered, "They are souls to which bodies are to be given in due time. Meanwhile they dwell on Lethe's bank, and drink oblivion of their former lives." "Oh, father!" said AEneas, "is it possible that any can be so in love with life, as to wish to leave these tranquil seats for the upper world?" Anchises replied by explaining the plan of creation. The Creator, he told him, originally made the material of ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... write at intervals, and hope you will pay me in kind. How does Pratt get on, or rather get off, Joe Blackett's posthumous stock? You killed that poor man amongst you, in spite of your Ionian friend [2] and myself, who would have saved him from Pratt, poetry, present poverty, and posthumous oblivion. Cruel patronage! to ruin a man at his calling; but then he is a divine subject for subscription and biography; and Pratt, who makes the most of his dedications, has inscribed the volume to no less than five ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... the Russian all the justice of impartiality. When he saw the girl, he rather shrank from the affair. But he had gone too far, he had promised too much; to withdraw now meant his own defeat, his government's anger, his political oblivion. And there was a zest in this life of his. He could no more resist the call of intrigue than a gambler can resist the croupier's, "Make your game, gentlemen!" I believe that he loved the girl the moment he set eyes upon her. Her beauty and bearing distinguished her from the other women ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... clear-skied, sweet-breathed loveliness; in the autumn, there where the melancholy of the falling leaf could not spread its contagion to the sculptured foliage of Gothic art, the days were alike in their sentiment of tranquil oblivion and resignation which was as autumnal as any aspect of woods or fields could have been; in the winter they were alike in their dreariness and discomfort. As I remember, we spent by far the greater part of our time in going to ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... has been alienated from the Pyncheons these four-score years; but the Judge had kept it in his eye, and had set his heart on reannexing it to the small demesne still left around the Seven Gables; and now, during this odd fit of oblivion, the fatal hammer must have fallen, and transferred our ancient patrimony to some alien possessor. Possibly, indeed, the sale may have been postponed till fairer weather. If so, will the Judge make it convenient to be present, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... feeling better?" The sweet, familiar voice roused her to the realization of what had happened. It was the same voice that, before unconsciousness had wrapped her in its merciful oblivion, had been pouring into her ears an unbelievably hideous story—a nightmare tale of what had happened at some far ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... inmates are more or less living in a perfect agony of mind, which drives many into insanity or to the verge of insanity, as it did me. How can one, then, when the past is remorse—and the present and future despair—find oblivion or raze out the written troubles of the brain ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... person to whom I have thought myself bound to tell the whole truth. I do not think my reluctance to draw the follies of my brother from oblivion a culpable one. I am willing to rely, for my justification from malicious charges, on the general tenor of my actions, and am scarcely averse to buy my brother's reputation at the cost of my own. The censure of the ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... precautions he had adopted, to raise any objections, disposed though they may have been to try and bring forward other arguments. Their sole alternative therefore was to suppress their resentment, to refrain from further importunities and let the matter drop into oblivion. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... great dream died, Whose failing sense darkened on peaks unwon, Whose souls went forth upon the wine-dark tide To seas beyond the sun, Far off, far off, but ours and England's yet, Know she has conquered! Live again, and let The clamouring trumpets break oblivion! ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... his very lips so violent, so strong, that it burst its feeble limits and broke out in one resistless word, "Honor" the very sound of his own voice startled Guy, he could have rushed from the spot into oblivion forever, had not the still reclining figure grown suddenly animate, like a spark of electric fluid the word vibrated through her whole frame, she started suddenly up with an expression of blank dismay ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... the centuries of silence and oblivion under the shroud of the desert sands, which, thickening each year, proceeded to bury, and, in the event, to preserve for us, this ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... drank deeply from the black cup of sleep. For a few hours all remained opaque to me. Oblivion and nothingness inundated me ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... his country's doom in letters large and deep on the walls of time. Yet, with unblenching brow, he waits the falling of the thunderbolt, a calm, grand figure, fit to live in history's pages when every memory of meaner men has passed into oblivion, M.T. Steyn, President of the shattered Free State of South Africa. Around this man the human jackals howl to try with lying lips to foul his memory. Yet, as a rock, age after age, throws back with contemptuous strength the waves that break against its base, so every action of his manly life ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... very faint one; no one can quite dare to say just when it has been crossed. But this mild creature had crossed it somewhere in the beginning of his certainty that he was going to give the world the means of seeing the unseen. That this great gift should be flung into oblivion, all for the want, as he believed, of a little time, broke his poor heart. When Lizzie Graham came to see him, she found him sitting in his twilight, his elbows on his knees, his head in his long, thin hands. ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... of society, what shall we say of that great multitude of men and women, crushed into poverty, helplessness and ignorance, groping as the blind grope in darkness; and who find in the dram-shop a momentary oblivion to their miseries? ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... may pourtray, And any tyrant, fool, or knave Who has the wealth, may in that way His name from dull oblivion save; ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... reptiles, and fishes. It would be most interesting to see these science primers prepared by Solomon, and compare them with what we see on the same subjects in our own day. But the Bible has not preserved them, and they have long centuries ago passed into oblivion. Solomon's knowledge was not of that shallow sort which is limited to the sphere of earthly material, "seen things;" for he was wise with that deeper knowledge which has for its object God and the human soul, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... the patience and perseverance of Fathom, who foresaw, that the soothing hand of time would cast a veil of oblivion over those scenes which were remembered to his prejudice; and that, in the meantime, though he was excluded from the private parties of the fair sex, in which his main hope of success was placed, he should be able to insinuate himself into some ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... part in the sacrifices, except a woman of approved chastity, and who was the wife of one husband. This institution, being afterwards debased by [the admission of] vicious characters, and not only by matrons, but women of every description, sunk at last into oblivion. During this year the Ogulnii, Cneius and Quintus, being curule aediles, carried on prosecutions against several usurers; whose property being fined, out of the produce, which was deposited in the treasury, they ordered brazen thresholds for the Capitol, utensils ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... combined fumes of opium and tobacco are well-nigh unbearable, but thera is no alternative. The next bench to mine is occupied by a peripatetic vender of drugs and medicines. Most of his time is consumed in smoking opium in dreamy oblivion to all else save the sensuous delights embodied in that operation itself. Occasionally, however, when preparing for another smoke, he addresses me at length in about one word of pidgin-English to a dozen of simon-pure Cantonese. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... to the skies. Better to honour the great master who, for so many centuries, has held the world in awed admiration. There is no need to-day to drag Rembrandt forth from the obscurity of the past to save him from oblivion; we were not obliged to cleanse his image from the dust of ages before showing to the world this unequalled genius to whom Holland proudly points as one ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels
... ran through space When first the mournful toll Rang for My Lady's soul. The shining world was hell; her grace Only the flattering gleam And mockery of a dream: Oblivion struck me like a mace, And as a tree that's hewn I dropped, in a dead swoon, And lay a long time ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... bodies in the vain hope of pleasing their idol and attracting her attention. To be loved by Paris is an ordeal that few natures can stand, for she wrings the lifeblood from her devotees and then casts them aside into oblivion. Paris, said one of her greatest writers, “aime briser ses idoles!” As Ulysses and his companions fell, in other days, a prey to the allurements of Circe, so our powerful young nation has fallen more than any other under the influence of the French ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... multitudes behind her and impatient multitudes awaiting her coming. Her life, during one hour of each day, upon the platform, would be a rapturous intoxication—and when the curtain fell; and the lights were out, and the people gone, to nestle in their homes and forget her, she would find in sleep oblivion of her homelessness, if she could, if not she would brave out the night in solitude and wait for the ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... resolve to dedicate thyself anew to His service, and so coming, "He will by no means cast thee out!" Despond not by reason of former shortcomings,—thy sins are great, but thy Saviour's merits are greater. He is willing to forget all the past, and sink it in oblivion, if there be present love, and the promise of future obedience. "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?" Ah! how different is God's verdict from man's! After such sins as thine, man's sentence would have been, "I will in nowise receive!" But "it is better to fall into the hands of God, than ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... Muse which weepeth, Carved in marble rich and rare; Even now time's ploughshare creepeth Through the grass which groweth there. O'er the place where he is sleeping Soon will roll oblivion's wave: Still God's angel will be keeping Ward above the ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... nothing if it is not. So I shook my head, and he turned away, leaving me to wallow in the mire of contemptible security. I can hardly doubt that he will be one day found dead in the mountains, and that his Eldorado will be but oblivion. ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... in the opinion of both; and, being thus pressed by the men whom I most loved and revered, I endeavoured to consign my resentment and its effusions to oblivion, and to dismiss the subject ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... fierce pursuing Matabele; again heard their cruel shouts and the answering crack of the rifles; again, amidst the din and the gathering darkness, distinguished the gentle, foreign voice of Meyer speaking his words of sarcastic greeting. Next oblivion fell upon her, and after it a dim memory of being helped up the hill with the sun pouring on her back and assisted to climb the steep steps of the wall by means of a rope placed around ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... give me such a soul (A soul, which ev'ry way is form'd for Empire), And damn me with a younger Brother's right? The diadem would set as well on mine, As on the brows of any lordly He; Nor is this hand weak to enforce command. And shall I steal into my grave, and give My name up to oblivion, to be thrown Among the common rubbish of the times? No: Perish first, this happy ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... continually in inconvenient places and ever insistently demanding a new depository. At last I began to look on it with loathing; and one day in a fit of inspiration, creating the limbo aforesaid, I hurled the manuscript, as I thought, into everlasting oblivion. I had no desire to carry on the record of my life any further, and there, in limbo, it has remained for three years. But the other day I took it out for reference; and now as I am holiday-making in a certain little backwater of the world, where it is raining in a most unholiday ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... blossoms, bursts Into a rage to suffer for mankind, And recommence at sorrow: drops like seed After the blossom, ultimate of all. Say, does the seed scorn earth and seek the sun? Surely it has no other end and aim Than to drop, once more die into the ground, Taste cold and darkness and oblivion there: And thence rise, tree-like grow through pain to joy, More joy and ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... was peacefully sleeping; and this total oblivion, this absence of all consciousness, seemed to him so enviable that, suddenly yielding to a fit of cowardice, he seized the bottle, still half-filled with the sleeping-draught, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... exterminate our people, it behoves us to speak the truth in what may be, perchance, our last message to the world. Even if we are exterminated the truth will triumph through us over our conquerors, and will sterilise and paralyse all their efforts until they too disappear in the night of oblivion. ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... remained to Mary Stuart of her two thrones and her double power? Her name, that was all; her, name with which, free, she had doubtless stirred Scotland, but which little by little was about to be effaced in the hearts of her adherents, and which during her lifetime oblivion was to cover perhaps as with a shroud. Such an idea was insupportable to a soul as lofty as Mary Stuart's, and to an organisation which, like that of the flowers, has need, before everything, of air, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... behind barred doors," said his wife scornfully. "Let my lord, then, recline indolently upon the floor of his inner chamber while this person sumptuously lulls him into oblivion with the music of her voice, regardless of the morrow and of the fate in which his ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... centre of the planetary system, and that the Earth revolves round him. This theory—the accuracy of which has since been confirmed—received but little attention from his successors, and it sank into oblivion until the time of Copernicus, by whom it was revived. Pythagoras discovered that the Morning and Evening Stars are one ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... happening and to bring my senses into a state of stupor. I would willingly have gone to sleep, but that seemed impossible. I was mistaken, however. After some time, in spite of the violent movements and the terrific uproar, I began to doze off, and an oblivion of all things, past and present, came over me. It was sent in mercy, for I do not think I could otherwise have endured my sufferings. When I awoke to the present matters had not improved, so I endeavoured, and successfully, to go to sleep again. This ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... resting-place, when Kean came to America, found out the spot, and raised a handsome cenotaph to his memory; and it is to Mr Placide, one of the very best of American actors, that Red Jacket is indebted for the tablet which has been raised to rescue his narrow home from oblivion. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... cunning goldsmith. "I know I've got you. But I'll be magnanimous—I'll take L150. No, L160—I must pay the boatmen—and then I'll say no more about the affair. It shall be buried in the oblivion of my breast, it shall be forgotten with the sins of my youth. I must ask you ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... snatch from utter oblivion the once highly reputed Humphry, the king of landscape gardeners, to whom many of our baronial parks owe much of their picturesque beauty, and who, by the side of Sir Joseph Paxton, would now most ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... at work. Not an engine answered the call of the road! A passing truck driver, grinning from ear to ear, drove slowly down the line, dealing out the ancient jests rescued for the occasion from an oblivion to which the perfection of the ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... doubt and irresolution, it is because it is forcibly recalled to it, because some incident startles him to recollection, proves to him that he has forgotten it, and he turns upon himself with surprise and indignation: Why is it this thing remains to do? Am I a coward! Do I lack gall? Is it "bestial oblivion?" or ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... shown how it was possible to copy from life, in a novel, true heroism and true tenderness without exaggeration; her exquisite masterpiece was translated of course as was everything then that was French; but oblivion soon gathered round the "Princess of Cleve," and the only proof we have that it did not pass unnoticed is a clumsy play by Lee, in which this best of old French novels is mercilessly caricatured.[354] There was no attempt ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... up from the deep oblivion of ages many stirring times. It was originally "Fordie," but was named Lawers after the Campbells from Loch Tayside came into possession. How different our quiet Christian Lord's Days and "kirk-yard cracks" from these Sunday and festival ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... outlined the plan more definitely. He was going to be a soldier. Soon she would hear him well spoken of. His idea was either to be stretched on the battlefield in his first encounter, or to astound the world by his bravery. In this way the impossible situation would settle itself—either the oblivion of ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... one; Robert would listen to no word of accompanying his family in their exile. He declared his only desire was either to procure for his country even justice, and freedom from neglect and oppression, or for himself a grave, and oblivion of her people's sufferings ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... is earthed and shackled in the same manner. He began his career with finished and studied pictures, which, I believe, never paid him—he now prostitutes his fine talent to the superficialness of public taste, and blots his way to emolument and oblivion. There is commonly, however, fault on both sides; in the artist for exhibiting his dexterity by mountebank tricks of the brush, until chaste finish, requiring ten times the knowledge and labor, appears ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... displayed in behalf of the Creeks, history would have written him down as a great statesman. It was only by an accidental suit at law that some of his most characteristic letters were brought to light; but those that have been rescued from oblivion show that in wielding the pen he was more than a match for the many able men who ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... rightful proprietors. Did the savage so soon prepare to yield to the advancing movement of that hitherto fatal civilization before which his name, his race, nay, all traces of his rude existence may ere long pass into oblivion? or did the gathering of the night, and the apparent peaceful aspect of the morn, denote that one gallant struggle would be made ere a strange shout of triumph woke the silent echoes with the glorious name with ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... to affirm that the creation of such a Board would have made a government within a government, and would have threatened the independence of the State. At the time that we made the proposal, we sincerely trusted that what had happened might be buried in oblivion and that we might dwell together in amity. We had hoped that the burghers would have recognised that want of experience, and their education would have made them unfitted for dealing with the most difficult problems that ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... the vase, in all her glory, the rose could have shed tears of mortification, and was ready to cry like Themistocles, "Can nobody give us oblivion?" ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... weeks and a day since Caroline died. Five weeks and a day; his mother's death drifting away into the mystery and oblivion of the past. Likewise, twenty-five years of his ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... rare and beautiful perfections appearing in him, hitherto never wanted great favourers and loving preservers. Among whom I cannot sufficiently commend your charitable zeal and scholarly compassion towards him, that have not only rescued and defended him from the devouring jaws of oblivion, but vouchsafed also to apparel him in a new suit at your own charges, wherein he may again more boldly come abroad, and by your permission return to his old parents, clothed perhaps not in richer or ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... thunderbolts, amid the gaping of the throng. And I say nothing of the works themselves, those works announced with salvoes of artillery, awaited amid a delirium of impatience, maddening Paris for a week, and then falling into everlasting oblivion!' ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... light of memory found Alive within your social glass; Let that be still the magic round. O'er which Oblivion, dare ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... pressure, but allowed it to revolve upwards, and thus to facilitate the release of the foot, in the event of a fall. The simple capped stirrup was used by ancient Spanish Cavaliers, and is still employed by many of their descendants in America. In apparent oblivion of these facts, the Christie stirrup (Fig. 20), made on the same principle, was patented about four years ago. Besides its undue weight (1-1/4 lb. as compared to the 1/2 lb. of the slipper stirrup), it has the further disadvantage of allowing the possibility of the toe being caught between its ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... woman! There is nothing to prescribe but oblivion in a case like this.' He ordered narcotics. Two weeks later I was told that I had been dangerously ill. In that darkened room I had suspected my jeopardy. Surely there is a special place in heaven for mothers who ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... while in his sleep. At six he would suddenly compose himself, even in the midst of an animated narrative or of earnest discussion, and he would lie buried in entire forgetfulness, in a sweet and mighty oblivion, until ten, when he would suddenly start up, and rubbing his eyes with great violence, and passing his fingers swiftly through his long hair, would enter at once into a vehement argument, or begin to recite verses, either of his ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... shadows deep Are life's oblivion, the soul's sleep, And kisses the closed eyes Of ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... silence, the more surely she perceived that earthly glory and magnificence, which she had thought the greatest blessings, were only a series of sunbeams, swiftly following one another, which would be clouded by one shadow after the other until darkness and oblivion ingulfed them. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... could hear the sighing and the sobbing of him who lay sleepless far, far below that bower of rapture, in one of the cold vaults of the Place of Oblivion, thinking of his lost ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... Do you know that Mr. Jefferson was one of as great characters as ever lived among the whites? See his writings for the world, and public labors for the United States of America. Do you believe that the assertions of such a man, will pass away into oblivion unobserved by this people and the world? If you do you are much mistaken—See how the American people treat us—have we souls in our bodies? are we men who have any spirits at all? I know that there are many swell-bellied fellows among us whose greatest object ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... supper completed when Rod felt creeping over him a drowsiness which he attempted in vain to fight off a little longer. Dragging himself back in the shelter he wrapped himself in his blanket, burrowed into the mass of balsam boughs, and passed quickly into oblivion. His last intelligible vision was Mukoki piling logs upon the fire, while the flames shot up a dozen feet into the air, illumining to his drowsy eyes for an instant a wild chaos of rock, beyond which lay the mysterious and impenetrable blackness of ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... grief and hope and fear, Alternate triumphed in his breast; His bliss and woe—a smile, a tear! Oblivion hides the rest. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... from it by his gluttonous and artistic nature. Only ten pounds for an article, whereas a successful "bridge" brought him ten times that amount, and he revolted against the column of platitudes that the hours whelmed in oblivion. There had been times, however, when he had been obliged to look to journalism for daily bread. The Spectator, always open to young talent, had published many of his poems; the Saturday had welcomed his paradoxes and strained eloquence; ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... considered that, were the gold abundant, the effects on the convict population would be eminently disastrous. To which obvious piece of good sense the Doctor bowed his head, and the whole thing passed into oblivion—so much so, that when I heard of Hargreave's discovery in 1851, I had nearly forgotten the Doctor's gold adventure; and I may here state my belief that the knowledge of its existence was confined to very few, and those well-educated men, who never guessed (how could they without considerable workings?) ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... children. Sadak, not knowing who were the agents of these evils, laid his complaint before Amurath, and then learnt that Kalasrad[^e] was in the seraglio. The sultan swore not to force his love upon her till she had drowned the recollections of her past life by a draught of the waters of oblivion. Sadak was sent on this expedition. On his return, Amurath seized the goblet, and, quaffing its contents, found "that the waters of oblivion were the waters of death." He died, and Sadak was made sultan in his stead.—J. Ridley, Tales ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... chapter I argued that we are marking time in a fool's paradise while western civilization slips backward and downward toward dissolution and oblivion. Like many of its predecessors, our civilization seems to have exhausted its capacity to create, progress, advance. Instead it is disintegrating and breaking up in our current time ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... excuses to the King for having been naughty, and promised to be wise in future. Louis behaved more graciously towards the fair rebel than did his mother, and said that everything should be buried in oblivion; but he did not forget the cannonade of the Bastille. After five years' seclusion, she again looked forward to resume her position at Court, to keep one of her own, to enthrone herself at the Luxembourg, and doubtless contract some sovereign ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... idiocy of our tribe, we proceeded to swallow oblivion by the tumbler until the afternoon was nearly gone. I felt damp and cold and sticky, so I said I should scull home and change my clothes. Then Darbishire yelled with spluttering cordiality, "Home! Not if I know it! My togs just fit ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... strange influences and associations. His roving fancies had gone to and fro, between his uncle and his bewitching cousin, until his heart grew softened and satisfied, not less with the native pleasures which they revived in his memory, than of the sweet oblivion which they brought of the many painful and perilous prospects with which he had more recently become familiar. He had no thought of the present, and the pictures of the past were all rich and ravishing. To his wandering sense at that moment there came a sweet vision of beauty ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... length broke with the following words: "It is come to the point I have long dreaded. I must either witness, like an ungrateful beast, the downfall of the best and kindest of masters, or I must speak what I would have buried in the deepest oblivion, or told by any other ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Oblivion here thy wisdom is, Thy thrift the sleep of cares; For a proud idleness like this Crowns all life's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various |
