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Void   Listen
adjective
Void  adj.  
1.
Containing nothing; empty; vacant; not occupied; not filled. "The earth was without form, and void." "I 'll get me to a place more void." "I 'll chain him in my study, that, at void hours, I may run over the story of his country."
2.
Having no incumbent; unoccupied; said of offices and the like. "Divers great offices that had been long void."
3.
Being without; destitute; free; wanting; devoid; as, void of learning, or of common use. "A conscience void of offense toward God." "He that is void of wisdom despiseth his neighbor."
4.
Not producing any effect; ineffectual; vain. "(My word) shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please." "I will make void the counsel of Judah."
5.
Containing no immaterial quality; destitute of mind or soul. "Idol, void and vain."
6.
(Law) Of no legal force or effect, incapable of confirmation or ratification; null. Cf. Voidable, 2.
Void space (Physics), a vacuum.
Synonyms: Empty; vacant; devoid; wanting; unfurnished; unsupplied; unoccupied.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Void" Quotes from Famous Books



... heavens. "Thou wert once of little value, Having neither form nor beauty, Neither strength nor great importance, When like water thou wert resting On the broad back of the marshes, On the steep declines of mountains, When thou wert but formless matter, Only dust of rusty color. "Surely thou wert void of greatness, Having neither strength nor beauty, When the moose was trampling on thee, When the roebuck trod upon thee, When the tracks of wolves were in thee, And the bear-paws scratched thy body. Surely thou hadst little value When the skilful Ilmarinen, First of all the ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... celebrating the feats of the ancient Caledonians, the object of the Society being to preserve their language, costume, music, gymnastic sports, and martial games. This introduction happily fills up what would otherwise have been the only void in the scene, so thickly is it studed and storied with objects and recollections. Altogether, we have rarely seen a topographical panorama of such diversified character: it has reminiscences of history and poetry to lead us through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various

... of interest to that class which most needs something to fill the void made by bereavement. The wounds of grief are less apt to find a cure in that rank of life where the sufferer has wealth and leisure. The poor widow, whose husband was her all, must break the paralysis of grief. The hard necessities of life ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... void?" asked St. Gal, who had evangelized the people of Cornwall and had trained the holy Mael ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... is not room for Death, Nor atom that his might could render void: Thou—THOU art Being and Breath, And what THOU ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... none the poorer when a sad truth takes the place of a beautiful dream. Knowledge has already filled the void which the ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... When he had done stripping us, it was a nice question whether even our nakedness remained. He treated our prejudices and our effete institutions as though they were something external to us, which had come out of nowhere and could be flung into the void from whence they came. When you have called opinion a prejudice, or traced an institution to false reasoning, you have, after all, only exhibited an interesting zoological fact about human beings. We are exactly ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... sorts to make a world, as he often used to say to himself, and if every one was exactly alike one would feel almost as solitary as if the whole earth was empty and void, while, as for virtues and good qualities, they would automatically cease to exist, so that a really good man would simply long to go to hell and have some opportunity to show his goodness. That always seemed very reasonable to me, but I am just ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... the face. And the theories I talked about are no comfort any more; they are just what pretty speeches would be to a person in torture. Oh, Mr. Lyndsay, I always feel that you are real, that you are good; tell me what you know. Is there nothing but this dark void beyond when life falls ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... outdoors she forgot the cheerless, bare interior. Florence led the way out on a porch and waved a hand at a vast, colored void. "That's what Bill likes," ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... droop'd the sweetest flow'rs, And rivers, swoll'n with pride, o'erlook'd the banks; Poor grew the day of summer's golden hours, And void of sap stood Ida's cedar-ranks. The pleasant meadows sadly lay In chill and cooling sweats By rising fountains, or as they Fear'd winter's ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)

... while the planets fanned The vacant ether with their voices deep? Soul of my soul, no word shall be forgot, Nor yet alone, beloved, shall we see The desolation of extinguished suns, Nor fear the void wherethro' our planet runs, For still together shall we go and not Fare ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale

... personal collision, or the menace of personal collision, within the very gardens of the academy; which was not terminated until the Supreme Court of the United States adjudged the acts unconstitutional and void. This decision was pronounced in 1819; and then, and not till then, had President Brown peace,—a brief peace made happy by letters, by religion, by the consciousness of a great duty performed for law, for literature, and for the Constitution,—happy even in prospect of premature death. This ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... authorities against the intractable was, as in the Church, excommunication; but that sometimes individuals asserted, and even swore in advance, that they would not yield to the decree against them. Rashi considered that this oath, being contrary to law, was null and void. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... distance as to prevent mutual help and cohabitation; and of this distance the minister shall judge, and his certificate of the inconvenient distance shall be valid, so as to make such sale unlawful, and to render the same null and void. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... take up your case." Have they done as they promised? When we come asking protection under the new guarantees of the Constitution, the same men say to us that our only plan is to wait the action of Congress and State legislatures in the adoption of a Sixteenth Amendment which shall make null and void the word "male" in the Fourteenth, and supply the want of the word "sex" in the Fifteenth. Such tantalizing treatment imposed upon yourselves or any class of men would have caused rebellion and in the end a bloody revolution. It is only the close relations ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... vapory atmosphere of the terrestrial globe, shone through the glass, filling the air in the interior of the projectile with silvery reflections. The black curtain of the firmament in reality heightened the moon's brilliancy, which in this void of ether unfavorable to diffusion did not eclipse the neighboring stars. The heavens, thus seen, presented quite a new aspect, and one which the human eye could never dream of. One may conceive the interest with which these bold men watched the orb of ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... backe to speake of other dooings, as in other parts of this land they fell out. About the yeere of our Lord 764, the see of Canturburie being void, one Iambert or Lambert was elected [Sidenote: 764.] archbishop there, and in the yeere 766, the archbishop of Yorke Egbert [Sidenote: Sim. Dun. saith 780] departed this life, in whose place one Adelbert succeeded. About the 25 yeere ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed

... name it wears upon the maps, but the Indian's is the better word. Desert is a loose term to indicate land that supports no man; whether the land can be bitted and broken to that purpose is not proven. Void of life it never is, however dry the air and ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... arisen in this province the resentment that is just, and it is commended to our Lord with many fastings and disciplines. Will your Majesty examine this matter with those royal eyes, so void of passion, and set it right, as I have here petitioned, for thus will it be expedient for the royal service of His Divine Majesty and that of your Majesty. May His Divine Majesty augment, keep, and preserve you, as we, all these your faithful vassals, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various

... whim, You might have envied, were you wise, The tears within your mother's eyes Which, I dare say you did not see. But let that pass! Yours yet will be I hope, as happy, kind, and true As lives which now seem void to you. Have you not seen shop-painters paste Their gold in sheets, then rub to waste Full half, and, lo, you read the name? Well, Time, my dear, does much the same With this unmeaning glare ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... than a week past far beyond their ordinary limits, now relaxed and gave way. The fever which for the last few days had kept him up failed him now; and, with the weariness, he felt an imperative need of rest. He experienced a great void, an ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... awe which passed through passengers and crew at this spiritual challenge from the vast and intangible void around them had scarcely subsided when the captain turned to Senor Perkins with a look of surly interrogation. The Senor brushed his hat further back on his head, wiped ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... fact. Why hast thou taught that, in this commandment, I gave license to all men-servants and maid-servants in the whole land of Israel to run away from their masters? Why hast thou thus made me, in one saying, contradict and make void all my laws wherein I ordained that the Hebrews should be slave-owners over their brethren during years, and over the heathen forever? Why hast thou in all this changed my Golden Rule? I, in that rule, assume that men know from revelation and providence the relations in which I have ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.

... to say what, of greatness in being able to rise to the highest calculations of statesmen and then to fall coldly back into the void of a frivolous life? Where is the man of iron who can withstand the alternating luck of gambling, the rapid missions of diplomacy, the warfare of fashion and society, the dissipations of gallantry,—the man who makes his memory a library of lies and craft, who envelops ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... Chesterton had reached incredible proportions for one generation. I think this is true but we have also to render thanks (for example) to the suicide of the commercial-capitalist-combine which created the void for our philosophy. That the Distributist League has had much influence I doubt: in the United States the Chesterton spirit is better represented by that admirable paper Free America than by the American ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... enwrapped in characteristic quietude. There was no wind to ruffle the man's hair, no sound of a falling cone or of dead leaves crackling under a squirrel's foot. And yet the man had the air now of one listening, hearkening to the silence itself. For silence among the pines is not the dead void of desert lands, but a great hush like the finger-to-lip command in a sleeper's room, or the still message of a sea-shell held to the ear. The countless millions of cedar and pine needles seemed as motionless as the very mountains themselves, yet ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... seemed to be a deathless energy within her that chained life strongly in its place—she only pressed both hands hard over the wound, and looked mournfully and reproachfully up in his face. Those beautiful, sad, solemn dyes, void of everything savage and fierce, were truly Leoline's ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... restored me, suddenly, to perfect sensation. At other times I was quickly and impetuously smitten. I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all was void, and black, and silent, and Nothing became the universe. Total annihilation could be no more. From these latter attacks I awoke, however, with a gradation slow in proportion to the suddenness of the seizure. Just as the day dawns ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... special period for their development. The child who does not, during his early years, have an opportunity to develop his social tendencies, is not likely later in life to acquire an interest in his fellow-men. In the same manner, if youth is spent in surroundings void of aesthetic elements, manhood will be lacking in artistic interests. It is in youth also that our intellectual interests, such as love of reading, of the study of nature, of mathematics, ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... were his days, Which flow'd through blessings. As a river pure, Whose sides are flowery, and whose meadows fair, Meets in his course a subterranean void; There dips his silver head, again to rise, And, rising, glide through flow'rs and meadows new; So shall Oileus in those happier fields, Where never tempests roar, nor humid clouds In mists dissolve, nor white descending flakes Of winter violate ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... Raymond laughed. Then he thought awhile and bent his broad brows; but soon his face cleared, for he had found a remedy. The King, he said, was surely Eleanor's cousin and within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, so that the marriage was null and void; and the Pope would be obliged against his will to adhere to the rule of the Church and pronounce it so. They were cousins in the seventh degree, he said, because the King was descended from Eleanor's great-great-great-great-grandfather, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... our return? Long since repose our precious! Their grave is of our life the bourn; We shrink from times ungracious! By not a hope are we decoyed: The heart is full; the world is void! ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald

... commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... believing me sincere, which is, that you know well that I thought the same of you, and professed the same to you, before I was of an age to have either views or flattery; indeed, I believe you know me enough to be sure that I am as void of both now as when I was fourteen, and that I am so little apt to court any body, that if you heard me say the same to any body but yourself, you would easily think that I spoke ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... but thus brought as it were to a personal knowledge of it by these few representatives of its inhabitants, he exclaimed, on hearing that they were still idolaters, with a deep sigh, 'What a pity that such a beauteous frontispiece should possess a mind so void of internal grace.' The name of their nation being mentioned to be Angles, his ear caught the verbal coincidence—the benevolent wish for their improvement darted into his mind, and he expressed his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various

... whose last thoughts Inge had been so vividly present, saw how deeply the poor girl had sunk. She burst into tears at the sight, and in heaven, as she had done when a little child on earth, she wept and prayed for poor Inge. Her tears and her prayers echoed through the dark void that surrounded the tormented captive soul, and the unexpected mercy was obtained for it through an angel's tears. As in thought Inge seemed to act over again every sin she had committed on earth, she trembled, and tears ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... see the better years that hasten by Carry thee back into that shadowy past, Where, in the dusty spaces, void and vast, The graves of those whom thou hast murdered lie. The slave-pen, through whose door Thy victims pass no more, Is there, and there shall the grim block remain At which the slave was sold; while at thy feet Scourges ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... out of the carriage window, looked straight down into the gulf; on this narrow way with only one line of rails, the train on one side was close to the towering hewn rock, and on the other was the void. Great God! if it should run off the rails! ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... fact that with the sight of the buck unconscious of his danger the dominant emotion of the Shawanoe was a sense of ravening hunger. It was a long time since he had partaken of food and his appetite was worthy of Victor Shelton. He meant that that buck should fill the aching void ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... kept up by a species of artifice; if the illusion which stands for reality were destroyed, if the confidence at present inseparable from the working staff were to fail, what would become of us with a deficit of a hundred millions every year? Without a doubt no time must be lost in filling up a void so enormous; and that can be done only by great measures. The plan I have formed appears to me the one that can solve so difficult a problem. Solely occupied with this great object, which demands enormous ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... entirely rejected the Old Testament; others reduced its history to a myth; whilst all mutilated and misinterpreted the writings of the apostles and evangelists. Like the Jewish Cabbalists, who made void the law of God by expositions which fancy suggested and tradition embalmed, the Gnostics by their far-fetched and unnatural comments, threw an air of obscurity over the plainest passages of the New Testament. Some of them, aware that they could derive no support from the inspired ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... Thorneycroft became at length terribly incensed, and talked a good deal of angry nonsense about disputing the claim of Henry Allerton's son to the estates, on the ground that his marriage, having been contracted in a wrong name, was null and void. Several annoying paragraphs got in consequence into the Sunday newspapers, and these ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... "be not so full of recklessness and scorn. Miriam is an adversary not to be despised. Miriam is sworn to the task of vengeance upon thy house. She will not let this fresh deed of thine pass without striving might and main to fulfil that vengeance which thou hast now made void." ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... the community the belief is that they who can steer the State along peaceful lines are mediocrities, and they who involve us in war are geniuses and earn the distinction of fame and Westminster Abbey, though it may be that they are totally void of all the essentials that are required to keep on good terms, not only with other Powers, but with our own masses. Take, first of all, the unostentatious old Scotsman, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who was regarded in ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... bond and thrall to wake, For wherever we come, we twain, The throne of the tyrant shall rock and quake, And his menace be void and vain, For you are lords of a strong young land and we are ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan

... tone are attached to the observed movement of its objects; in these objects its values are imbedded. A world loaded with dramatic values may thus arise in imagination; terrible and delightful presences may chase one another across the void; life will be a kind of music made by all the senses together. Many animals probably have this form of experience; they are not wholly submerged in a vegetative stupor; they can discern what they love or fear. Yet all this is still a disordered apparition that reels itself off amid sporadic movements, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... that the one true and living God is above their path and about their bed and spieth out all their ways, and that in him they live and move and have their being, are but too likely at last to people with fancied saints and daemons that void in the imagination and in the heart which their ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... through space, I knew that I had left the other words far, very far behind me, till, at last, I could no longer hear them at all. The voice of the story-teller was beyond the reach of hearing; and I was falling with ever increasing rapidity through an immense void. ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... thousand Mexicans, who remained in the country, trusting that order and law would soon be established; but, disappointed in their expectations, they have emigrated to Mexico. Eight thousand have quitted St. Antonio de Bejar, and the void has been filled up by six or seven hundred drunkards, thieves, and murderers. The same desertion has taken place in Goliad, Velasco, Nacogdoches, and other towns, which were ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... this? Why you have here some friend. Some kinsman doubtless, Newly returned from foreign lands and fallen Upon a house without a host to greet him? I crave your pardon, kinsman. For a house Lacking a host is but an empty thing And void of honour; a cup without its wine, A scabbard without steel to keep it straight, A flowerless garden widowed of the sun. Again I crave your ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde

... before the sting was taken out); and Scott, the right honest-hearted, entering into the passing scene with the hearty enjoyment of a child, to whom literature seems a sport rather than a labor or ambition, an author void of all the petulance, egotism, and peculiarities of the craft. We have Moore's authority for saying that the literary dinner described in the "Tales of a Traveller," whimsical as it seems and pervaded by the conventional notion of the relations of publishers and authors, had a personal foundation. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... hands are void of help, Though my soul should be stung to death; Could I avert one pang from you, Imploring with ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... have learned by experience the exact value of expressions of sympathy; they belonged to a class which the world delights to pity; they had been the objects of the benevolent interest of egoism; they had sounded the empty void beneath the consoling formulas with which the world ministers to ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... the deep below, Vainly the void above, They died a thousand years ago— Life and the ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... ordinary paper-hanging, and everything so commonplace that it was only the deep embrasure of the window that made it look unlike a bedchamber in a middling-class lodging-house. It would have seemed difficult, beforehand, to fit up a room in that picturesque old edifice so that it should be utterly void of picturesqueness; but it was effected in this apartment, and I suppose it is a specimen of the way in which old mansions used to be robbed of their antique character, and adapted to modern tastes, before ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... with me to the Cabinet. A gloom was visible upon all our countenances; and the Ladies confessed that the company and conversation of my departed guests, especially of Lysander, were such as to leave a void which could not easily be supplied. For my part, from some little warmth each sister betrayed in balancing the solid instruction of Lysander and the humorous vivacity of Lisardo, against each other, I thought the former had made a powerful impression upon the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... can read this poem without feeling, when it ends, what may be termed the pangs of vacancy—of that void in heart and mind for want of its continuance of which we are conscious when some noble strain of music ceases, when some great work of Raphael passes from the view, when we lose sight of some spot connected with high associations, or when some transcendent character upon the page of history disappears, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... Grace did rightly signify, That any citizen, who by force or craft Conspires against the person of the Liege, Is ipso facto outlaw, void of rights Such as pertain to other citizens, Is traitor, and a public enemy, Who may by any casual sword be slain Without the slayer's danger; nay, if brought Into the presence of the tribunal, Must with dumb lips and silence reverent Listen unto his well-deserved ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde

... by the justest doom Which ever the Destroyer yet destroyed, Amidst the roar of liberated Rome, Of nations freed, and the world overjoyed, Some hands unseen strewed flowers upon his tomb:[228] Perhaps the weakness of a heart not void Of feeling for some kindness done, when Power Had left the wretch an ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... it and apprehended its purport; then cried she, "By Allah, O nurse, my heart is chagrined with exceeding chagrin, never knew I a sorer, because of this correspondence and of these verses." And the nurse made answer to her "O my lady, thou art in thy dwelling and thy palace and thy heart is void of care; so return to him a reply and reck not." Accordingly, the Princess called for ink-case and paper and wrote ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... he had found his way every afternoon to Margaret's studio, Nathan having gone home to Kennedy Square with his head in the clouds when the negotiations became a certainty. In these weeks of waiting the Northern girl had not only stolen his heart, taking the place of a daughter he had never known—a void never filled in any man's soul—but she had satisfied a craving no less intense, the hunger for the companionship of one who really understood his aims and purposes. Nathan had in a measure met this need ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... that the plant is void of reason, because the growth of a plant is an involuntary growth. Given earth, air, and due temperature, the plant must grow: it is like a clock, which being once wound up will go till it is stopped or run down: ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... gray, ugly old palace, and its many courts, just as void of system and as inconceivable as when we were burrowing through its bewildering passages. No end of historical romances might be made out of this castle of the popes; and there ought to be a ghost in every room, and droves of them in some of the ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... have seemed to him to cover the whole ground of any one's affairs; but all at once it had become insufficient. It was as if the street had suddenly become insufficient as a highway, breaking into a chasm. He stopped abruptly, confronting, as it were, that bewildering void which a psychological situation invariably seemed to him. To get into a place where his few straightforward formulA| did not apply gave him that sense of distress which every creature feels ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... strictest historical justice this alliance, based on cupidity, was by the same ignoble motive made void of result. When the great Emperor Charles V, allied with the pope and England, threatened the French possessions in Italy, the Swiss soldiers compelled the French general to engage the imperial forces under the ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... the middle, with a head at one end of one of the ovals, is an herbivorous insect, and much abused as the reputed destroyers of books, papers, and all linen or muslin clothing. They feed mainly on such vegetable matter as is most subject to decay—as soft wood, and many other such, when void of vitality—and there is living herbage upon which they feed, and thereby prove a blessing to a country with a superabundance of rank vegetable matter. It is often asserted that they destroy whole buildings, yet I have never ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany

... finished for the present. When I came here the other night—provided of course that I did come here—immediately upon my entering the dining-room the place was brilliantly illuminated. Now, directly the place was void the supply of electric current would be cut off at the meter. So far as I can judge, some two or three units must have been consumed during my visit. There could not be many less than ten lights burning for an hour. Now, those units ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... they who lightly lose Their all, yet feel no aching void; Should aught annoy them, ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley

... to fame than even Horace suspected. The road to immortality is not one but manifold. A man can but do what he can. As the poet writes and the painter fills with his inspiration the mute and void canvas, so doth the Cook his part. There was formerly apopular work in France entitled "Le Cuisinier Royal," by MM. Viard and Fouret, who describe themselves as "Hommes de Bouche." The twelfth edition lies before me, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt

... what extent they are able to know the entire conditions of our race. But all this leaves faith in peaceful possession of a fact of unspeakable animation. It tells the discouraged or tired Christian, tempted to think of the unseen as a dark void, that it is rather a bright and populous world, in mysterious touch and continuity with this, and that our forerunners, from those of the remotest past down to the last-called beloved one who has passed out of our sight, know enough ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule

... philosophy aside, and to apply knowledge only to manners and policy. But as both heaven and earth do conspire and contribute to the use and benefit of man, so the end ought to be, from both philosophies to separate and reject vain speculations, and whatsoever is empty and void, and to preserve and augment whatsoever is solid and fruitful; that knowledge may not be as a courtesan, for pleasure and vanity only, or as a bond-woman, to acquire and gain to her master's use; but as a spouse, ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... stars across the space void broken free from their fixed orbits? Flecks of light, moving in an arc, ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... Skippy's pocket after the most painstaking search revealed this last ray of hope in the lining of the threadbare pocket. Only ten cents to stop the deficit in his stomach! The choice was difficult. There was ginger-pop at Bill Appleby's, and jiggers at Al's, pancakes at Conover's, and the aching void within him knew no prejudice or limitations to its hospitality. He hesitated, but the fragrance in the air was maddening—besides there was always the chance of a friend in funds. He fingered the coin regretfully and laid it on the counter with a heavy heart. ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... potter's clay, as the good book says, clay, feeble, and too-yielding clay. But I will not philosophize. Tell me, was it your misfortune to receive any concussion upon the brain about the period I speak of? If so, I will with pleasure supply the void in your memory by more minutely rehearsing the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... the Greek Zeus, the Sanscrit Dyaus, the Chinese Tien, all originally meant the sky above, and our own word heaven is often employed synonymously with God. There is at first no personification in these expressions. They embrace all unseen agencies, they are void of personality, and yet to the illogical primitive man there is nothing contradictory in making them the object of his prayers. The Mayas had legions of gods; "ku," says their historian,[47-2] "does not signify any particular god; yet their prayers are sometimes addressed to kue," which ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... days. All as a partridge plump, full-fed, and fair, She form'd this image of well-bodied air, With pert, slat eyes, she window'd well its head, A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead, And empty words she gave, and sounding strain, But senseless, lifeless! idol void and vain! Never was dash'd out at one lucky hit, A fool so just a copy of a wit; So like, that critics said, and courtiers swore, A wit it was, and call'd the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... yet creation's neither crammed nor blocked About by body: there's in things a void— Which to have known will serve thee many a turn, Nor will not leave thee wandering in doubt, Forever searching in the sum of all, And losing faith in these pronouncements mine. There's place intangible, a void and room. For were it not, things could in nowise move; Since body's ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... And they deserved that success when one considers the difficulties and discomforts—the months spent in acclimatization chambers back on earth, learning to breathe the air as tenuous as that of Mars, the challenging of the void in the tiny rocket driven by the cranky reaction motors of the twenty-first century, and mostly the facing ...
— A Martian Odyssey • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... exercise, I presume) as a point of law, on a question of private property and corporate franchise; by others it is regarded as the petty intrigue of a faction at court, and argued merely as it tends to set this man a little higher or that a little lower in situation and power. All the void has been filled up with invectives against coalition, with allusions to the loss of America, with the activity and inactivity of ministers. The total silence of these gentlemen concerning the interest ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... transferred to another. At all events, the blow took effect. Believing her dead, and deeming myself at liberty, I married Lady Emily, after a lapse of six months, exactly as many weeks before the death of my first wife. Of course you perceive now, my friend, that my last marriage was null and void; and that, hurried on by the eager impulses of love and ambition, I did, without knowing it, an act which has made my children illegitimate. It is true, my union with Lady Emily was productive to me of great results. I was created an Irish peer, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... as they choose, that I would now degrade myself by voting one way if the slavery clause be voted down, and another way if it be voted up? I care not how that vote may stand.... Ignore Lecompton; ignore Topeka; treat both those party movements as irregular and void; pass a fair bill—the one that we framed ourselves when we were acting as a unit; have a fair election—and you will have peace in the Democratic party, and peace throughout the country, in ninety days. The people want a fair vote. ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... and I had lost the motive of action. For allowing my father to be right, and the principles advocated by Mr. Spence to be monstrous and absurd, I had been too intimately connected with the system not to feel a great void in my existence at severing my relations with it. What ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... Conscience has lost its strong and on-pressing energy, and the sense of personal responsibility lacks sharpness of edge. The native hue of spiritual resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of distracted, wavering, confused thought. The souls of men have become void. Into the void have entered in triumph the seven devils ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... wept; all woe-all gloom! The heart-void still unfilled, ached keen and sore, When through the inky darkness shot a gleam Of ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl

... settling of the slime of those turbid rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of the lifeless, impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth! how little imagined ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... se void environne d'une douzaine d'hommes armez, qui de pistolets, qui d'espees nues, et qui de hallebardes. Lisandre est parmy eux, qui luy crie: 'C'est maintenant que tu recevras le salaire de la honte que ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... mythology perhaps the best-known statement was made by Hesiod: to him it was revealed, regarding the men of the most ancient times, that they were at first "a golden race," that "as gods they were wont to live, with a life void of care, without labour and trouble; nor was wretched old age at all impending; but ever did they delight themselves out of the reach of all ills, and they died as if overcome by sleep; all blessings were theirs: of its own will the fruitful field would bear them fruit, much and ample, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... Commons which met in 1623 determined to apply a strong remedy to the evil. The King was forced to give his assent to a law which declared monopolies established by royal authority to be null and void. Some exceptions, however, were made, and, unfortunately, were not very clearly defined. It was especially provided that every Society of Merchants which had been instituted for the purpose of carrying on any trade should retain all its legal privileges. [153] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... guiding it: surely the fisherman's mate. Rahero saw and he smiled. He straightened his mighty thews: Naked, with never a weapon, and covered with scorch and bruise, He straightened his arms, he filled the void of his body with breath, And, strong as the wind in his manhood, doomed ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson

... through the gorges, the reedy notes of the accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney—storytelling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed too but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... then spoke she, Alice Brand, That woman void of fear,— 'And if there 's blood upon his hand, 'Tis ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... forward to what she was going to. Once she had reached the street it would be time enough to think of both. She had the fact in the back of her consciousness, but she kept it there. Out in the street she would feel grief for the prince and his palace, and terror at the void before her; but she couldn't feel them yet. Her ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... living creatures, the captain ordered a trumpet to be sounded, to inform the inhabitants of our arrival. Before the echoes of the blast from the trumpet had subsided, (and they seemed to penetrate farther and reverberate longer than usual from the perfect stillness of this apparently void region,) about thirty musical instruments came hopping towards us. These were bass-viols. On the very long neck of each was placed a little head; the body was also small, and covered by a smooth bark, which, however, did not close entirely ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... at this time is the absolute failure of his home life and affections to content his aspirations,—the emptiness both of mind and heart, which caused his passionate eagerness for external employment to fill the void. Earnestness appears only when he is brooding over the slight with which he was treated, and the resultant thwarting of his career. For both mind and heart the future held in store for him the most engrossing emotions, but it did not ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... thoughts to more cheerful channels. He must stick to the Governor, who to be sure showed no inclination to desert him. Indeed the Governor evinced a sincere pleasure in his society, and if he behaved himself he might fill the void created in the man's life by the loss of Hoky. He would remain in hiding until the whole thing blew over, whether it was Hoky or Putney Congdon he had ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... wrestler, swimmer, and fighter open once more to them, and were free from the silent and somewhat contemptuous gaze of him who, however they looked down on him, was a sort of silent power among them. Vashti alone felt a void and found by its sudden absence how great a force was the steady backing of one who could always be counted on to take one's side without question. She had to bear the gibes of the school as "Miss Darby", and though her two brothers were ready ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page

... do not shake existing belief, enervate authority, and throw doubts over commonly received ideas. The effect of all revolutions is therefore, more or less, to surrender men to their own guidance, and to open to the mind of every man a void and almost unlimited range of speculation. When equality of conditions succeeds a protracted conflict between the different classes of which the elder society was composed, envy, hatred, and uncharitableness, pride, and exaggerated self-confidence ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... at that period, proves that religion being detached from social order, there remained a frightful void, Which nothing could have filled up but its subsequent restoration. Without religion, men become enemies to each other, criminals by principle, and bold violators of the laws; force is the only curb that can restrain them. The inevitable ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... is not altogether destroyed, as the houses are said to be still standing, but entirely void of population, and become the dwellings of tigers, and other wild beasts. The circuit of this great city is twenty-four miles round the walls, within which are several hills. The ordinary dwellings are of earthen walls, and sufficiently mean, but the three palaces of the tyrant ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... something new, something beautiful, and the daily delight as he sees it grow under his hand, until it stands before him a completed whole? With my art and without wealth I am happy. Without my art I should have a void which no money could fill. But I really don't know why I should say all ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the orator bade the Athenians consider not only whether he spoke bitterly, but whether he spoke so from interested motives,[451] so the rebuke of a friend void of all private feeling is solemn and grave and what one dare not lightly face. And if anyone shows plainly in his freedom of speech, that he altogether passes over and dismisses any offences his friend has done to himself, and only blames him ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... for, to Cicily's unbounded relief, a diversion was now offered by the appearance on the scene of Mrs. Flynn, Miss Johnson and Ruth Howard. Once again, the necessary introductions were made. Mrs. Flynn displayed astonishment at the style of these "ladies," but contrived a neutral manner that was void of offense. Miss Johnson was distant, but Ruth was honestly pleased with this opportunity for sisterly association for the sake of uplift, and rolled her large ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... daily, in his father's castle, excess in its most excessive development. It had grown to be repulsive, and he knew not how to fill the void in his life. With a single spark of genius, and a little more culture, he might have become a passable author or artist; but he was doomed to be one of those deaf and dumb natures that see the movements of the lips of others, yet have no conception of sound. No wonder his savage old father ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... but only to be deposed in March, 1554. Soon after Mary came to the throne, she appointed a commission of bishops to deprive the bishops appointed during the reign of her brother. On various charges, and especially on that of "inordinate life" (meaning marriage), the bishopric of Harley was declared void. He is said to have spent the remainder of his life wandering about in woods "instructing his flock, and administering the sacrament according to the order of the English book, until he died, shortly after his deposition, a wretched ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher

... to that, the slightest movement would have rendered the whole process null and void; but as it was she stood in the proper position as quiet as a lamb; nothing could ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... change I allege. Mr. Spencer himself still thinks we are unable to conceive gravitation acting through empty space. "If an astronomer avowed that he could conceive gravitative force as exercised through space absolutely void, my private opinion would be that he mistook the nature of conception. Conception implies representation. Here the elements of the representation are the two bodies and an agency by which either affects the other. To conceive this agency is to represent it in some terms derived ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... an object; there must be matter on which to reason, whether this matter be supplied by the facts or the ideas. Again, a desire, a volition, an act of reflection, has need of a point of application. One does not will in the air, one wills something; one does not reflect in the void, one reflects over a fact or over ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... "in forty-eight hours the dream of my life was to find and woo that woman. I instinctively felt that she would make me supremely happy—that the void which every man feels in his heart, no matter what his love for relatives may be, could be filled by this young girl alone—that she would perfect my life. Very well—now ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... along that wet, slimy, treacherous surface, it seemed, for hours. I could see nothing—absolutely nothing; everything was black void; it was hard to appreciate reality in such a nightmare. On the one side, nameless dangers; on the other, the unseen, bottomless lake; enough, surely, to take a man's nerve. My fear for Harry killed anxiety on my own account. We ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... and that she has seen better days. We must say that this good lady does everything in her power to make a match between the young people; and she is more pleased than surprised at the success of her efforts. It has been the hero's idea that human love will fill up the void left in his life by the rejection of God and religion; but he soon finds himself vaguely unhappy and unsatisfied, and he determines to glut his heart with literary fame. He goes, therefore, to New York, and succeeds as a poet beyond all his dreams of success. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... splendid union of all the outward qualities we are inclined to give to the heroes of old never dazzled the eye or impressed the fancy. But even this effect of mere person was subordinate to that which this eminent nobleman created—upon his inferiors, at least—by a manner so void of all arrogance, yet of all condescension, so simple, open, cordial, and hero-like, that Marmaduke Nevile, peculiarly alive to external impressions, and subdued and fascinated by the earl's first word, and that word was "Welcome!" dropped on his ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... universe, has thus given us a creation which in many of its attributes rivals Omnipotence. It is the sum of all contradictions, and the source of all reality. The gross matter which we see and feel is one state of it; electricity, which is without form and void, is another state of it; and our minds and souls, Sir Oliver Lodge intimates, may be still another state of it. But all these theories of physical science are justified by their fruits. The atomic theory of matter, and the kinetic theory ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs



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