"Bereft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now—of work she made up her mind to face it, and to include in her furlough a visit to the graves of her mother and sister at Exeter. The difficulty of the east wind in Scotland was overcome by a proposal from Mrs. Arnot, who in the mystery of things, had suddenly been bereft of her husband, that she would take a small house where they could live together in quiet. "I shall meet you," that lady wrote, "and make a home for you and care for you if God puts it into your heart to come." The wonderful kindness ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... the race, did not glance a second time at the survivor of the "Lady Letty's" misadventure. To them it was evident she was but a for'mast hand. However, Wilbur examined her with extraordinary interest as she sat in the sternsheets, sullen, half-defiant, half-bewildered, and bereft of speech. ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... blood of myriads of their fellow-creatures, can call their murders "religion, justice, attention to the good of mankind." Poor Agnes knew no sophistry to calm her sense of guilt: she felt herself a harlot and a murderer; a slighted, a deserted wretch, bereft of all she loved in this world, all she could ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... a fair woman, or, perchance, an immortal Goddess, stand upon the pylon brow, and as she stood and sang those who looked were bereft of reason. And thereafter some tried to pass the ghosts who guarded the woman, and were slain of invisible swords. It was a strange ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... moving shuttle, the Orient Express, there would be nothing to trouble the mind unpleasantly—except in that the more comfortable we are, the more we demand and the more we grumble. But if you travel by the ordinary unheated train, where even the first-class carriages are more or less bereft of glass and have the windows loosely boarded up with bits of old packing-cases, you taste something of the persistent northern wind which blows down sleet and rain from the Black Sea, from Russia, as it were Russian ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... cousin of King James I., the victim all her days of jealousy and state policy, suspected of aspiring to the crown on the death of Queen Elizabeth, was shut up in the Tower of London, where she died bereft of reason in 1615 ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... new convert, so the young missionary sat down to rest, well pleased and ready for another attempt as soon as she could decide in what direction it should be made. She quailed before Boo as she looked at the unconscious innocent peacefully playing with the spotted dog, now bereft of his tail, and the lone sausage with which he was attempting to feed the hungry animal, whose red mouth ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... I energy enough to move, to raise my aching head a little way in order to look around a bit? For a few minutes I could not summon sufficient strength to stir a finger; I felt paralysed and utterly bereft of the power to set my muscles working. Gradually, however, I began to feel a little better, the noise at my ear ceased and let peace in; a delightful calm followed, and with it ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... a messenger from her husband informed her of what had occurred, she had instantly come to the city to see that the right thing was done, and take the girls thus bereft of their father from the desolate Ortlieb mansion to her own house. Herr Pfinzing had warmly approved this plan, and accompanied her to the "Es," as he, too, was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... camp here last night we saw some one coming on horseback along the canyon rim on the opposite side. The form seemed familiar and the horse looked like one I had seen, but I dared not believe my eyes. Clyde, who was helping to draw water from the eighty-foot well without a pulley, thought I was bereft as I ran from the camp toward the advancing rider. But although I thought what I saw must be a mirage, still I knew Mrs. Louderer ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... gaze upon him, with his eyes starting out of his head; but astonishment had actually, for the moment, bereft him of speech. ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... knife heaved on high. Trembling stood Sir Belligan, for he felt his death was nigh. The pagan's heart asunder with cunning skill he cleft; Down upon the grass he fell, of life bereft." Heldenbuch ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... they had his Estate. He laugh'd himself from Court; then sought Relief By forming Parties, but could ne'r be Chief: For, spight of him, the weight of Business fell On Absalom and wise Achitophel: Thus, wicked but in Will, of Means bereft, He left not Faction, ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... of the curtain the knights of the plains, Rudolfo, Romualdo, Arnoldo, and others, who were conspiring to overthrow Count Orso at the time when Camillo's folly ruined all, assemble to deplore Camilla's banishment, and show, bereft of her, their helplessness and indecision. They utter contempt of Camillo, who is this day to be Pontifically divorced from his wife to espouse the detested Michiella. His ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... smile through tears, as sunshine o'er the sea, Awoke new beauty in the surge's roll! Oh, life is dead, bereft of all, with thee,— Star of my earthly hope, babe of ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... any sense as joy, though it strung her nature to a painful appreciation of joy. She saw life with a cold, appraising eye; it was like a landscape robbed of all sunlight, and, so robbed, so bleak, and so bereft, it was easy to appraise it, to see, since one could have no warmth or light, what were the next best things to have. She had missed the next best things again and again, when the moment had come for taking them; she had drawn back sick, blanched, ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... poor, and has been during all last winter; yet notwithstanding her daily sufferings, in her harassed body, she vigorously wrestles with ill luck. As it pains me to write, I must close with a few words. I have frequently thought, should I be bereft of my mother, what other friend, like her, would watch over the uneasy hours of sickness? What other friend would bear its petulance, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... beginning to show silvery white under the rays of a rising moon. Perhaps, like Don Ruperto, he was gazing on some spot, a house endeared to him as the home of his childhood; but from which, as the leader of the Free Lances, he had been bereft by the last confiscation. Possibly he was indulging in the hope of its being soon restored to him, but least of all ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... economic crisis but also to protect the ideals of ancient Aryan civilisation from the destructive forces that are threatening it.... There is a danger of regarding the mechanical efficiency as the sole end of life; there is also the opposite danger of a life of dreaming, bereft of struggle and activity, the degenerating into parasitic habits of dependence. Only through the noble call of patriotism can our nation realise the highest ideals ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... provides house visitation by means of dog-sledge journeys covering hundreds of miles in a year, teaches wholesome and righteous living, conducts cooeperative stores, provides for orphans and for families bereft of the bread-winners by accidents of the sea, encourages thrift, and administers justice, and adds to the wage-earning capacity and therefore food-obtaining power by operating a sawmill, a schooner-building yard, and other ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... man? I said; Did the tide come up ower strang? 'Twas a braw deith for them that gaed, Their troubles warna lang. Or was ane ta'en, and the ither left— Ane to sing, ane to greet? It's sair, richt sair, to be bereft, But the tide is at yer feet. "Robbie and Jeannie war twa bonnie bairns, And they played thegither upo' the shore: Up cam the tide 'tween the mune and the sterns, And pairtit the twa ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... legitimate interest. The great purpose of the present history must be found in its illustration of the creative power of civil and religious freedom. Here was a little republic, just born into the world, suddenly bereft of its tutelary saint, left to its own resources, yet already instinct with healthy vigorous life, and playing its difficult part among friends and enemies with audacity, self-reliance, and success. To a certain extent its achievements were anonymous, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... even more than exposure would be averted for ever—none but he would call Mabel Langton his wife! Thinking this as he left the platform, he ran up against his uncle, whom he had completely forgotten: he was harmless now as a safety match bereft of its box, and Mark need fear him no longer. 'Why, there you are, uncle—eh?' he said, with much innocent satisfaction. 'I couldn't think where ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... and crushed plants were strewn about. Erica's room was quite bare of furniture, nor could she find any of the things she wanted. The pen with which she had been writing lay on the floor, and also a Japanese fan soaked with water, but neither of these were very serviceable articles to a person bereft of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... of his room, and often left untouched the meals they brought to him there; and this neglect caused them to shake their heads mournfully, again mistaking for dazedness the profound concentration of his mind. Meanwhile, the life of the little bereft group still forlornly centering upon him began to pick up again, as life will, and to emerge from its own period of dazedness. It was not Isabel's father but her son ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... best for him, and he sat until two o'clock in the morning, reviewing his success and developing his plans. I forget in detail what they were, but I have a general recollection that he was to begin with reviving the Drama, and to end with crushing it; inasmuch as his decease would leave it utterly bereft and without a chance ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... her right hand, and the sister her hair, but the wife refuses the necklace. The love of a mother is often described by the image of swallows, clinging to their own warm nest; or of tender doves, bereft of their young ones. The rights of a mother are respected with true filial piety, even by the barbarian hero Marko, who never fails to pay ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... in beauty shared with her— Since I seek one I loved, yet was faithless to in death. Not life enough I heaped, so thus my heart must fare with her, Now wrapt in the gross clay, bereft of life's breath. ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... god that hath bereft me? Or hath some mortal stol'n away his heart? No word, no letter since the day he left me, Nor more he ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... his hands to their proper dwelling-place—his pockets—he jerked his thumb toward a long white boat, which we had not seen through the blinding scud. Bereft of its brethren, or sisters—for all fluctuating things are feminine—that boat survived, in virtue of standing a few feet higher than the rest. But even so, and mounted on the last hump of the pebble ridge, it was rolling and reeling with stress of the wind and the wash ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... to know anything else," returned Rufus protectingly. "I'll bet Juliet kept you out of sight." He laughed, and his companion turning saw that he had been bereft ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... going abroad through his new kingdom, came on the Temple of the gods of Old. There he found the roof shattered and the marble columns broken and tall weeds met together in the inner shrine, and the gods of Old, bereft of worship or sacrifice, neglected and forgotten. And the King asked of his councillors who it was that had overturned this temple of the gods or caused the gods Themselves to be thus forsaken. And ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... from the territory which all the world knows to have been possessed by my ancestors? To whom could I better address myself than to you, when all the supports of my race have disappeared? To whom, bereft as I am of honorable protection, should I have recourse but to you? By whom, if not by you, should I be restored to the honors of my fathers? Please God things turn out favorably for me and for my fortunes! Rejected, what, can become of me save to be exhibited as a spectacle ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Bereft of religion, men possessing enormous power over the forces of nature are like children to whom powder or explosive gas has been given as a plaything. Considering this power which men of our time possess, and the way they use ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... generation. The whole situation was most propitious, and yet he found himself moving through it without one of the impulses which had been almost lifelong with him. As if in some strange paralysis, some obsession by a demon of indifference unknown before, he was bereft of the will to realize these familiar protagonists of his plain dramas. He knew them, of course; he knew them all too well; but he had not the wish to fit the likest of them with phrases, to costume them for their several parts, to fit ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Acadians found their way through a wilderness of forests, suffering and dying as they went, some landing in distant states, (five hundred having been consigned to Governor Oglethorpe of Georgia,) and others, lonely and bereft, found a home with the humble and laborious farmers of this hardy state, whose finest quality is an open-handed hospitality. These intermarrying with our people here, have left traces of their blood and fine moral qualities to enhance ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... change that has taken place. In case of a very small funeral the person who has passed away is sometimes left lying in bed in night clothes, or on a sofa in a wrapper, with flowers, but no set pieces, about the room, so that an invalid or other sensitive bereft one may say farewell without ever seeing the all too definite finality of a coffin. In any event the last attentions are paid in accordance with the wish of those ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... You've struck a heap of trouble— Bust in business, lost your wife; No one cares a cent about you, You don't care a cent for life; Hard luck has of hope bereft you, Health is failing, wish you'd die— Why, you've still the sunshine left you, And the big, ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... throughout my sighs have answered thy tears. Look on me, I am still the same. What, again and again, I repeat that I love thee, and yet thou wilt not say that thou lovest me! Can it be that thy beauteous eyes are for ever closed, that they are for ever bereft of daylight? O Death! need'st thou have taken so cruel a dart, and, regardless of my eternal being, endangered my own life! How oft, ungrateful deity, have I swelled thy dark empire by the contempt or the cruelty of a fierce and proud fair one? How many faithful lovers, since ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... Christi all the officers who had a fancy for riding kept horses. The animals cost but little in the first instance, and when picketed they would get their living without any cost. I had three not long before the army moved, but a sad accident bereft me of them all at one time. A colored boy who gave them all the attention they got —besides looking after my tent and that of a class-mate and fellow-lieutenant and cooking for us, all for about eight dollars per month, was riding ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... the street, purposeless now and bereft, he spied a recruiting party at the door of a public-house; and on coming nearer, found, by one of those strange coincidences which do occur in life, and which have possibly their root in a hidden and wondrous law, that it was a party, perhaps a remnant, of the very regiment in which he had ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... still the upper chamber of her tomb, he found her lying on a low and miserable bed, in a most wretched condition, and exhibiting such a spectacle of disease and wretchedness that he was shocked at beholding her. She appeared, in fact, almost wholly bereft of reason. When Octavius came in, she suddenly leaped out of the bed, half naked as she was, and covered with bruises and wounds, and crawled miserably along to her conqueror's feet in the attitude of a suppliant. Her hair was torn from her head, her limbs were swollen and ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... anticipated execution the carriage turned off into the public road. Exposed to the sultry summer-heat, without refreshment or human consolation, he passed seven dreadful hours in journeying to the place of destination—a prison fortress. It was nightfall before he arrived; when, bereft of all consciousness, more dead than alive, his giant strength having at length yielded to twelve hours' fast and consuming thirst, he was dragged from the carriage; and, on regaining his senses, found himself in a horrible subterraneous vault. The first ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... After he had dispelled the clouds raised by calumny, and had discovered a sure source of truth[30]: "Let the Freedman," said he, "the cause of the mischief, suffer punishment; but as for her, at the same instant bereft of a son, and deprived of a husband, I deem her to be pitied rather than condemned. If the father of the family had thoroughly enquired into the charge preferred, and had shrewdly sifted the lying accusations, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... three days, did Adrian remain bereft of strength and sense. But he was not smitten by the scourge which his devoted and generous nurse had anticipated. It was a fierce and dangerous fever, brought on by the great fatigue, restlessness, and terrible agitation ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Full soon my little Life is told; It has had no great joy or woe, For I am only twelve years old. Ere long I hope I shall have been On my first voyage, and wonders seen. Some princess I may help to free From pirates, on a far-off sea; Or, on some desert isle be left, Of friends and shipmates all bereft. ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... he stepped into the room, and his eyes fell upon Nastasia, stopped short, grew white as a sheet, and stood staring; it was clear that his heart was beating painfully. So he stood, gazing intently, but timidly, for a few seconds. Suddenly, as though bereft of his senses, he moved forward, staggering helplessly, towards the table. On his way he collided against Ptitsin's chair, and put his dirty foot on the lace skirt of the silent lady's dress; but he neither apologized for ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... let us love, while of the fire Time hath not yet bereft us With years our warmer thoughts expire, Till only ice is ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... type of Lawyer intensely admired but seldom employed, save by Criminals entirely bereft ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... was such as I had never heard before. Indeed, it could scarcely be called an air. It was the most capricious burden of mournfulness that had ever had its utterance from wo. Fancy a mute—one bereft of the divine faculty of speech, by human, not divine ministration. Fancy such a being endowed with the loftiest desires, moved by the acutest sensibilities, having already felt the pleasures of life, yet doomed to a denial of utterance, denied the language ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... stars all alien to their sorrow must remain within their houses. Only the Great Spirit, who lives beyond the golden veils of the boreal lights, may hear the sobbing of a stricken human creature over the thing of which it has been bereft. ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... here, ye son of a horse-couper?" was the encouraging salutation offered by a solicitor's son to the stumpy little figure bereft of its father and left to ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... and philosopher, tho' at the same time the tenderest mother in the world," and his eldest daughter, followed him; and the invalid was swiftly driven the twelve miles to Rotherhithe. Here the task of embarking a man quite bereft of the use of his limbs had to be accomplished. This difficulty was overcome with the aid of Saunders Welch, the friend of whom Fielding says "I never think or speak of but with love and esteem" [7]; and, at last, the traveller was "seated in a great chair in the ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... feud and this the foeman's hate the vengeful spite that I expect against us now will bring the Swedish bands; soon as they hear our chieftain high of life bereft— who held till now 'gainst haters all the hoard and realm; peace framed at home; and further off respect inspired. Now speed is best that we our liege and king go look upon, And him escort, who us adorned, the pile towards. Not things of petty worth shall with the mighty melt, but ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... have bereft me of all words; Only my blood speaks to you in my veins: But when this ring Parts from this finger, then parts life from hence; O, then be bold ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... much more of many men, self-styled Brigands of Avignon! The corpse of L'Escuyer, stretched on a bier, the ghastly head girt with laurel, is borne through the streets; with many-voiced unmelodious Nenia; funeral-wail still deeper than it is loud! The copper-face of Jourdan, of bereft Patriotism, has grown black. Patriot Municipality despatches official Narrative and tidings to Paris; orders numerous or innumerable arrestments for inquest and perquisition. Aristocrats male and female are haled to the Castle; lie crowded in subterranean ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... son's grief, Pilumnus entreated Ceres' revenge on the faithless nymph, and Lalage died in giving birth to the twins Amyntas and Amarillis. This but added to Philaebus' despair, so that he died upon her tomb, and the bereft father having once more sought the aid of the goddess, the oracle ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... master chiefly sits: and he calls it his workshop. His drawers and port-folios are, I think, filled with prints and old-drawings: innumerable, and in the estimation of the owner, invaluable. You yet continue your route into a further room,— somewhat bereft of furniture, or en dishabille. Here, among other prints, I was struck with seeing that of the late Mr. Pitt; from Edridge's small whole length. The story attached to it is rather singular. It was found on board the first naval prize ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... object of defeated care! Though now of Love and thee bereft, To reconcile me with despair Thine image and my ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... prone to "bear the ill they have" until, like the accumulation of rills on mountain side, indignation leaps the bounds of legal form and prostrate law to find their essence and purpose in reconstruction. At the time of which I write, there seemed nothing left for the friends of law, bereft as they were of all statutary means for its enforcement, but making a virtue of this necessity by organizing a "vigilance committee" to wrench by physical strength that unobtainable by moral right. There had been no flourish of trumpets, no herald of the impending ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Could it be true that for ten years she had been his wife, and that the tie between them was forever dissolved? From this day he was to be dead to her and to all the world. He was about to pass voluntarily into a condition of death amid life, as utterly bereft of all that had once been his as if the grave had closed over him. Roland Sefton ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... cried, "not with me. I am desolate and bereft. I have not even a home in which to hide my grief and no prospect ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... time after time had been made by her to the solitary church-yard in the mountains—containing, as it did, the only humble shrine from which her bruised and broken spirit could draw that ideal happiness, of which God in His mercy had not bereft her. ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... northern lands in winter! At the North Cape the sun sets on November 18, not to rise again until January 24, and everywhere within the Arctic Circle there is a time of continuous night. To us, who have no experience of such a state of affairs, it seems as if life must be bereft of all its pleasures. Yet the dwellers in the Arctic regions think nothing of it. To them even the dark winter has its charms, for, as has been said of a certain gentleman, it is not really as black as ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... order that he may not be compassionate toward it, and who promises a reward in after life to escape the necessity of its being bestowed in the present. In reply Lord Byron pointed to moral and physical evil which exists among savages, to whom Scripture is unknown, and who are bereft of all the means of becoming civilized people. Why are they deprived of these gifts of God? and what is to be the ultimate fate of Pagans? He quoted several objections made to our Lord by the apostles; mentioned prophecies ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... triumph over her weakness, to submit herself—Oh, what rescue from this hideous degradation! She went to the window, as if it had been possible to escape by that way; she turned again and stood moaning, with her hands about her head. When was the worst to come in this life so long since bereft of hope, so forsaken of support from man or God? The thought of death came to her; she subdued the tumult of her agony to weigh it well Whom would she wrong by killing herself? Herself, it might be; perchance not even death ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... likewise became subject to no little ridicule. For, if persons denied having spoken certain phrases, he, by asserting and taking oath that it had been said, wronged himself with greater show of reality. For this reason some suspected that he was bereft of his senses. Yet he was not generally believed to be insane simply for this behavior. All other business he managed in a way quite beyond criticism. For instance, he appointed a guardian over a certain senator that lived licentiously, as he might have done for a child. Again, he brought ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... porter for sixty or eighty items each, and amounting to forty or fifty francs. We made no noise, and did not laugh as we crossed the little hall at the bottom of the stairs; we commonly took it at a flying leap from the lowest step into the street. On the day when we first found ourselves bereft of tobacco for our pipes, it struck us that for some days we had been eating bread without ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... world, doom'd to wander and roam, Bereft of his parents, bereft of his home, A stranger to pleasure, to comfort and joy, Behold little Edmund, the ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... who, as we have said, was for a few moments bereft of the power of action, could do nothing but stand and gaze in amazement. All the dreams of his youth and manhood were as nothing to this! The poor buffalo fought nobly, but it had no chance against such odds, and would certainly have been torn to pieces and devoured had not Tom recovered ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... stranger whom we had taken for the advance guard of our enemy was in truth none other than Vicar Pinfold, and that it was the rhythmic pat of his stick which we heard mingling with his footfalls. Fascinated by the sight, we lay bereft of all power to warn him—a line of staring eyeballs. One step, two steps, three steps did the haughty Churchman take, when there was a rending crack, and he vanished with a mighty splash into the swift-flowing stream. He must ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... consoled, when I have been bereft of all that made existence dear, receiving nothing in return—nothing but doubt and uncertainty, and a ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... had got to the middle of what I had to say when it seemed to me that the whole machine of the mind suddenly ceased to work. It was as though an immense loneliness descended on me. I saw the audience before me, but apart from vision I seemed bereft of all my faculties. If I had in that instant been asked for my name I am doubtful whether I could have got anywhere near it. Happily some one in a front row, thinking I was pausing for a word, threw out a suggestion. It was like magic. I felt the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... of Christ has been introduced often enough into fiction, and many scholars have undertaken to write His life according to their own lights, but few perhaps have ever attempted to present Him to us bereft of all those characteristics which a lack of the sense of harmony has attached to His person through the ages in which His doctrines have been taught. Now Nietzsche disagreed entirely with Renan's view, that Christ was "le grand maitre en ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... was: "How far is it to the church?" The second: "Where can I get my beer?" When informed there was no church within a hundred miles and that it was at least fifteen miles to the nearest saloon, the poor woman felt that she was indeed all abroad! Bereft, at one blow of the Established Church and English Ale, the solid ground seemed to have given way from under her feet. For her, these two particulars comprised the whole ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... Wounded, bereft of all his friends, and left apparently dying in the hands of a hostile tribe, Herbert Cheyne had owed his life to the mercy of a woman, a poor, degraded ill-used creature, half-witted and ugly, but who had not lost all the instincts of her womanhood, ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... enjoy. Be cautious how you do any thing to offend them; and should you offend them undesignedly, rest neither night nor day till you have obtained their forgiveness. Reflect on, and enjoy the happiness that you are not, like poor little Adolphus, bereft of your fathers and mothers, and left in the hands, though of a good, yet ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... Chalybian stranger, emigrant from Scythia, is apportioning their shares, a fell divider of possessions, the stern-hearted steel,[157] allotting them land to occupy, just as much as it may be theirs to possess when dead, bereft of their large domains.[158] When they shall have fallen, slain by each other's hands in mutual slaughter, and the dust of the ground shall have drunk up the black-clotted blood of murder, who will furnish expiation? who will purify them? Alas for the fresh troubles mingled with ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... its smooth whir through fields, wooded lands, and queer, dead-and-alive little villages for some time before it drew up at last at a small station. Bereft by the season of its garden bloom and green creepers, it looked a bare and uninviting little place. On the two benches against the wall of the platform a number of women sat huddled together in the dampness. Several ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... waited without, and he was vanished from before their eyes ere yet the nobles had rallied from their astonishment. And they were downcast and oppressed with boding cares, and they held counsel among themselves what to do; for Rustem was their mainstay, and they knew that, bereft of his arm and counsel, they could not stand against this Turk. And they blamed Kai Kaous, and counted over the good deeds that Rustem had done for him, and they pondered and spake long. And in the end they resolved to send a messenger ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... met his eyes was the helpless and desolate bulk of one of the Silsbee wagons a hundred rods away, bereft of oxen and pole, standing alone and motionless against the dazzling sky! Near it was the broken frame of another wagon, its fore wheels and axles gone, pitched forward on its knees like an ox under the butcher's sledge. ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... 'fugitive master law,' the deserted slaves would be wholly without remedy had not the crime of treason given them right to pursue, capture and bring those persons of whose benignant protection they have been thus suddenly and cruelly bereft. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... like a foreign substance which had not annihilated the nature, but which had assumed dominion over the whole man, and exercised a power for which he was answerable, is displaced; and corruption, though not altogether removed, is gradually bereft of its influence, and doomed to extermination. It is not as if man in sin were altogether ignorant of what God requires, but because he is unwilling to obey, that he does not yield it. His disobedience is not as if ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... wild, impotent prayer for the past to be given into my keeping for just one more trial, one more opportunity to live up to the beauty and holiness and purity I had missed. When I looked up and saw the naked columns of the Parthenon silhouetted against the sky, bereft of their capitals, ragged, scarred, battered with the war of wind and weather and countless ages, all about me the ruins seemed to say, "Your appreciation is in vain; it is too ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... now that I have acted as one bereft of sense. I had no quarrel with the Company. They added to my territory, they had promised to defend me against all attacks but, when I heard that Holkar was approaching with so vast an army, I thought that surely he would recapture ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... but in a sheet of gold, And, till I die, thou shalt not be interr'd. Then in as rich a tomb as Mausolus' [93] We both will rest, and have one [94] epitaph Writ in as many several languages As I have conquer'd kingdoms with my sword. This cursed town will I consume with fire, Because this place bereft me of my love; The houses, burnt, will look as if they mourn'd; And here will I set up her stature, [95] And march about it with my mourning camp, Drooping and pining for Zenocrate. [The ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... the prostrate priest, like a lion above its prey. Then he reached into the canoe and drew out the axe. Holding it aloft, he stood an instant poised above the senseless man; then with a mighty swing he whirled about and hurled it far out into the lake. He seemed suddenly bereft of his senses. Incoherent muttering issued from his trembling lips. He looked about in bewilderment. A thought seemed to impress him. He took the rope from the boat and quickly bound Diego hand and foot. This done, he picked up the unconscious ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... "Robert's" professional stereotype of "by your leave," the tumblers, too, being as promptly emptied without any ceremonious bother about acknowledgment. The Lamb Inn lived a brief space longer, but utterly bereft of its old position in the revels and extravagance of every kind of the young settlement, and was finally levelled out of existence in company with ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... open-handed slap nearly knocked his victim through the bar-room wall. The head rocked sideways and the big body turned completely round. Eyes rushing water and one profile now resembling a slab of bloodied liver, the man reeled about in a circle as if bereft of sight. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... the Pale-Face Mother, She who once was brave for love's sake, Weak from hardships new and wearing, Utterly bereft of kindred, Her heart's comfort thus torn from her, Died beneath her weight of sorrow. And a pity, soft and human, Though he knew no name to call it, Thrilled the Red Man as he laid her 'Neath the forest ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... Indignation at the trivial, senseless, and unnatural Representation of the Chaplain. It is possible there may be a Pedant in Holy Orders, and we have seen one or two of them in the World; but such a Driveler as Sir Roger, so bereft of all manner of Pride, which is the Characteristick of a Pedant, is what one would not believe could come into the Head of the same Man who drew the rest of the Play. The Meeting between Welford and him shews a Wretch without any Notion of the Dignity of his Function; and it is out of all ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... good uncle, I can deny none of this. And indeed, unto those who were despoiled and robbed by the Turk's overrunning of the country, and all their substance movable and unmovable bereft and lost already, their persons only fled and safe, I think that these considerations—considering also that, as you lately said, their sorrow could not amend their chance—might unto them be good ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... gold across them trails in saddle bags!" His voice suddenly mounted into domineering vehemence. "Tote hit over wild an' la'relly mountings with this hyar country full of drunken scalawags thet would do murder for a ten dollar bill! Hev ye done gone plum bereft of reason?" ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... hath requit it, Him, and his innocent child: for which foul deed The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have Incens'd the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures, Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso, They have bereft; and do pronounce, by me Lingering perdition,—worse than any death Can be at once,—shall step by step attend You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from— Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls Upon your heads,—is nothing but ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... fourteen (for which read seventeen or eighteen), and insisted on the advantage of giving every girl a profession by which she could earn her living, if the need arose. Speaking to Mrs. Hall on the subject of some girls who had been suddenly bereft of fortune, she exclaimed: 'They do everything that is fashionable imperfectly; their drawing, singing, dancing, and languages amount to nothing. They were educated to marry, and had they had time, they might have gone off with, and hereafter ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... year, that happy group of kind faces had passed out of the world! The sudden death of the younger Mr. W., who was the idol of the family, brought his mother in sorrow to the grave. The girls, by some strange fatality, only survived her a few weeks; and the good old man, bereft of every kindred tie, pined away and died ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... those who were frightened deserve reproach, if there are such, still more are those to be blamed who pretended to be frightened. At any rate, my policy is justly to be praised for refusing to allow my fellow citizens (preserved by me and ardently desiring to preserve me) to be exposed while bereft of leaders to armed slaves, and for preferring that it should be made manifest how much force there might be in the unanimity of the loyalists, if they had been permitted to champion my cause before I had fallen, when after that fall they had proved strong enough to raise me up again. ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... thus that Rolfe, the English planter saw her, And the picture of the maiden at her beadwork Haunted long his memory as he sat alone In the home bereft of woman's love and care. Long he mused and sadly on his mournful fortunes Since the fateful shipwreck on Bermuda's shore That had left him lonely, left a gloomy shadow On his New World home. Then ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... Golden Gate and headed south. We dropped the mountains of California beneath the horizon, and daily the surf grew warmer. But there were no flying fish, no bonita and dolphin. The ocean was bereft of life. Never had I sailed on so forsaken a sea. Always, before, in the same latitudes, had I ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... Richling just outside the street entrance. Richling had halted there, bereft of intention, almost of outward sense, and choking with bitterness. It seemed to him as if in an instant all his misfortunes, disappointments, and humiliations, that never before had seemed so ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... bleak domains, Far dearer than the torrid plains Where rich ananas blow! Farewell, a mother's blessing dear! A brother's sigh! a sister's tear! My Jean's heart-rending throe! Farewell, my Bess! tho' thou'rt bereft Of my parental care, A faithful brother I have left, My part in him thou'lt share! Adieu too, to you too, My Smith, my bosom frien'; When kindly you mind me, O then ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... got the droops. "See about you!" she said silently and threateningly, jerking her head. The hat trembled at the motion, and was thereafter ignored. Stealthily Jenny went back to her own reflection in the window, catching the clearly-chiselled profile of her face, bereft in the dark mirror of all its colour. She could see her nose and chin quite white, and her lips as part of the general colourless gloom. A little white brooch at her neck stood boldly out; and that was all that could be seen with ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... them breathing, though he strained his ears. He could only hear his heart drumming at his breast, the blood pulsing in his temples. Why did they hold their breath? He crossed the room, not knowing what he did, bereft of his wits. He had a confused, ridiculous picture of himself wearing the flaccid, panic stricken face of Mr. Lance, like an ass' head, not holding the wand of Titania. He reached the window and stood in its embrasure, and there one definite, practical thought crept into his mind. He was visible ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... tender and each thought is blest. Long, for his loss, shall pensive Mem'ry show, Through Humour's mask, the visage of her woe, Day breathe a darkness that no sun dispels, And Night be full of whispers and farewells; While patient Kindness, shadow-like and dim, Droops in its loneliness, bereft of him, Feels its sad doom and sure decadence nigh,— For how should Kindness live, when he ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... the bridge at Paris; (38) and then upwards, along the Seine, to the Marne. Then upwards on the Marne as far as Chezy; and in their two stations, there and on the Yonne, they abode two winters. This same year died Charles, king of the Franks. Arnulf, his brother's son, had six weeks before his death bereft him of his kingdom; which was now divided into five portions, and five kings were consecrated thereto. This, however, was done with the consent of Arnulf; and they agreed that they should hold in subjection to him; because none of them had by birth any claim on the father's side, except ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... exactly illustrates the Zulu theory. At the moment when the husband of Jonka Dyneis was in danger six miles from her house in his boat, Jonka 'was found, and seen standing at her own house wall in a trance, and being taken, she could not give answer, but stood as bereft of her senses, and when she was asked why she was so moved, she answered, "If our boat be not lost, she was in ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... to her choice, and in which it is even now scarcely possible to decide what course would have been wiser or safer than that which she adopted. And when at last the long conflict was terminated by the complete victory of her combined enemies— when she, with her husband and her children, was bereft not only of power, but even of freedom, and was a prisoner in the hands of those whose unalterable object was her destruction—she bore her accumulated miseries with a serene resignation, an intrepid fortitude, a true heroism of soul, of which the history of the world ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... stocks of oil in England were running short, but I commanded enough to fill my great transportplane. We flew low over roads crawling with humanity as a sick animal crawls with vermin. Some cities were empty, obscenely bereft of population; ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... employment it so generously provided for wives bereft of their lawful support, the press-gang found for the women of the land many an odd job that bore no direct relation to the earning of their bread. When the mob demolished the Whitby rendezvous in '93, it was the industrious fishwives of the town who collected the stones used as ammunition on ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... human horror of the To-Come, whose hideous mysteries were known only to the royal prophetess. In mute and stern despair it looked out from the canvas, a curious anomalous thing—cut adrift from human help, bereft of aid from heaven—yet, in its doomed isolation, scorning to ask the sympathy which its extraordinary loveliness extorted from all who saw it. The artist's pride in this, her first finished creation, might well be pardoned, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... 1906, and the night which followed it, left her bereft of all literary, and other, treasures; but her poem bearing the refrain, "Lost city of my love and my desire," rings with the old genius, and expresses the feeling of many made desolate by the destruction of the city which held their ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... of reason bereft, Soon ended her sorrows and sank cold in death: Thus died that slave mother, poor heart broken mother, In sorrow ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... distances—from the mountains, the lakes, the far-off dry lands, but not one fish entered the vast rivers of the Pacific Coast. The people had made their choice. They had forgotten the honor that a mother-child would have brought them. They were bereft of their food. They were stricken with poverty. Through the long winter that followed they endured hunger and starvation. Since then our tribe has always welcomed girl-children—we ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... Bob in order by the aid of a person to whom the vision of Bob in the light of those thoughts (or in other words to whom her vision of Bob and nothing else) would mean so delightfully much? It was on the same general lines that poor Newton Winch, bereft, alone, ill, perhaps dying, and with the drawback of a not very sympathetic personality—as Mark remembered it at least—to contend against in almost any conceivable appeal to human furtherance, it was on these lines, very much, that the luckless case in Fiftieth Street was offered ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... Rebellion and treason required the lead and direction of an ambitious and reckless class; a class actuated by gross and selfish passions, in disconnection with sympathy for the masses. It required a class stripped and bereft by habits of thinking of the spirit of political beneficence, devoid of national honor, national pride, and national fidelity. Nothing less unscrupulous would have answered to plot, to carry forward, and to manage the incidents of the attempted dismemberment ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... cheering and example, what were these set against this final ordeal: a blistering thirst of three days and two nights? Happily a water-hole, not bereft of all moisture, was found in the nick of time. A few birds flew about it in the evening, but Sir George Grey's hand shook so that he could take no aim. He headed a last desperate spurt for Perth; the reaching of succour, or the arrival of death. ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... upon the outskirts of a dense crowd of people, who were swaying and tossing with excitement, their chins all thrown forwards and their gaze directed upwards. Following their eyes, the young officer saw a sight which left him standing bereft of every sensation ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... married Gulielma Maria Springett, a young and charming Quakeress. Guli Springett's father had died when she was but twenty-three years old, after such valiant service on the Parliamentary side in the civil war that he had been knighted by the Speaker of the House of Commons. Her mother, thus bereft, had married Isaac Pennington, a quiet country gentleman, in whose company, after some search for satisfaction in religion, she had become a Quaker. Pennington's Quakerism, together with the sufferings which it brought upon him, had made him known to ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... summer shores of New Jersey. His governess took him as far as Philadelphia, where the Eastern connection met him, and "poored" him, sent the woman back home, and took him out on the shining sands. During the child's absence she made covers for the drawing-room sofas and chairs; the house, bereft of Albert and draped in pale Holland, became more ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... of hard sense and native resources that rendered him ready for any emergency. Once when we had won some money from a man, he began to raise a fuss and carry on like one bereft of reason. Sherman humored him. He locked him up in the car, and told everybody that he was a lunatic that he was removing to the asylum—to keep away from him, as he was dangerous and entirely irresponsible. ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... Isis! Thou art a mother. Isis, in the name of thine own child, save mine. Let me not go with empty arms, bereft of my tender burden. Thou art ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... inscription was carved on a board, and placed at the head of the grave by Lander, Captain Clapperton being unable to sit up, or to assist in any manner in the mournful ceremony. Thus did Captain Clapperton see himself bereft of his comrades, and left to pursue his journey in very painful and distressing circumstances, with only Richard Lander as his servant, who stood by him in all his fortunes, and Pascoe, not a very trusty African, whom he had hired at Badagry. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the danger past, A frightful noise of trampling feet we hear. My father, looking thro' the shades, with fear, Cried out: 'Haste, haste, my son, the foes are nigh; Their swords and shining armor I descry.' Some hostile god, for some unknown offense, Had sure bereft my mind of better sense; For, while thro' winding ways I took my flight, And sought the shelter of the gloomy night, Alas! I lost Creusa: hard to tell If by her fatal destiny she fell, Or weary sate, or wander'd with affright; But she was lost for ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... words into a suffrage convention was naturally followed by an oppressive silence, which Mr. Taft, now wholly bereft of his self-possession, broke by saying that the best women would not vote and the worst ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... been ours, yet bright as brief; Oh! how I live them over, one by one, Now that the endless days, bereft of you, Creep ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... now treasured in the museum at Tobolsk, is examined with even the little knowledge we possess of the events immediately following it! For a time, we must believe, humanity then was deliriously bereft. One could almost believe the moon had a greater pull in ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... you in this affliction, and sincerely regret that the fatal wound was inflicted by one of my nation. Yet the past is irretrievable, though painful, and many are, like you, bereft of friends and relatives. Inez, in your hours of gloom and sadness can you not think of your reunion with Manuel, where ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... according to the decision of good and noble men, of full weight, and good metal, and handed over to him to whom it is due. But if contention there should arise again between them, then shall they settle by fee, and not by reddened steel. But if one of these parties become so bereft of his senses that he break this reconciliation, and pledge of truce, or becomes the contriver of the other's death, then shall he be driven from God, and from the commerce of all Christendom, as far as men pursue wolves, Christians ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... war—these being mere bodily calamities—to a famine of the Word which is always joined to eternal damnation? An example of the horrible darkness into which Satan can lead men when God is silent and does not speak, is furnished by the Gentiles who have been bereft of the Word. Who is not horrified by the Romans, men of exemplary wisdom and famous before other nations by reason of their dignified discipline, who observed the custom of letting the worthy matrons worship and crown Priapus, the foul idol, and of leading bridal virgins before ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... himself, and carried away by the might of passion and rendered incapable by the terrible experiences of the past few hours of controlling the emotions that assailed him, the youth, still scarcely beyond childhood, who saw himself torn away from and bereft of all that had usually sustained and supported him, sobbed aloud, and like a frightened birdling seeking protection under its mother's wings, hid his head, amid floods of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
