"Drift away" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not, unless you rode a cow and shot at a goat," Flint answered, and was rather relieved to have the conversation drift away on to the comparative merits, as hunting-grounds, of the different sections of the country. The subject was not specially exciting to Flint; but it was at least impersonal, and he felt an unaccountable aversion to hearing any further discussion of ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... of a riddle to him, and he let the subject drift away. "Shall we go and sit in the cathedral?" he asked, when ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... brought tears and incoherent shoutings from the audience, he became suddenly fearful before the ecstasies which he had touched to life, he faltered, and brought his discourse to an abrupt end. As the crowd slowly quieted and reluctantly began to drift away there flashed on him with blinding suddenness the realization that his excitement had been as great as their own; for a moment he wondered if such passion were godly. Only for a moment, however, of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... mind to go. The flowers were asleep in the garden, and there was a steady, gentle shower of yellow leaves down the Forest. That morning when he woke the little house seemed suspended in a golden mist. As he stood in the doorway he felt as though it might drift away up over the trees and into space any minute. But after a little he knew it was not Helma's little forest house that was to go swinging away into space and adventure,—it was himself. And suddenly he wanted to go then,—to the sea and over and beyond. He called the news ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... principles from the Witherspoon side of the house," McGlenn declared. "If he had, we should at once have discovered in him the unmistakable trace of the hog. Oh, I don't think he will stay in the club very long. His tendency will be to drift away. All rich men are the enemies of democracy. If they pretend that they are not, they are hypocrites; if they believe they are not, it is because they haven't come to a correct understanding of themselves. The ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... secured by very firm ligaments to the bones of the head, and being a weighty affair, would easily be knocked off, or might drop away from the body as it floated in water in a state of decomposition. The jaw would thus be deposited immediately, while the rest of the body would float and drift away altogether, ultimately reaching the sea, and perhaps becoming destroyed. The jaw becomes covered up and preserved in the river silt, and thus it comes that we have such a curious circumstance as that of the lower jaws in the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... found two or three large spars and a spare mast or two, which I threw overboard, tying every one with a rope that it might not drift away. Climbing down the ship's side, I pulled them toward me and tied four of them fast together in the form of a raft, laying two or three pieces ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... but no notice is taken of the fact that he thoroughly understands public accounts. A man is asked to subscribe ten dollars to a church affair, who cannot afford it, but his spiritual insight might save the impending church quarrel. People come and go in the churches, and many, I am convinced, drift away because they are never asked for anything but money for the support and interest of the Church. In no other sort of organization is this true. Even in the summer camp or mountain hotel or Atlantic liner, when any pastime or entertainment is suggested, the first thing ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... pipe—which he still enjoyed in spite of his blindness—and awaiting events in that vast patience so necessary to the successful African traveller. Occasionally a group of the chatting natives would drift toward his throne, would fall into awestricken silence, would stare, would drift away again; but none addressed him. The Leopard Woman, obeying rules that Kingozi had managed to convey as very strict, held apart. Only in the evening, after the lion- fearing visitors had all departed, did they sit together sociably by the fire. The nights at this elevation were cool—cold ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... Sir Robert, whom she found walking about on deck. He had been reading all the afternoon, and his mind was full of La Salle, and De Soto, and poor Evangeline, so cruelly near to Gabriel and happiness once, only to drift away from both forever. So large was his grasp of any subject that the imaginative phases of a situation appealed to him as powerfully as the practical, and he was not the man to take the Mississippi without its associations, any more than he would have done ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... kept near the edge, for it was evident the people did not care to go too near to the dangerous place. There was a row of thick bushes which concealed the gulf below, and as they approached these bushes the rain abruptly ceased, and the clouds began to break and drift away in the sky. "Two of you seize the girl and throw her over," said Tourmaline in a calm, matter-of-fact way, "and two others must throw the boy over. It may take four, perhaps, to lift the huge and ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... she said, and she put it in her pocket, and then she began to drift away a little. "Well, I'm sure I'm much obliged to you." She hesitated a moment, and then ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... gale came on from the southward, threatening every moment to snap them in two, and drive us from our anchorage. We held on for several hours, till, at nine P.M., some swell having set in upon the margin of the ice, it began to break off and drift away. Every possible exertion was instantly made to shift our stream cable farther in upon the floe; but it broke away so quickly as to baffle every endeavour, and at ten the ship went adrift, the wind blowing still harder than before. Having hauled ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... acquaintances beyond those with whom he was intimately associated. It seemed more politic to obey his instincts and remain unobtrusive in company and drift away inoffensively when the chance occurred. One of the men with whom he talked occasionally was a red-headed little cockney by the name of Shendish. For some reason or the other—perhaps because his name ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... fortunate, as it would largely solve the difficult question of prahus and men for my journey up the river. The controleur and the Sultan also co-operated in assisting me to make a start, but when at last all seemed in readiness, the Malays allowed one of our prahus to drift away down toward the sea; after other similar delays I finally began my expedition up the ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... "or else it will drift away in the night time. We'll tie it here, though, because you know we may want to sail round our island, and I don't see any log of wood here to make a boat out of as Robinson Crusoe did. Where's the rope, Bo?" she said, as she looked round ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... Where were my friends? What prospect had I of obtaining food to sustain life till I could find them? All these were questions which I asked myself, but to which I could give no satisfactory answer. Scarcely had I reached the shore than my raft, which I had not secured to it, began to drift away. Onward it went down the stream. I could not recover it; so a very natural impulse made me follow its course along the banks. I ran on for two or three hundred yards, when I arrived at the edge of a roaring cataract, some forty feet deep ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... Roman Catholic or infidel. They cannot drift away from the safe moorings of evangelical truth, unless the churches to which they are tied up give way. The churches control these missions forever. Local management in this work often means mismanagement, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... fascinating companion for a voyage down the sparkling stream of life; only his boat was very small. There was room in it for a girl-partner at the oar, but no accommodation for passengers. He was allowed to drift away from the threshold of the Belgravian mansion while Winnie averted her tearful eyes. He was not a lodger. The lodger was Mr Verloc, indolent, and keeping late hours, sleepily jocular of a morning from under his bed-clothes, but with gleams of infatuation in his ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... so that it could not possibly drift away, the boys boarded their own craft and rowed still farther up Firefly Lake, until they came to a cove and a creek, the latter thickly overhung with bushes. They pulled the craft out of sight, so that ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... his stocking feet, he listened again. There were more voices murmuring on the veranda of the hotel now, but within a few moments forms began to drift away down the street, and finally there was silence. Evidently the widow had not secured backing as strong as she could have desired. And Terry went ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... exquisitely graceful and golden than her sisters. The woods receded from it on every hand, leaving it lying in a pool of amber sunshine. The yellow trees were mirrored in the placid stream, with now and then a leaf falling on the water, mayhap to drift away and be used, as Uncle Blair suggested, by some adventurous wood sprite who had it in mind to fare forth to some far-off, legendary region where all the brooks ran ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... I say—at least thou professest to believe that the malefactor was that very day with Jesus in Paradise, and yet thou broodest over thy friend's grave, gathering thy thoughts about the pitiful garment he left behind him, and letting himself drift away into the unknown, forsaken of all but thy vaguest, most shapeless thinkings! Tell me not thou fearest to enter there whence has issued no revealing. It is God who gives thee thy mirror of imagination, and if thou keep it clean, it will give thee back no shadow but of the truth. Never a cry of ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... of importance which I had met with in my reading, before my mind, and compare them both with each other, and with all that was already in my memory. And whatever appeared to me most rational, most scriptural, I treasured for future use, allowing the rest to drift away into forgetfulness. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the constant problems of the Church is that of the loss of those who have for a time been associated with it—of those who have for a time seemed to recognise their duty to God, and their privileges as members of His Son. They drift away into the world. We pray and meditate and worry over this and try to invent some machinery which will overcome it. But it cannot be overcome by machinery, especially by the sort of machinery which consists in transferring the amusements that people find in the world bodily into the ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... often have I cursed thee, good friend, who staked thy life in the angry bore to snatch two spent bodies from its merciless tossing. It was not to be endured, said you, that the remains of the Lady of Savenaye should drift away unheeded, to be devoured by the beasts of the sea! They now repose in sacred ground, and I live on! Oh, hadst thou but reached us a minute later!—ah, God, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... wandered swiftly round the large room, watching every movement, every figure intently until prevented by physical pain which produced a sense of utter isolation. His perceptions were now concentrated in his chest, the source of all his suffering. Gradually, very gradually, he began to drift away from life. When now he saw something, it seemed to him strange and meaningless. The last fight between life and death had begun; it filled his whole being; it created a new world, strange and lonely, a world of terror, agony ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... her mind was that these associations meant only evil for Jack, and that to be absorbed in the sort of life that seemed to please him was for her to drift away from all ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... attend. I will. I will," she whispered to herself, a hand pressed to each temple to constrain her mind. And for five minutes she would attend, and then she would drift away on a sea of pleasant indolence, and time fluttered away from her like an escaping bird, and she knew herself for a light woman who would never excel. And Kay's brown head was bent over his book, and ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... I feel ouch and see desert and then I drift away up to sky again," answered Firio. "All right now, eh? Pretty soon you so strong I have to broil five—six—seven quail a day ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... invitations are all for funerals in these days," said she to her venerable maid Hannah, who had helped her dress for her parties fifty years before. She had given up society little by little. Her friends had died, or she had allowed herself to drift away from them, while the acquaintances from whom she might have filled their places were only acquaintances still. She was the last of her own family, and, for years before her father died, he had lived mainly in his library, avoiding society and caring for nothing but books; ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... of the room to stare at the man whom Jesus had healed. After a while, they began to drift away, talking excitedly. Philip did not push forward with the curious crowd but stood staring at Jesus. Even after the people had all gone, he continued to gaze wonderingly at Jesus. He could hardly believe his eyes: The man who had ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... the king and his mother watched the boys at their play. The older two amused themselves by building barns, in which they put toy cows and sheep; but Harold launched mock boats on a pond and watched them drift away. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... bush, called the prickly grass, and a dwarf tree, the Eucalyptus dumosa, grows only where the soil appears too barren and loose for anything else; indeed, were it not for these, the sand would probably drift away, and cover the vegetation of neighbouring spots less barren and miserable. Against this evil, nature seems to have provided by the presence of two plants so singularly fitted for a soil of this description. ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... might return, and return to discover—to own, perhaps, to himself and to her that he did love her, and that only mistaken pride, or her own coldness, or one of the hundred "mistakes" or "perhapses" by which men, so much more than women, allow to drift away from them the happiness they might grasp, had misled and withheld him! No; all was over. Henceforth she must live in her children alone—in the interests of others she must find ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... at last, after all his labour, and had been laid at her feet a dead man. She was free to go and join her love. To me, child as I was, this was sorely cruel. Death, as I know now, is very merciful even when he seems most merciless, but as I sat and watched the dear life slowly drift away from me, it was a ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... door. In the best of times there are such wanderers; and, in spite of the generous provision made for the relief of the poor, there must be, in a time like the present, a great number who let go their hold of home (if they have any), and drift away in search of better fortune, and, sometimes, into irregular courses of life, never to settle more. Entering the yard, we found the wooden sheds crowded with people at breakfast—all ages, from white-haired men, bent with years, to eager childhood, yammering over its morning ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... had what might be called a wan countenance; for the countenance is above all things a reflection, and it is an error to believe that idea is colourless. That countenance was evidently the surface of a strange inner state, the result of a composition of contradictions, some tending to drift away in good, others in evil, and to an observer it was the revelation of one who was less and more than human—capable of falling below the scale of the tiger, or of rising above that of man. Such chaotic souls exist. There was something inscrutable in that face. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Father, but of the world, who does not know in himself, or see in somebody he watches, something of this pure pride in life? Just to live is so attractive that the higher ends and responsibilities of living drift away out of sight. This instinctive almost physical selfishness is the philosophy of more than we think both of the good and of the bad ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser |
