"Ebb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so in like manner Catholic Christendom is no simple exhibition of religious absolutism, but it presents a continuous picture of Authority and Private Judgment alternately advancing and retreating as the ebb and flow of the tide;—it is a vast assemblage of human beings with wilful intellects and wild passions, brought together into one by the beauty and the majesty of a superhuman power—into what may be called a large reformatory ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... once in four years, who elect new legislators every two years, and renew the provincial officers every twelvemonth; if the Americans, who have abandoned the political world to the attempts of innovators, had not placed religion beyond their reach, where could it abide in the ebb and flow of human opinions? where would that respect which belongs to it be paid, amid the struggles of faction? and what would become of its immortality in the midst of perpetual decay? The American clergy were the first to perceive this truth, and to act in conformity with ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... past I have observed that the tide rises and falls twice every twenty-four hours, and that the ebb and flow produce a rather swift current through the submarine tunnel. It is pretty certain therefore that a floating object thrown into the lagoon when the top of the orifice is uncovered would be ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... times—whether he didn't know that he had seen her at least seventy-five times, and so forth; the satisfactory conclusion which was arrived at, at last, being, that he had better take care of himself, and mind what he was about. The witness having been by these means reduced to the requisite ebb of nervous perplexity, the examination was continued ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... sound. What a beauty! And now there came another. That was the way to live—carelessly, recklessly, spending oneself. He got on to his feet and began to wade towards the shore, pressing his toes into the firm, wrinkled sand. To take things easy, not to fight against the ebb and flow of life, but to give way to it—that was what was needed. It was this tension that was all wrong. To live—to live! And the perfect morning, so fresh and fair, basking in the light, as though laughing at its own beauty, seemed to ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... author, whose name must be BUCHANANOFF (though he modestly drops the ultimate syllable), gives as a second title to this portion of his wonderful work, "The Dirge for the Dead." It is very appropriate. A student, whose funds are at the lowest ebb, commits a purposeless murder, and a "pope" who has been on the look-out no doubt for years, seizes the opportunity to rush into the murdered man's dwelling, and sing over his inanimate body a little thing of his own composition. Anyone who has been in Russia ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... saw the turning of the tide below them. The streaky bends of curdled water, lately true as fairy-rings, stopped and wavered, and drew inward on their flowing curves, and outward on the side toward the ebb. Then the south wind brought the distant toll of her father's turret-clock, striking noon with slow ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow—Hope, shining upon the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to another man to dress for dinner, but Cleggett's character was an unusual blend of delicacy and strength; he perceived subtly that Lady Agatha was of the nature to appreciate this compliment. At a moment when her fortunes were at a low ebb what could more cheer a woman and hearten her than such a mark of consideration? Already Cleggett found himself asking what would please ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... induction and mathematical demonstration cooperate for the discovery of truth, that the English genius won in that age the most memorable triumphs. John Wallis placed the whole system of statics on a new foundation. Edmund Halley investigated the properties of the atmosphere, the ebb and flow of the sea, the laws of magnetism, and the course of the comets; nor did he shrink from toil, peril and exile in the cause of science. While he, on the rock of Saint Helena, mapped the constellations ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... but upon shops or houses where so large a booty might be expected as might prevent his being under necessity of thieving again in a week or two's time. Yet when he had in this manner got money, he was so ready to throw it away on women and at play, that in a short space his pocket was at as low an ebb as ever. When his cash was quite gone, he associated himself sometimes with a crew of footpads, and in that method got sufficient plunder to subsist until something offered in his own way, to which ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... she concluded, with a curious little tender smile; 'just when my affairs were at the lowest ebb he came here to visit an old regimental friend who lives over the way. So we met, and both being unattached, we drew to each other, and next month we are ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... last, the state of Richard's affairs had been reduced, by the causes mentioned in the last chapter, to a very low ebb, he suddenly succeeded in greatly improving them by a battle. This battle is known in history as the battle of Jaffa. It was fought in the early part of ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Keziah, have you?" broke in Zebedee. "Nor you, Mr. Ellery? Well, I must tell you. Here's where I gain a lap on Didama Rogers. Seems the Deborah S.—that's the packet's name, Mr. Ellery—she hauled out of Boston night afore last on the ebb, with a fair wind and sky clear as a bell. But they hadn't much more'n got outside of Minot's 'fore the fog shut down, thicker'n gruel for a sick rich man. The wind held till 'long toward mornin'; then she flattened to a dead calm. 'Bije Perry, the mate, he spun the yarn to me, ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... begun to come up half an hour before. For several hours, therefore, there would be a current, which it was well to profit by, for later the ebb would make it difficult to ascend the river. The tide was already strong, for in three days the moon would be full, and it was enough to keep the boat in the center of the current, where it floated swiftly along between the high banks ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... the hardy, the flower, the elite, — These are the men that are moved no more By the will to traffic and grasp and store And ring with pleasure and wealth and love The circles that self is the center of; But they are moved by the powers that force The sea forever to ebb and rise, That hold Arcturus in his course, And marshal at noon in tropic skies The clouds that tower on some snow-capped chain And drift out over the peopled plain. They are big with the beauty of cosmic things. Mark how their ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... was in favour, and the Cromwellians or Protectoratists, among whom the Presbyterians now ranked themselves, were far more numerous than the old Republicans. Royalism, or at least Stuart Royalism, was at its lowest ebb. Many that had been Royalists heretofore had accepted the constitutionalized Protectorate as the best substitute for Royalty that circumstances allowed, and saw no course left them but to cooperate with the majority of their ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... is at ebb, and the sound of her utmost word Is soft as the least wave's lapse in a still small reach. From bay into bay, on quest of a goal deferred, From headland ever to headland and breach to breach Where earth gives ear to the message that all days preach With changes of gladness and ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and pleasant afternoon, Before the sun was set, A fox and other country folk Upon the beach had met. The creeping tide far out had ebb'd, And by the shelving strand There stretch'd a wide and level plain Of ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... civilized society. As a proof that her efforts were not altogether unavailing, it may be observed, that her domestics consisted of some of her pupils, whom she had selected for the performance of the household duties. Morality here is at a very low ebb amongst the adult native population, and infidelity in the married state is a common occurrence. During our short stay, a poor fellow came to complain to Mr. Davy that his wife had gone to live with ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... the spirits of the sailors of the "Adams" to very low ebb. They were forced to struggle unceasingly against the fierce gales which in winter sweep the Atlantic. Their stock of food and water was giving out; and, to add to their distress, scurvy, the sailors' worst enemy, began to show itself in the ship. They had boldly run into the very waters in which ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... their position in society no longer tenable in England, hasten abroad, and, by their conduct, leave a most unfavourable impression of the English character, which, when Englishmen only travelled, stood high, but, now they reside to economise, is at its lowest ebb; for the only charm which the English had in the eyes of needy foreigners was their lavishing their money as they passed through the country, enriching a portion of the community without increasing the prices of consumption ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... while, they ceased firing, and dispersed about the neighborhood, butchering cattle and burning the church and a few empty houses. As the tide began to ebb, they sent a fire-raft in full blaze down the creek to destroy the sloops; but it stranded, and the attempt failed. They now wreaked their fury on the prisoner Diamond, whom they tortured to death, after which they all disappeared. A few resolute men had foiled one of the most ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... the painted duck and drake, The frost a ghostly tapestry doth make, Chill the kingfisher's quilt with none to share. Parted by life and death; the ebb and flow Of night and day over his spirit go; He hunts her face in dreams, and ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... passion of the soul, and being such, is subject to ebb and flow, and to be extreme both ways. For whatever is a passion of the soul, whether love or hatred, joy or fear, is more apt to exceed, or come short, than to keep within its due bounds. Hence, oft-times that which is loved today ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... replied Andrew, "cannot be dismissed in that way. Reasonable or not, I do undoubtedly experience sensations similar to Clarrie's. But in my love I notice a distinct ebb and flow. There are times when I don't care ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... deposited his burden, and left Karl to watch him, he climbed the height, whence he could observe the proceedings of the imperialists. He had not long to wait. As he had seen them advancing like a rushing torrent, now they returned like the ebb of the ocean. As he had feared, they appeared to be slaughtering those they found still stretched alive on the ground. On they went, till there were none to kill, and then, the trumpet collecting them in more compact ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... the buggy and drove silently into town. Mr. Bowman tried to recover his spirits, but they were at low ebb. He did manage to hint that Scattergood should stand his share of the loss, but in his heart he knew that to be vain. Still, he could get that five thousand dollars for the mining stock. It would be ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... sunset of my brother's son It rains downright.— How now! a conduit, girl? what, still in tears? Evermore showering? In one little body Thou counterfeit'st a bark, a sea, a wind: For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea, Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is, Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs; Who,—raging with thy tears and they with them,— Without a sudden calm, will overset Thy tempest-tossed body.—How now, wife! Have you deliver'd to her ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... began to ebb. That fine equilibrium of all the elements of speech could not be maintained indefinitely. Its poise and equability began to grow trivial, its exalted familiarity to become mere vulgarity. So violent reactions became necessary. Johnson and Johnsonese swept heavily over ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Portland lights were made by the revenue-cutter Active. Mr Appleboy went up to have a look at them, ordered the cutter to be hove to, and then went down to finish his allowance of gin-toddy. At twelve o'clock, the yacht Arrow made the Portland lights, and continued her course, hardly stemming the ebb tide. ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sands rose a group of rocks which, though covered at high water, were bare now. It was about half ebb, and spring tide, too, so the sea was further out than usual, so far, in fact, that a wide bar of sand stretched between the rocks and the sea. It was from these rocks that the cry seemed to come, and Lutey, feeling sure that someone was ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... sir. She belongs to the same company as the boats you captured at Hurst Castle. She will complete landing her cargo early to-morrow morning, and drop down the river with the ebb-tide ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... her little 'Chateau Joyeux' of La Favorite, and in the many beautiful properties which belonged to this extravagant Land-despoiler. She came to Wuerttemberg when the country was at a low financial ebb. Louis XIV. had preyed upon the land for years. Robber raids they called these wars which he waged for trumped-up pretexts. After these invasions came the war of the Spanish succession, and Wuerttemberg lying on the high-road ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... to learn the ebb of time From yon dull steeple's drowsy chime, Or mark it as the sunbeams crawl, Inch after inch, along the wall. The lark was wont my matins ring, The sable rook my vespers sing: These towers, although a king's they be, Have not a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... in the practical manner described. I think he must have been very fond of Nina Algernon indeed, although he did not the least know she was at that moment looking out of window, with her hair down, listening to the night breeze in the poplars, the lap and wash of the ebb-tide against the river-banks, thinking how nice it was to have met him that morning, by the merest accident, how nice it would be to see him in the painting-room, by the merest accident again, of ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... sleep healthily through their hard times. These organizations can be adjusted to their environments because the changes of the latter are known and can be more or less accurately predicted from any point. But the human worker has no such regularity. His food period does not ebb and recur with the seasons. There is no periodicity in their changes and, therefore, no possibility for defensive or protective action. His physical structure uses and excretes energy so rapidly that ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... Museum or the school of the Serapeum; nay, as an amateur, he had often sung in the chorus there and acted as deputy for the regular leader. The theatre in his native town of Tauromenium had also been a famous one of old, but, at the time of his return, it had sunk to a very low ebb. Most of the inhabitants of the beautiful city nestling at the foot off Etna, had been converted to Christianity; among them the wealthy citizens at whose cost the plays had been performed and the chorus maintained. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... who have given up themselves to fanciful credulity would confine their conceits in their own minds, they might regulate their lives by the barometer, with inconvenience only to themselves; but to fill the world with accounts of intellects subject to ebb and flow, of one genius that awakened in the spring, and another that ripened in the autumn, of one mind expanded in the summer, and of another concentrated in the winter, is no less dangerous than to tell children ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... came to scoff. I must see all there is to be seen. If there is an apple to be bitten, I must bite. I have floated in with the flood and out with the ebb of almost every fad from crystal-gazing to bridge. I always hope that one of them is going to ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... and houses, where men and women huddle together and have, as they had, a certain amount of comfort, but lose their identity, and are finally swept away into that great stagnant pool of obscurity where existence in great cities goes on and on without either ebb or flow. ...
— A Few Short Sketches • Douglass Sherley
... to drink. He knew that the tide would soon be going out, so he just put his bill in the water, and waited until the tide did begin to ebb. The water of the river began to fall also. The carabao noticed the change, but he could not comprehend it. He was surprised, and agreed that he had been beaten. Little Hum flew away, leaving poor old Carabao stupefied and hardly able to move, ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... slowly like one in a dream, and the lure of the range-land was strong upon him. The deep breathing of three thousand sleeping cattle; the strong, animal odor; the black night which grew each moment blacker, and the rhythmic ebb and flow of the clear, untrained voice of a cowboy singing to his charge. If he could put it into words; if he could but picture the broody stillness, with frogs cr-ekk, er-ekking along the reedy creek-bank and a coyote yapping weirdly upon a distant hilltop! ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... flood tide of emotion began to ebb, and the confusion of loving exclamations and incoherent words gained some order and separated into question and answer. When Anna learned that the musician had accompanied her sister, she wished to see him, and when he entered, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... matter if in calm or strife, There ebb or flow for me the future's tide. I had but one great longing in my life, And ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the effects of these sufferings and fatigues had brought his bodily strength to its lowest ebb, the young Count Sobieski was roused by information that the Russians had planted themselves before Praga, and were preparing to bombard the town. The intelligence nerved his heart's sinews again, and rallied the spirits, also, of his depressed soldiers, who energetically obeyed their commander ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... feel as cool as a strawberry ice In one's own particular damp sea-cave, Dipping one's feelers in each green wave. It is good, for a very rapacious maw, When storm-tossed morsels come to the claw; And 'the better to see with' down below, To wash one's eyes in the ebb and flow Of the tides that come and the tides that go." So sang the Lobsters, thankful for their mercies, All but the hero of these simple verses. Now a hero— If he's worth the grand old name— Though temperature may change from boiling-point to zero Should ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... restored by an honest, kindly countryman of ours. There he stands, and wha kens if he wants the money on the nail, or if he might not be as weel pleased wi' a bit rescript on our treasury some six months hence? Ye ken that our Exchequer is even at a low ebb just now, and ye cry pay, pay, pay, as if we had all the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... toward the end of the seventeenth century it passed to the headwaters of the Mississippi. During the two administrations of Frontenac the fur traffic grew to large proportions, nor did it show much sign of shrinking for a generation thereafter. With the ebb-tide of French military power, however, the trader's hold on these western lands began to relax, and before the final overthrow of New France it had ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... the water not having so ready and free passage through it, cannot upon so short and quick mutations of pressure, be able to produce any sensible effect at such a distance. Besides that, to confirm this hypothesis, there are many Examples found in Natural Historians, of Springs that do ebb and flow like the Sea: As particularly, those recorded by the Learned Camden, and after him by Speed, to be found in this Island: One of which, they relate to be on the Top of a Mountain, by ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... she covered her typewriter, and the heat and a stray mosquito which had eluded both Mrs. Crum and the screens, made her wakeful and restless. That accounted for her physical exhaustion, while the experiences of the morning were enough to send her spirits to the lowest ebb. ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... same manner; and, secondly, lest its pressure should detach the land-ice to which we were secured, and thus set us adrift and at the mercy of the tides. Happily, however, neither of these occurred, the floe remaining stationary for the rest of the tide, and setting off with the ebb which made soon after. In the mean while the Hecla had been enabled to get under sail, and was making considerable progress towards us, which determined me to move the Fury as soon as possible from her present situation into the bight I had sounded in ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... sublime march through the ancient glories of France, and in fancy we saw the titanic forms of the twelve paladins rise out of the mists of the past and face their fate; we heard the tread of the innumerable hosts sweeping down to shut them in; we saw this human tide flow and ebb, ebb and flow, and waste away before that little band of heroes; we saw each detail pass before us of that most stupendous, most disastrous, yet most adored and glorious day in French legendary history; here and there and yonder, across that vast field ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... disposed to resent the over-haste. Calm and time to think were promised to Rachel, but the more she had of both the more they hurt her. She tossed restlessly all night, and was depressed to the lowest ebb by day; but on the second day, ill as she evidently was, she insisted on seeing Captain Keith, declaring that she should never be better till she had made him understand her. Her nurses saw that she was right; and, besides, Mrs. Curtis's pity was greatly touched by dear Alexander's ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... away, though its ebb left him shivering. Child though he was, he could not remember when he had not been curious about the sea. In a dazed fashion he stared out upon the breakers. The wind had died down after the tempest, but the ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and the Pre-Raphaelite heresy was connected by unfriendly critics with the Anglo-Catholic or Tractarian movement at Oxford. William Sharp, in speaking of "that splendid outburst of Romanticism in which Coleridge was the first and most potent participant," and of the lapse or ebb that followed the death of Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, resumes: "At last a time came when a thrill of expectation, of new desire, of hope, passed through the higher lives of the nation; and what followed thereafter were the Oxford movement ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... around the Vatican, in order to snap at the prey which they hoped to secure. He found them everywhere, and told himself with some shame that he was one of them, that the unit of his own personality served to increase the incredible number of cassocks that one encountered in the streets. Ah! that ebb and flow, that ceaseless tide of black gowns and frocks of every hue! With their processions of students ever walking abroad, the seminaries of the different nations would alone have sufficed to drape and decorate the streets, for there were the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... waters of mine eyes, The ready handmaids on her grace t'attend, That never fail to ebb, but ever rise; For to their flow she never grants an end. The ocean never did attend more duly Upon his sovereign's course, the night's pale queen, Nor paid the impost of his waves more truly, Than mine unto her cruelty ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... her lover's arm, unable to control her anguish, feeling the ground give way beneath her feet, her life ebb from her at every step. Once inside the carriage, she burst into a passion of tears, sobbing despairingly on ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... the 6th of February, Lieutenant Cook had gotten out of the sound, he stood over to the eastward, in order to get the strait well open before the tide of ebb approached. At seven in the evening, two small islands, which lie off Cape Koamaroo, at the south-east head of Queen Charlotte's Sound, bore east, at the distance of about four miles. It was nearly calm, and the tide of ebb setting out, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... not lost its freshness. Antelao and Tofana, guarding the vale above Cortina, show faint streaks of snow upon their amethyst. Little clouds hang in the still autumn sky. There are men dredging for shrimps and crabs through shoals uncovered by the ebb. Nothing can be lovelier, more resting to eyes tired with pictures than this tranquil, sunny expanse of the lagoon. As we round the point of the Bersaglio, new landscapes of island and Alp and low-lying mainland move into sight at every slow stroke of the oar. A luggage-train ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the significance of his words. The implication was clear, even though veiled in the heaviest sarcasm. He had the satisfaction of seeing the colour ebb from her cheek. Her face being averted, he missed the swift flicker of pain that rushed to her eyes and, departing, took away with it the soft light that had glowed in them the instant before. He had touched a concealed canker,—the sensitive ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... their traditional doctrines in dealing with it, and really gave it aid and comfort by their irresolute attitude; all the departments full of "Southern sympathizers" and honeycombed with disloyalty; the treasury empty, and the public credit at the lowest ebb; the arsenals ill supplied with arms, if not emptied by treacherous practices; the regular army of insignificant strength, dispersed over an immense surface, and deprived of some of its best officers by defection; the navy small and antiquated. But that was not ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... propitious intervals, if we choose to make the best of them, or they may only be fitful breaks in the glad monotony of our sensual, easy-going lives—breaks, that our evil tendencies most often survive, seeing them rise, and surge, and ebb, in fearless defiance, and then quietly resuming their old sway, when the moral struggle ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... mention a singular phenomenon which has in latter times often occurred at Callao, and which, in 1841, I had myself the opportunity of observing. About two in the morning the sea flowed from the shore with greater force than in the strongest ebb; the ships farthest out were left dry, which is never the case in an ebb tide. The alarm of the inhabitants was great when the sea rushed instantly back with increased force. Nothing could withstand its fury. Meanwhile there was no commotion of the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... that these accidents occur in the night-time, in very hazy weather, or at ebb tide. In the latter case it is necessary for boats to be taken in carts over the sands down to low-water mark, before ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... And as with her own cry her sense was slain, So with the other it was call'd again. She rose, and to her bed made forced way, And laid her down even where Leander lay; And all this while the red sea of her blood Ebb'd with Leander: but now turn'd the flood, And all her fleet of spirits came swelling in, With child of sail, and did hot fight begin With those severe conceits she too much mark'd: And here Leander's beauties were embark'd. He came in swimming, painted all with joys, Such as might ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... unmelodiously, and not dreaming a thing; for when a cow-puncher has nothing in particular to do, he sleeps to atone for the weary hours when he must be very wide-awake. An avalanche descended upon his unwarned middle, and checked the rhythmic ebb and flow of sound. He squawked and came ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... for his standing, and "the friendship of more than one person of consideration, efficiently disposed to aid his views in life." In short, he describes himself as "beyond all apprehension of want." He then notices the low ebb of poetry in Britain for the previous ten years; the fashionable but slender poetical reputation of Hayley, then in the wane; "the Bard of Memory slumbered on his laurels, and he of Hope had scarce begun to attract his share of public attention;" Cowper was dead, and had not left an extensive ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... This remarkable thing had one immense mast in the middle of it, supported by six stays, like the Norse galleys of old, but it had no yards; for, although the sea was indeed its home, and it incessantly braved the fury of the storm, diurnally cleft the waters of flood and ebb-tide, and gallantly breasted the billows of ocean all the year round, it had no need of sails. It never advanced an inch on its course, for it had no course. It never made for any port. It was never either homeward or outward bound. No streaming ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... be done with his existence? In the plenitude of youthful health and strength, was his life to ebb away, like an unreplenished stream, flowing into nothingness? His days became more and more wearisome; the hours hung more and more heavily upon his hands; the feet of time sounded with iron tramp in his ears, yet never appeared ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... ebb tide the crowd of soldiers crept into the cavern and lashed two long ladders together, and began to climb up the precipice. But a strong arm seized the ladders from above, and flung them back on the granite floor of the cave. Standing like a ghost in the faint, silvery radiance falling ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... had broken the crust of the globe, heaved up the masses of earth, and made fissures. It is, as it were, an interior sea, which has its flow and ebb, its tempests; a thin film separates us from it. We could not sleep if we thought of all that is under our heels. However, the central fire diminishes, and the sun grows more feeble, so much so that one day the earth will perish of refrigeration. It will ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... and pestilent discovery, Didst thou find place within the human heart? Through thee is martial glory lost, through thee The trade of arms became a worthless art: And at such ebb are worth and chivalry, That the base often plays the better part. Through thee no more shall gallantry, no more Shall valour prove ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... morning when Mrs. Keith sat on the saloon deck of a river boat steaming with the ebb tide down the St. Lawrence. The terraced heights of Quebec had faded astern; ahead a blaze of sunshine rested on the river, up which a big liner with crowded decks and her smoke-trail staining the clear blue sky moved majestically. To starboard dark pinewoods, with here and there a sawmill ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... actress mother cherished for the city in which she had enjoyed her greatest triumphs seemed to have turned to hatred in the heart of her brilliant and erratic son. In his short and disastrous sojourn in Boston, when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb, it is not likely that his thought once turned to the old house on Haskins, now Carver, Street, where his ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... Never did a man live so long in a foreign country and take on so few of its thoughts and ways. He threw himself into the anti-slavery movement upon the crest of the wave; the flowing sea carried him quickly from one distinction to another; the ebb tide, which found him in the Senate of the United States, revealed to his startled senses the creeping, crawling things beneath the surface; partyism rampant, tyrannous and corrupt; a self-willed soldier in the White House; a Blaine, a Butler and a Garfield leading the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... death of an infant, while a sad, is a beautiful thing to witness. There is no flower that blooms on a baby grave that does not speak to the world-worn heart, of Immortality. The grief, therefore, is gentle in its touch. But with the ebb of a maturer life the sorrow is of a different character, and when the physician announced to this worthy couple that their daughter, Elvira, would die, they were stunned by the blow, and when the event came "they refused" like Rachel "to be comforted." The child that ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... The ebb of the company's prosperity dated from Kate's marriage. Somehow things did not seem to go well after. In the first place the production of Olivette was not a success. Mortimer was drunk, did not know his words, and went 'fluffing all ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... which expresses elevated thought and refinement of spirit, in whatever form it manifests itself, is at its lowest ebb among the Sakais and especially representative art, although it is curious to notice how much more they prefer (I speak of the male sex) this latter to that of sounds. Music may procure some moments of bliss to those who yield themselves to its charms but it is transitory and, with them, leaves no ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... stagers." Formerly, many who had been at the church from the first might be seen at it; numerous persons recognised as "fixtures" were there; but they have either gone to other churches or died off, and there is now a strong ebb and flow of new ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... we sit by the River of Time And gaze at the waves below, But its brink is covered by frost and rime, And we hear on the wind a muffled chime Proclaiming the end of a brief sojourn: Yet the floods of life still whirl and churn As the currents ebb and flow:— By the rolling wheel we wait our turn Calm, but ready to go! The hopper is drained, but unmoved still, The Miller who grinds in Time's ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... always seize his opportunity; but the changes of the times in which he has lived have never allowed him to have one. There has been no period of flood in his tide which might lead him on to fortune. While he has been waiting patiently for high water the ebb has come upon him. Mr. Prendergast himself had been a successful man, and his regrets, therefore, were philosophical rather than practical. As for Herbert, he did not look upon the question at all in the same light as his elderly friend, and ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... that the world began to hear of Mr. Nathaniel Hawthorne, of Salem; but it was still long before the public knew him. Meanwhile, at the very moment of the disclosure, he was in the lowest ebb of discouragement, in spirits, that he ever knew. It is to this time that his gloomiest memories attached themselves. He had tried to enter the world, he had even tried to earn a living, and had failed. Cilley, his old college mate, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... the tide. It comes, each wave higher and higher, until it almost appears that it will never end, and then suddenly it seems to ebb a little, comes up again, recedes again, and, before one knows it, is passing away as ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... arras of the gloom Are the pale breezes moaning: by her tomb Bends Julio, like a phantom, and his eye Is fallen, as the moon-borne tides, that lie At ebb within the sea. Oh! he is wan, As winter skies are wan, like ages gone, And stars unseen for paleness; it is cast, As foliage in the raving of the blast, All his fair bloom of thoughts! Is the moon chill, That ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... end of the age of monastic influence. Pope Eugenius III., the great Suger and St. Bernard, all died when Hugh was a young man. The great enthusiasm for founding monasteries was just beginning to ebb. Yet a hundred and fifteen English houses were founded in Stephen's reign, and a hundred and thirteen in the reign of Henry II., and the power of the monastic bodies was still almost paramount in the church. It was to the monasteries ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... districts, just before the capture of his wife and son. He filled the Tower of Buchan with his own creatures, scattered the Comyns all over the land, with express commands to attack, hunt, or resist all of the name of Bruce to the last ebb of their existence. He left amongst them officers and knights as traitorous, and spirits well-nigh as evil as his own, and they obeyed him to the letter, for amongst the most inveterate, the most treacherous, and most dishonorable persecutors of the Bruce stood first and foremost the Comyns ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... thee These Song-Waves from life's voiceful sea. They ebb and flow with swift occasion, Bearing rich ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... perfect yet deepening peace was upon it. Cosmo scarcely left him, but watched and waited, with a cold spot at his heart, which kept growing bigger and bigger, as he saw his father slowly drifting out on the ebb-tide of this earthly life. Cosmo had now to go through that most painful experience of all—when the loved seem gradually withdrawing from human contact and human desires, their cares parting slowly farther and farther ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... gilding the pastures and hill-slopes, the clover shedding its perfume, the timothy shaking out its little clouds of pollen as the sickle-bar strikes it, most of the song-birds still vocal, and the tide of summer standing poised at its full. Very soon it will begin to ebb, the stalks of the meadow grasses will become dry and harsh, the clover will fade, the girlish daisies will become coarse and matronly, the birds will sing fitfully or cease altogether, the pastures will turn brown, and the haymakers will ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... Coincident with the ebb of the store advertising occurred a lapse in circulation, inexplicable to the staff until an analysis indicated that the women readers were losing interest. It was young Mr. Surtaine who solved the mystery, by a ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... half-past three in the morning I went to the beach, and found the boat on shore half-filled with water, in consequence of the man having left her. I called the people, and baled her out; found she was considerably damaged, and very leaky. At half-past 5 A.M., the ebb-tide making, we left Macao with vegetables for ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... Vestalia on the 9th of June, and from the night festival of the Bona Dea: the notorious escapade of Clodius in 62 B.C. shows the scandal raised by a breach of this rule even at the period when religious enthusiasm was at its lowest ebb. Slaves were specifically admitted to a share in certain festivals such as the Saturnalia and the Compitalia (the festival of the Lares), whereas at the Matralia (the festival of the matrons) a female slave was brought in with the express purpose ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... fastening a cinch, had his forehead pressed against the saddle and could afford a grin. He knew that the courage of a killer is largely dependent on his physical well-being. If he is cold or hungry or exhausted, his nerve is at low ebb; if life is running strong in his arteries his grit is above par. For years Roush had been drinking to excess. He had reached the point where he dared not face in the open a man like Albeen with nerves of unflawed steel. The declension of a gunman, ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... caress of the sea, and, calmer now, could see the sombre and confused mass of the Raven on one side and on the other the long white streak of Molene sands that are left high above the dry bottom of Fougere Bay at every ebb. She turned round and saw far away, along the starred background of the sky, the ragged outline of the coast. Above it, nearly facing her, appeared the tower of Ploumar Church; a slender and tall pyramid shooting ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Yields Sigh for Sigh, and melts in equal Tears; For such Descriptions thus at once can prove The Force of Language, and the Sweets of Love. You sit like Heav'n's bright Minister on High, Command the throbbing Breast, and watry Eye, And, as our captive Spirits ebb and flow, Smile at the Tempests you have rais'd below: The Face of Guilt a Flush of Vertue wears, And sudden burst the involuntary Tears: Honour's sworn Foe, the Libertine with Shame, Descends to curse the sordid lawless Flame; The tender Maid ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... a breeze from the land, we weighed, and steered our course S.S.E. for the Scarcies bar, but the wind shifting to the S.E. and the ebb tide running strong, we were nearly driven out of sight of land; we were therefore obliged again to anchor, and wait the change of tide. Trusting to a sea breeze that had just set in, it being slack water, we again weighed: the serenity of the weather did not long continue, ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... police station without one or more detectives. They are expected to hold local crime in check. But the machine is adaptable to contingencies. The "morning report of crime" sent to headquarters shows daily the ebb and flow of crime. A sudden wave of burglaries, for instance, might be met by reinforcements from another district or from the ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... suited his action to the word, and busied himself with preparations for the journey, taking care, however, as he strode from ante-room to bed-chamber to keep his prisoner constantly in sight. The latter's hope of escape had reached a low ebb when Malespini knocked timidly. He had brought certain papers which the Signor had left in the library. Captain Radicofani received the secretary distrustfully and bestowed the papers among his own effects. "I will look them over," he commented, "and if ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... escaped from his persecutors. Pretended plots were rumoured in all directions, and numbers of innocent persons were executed. William Burke was hanged in Galway, and forty-five persons were executed. The Geraldine cause was reduced to the lowest ebb by the treachery of Jose. The Earl of Desmond and his sons were fugitives in their own country. The latter was offered pardon if he would surrender Dr. Saunders, the Papal Legate, but this he resolutely refused. Saunders continued his spiritual ministrations until he was entirely ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... "moments" for which she had come to Europe when she stood for the first time on the balcony overhanging the Corso, which Mrs. Ashe had hired in company with some acquaintances made at the hotel, and looked down at the ebb and surge of the just-begun Carnival. The narrow street seemed humming with people of all sorts and conditions. Some were masked; some were not. There were ladies and gentlemen in fashionable clothes, ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... my arrival in America that education was at a very low ebb amongst the members of my race perhaps not more than 15% of adult folks one would encounter in the streets ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... through his palms Bob Acres' valour oozed, So Juan's virtue ebb'd, I know not how; And first he wonder'd why he had refused; And then, if matters could be made up now; And next his savage virtue he accused, Just as a friar may accuse his vow, Or as a dame repents her of her oath, Which ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... indeed at a low ebb, and reproaches made her weep. Tarrant half carried her up to his room, made a light, and fell to his knees ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... travelling money was at a low ebb, and it was nearly exhausted by the time, at an exorbitant price, he had managed to get a little hay and water for the horses, and a couple of loaves and a haunch of bacon among the five hungry men. They were quite content to believe that Master Giles had ridden on ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... dresses gravitated about him and his entourage, women representing all the strata heaved upwards by the Revolution, with here {241} and there a surviving aristocrat, like the widow of Beauharnais, needy, and turning to the new sun to relieve her distress. Among them morality was at the lowest ebb. For the old sacrament of marriage had been virtually demolished by law; civil marriage and divorce had been introduced, and in the governing classes, so much affected in family life and fortune by the reign of terror, the step between civil marriage and what was no marriage ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... him writing on all manner of subjects. He asks his scientific friends to explain to him the mystery of a spring whose waters ebb and flow, of a lake which contained floating islands, and in one letter he tells a fascinating ghost story of quite the conventional type, about a haunted house, which drove any unwary tenant crazy, and the ghost of ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... low an ebb has our Army arrived under recent mal-administration! In time we may have even "Our Only General" himself advertising for a place, or answering an advertisement like the above. Not much "company drill"; so, if ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... Cumberland from the S. of Scotland (Kirkcudbright and Dumfries); stretches inland from Balcarry Point 36 m., and from 2 to 20 m. broad; receives the Annan, Dee, Nith, Eden, and Derwent, and has valuable salmon-fishings; the spring tides ebb and flow with remarkable rapidity, the "bore" often reaching a speed of from 8 to 10 m. an hour; is spanned near Annan by a railway viaduct ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... The low ebb of their finances appears to stagger the most desperate democrats in the States, and may possibly delay the commencement of direct hostilities; but should France and England continue the contest much longer, ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... section job he had become a brakeman. He took a turn at lumbering, bought a tract of chestnuts and made a good penny in railroad ties. He saved every dollar above his expenses. He bought a small interest in a contracting firm, and presently he became its head. There was ebb and tide to his fortunes but he hung on. A lighting contract made him a rich man. Then he drifted into politics; and now, at the age of fifty, he was a power in the state. The one phase of sentiment in the man was the longing ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... BARS. Under certain conditions the sea cannot carry out its intention to bridge a bay. Rivers discharging in bays demand open way to the ocean. Strong tidal currents also are able to keep open channels scoured by their ebb and flow. In such cases the most that land waste can do is to build spits and shoals, narrowing and shoaling the channel as much as possible. Incomplete bay bars sometimes have their points recurved by currents setting at right angles to the stream of shore drift and are then ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... warm autumn retard the return movement. But as you study birds you will soon see that each one has his own place in the procession, and usually keeps it. Year by year this vast procession goes on in the air, back and forth, night and day, like the ceaseless ebb and flow of the tides at sea. Bird-waves flow on forever, in their appointed times, and none of Nature's aspects are more regular or more unfailing. It almost seems, boys, as if birds made the seasons—as if winter in ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... little change in the exterior of our block. It was situated at a point in the city from which the ebb tide of Fashion was slowly receding, and which the flood tide of Trade had not yet touched. There was not a new house on the block, or an old one materially altered. A little paint, and a diligent application ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... at all times frequented them, in search of the abundant food which lay buried along the edges of the muddy gutters. There were thousands of sandpipers in enormous flocks, mixed with king plovers, dunlins, and turnstones, which followed the ebb tides, and returned again in whirling clouds before the oncoming floods. Black-and-white oyster-catchers were always to be found chattering over the great mussel patches at low water. With their reddish bills, what a trophy a bunch of them made as we bore them proudly home over our ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... among the British seamen. The troops were aroused, and, with the sailors, manned the wharves and shipping at Philadelphia, discharging their cannon and small-arms at everything they could see floating in the river during the ebb tide. ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... behaved. 'Consider what a step you have taken,' said I to them; 'they know nothing at my house, and you have told them all. My wife, who carries on the concern in her name, will perhaps turn me out, and then I must be reduced to the lowest ebb of misery.'—'Oh! you can come and rob with us,' answered the two rascals. I endeavoured to convince them, how much better it was to owe an existence to honest toil, than to be in incessant fears from the police, which, sooner or later, catches all malefactors in its ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Howe referred to the fact that women had been educated not to depend upon themselves, and drew a graphic picture of their condition should the tide of prosperity ebb from under them. Remember, too, I pray you, that power to do ill can not be denied without including the power to do good. The question as to whether men, in case that women should vote, would be less polite to women, was touched upon. The ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... who rode in advance of me, called out "The Sea!" which so took them all by surprise, and they were so astonished, that he had to repeat the call before they fully understood what was meant. Then they immediately gave three long and hearty cheers. The beach is covered with a soft blue mud. It being ebb tide, I could see some distance; found it would be impossible for me to take the horses along it; I therefore kept them where I had halted them, and allowed half the party to come on to the beach and gratify themselves by a sight of the sea, while the other half remained to watch the ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... quite easy to put into formulas; but characteristic of the vague discomfort of the holders of sinecures in those halcyon days arising from the perception that the ground was hollow under their feet. To understand him we must remember that the period of his activity marks precisely the lowest ebb of political principle. Old issues had been settled, and the new ones were only just coming to the surface. He saw the end of the Jacobites and the rise of the demagogues. His early letters describe the advance of the Pretender to Derby; they tell us how ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... say, they proceed from the sun, which moves and whirls about the winds; and these falling with a violence upon the Atlantic, it is pressed and swells by them, by which means the sea flows; and their impression ceasing, the sea retracts, hence they ebb. Pytheas the Massilian, that the fulness of the moon gives the flow, the wane the ebb. Plato attributes it all to a certain balance of the sea, which by means of a mouth or orifice causes the tide; and by this means the seas do rise and flow alternately. Timaeus ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... tender my warmest thanks. To the people of New Zealand, and especially to those many friends—too numerous to mention here—who helped us when our fortunes were at a low ebb, I wish to say that their kindness is an ever-green memory to me. If ever a man had cause to be grateful for assistance in dark days, I ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... longing for national existence again, that will not down, spells out the coming victory of God's plan after centuries of failure. And even though the present tide may run out toward ebb, it will be to gather force for a new and fuller flood. When God's plan works out the world will have a wholly new idea of national life, and of a world-power without army or navy or any show of force, touching all men, and touching them ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... transformed themselves into light flakes of froth, into innumerable wandering flocks in the blue plains of the firmament. Another time the arch of heaven seemed changed into a shore on which one could discover horizontal rows, parallel lines such as are made by the regular ebb and flow of the sea; a gust of wind tore this veil again, and everywhere appeared in the sky great banks of dazzlingly white down, so soft to the eye that one seemed to feel their softness and elasticity. The scene on the earth was not less delightful: the silvery and velvety light of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... for the Public Thing than for any private thing. The interest of the State is with him a sincere thirst of the soul, as it was in the little pagan cities. Now this public passion, this clean appetite for order and equity, had fallen to a lower ebb, had more nearly disappeared altogether, during Shaw's earlier epoch than at any other time. Individualism of the worst type was on the top of the wave; I mean artistic individualism, which is so much crueller, so much blinder and so much more irrational even than commercial ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton |
