"Interminable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alive and warm, lay packed in the blankets, sound asleep and happy. For an interminable length of time the Crows, en dishabille, stood and gazed open-mouthed and awed at the little stranger. Ten minutes later, after the ejaculations and surmises, after the tears and expletives, after the whole ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... covered, far as the eye could reach, with field-ice. Noah stood on, without apprehension; for the water had been smooth ever since we entered the first opening, the wind not having rake enough to knock up a swell. When about a mile from the margin of the frozen and seemingly interminable plain, the ship was brought to the wind, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... were filled with the enormous equipment of an army advancing. Every village swarmed with gray soldiers. We passed interminable processions of motor-lorries, mule-carts, trucks, and wagons piled high with hay,[A] lumber, wine-casks, flour, shells, barbed wire; boxes of ammunition; pontoon-trains, balloon outfits, searchlights ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... stay at Seoul, the Japanese Minister came by his death through a cold which he contracted by having to stand an inordinate time in the cold room, in his evening dress, and then walk minus his overcoat or wrappers, through the interminable paved passage leading ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... was late. A dispatch from the frontier had announced his coming, but to the anxiety of Delgado delays seemed numberless and interminable. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... 1456. The snow fell over Paris with rigorous, relentless persistence; sometimes the wind made a sally and scattered it in flying vortices; sometimes there was a lull, and flake after flake descended out of the black night air, silent, circuitous, interminable. To poor people, looking up under moist eyebrows, it seemed a wonder where it all came from. Master Francis Villon had propounded an alternative that afternoon, at a tavern window: was it only Pagan Jupiter plucking geese upon Olympus, or were the holy angels moulting? ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... did not have Tom there much longer, for he departed, looking even worse-tempered than when he came. Wimp went soon after, and Crowl and Denzil were left to their interminable argumentation concerning ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... moments afterwards the footlights flared up, and the curtain rose on the third act. Dorian Gray went back to his seat. He looked pale, and proud, and indifferent. The play dragged on, and seemed interminable. Half of the audience went out, tramping in heavy boots, and laughing. The whole thing was a fiasco. The last act was played to almost empty benches. The curtain went down on a ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... numerous tracts around posts within the Indian country, such as Fort Wayne, Detroit, and Michilimackinac—strategic points on the western waterways. "Elder Brother," said a Chippewa chief in the course of one of the interminable harangues delivered during the negotiation, "you asked who were the true owners of the land now ceded to the United States. In answer, I tell you, if any nations should call themselves the owners of it, they would be guilty of falsehood; our claim to it is equal; our Elder ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the disorder of the desk produced a painful effect on my systematic temperament. The drawers were filled with letters evidently unsorted, for now and then I came upon a mass of business receipts and acknowledgements crammed in among wedding invitations or letters from some elderly lady, who wrote interminable pale epistles in the finest and most feminine of Italian hands. That a man of Mr. Vanderbridge's wealth and position should have been so careless about his correspondence amazed me until I recalled the dark hints Hopkins had dropped ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... years been making themselves familiar with all the beautiful mysteries of instinctive life. Take two boys, and set them respectively to pursue the two plans of study. How puzzled and perplexed will be the one who pores over the "interminable terms" of a system in books, having meanwhile no access to, or communion with nature! The poor wretch is to be pitied—nor is he anything else than a slave. But the young naturalist who takes his first lessons ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... January, my friend Christian and I left Davos long before the sun was up, and ascended for four hours through the interminable snow-drifts of the Fluela in a cold grey shadow. The sun's light seemed to elude us. It ran along the ravine through which we toiled; dipped down to touch the topmost pines above our heads; rested in golden calm upon the Schiahorn ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling variations of shape in the banks of this interminable river as well as I know the shape of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Christianity is false; nay, he declares that he is not convinced of that even now; he is a genuine sceptic, and is the subject, he says, of invincible doubts. Those doubts have extended at length to the whole field of theology, and are due principally, as he himself has owned, to the spectacle of the interminable controversies which (turn where he would) occupied the mind of Germany. Even when he returned home he does not appear to have finally abandoned the notion of the possibility of constructing some religious system in the place of Christianity;— this, as he affirms, is a ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... split and gape open. A shaft of light, extending from horizon to horizon, paralyzed their vision. It was accompanied by a crash of thunder that set their ear-drums well-nigh bursting. Both lightning and the thunder lasted for what seemed interminable minutes and left their senses dazed, and the earth rocking beneath their feet. Again came the blinding light, and again the thunder crashed. Then, in a moment, panic had set in, and the tattered blanket had fallen behind the last man as a rush was made for the doubtful shelter ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... oily swell; I was more troubled by the dazzle of the sun on the water, not daring to shut my eyes for long lest I should miss a possible ship, and also I was divided between the gnawing of my thoughts and the boredom of those interminable hours from sunrise to sunset. I don't suppose it is given to many men to have nothing better to do than watch the sun travel across the heavens from the moment it emerges above one horizon to the moment it dips below the ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... seemed to me interminable—I was hastening away, anxious only to find Eugen, when Karl Linders stopped me in a retired corner, and holding me ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... the room and went down to the dining-room. Four of the "young chaps" were playing their interminable game of cards at the table. A three months' old niece of Mrs. King, whose mother was sitting with her sister in the bedroom talking, lay in a dressbasket on the table ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... high, clear voice he read that beautiful burial-service for the dead ... an upward tilt of the board in the hands of two brown-armed seamen, the body flashed over the side, to swing feet-down, laden with shot, for interminable days and nights, in the ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the platform for an interminable time trying to talk, but neither Mrs. Faulkner nor Nina seemed to take any interest in Fred and me, and I must say that Jack looked terribly uncomfortable at all the things which were said to him. Just before the train was ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... escaped with a bruise or two. It was a bad place! At the end of it a host of Kalingas acclaimed us, as picturesque as the warriors we had met at the stream, and took over the pack. Leaving the river, we began what appeared to be an interminable climb to Lubuagan. Up ran the trail, disappearing far ahead above us, behind the shoulder of the ridge; and we would all be hoping (those of us to whom the country was new) that Lubuagan would be just around the turn, only to find we had the same ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... introduced Rose to her new home. We climbed a dark, interminable staircase. I held a flickering candle in my hand; and, all out of breath, I explained to her the advantages of this boarding-house, a quiet place where her privacy would not be invaded and where she could make useful ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... themselves seemingly endless, ran into hours while she wandered (so heavy with fatigue that she found herself wondering how it was that she didn't collapse from sheer exhaustion on any one of the interminable array of benches that she passed) dragging her leaden feet and aching limbs and struggling to hold up ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... imposing of English ancestral abodes. The house was of indescribable magnitude and splendour. It had a remarkable "turret," whence, across many miles of plain, Lincoln Cathedral could be discovered by the naked eye; it had an interminable drive from the lodge to the stately portico; it had gardens of fabulous fertility; it had stables which would have served a cavalry regiment In what region were the kine of Sir Grant Musselwhite unknown to fame? Who had not heard of his dairy-produce? Three stories was Mr. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... second, at the stupendous sums of money which are paid for services which in his opinion are entirely superfluous, and, finally, at the terrible loss of time incurred in the conclusion of any transaction by the waiting for the drafting and redrafting and amending and engrossing and recording of interminable documents which are a bewilderment and an annoyance ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... emerald gates, O Morn, and let thy dawnings come! Mine eyes roll in vain to find thee, and my soul is weary of this interminable gloom. The past comes back robed in a pall which makes all things dark. The present blotted out, and the future but a rayless, hopeless, loveless night of years, my heart is but the tomb of blighted hopes, and all the misery of feelings unemployed has settled on me. I am misfortune's child and sorrow ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... commending himself to me, in spite of a choleric temper apt to burst forth over trifles. He and De Noyan would have quarrelled many times a day, only neither comprehended the language of the other. The greatest cause I found for criticism was his interminable prayers, and the bull voice in which he offered them. I have never made mock of religion, coming of a line of godly ancestors, yet I felt there could be no necessity for making such noise over it morning, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... sit all day long, day after day, and for the most part of the time alone, though she received tiresome and inane visits which led her to think her loneliness preferable to empty tittle-tattle. If she permitted herself the slightest gleam of intelligence, it gave rise to interminable comment and embittered her condition. She occupied herself a great deal with her children, not so much from taste as for the sake of an interest in her almost solitary life, and exercised her mind on ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... to waiting," he replied, with a retrospective mind for the interminable waits of ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Presently he, too, was shaking hands with the visitors, who were evidently old friends of the house. Madame Reynier, the aunt of mademoiselle, was summoned, and Van Camp was marooned on a sofa with Lloyd-Jones, who was just in from the West. Aleck found himself listening to an interminable talk about copper veins and silver veins, a new kind of assaying instrument, and the good luck attendant upon the opening of Lloyd-Jones' new ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... at it grimly, trying to keep in mind Mr. Kincaid's advice. The task was as disagreeable, and apparently as interminable as ever, but Bobby had gained this: he had not now, even in the subconscious background of his mind, any desire to quit; and there no longer pressed upon the weight and cold of the decoy he was at the moment handling, the useless ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... number and their diversity? What hope was there of condensing into a pamphlet of a readable length, matter which ought freely to expand itself into half a dozen volumes? What means was there, except the expenditure of interminable pages, to set right even one of that series of "single passing hints," to use my Assailant's own language, which, "as with his finger tip he had ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the end of the interminable first act. Talk. Talk. Talk. He'd go to sleep, but would be sure to get a crick in his neck. Then he remembered a woman who had come down the aisle just as the lights were lowering and passed his seat. He had not seen her face, but her graceful figure had attracted his ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... is this Thrilling the wilderness to life As with the bodily shape of Fear? What but a desperate sense, A strong foreboding of those dim, Interminable continents, forlorn And many-silenced in a dusk Inviolable utterly, and dead As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styes In ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... up, as might have been expected, by a young champion, who thought, or said without thinking, that friendship was—I really cannot undertake to say what, but all the things that young ladies usually put into their themes at school: something interminable, illimitable, and immutable. From this the discussion grew; and how it was, and what it was, went on to be discussed. I cannot pursue the thread of the discourse; but the amount of it was this:—One thought friendship was the summer portion only of the blessed; a flower for ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... Their sight never wearies. To look a prairie up or down, to ascend one of its undulations, to reach a small plateau (or, as the voyageurs call it, a prairie planche), moving from wave to wave over alternate swells and depressions and finally to reach the vast, interminable low prairie that extends itself in front—(be it for hours, days or weeks)—one never tires; pleasurable and exhilarating sensations are all the time felt; ennui is never experienced. Doubtless there are moments when excessive ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... apparently an amusement of many of these writers to collect, as did the jaunty author of "Peter Simple" in his Diary, interminable pages from our own press to illustrate the general contempt for those laws which really interfered with pleasures or economic interests. Harriet Martineau drove through Boston on the day when Garrison was being dragged through the streets. The flame of her indignation burned high; ...
— The Conflict between Private Monopoly and Good Citizenship • John Graham Brooks
... movements when in the air are very majestic and beautiful to the eye, being in every respect identical with those of our common hen or red-tailed hawk. They sail along in the same calm, effortless, interminable manner, and sweep around in the same ample spiral. The shape of their wings and tail, indeed their entire effect against the sky, except in size and color, is very nearly the same as that of the hawk mentioned. A dozen at a time may often be seen ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... with time. Meanwhile, you cannot escape the internal intimations of your unsoundness. A man's pride is the front and headpiece of his character, his soul's support or snare. Look to it in youth. I have to thank the interminable hours on my wretched sick-bed for a singularly beneficial investigation of the ledger of my deeds and omissions and moral stock. Perhaps it has already struck you that one who takes the trouble to sit and write his history for as large a world as he can ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were furniture-vans; at the first glance and in the smoky distance I thought they were a row of cottages. A low stone wall cut off the wheels, and the vans were somewhat of the same colour as the yellowish clay or stone of the buildings around them. I had come across that interminable Eastern plain which is like the open sea, and all the more so because the one small hill and tower of Lincoln stands up in it like a light-house. I had climbed the sharp, crooked streets up to this ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... abate Your fierce interminable hate? Still am I doomed to rue the fate That such unfriendly neighbors made? The while ye might, in peaceful cheer, Mirror upon your waters clear, Semlin! thy Gothic steeples dear, And thy ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... At sunset the interminable monotony of the wilderness was broken by a house of curious architecture, the like of which the tired young traveller had never seen before, and whose singular candor of design made her doubt the evidence of her own thoroughly exhausted faculties. The house ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... greatly stimulated, for McGuire chained him to a bitter existence. The air—the man's only chance for life—he commanded to be kept out by closed windows and drawn curtains. The room was always blue and foul with cigarette smoke; whosoever entered it must sit, suffocating, and listen to the imp's interminable gasconade ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... I had only met troops, either marching or camping on the road, all went well, but I soon found myself mixed with an interminable line of cars and the like, forming the military and the civil train of the moving army. Then it was that it needed as much patience to keep from jumping out of one's carriage and from chastising the carrettieri, as they would ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in the morning of November 20, 1917, and the dew lay thick on the soil. Men were quietly roused, rifles slung, and with fast tattooing pulse paused for orders. First wave "over" stamped feet impatiently in those interminable hours of waiting blended in what was only a few short minutes; an almost frenzy of anxiety to get through the waiting possessed them. Then the tanks, faintly outlined forms in the grey light, ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... there drowned in it, not stirring, his eyes fixed upon the door. There was a good deal of noise, laughter, swearing, voices raised and dropped, forming a kind of skyline, and above this a voice telling an interminable tale. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... Graves's memories are keen but monotonous,—a strong smell of stable, arising from the laprobe which had evidently been recently used as a horse blanket; the sound of hoofs, in an interminable "jog, jog—splash, splash," never hurrying; a series of exasperated howls from the captain, who was doing his best to make them hurry; the thunderous roar of rain on the buggy top and the shrieking gale which rocked the vehicle on its springs and sent showers of fine spray driving in at ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... world over. Hand labor in the Orient would have to give way to machine production, as it has done in Western lands. For a strictly static adjustment indeed even the density of population in the different sections would have to be brought to a virtual equality. While this nearly interminable process was going on, it would be needful that such dynamic changes as inventions and discoveries bring in their train should be absolutely precluded. Stop making new kinds of machinery and wait for centuries to allow ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... ultimately marries the prettiest girl in the book. His character is, on the whole, well drawn, and the authors have almost succeeded in making him good without making him priggish. The method, however, by which the story is told is extremely tiresome. It consists of an interminable series of long letters by different people and of extracts from various diaries. The book consequently is piecemeal and unsatisfactory. It fails in producing any unity of effect. It contains the rough material for a story, but is not a completed work of art. It is, in fact, more of a notebook ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... In the Royal Instructions which he brought with him were embodied all the above-mentioned civil, ecclesiastical and military reforms. At the same time, King Philip abolished the Supreme Court. He wished to put an end to the interminable lawsuits so prejudicial to the development of the Colony. Therefore the President and Magistrates were replaced by Justices of the Peace, and the former returned to Mexico in 1591. This measure served only ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... cousin—a dreadful English cousin, a member of my mother's family—who is in Paris for a week for her husband, and who wishes me to point out the 'principal beauties.' Imagine a woman who wears a green crape bonnet in December and has straps sticking out of the ankles of her interminable boots! My mother begged I would do something to oblige them. I have undertaken to play valet de place this afternoon. They were to have met me here at two o'clock, and I have been waiting for them twenty minutes. Why doesn't she arrive? She has at ...
— The American • Henry James
... because it is a peculiarly simple example of what I wish now to speak of as THE PRAGMATIC METHOD. The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many?—fated or free?—material or spiritual?—here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... stunted shrubs, which serve as land-marks for the caravans, and furnish the camels with a scanty forage. In other parts the disconsolate wanderer, wherever he turns, sees nothing around him but a vast interminable expanse of sand and sky; a gloomy and barren void, where the eye finds no particular object to rest upon, and the mind is filled with painful apprehensions of perishing with thirst. "Surrounded by this dreary solitude, the ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... relate the bustle, the reparation of half-forgotten, and consequently neglected business, the duns, good wishes, injunctions to execute commissions in some distant port, and all the confused, and seemingly interminable, duties that crowd themselves into the last ten minutes that precede the sailing of a merchant vessel, more especially if she is fortunate, or rather unfortunate enough to have passengers. A certain class of men quit a vessel, in such a situation, with the reluctance that they ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... (I, who never knew the meaning of mal-de-mer!) and I know my forehead must have been drawn, for Miss Jencks pressed sal volatile upon me solicitously. Roger, manlike, let me get off immediately and alone, as I begged, and once at the bottom of the interminable stairs, I flung myself into a wandering fiacre, and drove through the merry, lighted Paris boulevards, a helpless prey to passions black and bitter—to a wicked, seething jealousy such as I had never dreamed possible to ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... laughed at, these were resented by the Infantry in the line, who at this stage lacked either wish or intention to join hands with the German or lapse into a truce with him. On the other hand, a day's holiday from the interminable sounds of shelling would have been appreciated, and casualties on Christmas Day struck a note of tragedy. This want of sagacity on the part of our higher staff, as if our soldiers could not be ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... wept the bell rang. When she did not answer it, it rang again, and after an interminable pause the footsteps of Miss Amelia were heard descending the stairs. Then the door opened and shut, the footsteps began their slow ascent of the stairs, and after an eternity of silence, she knew that ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... day before, a day of half starvation, of tiptoed, breathless routine,—days in which she spoke not a word save a whisper or two at midnight at the food-bearing visit of the sad-visaged Matilda,—three dull, diabolic days dragged by their interminable length of hours. ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... Alsace, on the solitary route whose interminable ribbon stretches on and on under the forests of the Vosges, there is a stone-breaker whom I have seen at his work for thirty years. The first time I came upon him, I was a young student, setting out with swelling heart for the great city. ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... Kitty were soon wedged into one of the interminable lines of carriages that blocked all the approaches to St. James's Square. The ball had been long expected, and there was a crowd in the streets, kept back by the police. The brougham went at a foot's pace, and there ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... breath; she had walked so fast and had rested so little that her interminable flow of "ses I's" and "ses he's" ceased necessarily. She had reached, moreover, the point of most vital ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... veritable poem for serenity and simplicity of tone. He took to camp life as if it were his native element, and (like so many of our young soldiers) he was at first all eagerness to make arms his permanent profession. Drilling and disciplining; interminable marching and counter-marching, and picket-duty on the Upper Potomac as lieutenant in our Second Regiment, to which post he had soon been promoted; pride at the discipline attained by the Second, and horror at the bad discipline ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... sport away? Whence comes his mastery o'er the human breast, Whence o'er the elements his sway, But from the harmony that, gushing from his soul, Draws back into his heart the wondrous whole? With careless hand when round her spindle, Nature Winds the interminable thread of life; When 'mid the clash of Being every creature Mingles in harsh inextricable strife; Who deals their course unvaried till it falleth, In rhythmic flow to music's measur'd tone? Each solitary note whose genius calleth, To swell the mighty choir ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... was the battle with the ocean. Holland is in great part lower than the level of the sea; consequently, everywhere that the coast is not defended by sand-banks, it has to be protected by dikes. If these interminable bulkwarks of earth, granite, and wood were not there to attest the indomitable courage and perseverance of the Hollanders, it would not be believed that the hand of man could, even in many centuries have accomplished such a work. In Zealand ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... of short English words like the short Roman swords. The first line of one of his finest poems, for instance, runs, "I have lived long enough to have seen one thing, that love hath an end." In that sentence only one small "e" gets outside the monosyllable. Through all his interminable tragedies, he was ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... the bulky document was thrust into his hands. He unfolded it with trembling fingers and glanced downwards through an interminable list of newly-made Maharajas, Nawab Bahadurs, Raja Bahadurs, and Rajas—in the hope of finding his own name. Alas, it was conspicuous by its absence. Oh, the pangs of hope deferred and wounded pride! Death seemed to Samarendra preferable to a life of poverty and despair. He returned home crestfallen ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... source of light, I glanced down again to my surroundings. Everywhere I looked, I saw nothing but the same flat weariness of interminable plain. Nowhere could I descry any signs of life; not even the ruins of some ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... head of the observer be extended ever so little beyond the charmed circle of that garden, and nearly all around is ugliness supreme! For this is a garden on the roof of an old house; the grand river is the Thames, alive with the shipping of its world-wide commerce, and all around lies that interminable forest of rookery chimneys, where wild ungainly forms tell of the insane and vain efforts of man to cope with smoke; where wild beasts—in the form of cats—hold their nightly revels, imitating the yells of agonised infants, filling the dreams of sleepers with ideas of internal thunder ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... the road and seated himself on a stepping-block in front of the inn door. From the wharf emerged an interminable stream of loaded wagons. From the opposite direction arrived empty wagons at full speed, the drivers jolting up and down on the seats. The quay emitted a rumbling as of thunder; accompanied by an acrid dust. The ground ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... and be shut up behind a great leather strap, so that if anything happened, they would be the last to reach the door! I have a few notes of a stage-coach journey, made last summer. If you like, I will read it to you while you work on that interminable afghan. By the way, Aunt Sarah, I do not think you have labored quite so energetically since the late decision made by the Metropolitan Fair in regard to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... semicircle of moorland, with the brown river as radius, and the high hills forming the northern circumference. There was not a sign or sound of a human being, only the plashing water and the interminable crying of curlews. Yet, oddly enough, for the first time I felt the terror of the hunted on me. It was not the police that I thought of, but the other folk, who knew that I knew Scudder's secret and dared not let me live. ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... stumbled to-night. Strolling in the cool moonlight, I was attracted by a brilliant light beneath the trees, and cautiously approached it. A circle of thirty or forty soldiers sat around a roaring fire, while one old uncle, Cato by name, was narrating an interminable tale, to the insatiable delight of his audience. I came up into the dusky background, perceived only by a few, and he still continued. It was a narrative, dramatized to the last degree, of his adventures ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... elders, the Tyro sought some inoffensive means of breaking away; but when the other hooked an arm into his, alleging the roll of the vessel,—though not in the least needing the support,—he all but gave up hope. For an interminable quarter of an hour the marplot jurist teased his captive. Then, with the air of one making a ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... move out into the current behind her and drift along in the soft, autumn night. Her first thought was one of indignation, but when a little later they emerged into the broad river current and she felt the solitude of the interminable surface, ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... sweat started cold upon my brow. Then her gaze passed from me, and looked beyond into the street, as though she had not known me; whether in her turn she paled or reddened I cannot say, for the light was too uncertain. Next followed what seemed to me an interminable pause, although, indeed, it can have been no more than a matter of seconds—aye, and of but few. Then, her gown drawn well aside, she passed me in that same irrecognizing way, whilst I, abashed, shrank back into the shadows of the porch, burning ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Suffrage in the District. Well knowing how a single petition is suffocated, would it not be well for all the States to unite, and be presented at the same time? New York, being the banner State, must head the move and be spokesman. Out list of names is waiting the interminable Impeachment to be handed in (oh, for old Ben. Wade in the White House), but it seems to me one State should not go alone; if all the State organizations were notified to send in their lists immediately to whoever you think will be most likely to do justice to the cause, we could ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... heures de rcration, je les apercevais de loin travaillant derrire une fentre du premier tag qui donnait sur la cour des moyens.... Ils taient l, plus noirs, plus grands que jamais, penchs du matin jusqu'au soir sur une couture interminable; car les yeux noirs cousaient, ils ne se lassaient pas de coudre. C'tait pour coudre, rien que pour coudre, que la vieille fe aux lunettes les avait pris aux enfants trouvs,—les yeux noirs ne connaissaient ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... engagement, I descended into a subway and was shot out in less than ten minutes from the heart of the city to the old "Square" of Alton,—a journey that took us formerly from half to three quarters of an hour, and in cold or rainy weather, of which there is a good deal in Alton, seemed truly interminable. From the "Square," which no longer had the noble amplitude of my memory, the direct way to Fuller Place lay up the South Road,—a broad thoroughfare, through the center of which there used to trickle occasionally ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... his feet in the midst of a climbing rose which clutched at him with its thorny branches; had run across an acre of kitchen garden and leaped the low-growing hedge which divided it from the sunken flower garden he had made for Lydia. Here were more rosebushes and an interminable space broken by walks and a sundial, masked by shrubs, with which he collided violently. There was no mistaking the clamor from the front of the house; the rioters had reached their quarry first! Not stopping ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... she felt strength enough in her to look at him. He was still living. The hours succeeded each other—dull, mournful, interminable, hopeless, and she no longer counted the minutes, save by the progress of this mental anguish. The shakings of his chest threw him forward as if to shatter his body. Finally, he vomited something strange, ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... movements. He wanted them away speedily, so that he and Joe might extinguish the fire if that were still possible, and as every minute served to increase the difficulty and lessen the chances of doing so, the loitering of the savages seemed interminable. They stopped first to drink at the spring. Then they amused themselves by throwing sticks, and pebbles and shells at a turtle which was sunning himself on a log in the stream. Then they stopped to examine the track of a turkey or of some animal, in the sand, and it really seemed to Tom ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... so glittering and gorgeous and interminable, that poor old TIME dropped asleep more than once, in spite of the din of the orchestra. At last, although several other places remained to be visited, he broke down altogether. "To tell you the truth," he said, "I've had about enough of it. At my age, ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... inspection of the country to which they had so laboriously penetrated. The range, destined to be associated with so many subsequent important explorations, was a mass of naked rocks, and from the summit they could see nothing but the interminable scrub thickets, and in the distance the thin blue line of ocean. Fortunately they found a little grass and water, which saved the lives of their animals. They had discovered a coal seam at the mouth of the Murchison River, and now, on their return journey, they found another ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... upon the world in the fifteenth century without premonitory symptoms. Far from that, within the Middle Age itself, over and over again, the reason strove to break loose from its fetters. Abelard, in the twelfth century, tried to prove that the interminable dispute about entities and words was founded on a misapprehension. Roger Bacon, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, anticipated modern science, and proclaimed that man, by use of nature, can ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... office, Dodson prepared to write his criticism. Except for the distant clatter of telegraph instruments, or the peremptory cries of "copy" from an upper room, the office was still. Dodson wrote and smoked his interminable cigarettes; O' Connor rested his head in his hands on the desk, and sat in perfect silence. He did not know when Dodson finished, or when, arising, and absent-mindedly extinguishing the lights, he moved to the ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... hour wrestling with a stub of a pencil on the margin of a three-year-old newspaper, and the more interminable and hieroglyphic grew his figures the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... print events which were instrumental in guiding the destinies of the National League during the trying period of its early days. To write upon base ball in a historical manner, and yet not fall into the habit of quoting interminable statistics, is a feat that ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... presently the interminable walk came to a conclusion. Maggie reached the hermit's hut, listened with painful intentness for the baying of some angry dogs, pressed her nose against the one pane of glass in the one tiny window, saw nothing, heard nothing, finally lifted ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... almost as silently as his Air Scout Tom Swift drove the speedy car down the highway. It was about three miles from his home to that of Mary Nestor, and though the distance was quickly covered, to Tom, at least, the space seemed interminable. But at length he drove up to the door. There were lights in most of the rooms, which was unusual ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... of the traveller when he approaches them nearly. Several chains of mountains, towering one above the other, and sundry "Jokuls," or glaciers, which lay still sparkling in their wintry garb, surround this interminable plain, which is only open at one end, towards the sea. Some of the plains and hills shone with tender green, and I fancied I beheld beautiful meadows. On a nearer inspection, however, they proved to be swampy places, and hundreds upon hundreds of ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... poor Theobald! All Florence knows him, his flame-coloured locks, his black velvet coat, his interminable harangues on the beautiful, and his wondrous Madonna that mortal eye has never seen, and that mortal patience has quite given ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... going to end. Even when she had bidden her aunt "Good-night," and, having previously told her maid not to sit up for her, found herself alone in her own room at last—even then it seemed that this interminable day was not quite over. She was standing by the dim fire, trying to gather up sufficient energy to undress, when a quiet step came cautiously along the passage, followed by a low tap at her door. She opened it noiselessly, and found Mr. Alwynn ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... mountain's edge; Jose in the door of his hut; Maria's lace bobbins Tapping, tapping. Evening... The parrot's shrill cry; Pale silver green stars. Night... The ghosts of dead Joses And dead Marias Sitting in the moonlight. Peace— Depressing, Interminable Peace. ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... For what seemed an interminable time the bidarka of the headman lay silent, trembling and heaving on the swell of the choppy sea, while the huntsman sat steadily and studied the giant quarry in front of him. Once or twice he gently turned the ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... we enjoyed at Fontevrault, compared with the interminable bondage of Saint Germain or Versailles, made the abbey ever seem more agreeable to me; and Madame de Thianges asked me in sober earnest "if I ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... in the office of the great hospital, the President and his wife had sat like statues through all those interminable minutes which were to tell the story of whether the little life was to be spared or sacrificed. Vaguely they heard the bustle of busy nurses, vaguely they saw the doctors hurrying in and out about their duties; but not once did either man or woman move from the great ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... well-deserved remove, with a compliment from the Doctor into the bargain, which made his pale face glow with pleasure. Dick, with a sturdy effort to look cheerful, waved his congratulations across the Hall, and then settled down to hear the almost interminable string of names before his or Georgie's ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... and east to Ivangorod and Brest-Litovsk. These permanent fortifications were supported by strong natural barriers or obstacles in the form of rivers. The Niemen, Bobr, Nareff, Vistula and Bug, with their interminable windings, made more difficult to cross in some places by extensive swamp lands, had, together with the fortified places, offered ideal means for strong defense. Again and again, throughout the first thirteen ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... sun Cuthbert saw that they were making their course nearly due east, and therefore that it could not be their intention to take him to Jerusalem, which was to the north of the line they were following. A long day's journey, which to Cuthbert seemed interminable, found them on the low spit of sand which runs along by the side of the Dead Sea. Behind, lofty rocks rose almost precipitously, but through a cleft in these the Arabs had made their way. Cuthbert saw at once that they belonged to some desert tribe over whom the authority ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... fascinated the imagination of the great utopian, Robert Owen, at the age of seven, has nothing in all its sonorous music that lingers in the mind like its magnificent opening lines, and one searches in vain through the interminable length of Wordsworth's "Excursion" for a ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... to adjourn that interminable and inconclusive debate while we take by consent one step in the direction of reform by eliminating the gerrymander, which has been denounced by all parties as an influence in the selection of electors of President and members of Congress? All the States have, acting freely and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison |
