"Solitary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it would be no travellers' room if it were not. It is the right-hand parlour, into which an aspiring kitchen fireplace appears to have walked, accompanied by a rebellious poker, tongs, and shovel. It is divided into boxes, for the solitary confinement of travellers, and is furnished with a clock, a looking-glass, and a live waiter, which latter article is kept in a small kennel for washing glasses, in a corner of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... productiveness of the Russian poets is however a very striking and discouraging feature. While in the animated forest of German poetry, even during the most trying struggles of the times, a full chorus of songs and ballads resounds from every branch, we hear from Russian groves only solitary voices, and these voices seem to be exhausted almost as soon as they are heard. A volume of twenty sheets is in general considered in Russia as quite a respectable collection. Pushkin is almost the only one of their poets, whose very thoughts ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... tea-table, in the flickering dimness, they were speaking suddenly with a murmuring, yet so sharp a confidence; a confidence that in broad daylight, or in complete solitude, might have seemed impossible. All sorts of things must steal out in that persuasive, that peopled yet solitary, twilight. ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... over the faith of others, honestly, chastely discharging his duties, full of haughty sadness at the thought that he had been unable to renounce his mind as he had renounced his flesh and his dream of being a saviour of the nations, he withal remained erect, full of fierce yet solitary grandeur. And this despairing, denying priest, who had dived to the bottom of nothingness, retained such a lofty and grave demeanour, perfumed by such pure kindness, that in his parish of Neuilly he had acquired the reputation of being a young saint, one beloved ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... death under the statute of supremacy. But two years later, when the official list was presented to the parliament of those who had suffered for their share in "the Pilgrimage of Grace," among the rest we find the name of Robert Hobbes, late Abbot of Woburn. To this solitary fact we can add nothing. The rebellion was put down, and in the punishment of the offenders there was unusual leniency; not more than thirty persons were executed, although forty thousand had been in arms. Those only were selected ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... found myself alone in the sitting-room, and had time to think quietly, I realized that a great change had taken place in the house. Three children had come home, and my solitary days were over. They might tease me, perhaps, but at least they would be company. Another thing too I realized, and that was that for the first time I was free. I looked around the room. It was light and sunny, and ...
— Harper's Young People, November 18, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hair would raise my hat up, and it would seem to me as though the next minute a volley would be fired at me, and I shrunk down between the piles of baggage on my saddle to be protected from bullets. Suddenly the moon came out from behind a cloud and around a turn in the road a solitary horseman might have been seen coming towards me. I never have seen a horse that looked as high as that horse did. He seemed at least eighteen feet high, and the man on him was certainly twelve feet high. My heart pounded against a tin canteen that I had strung around my shoulder, so I could hear ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... castle of La Riviere, between Pontarlier and Joux, and shut himself up there for more than six weeks, without, however, giving up the attempt to collect soldiers. "Howbeit," says Commynes, "he made but little of it; he kept himself quite solitary, and he seemed to do it from sheer obstinacy more than anything else. His natural heat was so great that he used to drink no wine, generally took barley-water in the morning and ate preserved rose-leaves to keep himself cool; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... silently laying the foundations of English enterprise and English commerce. To the great body of the Benedictines and the Cluniacs were added in the middle of the twelfth century the Cistercians, who founded their houses among the desolate moorlands of Yorkshire in solitary places which had known no inhabitants since the Conqueror's ravages, or among the swamps of Lincolnshire. A hundred and fifteen monasteries were built during the nineteen years of Stephen's reign, more than had been founded in the whole previous century; a hundred and ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... malice on account of the unfavourable opinion which had always been entertained of him by his old master, consented to supply the testimony which had hitherto been wanting. Cornish was arrested while transacting business on the Exchange, was hurried to gaol, was kept there some days in solitary confinement, and was brought altogether unprepared to the bar of the Old Bailey. The case against him rested wholly on the evidence of Rumsey and Goodenough. Both were, by their own confession accomplices in the plot with which they charged the prisoner. Both were impelled by the strongest ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... thing could have been shunned. It was my hard fate to come athwart an obstacle which could not be circumvented, but must be broken. No friend could help me in the business, not Ringan, nor the Governor, nor Colonel Beverley. It was my own affair, which I must go through with alone. I felt as solitary as a pelican. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... on that which I am sure interests these gentlemen more than their own praises; of that which is good in holidays and working-days, the same in one century and in another century. That which lures a solitary American in the woods with the wish to see England, is the moral peculiarity of the Saxon race,—its commanding sense of right and wrong,—the love and devotion to that,—this is the imperial trait, which arms them ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... he believed that his mind had opened in proportion to the distance covered. He knew that men and women of action pick up knowledge of the world without pausing on their busy way; but he did not know that it is to the silent, the sorrowful, and the solitary—to those who have time to listen—that God reveals the ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... measurements of the opening about the range, and to see where a boiler could best be placed. A glance within was sufficient. Martha was busy about the very spot; and Vane turned back, making up his mind to defer his visit till midnight, when the place would be solitary, and the fire out. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... occupation, the active annoyances are some sort of bitter distraction to the unfathomable grief—it is one little shade worse to lie solitary and motionless in the old scenes from which ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... that for a favorable report on a certain bill before the New York Senate, $5,000 apiece was paid to four members of the committee having it in charge. On the passage of the bill, a further $5,000 apiece with contingent expenses was added. In another instance, where but a solitary vote was needed to put a bill through, three Republicans put their figures up to $25,000 each; one of them was bought. About thirty Republicans and Democrats in the New York Legislature organized themselves into a clique ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... ingenuous, was not devoid of a certain instinctive perception of men and, things, which rendered it difficult for him to be an easy prey. His natural disposition, and his comparatively solitary education, had made him a keen observer, and he was one who meditated over his observations. But he was naturally generous and sensible of kindness; and this was a favorite companion—next to Bertram, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... privacy. We dined in our retired situation on some rugged lumps of broiled flesh, which the landlady called chops, and the servant steaks. We broke out of prison after dinner, and roamed the streets. We returned to solitary confinement in the evening, and were ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Mr. Bertram continued to live a solitary and mournful life at Ellangowan. The poor dominie never ceased to blame himself for the loss of the boy, as Harry was in his charge on the day on which he had disappeared; but he still lived with the laird as before, and was chiefly employed in teaching ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... dawned on the world in the year 1517. What did it do for the cause of freedom from that date down to 1776—when our Republic arose? Did it strike one blow for liberty during these two centuries and a half? Did it originate one republican principle, or found one solitary republic? Not one. In Germany, where it had full sway, it ruthlessly trampled in the dust all the noble franchises of the Catholic middle ages; it established political despotism everywhere; it united church and state; in a word, it brought about that ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... dark. Sailors capture the bird for its long wing-bones, which they manufacture into tobacco-pipe stems. The albatross lays one egg; it is white, with a few spots, and is about 4 in. long. In breeding-time the bird resorts to solitary island groups, like the Crozet Islands and the elevated Tristan da Cunha, where it has its nest—a natural hollow or a circle of earth roughly scraped together—on the open ground. The early explorers of the great Southern Sea cheered themselves with the companionship of the albatross ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... How solitary and wretched he would have felt, how ready to give way to despair, had he not known that, all alone as he was, God his Father ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... degree of surprise that after three weeks' continued hostility carried on by the citizens of New York against the people of Upper Canada his excellency seems to have considered himself not called upon to make this aggression the subject of remark for any other purpose than to complain of a solitary act of self-defense on the part of Her Majesty's Province of Upper Canada, to which such ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... although they have little dealing with the Bissayas. While I was in Tigbauan, however, a petty war occurred between them which is worth relating for what it shows of such wars among these nations, and their triumphs and trophies. A Bissayan chief, who lived in his solitary house among the mountains, distant from the villages, had a friendship—or, for all I know, a relationship—with a leading Negrillo, who was also headman among his people. Under the cover of this friendship, the Negrillo took his opportunity, as I shall relate, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... good man himself must to fetch the Midwife; for who knows whether or no she would come so quick if the maid went; nay it is a question also, being so late in the night, whether she would come along with the maid alone, because she dwells in a very solitary corner clearly at the t'other end of the City: (for after a ripe deliberation of the good woman, the lot fell so that she made choice of this grave and ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... traveled about perpetually, and he observed the movements of his companions all at the same time. Still the hoarse roar of the pirates in their carouse arose from the covered sheds in the calm night, and the two solitary lights from each mast-head of the felucca and schooner twinkled above the basin ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... parks which had been laid out by himself or his predecessors in the vicinity of their summer palaces. Urus-stalking had become merely a memory of the past: these animals had been so persistently hunted for centuries that the species had almost become extinct; solitary specimens only were occasionally met with in remote parts of the forest or in out-of-the-way marshes. The wild ass was still to be found in large numbers, as well as the goat, the ostrich, and small ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good. If that solitary suffrage can be obtained by foreign nations by flattery or menaces, by fraud or violence, by terror, intrigue, or venality, the Government may not be the choice of the American people, but of foreign ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... quickly along the deck caught sight of the solitary figure in the trim, dark-blue dress, and recognised its outline before a turn of the head revealed the glorious, flaming hair. Someone with a grim face, pale beneath his tan, with haggard lines about ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Bernard Shaw of Germany. He is considered the leading German editor and an expert in Germany on foreign politics. As editor and proprietor of Die Zukunft, his fiery, brooding spirit and keen insight and wit, coupled with powers of satire and caricature, made him a solitary and striking independent figure in the German press years before the other newspapers of Germany dared to criticise or attack the Government or the persons at ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... trying to persuade Mrs. Hading to come for a spin around the Wankelo kopje in his car, and he was not unsuccessful. Only, they went further than the kopje. About six miles out they got a glimpse of a solitary rider ahead, going like the wind. A cloud of soft, ashen dust rising from under the horse's heels floated back and settled like the gentle dew from heaven upon the car and its occupants. Druro was on the point of slackening speed, but Mrs. Hading's pencilled brows ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... the Midianites: have not I sent thee?" My grandfather, Joash, was one of the poorest men of his tribe, and as for my father, nobody had ever thought anything of him, nor had he thought anything of himself. He, a solitary labourer, unknown, with no friends, no arms; he to do what the princes could not do! he to lead these frightened slaves against soldiers who were as the sand for numbers! It was not to be believed, and yet—there sat the angel. It was broad noon; in the shade ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... you, aunt, by-and-by," answered Clara, not wishing on her first arrival at home to enter into any discussion. "I hope that you have not felt yourself very solitary ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... materials which earned him the title, 'Father of Archaeology.' He seems to have been about thirty years old when he first began to speak in public places, to such audience as he could gather, expanding with ready though untried eloquence the soaring thoughts bred in years of solitary study. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... everyone with the solitary exception of Slyme, who said that Philpot would find out his mistake after he was dead, when he would have to stand before the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... followed a body of rough-appearing men, each with a short Roman sword and a revolver; and in the open centre, alone and handcuffed, one trembling negro. The fife had stopped, and they marched now in a hushed silence to the tap of a solitary drum; and behind came ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... appealed to him to procrastinate. The curtains before the French windows were closely drawn. The hearth had been swept in their absence; the fire glowed more companionably than ever. About the table, where the coffee waited, a solitary lamp shed a golden blur. It was heavily shaded with yellow silk, so that most of its light escaped their ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... of Gotama, but his individual name was Siddhattha. When he was nineteen years old he was married to his cousin Yasodhar[a], daughter of a Koliyan chief, and gave himself up to a life of luxury. This is the solitary record of his youth; we hear nothing more till, in his twenty-ninth year, it is related that, driving to his pleasure-grounds one day, he was struck by the sight of a man utterly broken down by age, on another occasion by the sight of a man ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... leave and went straight to Zoe's room. She was not there. He was glad of that, for it gave him hopes she was going to respect his advice and give up her solitary life. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... of life was there, Except my steps in solitary clamber, From flight to flight, from humid stair to stair, From ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... type is lost, fantastic and uncouth, which puzzle the naturalist to assign them even to their class; boat-like animals, furnished with oars and a rudder; fish, plated over, like the tortoise, above and below, with a strong armour of bone, and furnished with but one solitary rudder-like fin; other fish with the membranes of their fins thickly covered with scales; creatures bristling over with thorns; others glistening in an enamelled coat, as if beautifully japanned; the tail in every instance ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... us and clothe us. We are accustomed to speak of dogs generally as the servants and the friends of man; it is only of the sheep-dog that this can be said with absolute truth. Not only is he the faithful servant of the solitary man who shepherds his flock, but the dog's companionship is as much to him as that of a fellow-being ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... in the grill of his club, brooding over a solitary glass, unmindful of the friendly chatter of the members about him, when a uniformed page brought him a yellow envelope. He tore open the telegram, sensing important news. It was only from Meadow Green that he received his club mail. And it was from Louisville that the message came. It was simple, ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... therefore, was that going out of Cain indeed. It was a departure full of tears. He was compelled to leave forever his home and his parents, who now gave to him, a solitary man and a "vagabond," their daughter as his wife, to live with him as his companion; but they knew not what would become either of their son or of their daughter. In consequence of losing three children at one time their grief is ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... her solitary luncheon, she found the whole thing a little absurd. There was still the drawing-room to be put in order, and no reason in the world why Justine should not do it. The girl was not overworked, and ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... faithful to its master because it is a more sociable animal. In its natural state every dog is faithful to the pack and to the leader; the cat is not a social animal, but is by nature solitary and independent. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... of adornment, Claudian's Rape of Proserpine (A.D. 400) is one of the most rich and elaborate poems ever written. It has in common with Milton the circumstance that its whole action is contained in a solitary event, viz., the carrying off of Proserpine from the vale of Henna by Pluto, All the personages, too, are superhuman; and the incident itself supernatural. Claudian's ambition was to overlay his story ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... her never to go alone, always to take a servant as an attendant, even if she had one of the children with her, and especially if she had not; but she disregarded his wishes in this instance, partly from a spirit of defiance, partly because she much preferred a solitary ride, and could not see that there was ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... All the windows were wide open, so that to go on the balcony was not to be solitary. As I went out with him I noticed that my grandmother looked after me with an amazed air. Well, I might be mad to believe good of Richard Dawson on his mother's report, but it was worth a trial. I went out on the balcony ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... Ray so intelligently deprecates, who have waked to a new standard of success by seeing one with talents which could gain their coveted distinctions passing them by to pursue, in uncompromising honesty of conviction, his solitary way? Shall we not consider the city-bred girls, confined in circles where the vulgar glitter of wealth was mitigated only by the feeblest dilettanteism,—spirited young women, falling into a morbid condition, whose pitiableness Dr. Ray ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... they revenge with vehemence the injuries which may tend to the disgrace of their blood; and being naturally of a vindictive and passionate disposition, they are ever ready to avenge not only recent but ancient affronts; they neither inhabit towns, villages, nor castles, but lead a solitary life in the woods, on the borders of which they do not erect sumptuous palaces, nor lofty stone buildings, but content themselves with small huts made of the boughs of trees twisted together, constructed with little labour and expense, and sufficient ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... one the rest of the conspirators tramped heavily up the ladder, leaving her alone with Sobrenski, who stood with his back to the doorway, following her with his eyes as she moved to and fro in the shadows cast by the solitary lamps. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... delightful worry—over the hole in her one good silk petticoat, the loss of a string of beads from her chiffon and brown velvet frock, the catsup stain on her best georgette crepe blouse. She wailed, "I haven't a single solitary thing that's fit to be seen in," and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the Nagase-gawa itself had been arrested at its issue from a narrow pass by a monster barrier of disrupted matter thrown right across its course. Neither living thing nor any sign of life could be discerned over the whole expanse. All was dismally silent and solitary. Beneath it, however, lay half a score of hamlets, and hundreds of corpses of men, women and children, who had been overtaken ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... cast ashore by some overflow—the Cosmopolitan Hotel drifting into the Baptist church, and dragging in its tail of wreckage two saloons and a blacksmith's shop; while the County Court-house was stranded in solitary grandeur in a waste of gravel half a mile away. The intervening flat was still gashed and furrowed by the ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... to an idle halt near Cleopatra's needle, and leaning against the Embankment wall, looked across the river to the warehouses opposite, which, in the evening mist, had the look of stark cliffs guarded by a solitary watchful lion. The smaller of the two young men took off his soft hat and set it beside him so that he could let the wind brush through his thick red hair. He held himself very straight, his slender body taut ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... the greater glory—procuring them from without when home-made catechumens were scarce, sometimes serving them up with a proselyte Turk. But in view of the importance of the accession, and likewise of the closeness of Epiphany, it was resolved to give Joseph ben Manasseh the honor of a solitary baptism. The intervening days he passed in a monastery, studying his new faith, unable to communicate with his parents or his fellow Jews, even had he or they wished. A cardinal's edict forbade him to return to ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the French Legation at Tihran, to whom we are indebted for this narrative, adds that a pious hand planted five or six solitary trees to mark the spot where the heroine gave up this life for a better one. It is doubtful whether the ruthless modern ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... lifted the box as soon as the lights were obtained, and the solitary die proclaimed that the game was still ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... off, and Laing, feeling rather solitary, returned to his cigar. An hour later the waiter brought him two telegrams, one for Dora and one for Charlie, he ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... Giadrezze, on the other side of the inland sea and beyond the arsenal, there stands a tall, solitary palm. It is the last, the very last, or almost the very last, of a race of giants that adorned the gardens which have now been converted into the "New Quarter." I imagine it is the highest existing palm in Italy, and ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... reflected, need ever yearn for the wastes of the Sahara when a desire for solitude or the need of privacy came upon him. The east side of Michigan Avenue was just as solitary and despite the difficulty of getting across to it, really a good deal more accessible. The west side was one unbroken glow of light and though the Christmas crowds had thinned somewhat with the closing of ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... direction without any seeming plan, but looking as if they might have crept together some cold winter's day for mutual warmth, or as if the middle house was a bantam trying to shield an overgrown brood, a solitary tower having the effect of a chicken on ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... use chasing a bear, as he would jump into the first crack he came to, and swim over it to the other side, and there he would be safe enough. And, indeed, when I climbed one day to the top of a tall iceberg, and looked out in the direction of our solitary island, I could see several cracks from a yard to a hundred yards wide, so that it was very fortunate we escaped from the island when ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... humouring his strange fancy; "but there's only one about, and it seems a deuce of a long way off—however, I'll try;" and, with that, I reached my arm up in the direction of the solitary planet, which lay in the vast obscure like a small silver candlestick, with a greenish tinge in its icy sparkling, mirrored far below in the indigo flood of the abysmal sea, while a grey scud came sweeping up, no ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... was called to the bar; in 1845 he threw himself into the Chartist movement, and devoted the rest of his life to the amelioration and elevation of the working-classes, suffering two years' (1848-1850) solitary imprisonment for a speech made at Kensington; he wrote, besides pamphlets and papers in the Chartist cause, several poems; "The Revolt of Hindostan" was written in prison, with his own blood, he said, on the fly-leaves of a prayer-book; he never ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... earrings, bracelets, and armlets worn by the kings and the great officers of state were probably of the more valuable metal, while the similar ornaments worn by those of minor may have been of silver. [PLATE LXXVI., Fig. 3.] One solitary specimen only of either class has been found; but Mr. Layard discovered several moulds, with tasteful designs for earrings, both at Nimrud and at Koyunjik; and the sculptures show that both in these and the other personal ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... morning Eustace, with Gaston, Arthur, and Ingram, all full of expectation, and delighted at the change from the gloomy solitary old Castle, were all posting on their way back to Bordeaux. They slept at an hostel about twelve miles from the town, first, however, by desire of the Prince's messengers, sending Ingram on to announce their speedy arrival, and about ten in the ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... made with needle and thread and principally in buttonhole stitches. A traced parchment pattern is procured, the outline made with a solitary thread stitched down to the parchment at frequent intervals. The thread is then worked over with fine buttonhole stitches; the modes or fillings have a fine network of threads stretched across, afterwards being buttonholed ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... direction of our course, we should not meet with any such serious obstruction as the last: indeed we imagined we could trace the course of the river nearly on a parallel line with us. We this day saw a solitary native, but I believe we were indebted for the sight rather to the circumstance of his being deprived of the use of his limbs than to his boldness or curiosity. Two or three families had been encamped on the spot where ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... Germinie was not Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's maid; she was Devotion, waiting to close her eyes. The solitary old woman, overlooked by death, alone at the end of her life, dragging her affections from grave to grave, had found her last friend in her servant. She had rested her heart upon her as upon an adopted daughter, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... gentlemen," wound up the coach, "we must practice the new signals like wild fire. There's mustn't be a single slip not a solitary break in our game with Tottenville. And that game will begin at three-thirty ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... there was a secret grot, Where lovers, when they pleased, concealment got, A quiet, gloomy, solitary place, Designed by nature for the ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... driven right into the tree. Not only is the wood useless as timber, but it is equally valueless as fuel, for the pith rots before it can be dried. The leaves are poisonous, and in spite of its being mere pith, it is one of the slowest-growing trees known, so that, take it all round, the solitary indigenous tree of Buenos Ayres is about the most useless arboreal product that could be imagined. The ombu is a handsome tree to the eye, not unlike an English walnut in its habit of growth, and it has the one merit of being a splendid shade-tree. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... Cafe Tantale—not in the garden, for it was winter, but in the inner room—he found the man called Vassili consuming a pensive and solitary glass of liqueur. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... to such remarks as 'Devilish good show, Burgess,' drank in one gulp another whisky and potass, and hastened away. The remainder of the company soon followed; the barmaid disappeared from the bar, and her assistant was left languidly to watch a solitary pair of topers who would certainly not leave ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... wise men—these things had sent chills of pleasing horror through the boy's frame. They were altogether new to him, in this vivid personal guise at least, and mixed up with all the familiar names and places of the district; for his childish life had been singularly solitary, giving to books the part which half a century ago would have been taken by tradition; and, moreover, the witch-belief in general had now little foothold among the younger generation of the Scout, and was only spoken of with reserve and discretion among ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... around me, white and sparkling diadems of wondrous beauty, and at my feet, black and stirless, lay a silent pool, reflecting the weird shadows of my coolies flitting like specters among the jagged rocks of these most solitary hills. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... his own expressions, he lived a "solitary and sedentary life, mihi et musis, having more converse with the dead than the living, that is, more with books than with men." The facts for his biography are scanty and meagre, and are rather collected by inference from his works, than from any other source. He was ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... could he endure these words of his foes? Thou hast, with thy own eyes, O Sanjaya, seen the whole earth, with even her Mlecchas and nomad tribes, depend upon his grace! Rebuked thus at that spot by the sons of Pandu in particular, while lying concealed in such a solitary place after having been deprived of his followers and attendants, alas, what answer did he make unto the Pandavas upon hearing such bitter and repeated taunts from his victorious enemies? Tell me everything, O Sanjaya, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the same record, then spoke with great warmth concerning the hostility of Freneau as manifested in his newspaper. He despised all personal attacks upon himself; but, he said, not a solitary act of the government had escaped the slanderer's assaults. He adverted to the fact that Freneau (evidently for the impudent purpose of insulting Washington) sent him three of his papers every day; and Mr. Jefferson records these facts ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... this period as leading the life of a severe student, employed on his papers during the whole of the mornings, and allowing himself little or no recreation, except a solitary evening walk on the banks of the Yarrow. Occasionally, however, he would indulge himself in longer excursions among the wild and romantic scenery of that neighbourhood, to which he was fondly and almost enthusiastically attached. [Footnote: The situation of Fowlshiels ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... who announced the arrival of a ship at Monterey, with dispatches of great importance from Mazatlan. We accordingly turned our horses back to Sutter's Fort. Crossing the Sacramento again by swimming our horses, and ferrying their loads in that solitary canoe, we took our back track as far as the Napa, and then turned to Benicia, on Carquinez Straits. We found there a solitary adobe-house, occupied by Mr. Hastings and his family, embracing Dr. Semple, the proprietor of the ferry. This ferry was a ship's-boat, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... me, though uniformly kind, flowed less from affection and tenderness than from a sense of obligation and duty. Indeed, I seldom even spoke to him except at meal-times, and then his manner was silent and abrupt; his leisure hours, which were many, were passed either in his study or in solitary walks; in short, he seemed to take no further interest in my happiness or improvement than a conscientious regard to the discharge of his own duty ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... these three well-watered valleys, either might have served as a retreat to some solitary who would have found there everything necessary for life. But the settlers had already explored them, and in no part had they ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... time. Yes, Sir, they are no slouches at sleuth-work. If I were to buy a pair of false whiskers and dye my hair and dress like a Baptist parson and go into Germany on the peace racket, I guess they'd be on my trail like a knife, and I should be shot as a spy inside of a week or doing solitary in the Moabite prison. But they lack the larger vision. They can be bluffed, Sir. With your approval I shall visit the Fatherland as John S. Blenkiron, once a thorn in the side of their brightest boys on the other side. But it will be a different John S. I reckon he will have experienced a change ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... their own despite. The solitary habitations of the widow, the fatherless, and the unfortunate, were visited by the beneficent, who felt for the woes of their fellow-creatures; and to such as refused to receive a portion of the public charity, the necessaries of life were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... you as straight as I can, but my head isn't as good as it might be. They drove nails through it to make me hear better how Dravot died. The country was mountaineous and the mules were most contrary, and the inhabitants was dispersed and solitary. They went up and up, and down and down, and that other party, Carnehan, was imploring of Dravot not to sing and whistle so loud, for fear of bringing down the tremenjus avalanches. But Dravot says that if a King couldn't sing it wasn't worth being King, and whacked the mules over the rump, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... bird among the branches of the solitary park whistles mockery.... We feel the shadow of a dream in our wine-glass, and something that is earth in our flesh feels the dampness of the garden like ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... and quiet: not a sound was to be heard but the ticking of the great clock in the hall. Ruth did not look at it, she did not care to know the time, for she was sure it was very late. The little study looked cold and desolate by the light of her solitary candle, and the ashes in the grate still moved and made a slight rustling which sounded very plainly. Ruth had just gathered up her books and papers when the hall clock struck close to ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... him from his duty to God; and now, isolated and looked upon as an unworthy member of the little society to which he belonged, he learned to find his sole happiness in that sweet communion which he had now solitary leisure to enjoy. His very troubles carried him to a throne of grace; his desolate condition made him feel that there was only One who never changed nor forsook His people; only One who could understand and feel for the infirmities ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... breakfasted always at half-past eight, there was no need of hurry on account of the expected visit. But, nevertheless, she was in a fuss all the morning; and spoke of the coming period as one in which she must necessarily put herself into solitary confinement. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... between the seas in a very wonderful manner. It seemed to be only those seas which caught her in the act of rising which struck her with so much violence and threw such quantities of water aft. On deck there was only one solitary individual looking out, to give the alarm in the event of the ship breaking from her moorings. The seaman on watch continued only two hours; he who kept watch at this time was a tall, slender man of a ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fathers poverty has made thee happy; For though 'tis true, this solitary life Sutes not with youth and beautie, O my child, Yet 'tis the sweetest Guardian to protect Chast names from Court aspersions; there a Lady Tender and delicate in years and graces, That doats upon the charms of ease and pleasure, Is ship-wrackt on the shore; for 'tis ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... quantities of their cattle, and eventually Africaner became the terror of the colony. The natives also who resided in Namaqua-land commenced depredations upon Africaner, but he repaid them with such interest that at last every tribe fled at his approach, and his name carried dismay into their solitary wastes. The courage and intrepidity shown by Africaner and his brothers in their various combats were most remarkable; but to narrate all his adventures would occupy too much time. It is certain that he not only became dreaded, but in consequence of his forbearance ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... it implies—was the dull stock he rooted in. Born a poor farmer's son, with a savage passion for learning, he almost destroyed his eyesight in lonely study under the flicker of tallow dips. All that had ever come to him of knowledge came in these solitary vigils. Miry and sweating from the plough he mastered the classics, law, chemistry, engineering; and finally emerging heavily from the reek of Long Island fertiliser, struck with a heavy surety at Fortune and brought her ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... seems, had, about sixteen years since, a band of forty ruffians at his command, who infested these wilds, and supported themselves by plunder. For a considerable time Sabocha pursued his atrocious trade unsuspected, and many an unfortunate traveller was murdered, in the dead of night, at the solitary inn by the wood's side, which he kept; indeed a more fit situation for plunder and murder I never saw. The gang were in the habit of watering their horses at the pool, and perhaps of washing therein their hands ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... convention developed facts and was fruitful in results: That there were solitary cases of pleuro-pneumonia, and limited to the eastern border States; that Western herdsmen had just cause of alarm on account of the shipment of young stock West from the narrow pastures and dairy districts of the East. It was shown ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... Edgar returned home and related their adventure, they were all surprised at the fortitude of Melissa in being enabled to support her spirits in a solitary mansion, amidst such great, and ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... grandiose, there is always, for some reason, mixed with melancholy, a conviction that he will live and die in obscurity, and he reflectively snatches up a pencil and hastens to write his name on the first thing that comes handy. And that, I suppose, is why all convenient solitary nooks like my summer-house are always scrawled over in pencil or carved with penknives. I remember as though it were to-day; looking at the parapet I read: 'Ivan Korolkov, May 16, 1876.' Beside Korolkov some local dreamer had ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... hills; dene being a Saxon word, signifying a narrow valley, with woods and streams of water convenient for the feeding of cattle. Here the river Spodden, which now keeps many fulling-mills and engines at work, formerly turned one solitary corn-mill only. It was built in the narrow dingle below the hall, for the supply of the hamlet. The feudal owners of most mansions usually erected corn-mills (where practicable) within their own demesnes. After the family had removed to the more mild and temperate climate of Mavesyn-Ridware, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... like to see you again, but you would find a visit here very dull, for we feel very old and have no amusement, and lead a solitary life. But we intend in a few weeks to spend a few days in London, and then if you have anything else to do in London, you would perhaps come and lunch with us. (My father had the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Haliburton at his brother's house in Queen ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... arches. The path which led to it was almost as charming as the nest itself. Lifting a low-hanging branch of maple at the entrance to the woods, we took leave of the world and all its affairs, and stepped at once into a secluded path. Though so near the house, the woods were solitary, for they were private and very carefully protected. Passing up the rustic foot-path, under interlacing boughs of maple and beech, we came at length to a sunny open spot, where all winter grain is kept for partridges, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... of Pletho? If the work was only an arranged system of paganism, or the platonic philosophy, it might have been an innocent, if not a curious volume. He was learned and humane, and had not passed his life entirely in the solitary recesses ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... quite alone to-day in Italy, and far off, as if she had no duties, no ties, as if she were one of those solitary, drifting, middle-aged women who vaguely haunt the beaten tracks of foreign lands. It was sultry in this path away from the sea. She was sharply conscious of the change of climate, the inland sensation, the falling away of the freedom ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... that for a moment and, standing in a little pool of purple light under the benignant friendliness of a golden moon new risen and solitary, he considered it. No, he did not know whether he liked her—it was interest rather that drew him, her strangeness, her strength and loneliness, young and solitary like the moon above him—and yet—also ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole |
