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Waning   /wˈeɪnɪŋ/   Listen
Waning

noun
1.
A gradual decrease in magnitude or extent.  "The waxing and waning of the moon"






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"Waning" Quotes from Famous Books



... life which takes the end of a March day before the bud swells or a nest appears. The faint chill twilight floats upon the field, and the red moon mounts above the scrub-clad hillside into a rich grey sky, beautifully graduated and full of the glamour of waning and strengthening light. The slope of the field, too—it is there the sheep are folded—is in admirable perspective. On the left, beyond the hurdles, is a strip of green, perhaps a little out of ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... supper, he commenced making a bow. One only of the sticks appeared suitable for the purpose. On bending it, back it sprang with considerable force. While still working away by the light of his waning fire, sleep so completely overpowered him, that he let fall his knife, and the stick of his bow by his side, while his head bent down over his breast. When he awoke, his fire was almost out, and as he could see to work no more, ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... he said to me, as he was courteously conducting me over the benches of his Surrey Theatre, the last retreat, and recess, of his every-day waning grandeur. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... waning soup, he wrote and sent off six notes before he touched his dinner. Three were City; three West-End. The City letters were to Cornhill, Ludgate-hill, and Farringdon Street. The West-End letters were to Great Marlborough Street, New Burlington Street, and Piccadilly. Everybody ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens

... sleep—for it is evening—on the bosoms of the dead. Yoho, past streams, in which the cattle cool their feet, and where the rushes grow; past paddock-fences, farms, and rick-yards; past last year's stacks, cut, slice by slice, away, and showing, in the waning light, like ruined gables, old and brown. Yoho, down the pebbly dip, and through the merry water-splash and up at a canter to the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... slowly waning, and they were preparing for their second night of the prize trip, congratulating themselves that they had not ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... cleanly and upright—that is, he spoke of such uprightness as invariably follows cleanliness. But as time wore on her habits of cleanliness wore off, and there were undoubtedly corners in the ice box where her waning-in-enthusiasm fingers failed to reach. But on a night when the New York thermometer ranges up toward the nineties it is a pure and unadulterated joy to labor inside an ice box. I scrubbed and rinsed and wiped until Schmitz almost looked approving. Only it was ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... was dying fast when Millicent Leslie came softly into the great bare room, and, for Anthony Thurston had paid for overtaxing his waning strength, her heart smote her as she looked upon him. She could recognize the stamp of fast approaching death. There was an unusual gentleness in his eyes, which brightened at her approach, and with the exception of Geoffrey, whose sympathy filled her with shame, it was long since anyone ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... Waring, kneeling down with an expression of repugnance. He was something of a surgeon, and knew what he, was about. His task over, he made up the fire, warmed some food, fed the old man, and helped his waning strength with the contents of his flask. 'At least you placed all my property in the dug-out before you set me adrift,' he said; ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... was quick to seize upon one when he found him. To Chauncey, on the other hand, the affair in its consequences and demonstration of actualities was a rude awakening, to which his correspondence during the succeeding six weeks bears witness by an evident waning of confidence, not before to be noted. On June 4 he tells the Secretary of the Navy that he has on Ontario, exclusive of the new ship not yet ready, fourteen vessels of every description, mounting sixty-two guns; ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... lightning's flash springing forth between the pillars of the portico—on swiftly by it, lest thy heart faileth and thou diest. Having passed this temple, take the winding road at its rear. This will bring thee to where three roads meet, and there thou wilt see, by the light of the waning moon and the flickering stars, an altar, and, rising above it, the three-figured statue of the Triple Goddess. She, as Hecate, holding in her hands the keys of hell and of death, facing the pit in which the altar is reared for to-night's incantations and sacrifice. Secrete thyself before midnight ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... Tex led the way toward a point where a few straggling pines showed gaunt and lean in the rapidly waning moonlight. ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... going on in Soudan the last fifty years, threatening to leave the country, at no distant time, bare of inhabitants, unless roads be constructed by the Christians of the Southern States for commercial intercourse, and double exertions made to civilize and Christianize the waning population of Central Africa before it entirely disappears. The good missionary, though sent out from Georgia, was evidently taught in that British school which assumes that there is only a single species in the genus homo, in opposition to the Bible, that clearly designates ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... excessively sensitive to light, and exposure even to common daylight causes forcible and sustained closure of the lids, and a profuse flow of tears. When persons who ought to begin the use of convex glasses habitually strain the waning power of accommodation, an undue secretion of tears very often follows, and the retina is liable to become unduly sensitive to light. In general, morbid affections of the surface of the eye, and of the ciliary structures concerned ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... moon; "I am waning, and the lamps have never shone for me, but I have shone for the lamps."* So the moon went behind the clouds again, for it would not be plagued. A drop of rain then fell straight down on the lamp's cowl, it was like a drop of water from the eaves, but the drop said that it came from the grey clouds, ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen

... at what had taken place the previous evening. He was troubled, as well, over his financial difficulties, for he knew that if he could not raise the ten thousand dollars he was a ruined man. Even now he was aware that his influence in Rixton was waning, and what would it be if the crash should come? He had dominated the people because of his position and supposed wealth. They had bowed to his slightest will, and had allowed him to rule. But now they were taking matters into their own hands, and had inflicted ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

... quickly thereafter. The blow had gone straight home, and the last flicker of waning life fled from the titanic form. He went down sprawling; Ben stood waiting to see if another blow was needed. Then the ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... found themselves soon nearly up to their necks in the waves, while so narrow was the submerged bank along which they were marching, that a misstep to the right or left was fatal. Luckless individuals repeatedly sank to rise no more. Meantime, as the sickly light, of the waning moon came forth at intervals through the stormy clouds the soldiers could plainly perceive the files of Zealand vessels through which they were to march, and which were anchored as close to the flat as the water would allow. Some had recklessly stranded ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of the elders in a high piping voice and said: "Young man, we thank thee; but though the days of the springtide are waxing, the hours of our lives are waning; nor may we abide unless thou canst truly tell us that this is the Land of the Glittering Plain: and if that be so, then delay not, lead us to thy lord, and perhaps ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris

... recoiled within its former limits; and in two reigns further on, under Marcus Antoninus, though a prince of elevated character and warlike in his policy, we find such concessions of territory made to the Marcomanni and others, as indicate too plainly the shrinking energies of a waning empire. In reality, if we consider the polar opposition, in point of interest and situation, between the great officers of the republic and the Augustus or Csar of the empire, we cannot fail to see the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... instance, a root nak, expressive of perishing or destruction. We have it in nak, night; Latin nox, Greek nux, meaning originally the waning, the disappearing, the death of day. We have the same root in composition, as, for instance, jva-nak, life-destroying; and by means of suffixes Greek has formed from it nek-ros, adead body, nek-us, dead, and nek-u-es in the plural, the departed. In Sanskrit ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... will be seen at once that the inferior planets show various phases comparable to the waxing and waning of our moon in its monthly round. Superior conjunction is, in fact, similar to full moon, and inferior conjunction to new moon; while the eastern and western elongations may be compared respectively to the moon's first and last quarters. It will be recollected how, when these ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... hedgerow trees, and wet Her wing in silver streams, and set Shining foot on temple roof. Now again she flies aloof, Coasting mountain clouds, and kissed By the evening's amethyst. In wet wood and miry lane Still we pound and pant in vain; Still with earthy foot we chase Waning pinion, fainting face; Still, with grey hair, we stumble on Till - behold! - the vision gone! Where has fleeting beauty led? To the doorway of the dead! qy. omit? [Life is gone, but life was gay: We have come ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... who suddenly finds that he can outwalk the paralysis threatening him, or the man who finds the fog of blindness lifting before him, showing him again bit by bit the world he had deemed forever lost. Whilst this man sleeps in the tent beside his companion and the waning moon breaks up over the horizon and mixes her light with the red flicker of the fire, a word about that past of which he was in search may not be out ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... steely in the waning daylight. Snow had fallen. Only a slight fall for the region, but it had covered everything to the depth of nearly a foot. The whole aspect of the world had changed. The dark, forbidding gorge of the Bell River no longer frowned up at the defenders ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... Sloane and Phoebe Column were old friends; Axia and Amory new ones. But strange things are prepared even in the dead of night, and the unusual, which lurks least in the cafe, home of the prosaic and inevitable, was preparing to spoil for him the waning romance of Broadway. The way it took was so inexpressibly terrible, so unbelievable, that afterward he never thought of it as experience; but it was a scene from a misty tragedy, played far behind the veil, and that it meant something definite ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... of himself, of his life in the East, but he was careful not to ask about Lost Valley, to make mention of the circumstances that had brought her to his door. And so an hour passed as if it had been a bagatelle. The afternoon was waning when Tharon rose swiftly and abruptly terminated this first visit inside his home of any ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... existence. Oh, how guilty he felt towards Rogojin! And, for a few warm, hasty words spoken in Moscow, Parfen had called him "brother," while he—but no, this was delirium! It would all come right! That gloomy Parfen had implied that his faith was waning; he must suffer dreadfully. He said he liked to look at that picture; it was not that he liked it, but he felt the need of looking at it. Rogojin was not merely a passionate soul; he was a fighter. He was fighting for the restoration ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the waning moon, When skies proclaim night's cheerless gloom, On tower, fort, or tented ground, The sentry walks his lonely round; And should a footstep haply stray Where caution marks the guarded way, Who goes there? Stranger, quickly ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... not I knew his figure. It was Peter Poplar himself! I sprung eagerly forward. Captain Helfrich's appearance had made me feel old, but Peter's weather-beaten countenance and grizzly hair reminded me that my own manhood must be waning. For a moment I do not think he knew me. He had thought me dead—killed by the French fishermen, or murdered in prison. At all events he had heard nothing of me from the moment I was carried off in the fishing-boat. How kindly ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... A lopsided, waning moon, not long risen, looked over the ragged crest of the ridge, and sent long shadows down the sparsely wooded slope. Though there was no wind, and every tree was as motionless as if carved of ice, these spare, intricate shadows seemed to ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... present usually on these anniversary occasions in bygone years, for the Gibsons were kind friends of ours and pitied our lonely lot. They lived in the cutest little home in all the great city—in the most romantic spot you could find when the waning hours of the old year were danced away by merry feet and jolly hearts sang the New Year in. Mr. Gibson was a mechanical engineer (not from Stevens', but from Cooper Union), and he was the superintendent in charge of the big Produce Exchange building, whose tall, red tower ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... called Nick jogged up the waning blaze while others brought a fresh log, and soon the camp-fire was roaring a warming, hearty welcome home to the weary scoutmasters. One of these (who was evidently young enough to be addressed by his Christian name, ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... widely dilated. If, as is common, one eye only has suffered, the contrast in these respects with the sound eye is all the more characteristic. Another feature is the erect, attentive carriage of the ear, to compensate to some extent for the waning vision. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... bitter toil an' straining— But truce with peevish, poor complaining! Is fortune's fickle Luna waning? E'n let her gang! Beneath what light she has remaining, Let's ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... the waning light warned them that they were still upon the earth, they might never have tired of looking into one another's eyes, and telling each to each the experiences of that lifetime they had lived since their separation, and striving to put into words the ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... my watch on deck at the turn of the night I saw the spindrift rise, And I saw by the thin moon's waning light The shine of dead men's eyes. They rose from the wave in armor bright, The men who never knew fear; They rose with their swords to their hips strapped tight, And stripped ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... attendant at the Salon; he has been an immense loser, but plays on with the same stern perseverance with which he would pour his bold cavalry through a ravine torn by artillery; he stands by the still waning chance with a ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... A coppery waning moon hung low in the south-east, and sent a pale rusty pathway across the sea to where, behind the sand-bar, rippling waves broke in soft flash and sparkle. Its light was not strong enough to quench that of the stars crowding the western and the upper sky. Tom could distinguish the black ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... of the enemy's forts. Soon large parts of Isle of Wight and Surry had been overrun and the people reduced to their allegiance. During the first week of January several hundred rebels gathered upon the upper James to retrieve their waning cause, but they seem to have melted away without accomplishing anything, and at once all the south bank of the ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... straight level expanse of the Calle Rivera clattered an unending stream of horsemen, their accoutrements jingling a sinister diapason as they poured helter-skelter across the plaza in the waning moonlight. Tatterdemalion as they were, the ragged army were well-organized as Thode saw at a glance; no haphazard, leaderless crew was this, for at their head rode a diminutive, jockey-like figure, his face glistening and ebony in the eerie radiance, his teeth flashing white as he turned in the ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... other grand old houses, migrated to villas along the Brenta, where by day and night the same reckless, irresponsible life went gaily on. The power of such courtesans as Titian and Paris Bordone had painted was waning. Their place was adequately supplied by the easy dames of society, no longer secluded, proud and tranquil, but "stirred by the wild blood of youth and stooping to the frolic." "They are but faces and smiles, teasing and trumpery," says one of their ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... with the summer sun strolled Peace one afternoon late in August, gathering the purple foxgloves which waved invitingly in the breeze. It was one of those rare days of waning summer, clear, beautiful and cool, with just a hint of autumn haze in the air; and it cast its magic spell over the bare-headed, flower-laden maid, wandering dreamily through the crisp, crackling grass, with no particular destination ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, * * * * * It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... reposed confidence in his promise, for she knew that the Indian, savage as he was, rarely forfeited his word; but when gratitude inspired a pledge, she could not believe that he would use deceit. The fire was now burning quite low, and its waning light scarce cast a beam upon the branches over head. It was evidently not far from morning, and every hope of present escape entirely fled from her bosom. But just as she was yielding to despair, she saw the Indian returning in a stealthy pace, bearing some dark object in his arms. He glided ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... Love-true, Love shall renew, Love's love thus waning never, So love each morn of Love new-born, Love shall ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... corks, Where the orchestra is playing to the rattle of the forks; And your after-opera dinner you may think superbly fine, But that can't compare, I'm certain, to the joy that's always mine When I reach my little dwelling—source, of all sincere delight— And I prowl around the pantry in the waning hours of night. ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest

... I have termed the golden period of Stradivari, commenced about 1700, at which time he reached his 56th year: a time of life when it is a rare occurrence to find genius asserting itself with any degree of power—a time, if not of waning, at least of resting, when the mind usually stays from giving forth originality bearing the freshness of earlier years; but Stradivari, with a few other notable instances in the field of art, forms an exception to this rule, and he proves ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... At the outset she had slighted his mad devotion by her shallow coldness and occasional infidelities, until his lava-like passion petrified. Thenceforth it was for her to woo, and woo in vain. For years past she had to bemoan the waning of his affection and his many conjugal sins. And now the chasm, which she thought to have spanned by the religious ceremony on the eve of the coronation, yawned at her feet. The woman and the Empress in her shrank back ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... that was a temporary respite. She fell in her turn, and was devoured, to the last scrap of her hide. Dick again intervened to save Billy, but failed. Sam issued his orders the more peremptorily as he felt his strength waning, and realised the necessity of economising every ounce of it, even to that required in the arguing of expedients. Dick yielded with slight resistance, as he had yielded in the case of the girl. All matters but the one were rapidly becoming ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... John's ministry was gradually superseded by the ministry of Christ. It was the moon waning before the Sun. They came and told him that, "Rabbi, He to whom thou barest witness beyond Jordan baptizeth, and all men come unto Him." Two of his own personal friends, apparently some of the last he had left, deserted him, and went to ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... young Englishmen proceeded to dine—going in largely, as the phrase is, for cooling draughts and dishes, of which their attendant offered them a very long list. After dinner they went out and slowly walked about the neighboring streets. The early dusk of waning summer was coming on, but the heat was still very great. The pavements were hot even to the stout boot soles of the British travelers, and the trees along the curbstone emitted strange exotic odors. The young men wandered through the adjoining square—that queer ...
— An International Episode • Henry James

... frightened animal among the refuse of the grounds. Mrs. Preston walked tranquilly by his side, her face still illuminated by the fading glow. The prairie lay in gloomy vastness, lighted but a little way by the waning fire. Along the avenue forms of men and women—mere mites—were running to and fro. The figures were those of gnomes toiling under a gloomy, uncertain firmament, or of animals furtively peeping out of the gloom of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... that she could have thought of that old man with such a warm glow of thankfulness. There was nothing to be seen. The storm of the early night had passed over, and a faint light came into the room from the waning moon. And then she saw the curtains move, and opened her mouth to scream, but fear had paralysed her voice, and she lay staring at the hangings, incapable of movement or sound. As she watched the curtain she saw it ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace

... Grands Mulets for the ascent to the summit soon after midnight, in order to get over the immense snow slopes before the action of the sun has loosened the avalanches and weakened the crevasse bridges. But we did not start until half-past three in the morning. The waning moon, hanging over the Dome du Gouter, gave sufficient light to render a lantern unnecessary, and dawn was near at hand. Threatening bands of clouds attracted anxious glances from Couttet, and it was evident that a change of weather impended. But we clambered over the rocks to the crevassed ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various

... is waning," she answered in a low voice. "The moon is waning. Yet he promised to be here when the nights are light and the water covers the sandbanks ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... come in at this time and the coffin was carried by the mourners on long stakes. The straggling procession of pedestrians behind wound its slow way in the waning light to the kirkyard, showing startlingly black against the dazzling snow; and it was not until the earth rattled on the coffin-lid that Little Rathie's nearest male relative seemed to remember his last mournful duty to the dead. Sidling up to the favoured ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... least given to prayer are oftenest on their knees, crushing the strawberries, and whether they are "long" or short, much fruit is destroyed. North and South, the effort to keep those we employ off the berries must be constant, especially as a long, hot day is waning. Indeed, one can scarcely blame them for "lopping down," for it would be inquisitorial torture to most of us to stoop upon our feet through a summer day. Picking strawberries, as a steady ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... is that in many senses we are still in mid-Renaissance. The evolution has not been completed. The new life is our own and is progressive. As in the transformation scene of some pantomime, so here the waning and the waxing shapes are mingled; the new forms, at first shadowy and filmy, gain upon the old; and now both blend; and now the old scene fades into the background; still, who shall say whether the new scene be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the hot weather within business reach, there came a letter from him saying that he was settled at Gormanville, and wishing that he might tempt us up some afternoon before we were off to the mountains or seaside. This revived all my wife's waning interest in him, and it was hard to keep the answer I made him from expressing in a series of crucial inquiries the excitement she felt at his being in New England and so near Boston, and in Gormanville of all places. It was one of the places we had thought of for the summer, and we ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... have there not been thousands and thousands of cities which have come into being and perished during this period? And has not every place had endless forms of government, and been sometimes rising, and at other times falling, and again improving or waning?' ...
— Cratylus • Plato

... the northwest, the draining-canal that gave it its name tapered away between occasional overhanging willows and beside broken ranks of rotting palisades, its foul, crawling waters blushing, gilding and purpling under the swiftly waning light, and ending suddenly in the black shadow of the swamp. The observer of this dismal prospect leaned heavily on his arm, and cast his glance out along the beautified corruption of the canal. His eye seemed quickened to ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... LOUIS and BECKET). Ay, there they go—both backs are turn'd to me— Why then I strike into my former path For England, crown young Henry there, and make Our waning Eleanor all but love me! John, Thou hast served me heretofore with Rome—and well. They call thee ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... were a walk to Weydene, and another observation of the bedroom which Mrs. Heredith had occupied in the left wing. He decided to leave his investigation of the room until later so as to have the advantage of the waning daylight in his walk across ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... life which builds these mighty trunks and sends the vital currents to their highest branches, which alternately clothes and denudes them, makes no sound; cycle after cycle have the completed centuries made, and yet no sign of waning power here, no evidence of a finished work! Here life first dawned upon men; here, slowly, it discovered its meaning to them; here the first impressions fell upon senses keen with desire for untried sensations; here the first great thoughts, vast as the forest and as shadowy, ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... in the cafe, in spite of the waning season. A good many of the tables were occupied. At one of them sat the three unchaperoned Miss Dashleighs, in company with three solemn, high-shouldered young officers, enjoying something in tall, slender tumblers which looked hot and smelled spicy. At another table Mr Everett Tweeler ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... By this time 'the waning night was growing old,' and we were yet several miles from Sir John Dalrymple's. Dr. Johnson did not seem much troubled at our having treated the baronet with so little attention to politeness; but when I talked of the grievous disappointment it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... the overshadowing prestige of Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster. The appearance of Mr. Crittenden in the House in his seventy-fourth year was his patriotic response to the roll-call of duty. He loved his country and his whole country, and every effort of his waning strength was put forth in behalf of the Union. It was his influence, more than that of any other man, which saved his State from the vortex of Rebellion. But for his strong hold upon the sympathy and pride of Kentucky, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... arose before they arrived at their destination, and all were changed into stone, and ever since have appeared like stones. My companion pointed out the various figures of men, women, and children, with their bundles and baskets, girdles, etc., and in the waning light of day it was not difficult to understand how the Indians had come to this conception of the fantastic forms standing all around the place. Even a mountain may be a Taquat, and all the Taquats are gods to whom the Coras pray and sacrifice food; but ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... of the intercalary month(12) (702)—a subterfuge, which admitted an appellation labouring under a double incongruity(13) for the mere purpose of avoiding one which expressed the simple fact, and which vividly reminds us of the sagacious resolution of the waning patriciate to concede to the plebeians not the consulship, but ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... carpet knight. But it was well that his natural tendencies towards a life of action were braced by the experience of a chill in the ardour of royal benevolence. From 1587, as the star of Essex rose, and his was supposed to be waning, his orbit can be seen widening. It became more independent. As reigning favourite he had vicariously explored, colonized, plundered, and fought. Henceforth he was to do a substantial part of ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... when the two great lights of heaven, the Sun and the Moon, were associated with each other, as was often and naturally the ease, the Sun was considered to be more especially a personification of the Male Principle, and the waxing and waning moon, as represented by the Crescent, a personification of the Female Principle. Hence the worship of the God associated with the radiate sun, as of that of the Goddess associated with the crescent moon and called the Sun-God's mother or bride, was phallic in character; and their connection is repeatedly ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... from the known: as presently appeared, when he reached to me the entrails of a plaice and of a turbot, such as had never been tasted before. After this he informed me that honey-apples were most ruddy when gathered under the waning moon. What difference this makes you will hear best from himself. Then [says] Vibidius to Balatro; "If we do not drink to his cost, we shall die in his debt;" and he calls for larger tumblers. A paleness changed the countenance of our host, who fears nothing ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... thoughtfully in the gathering twilight, strange new thoughts stirring in his heart. He felt older and graver and wiser. He went round by his business stand; he took his knife from his pocket and carefully pried out the tacks which held his pasteboard sign; then he held it up in the waning light, and looked earnestly at the letters, his face working with new thoughts. But the only outward expression which he gave to these thoughts was to say as he rolled up ...
— Three People • Pansy

... reached the full and was waning. The fourteen day Lunar night was in its last half. No rescue ship came from Earth. We had ceased our efforts to signal, for we needed all our power to maintain ourselves. The camp would be in a state of siege before ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... stories is unquestionable,—they go through the motions quite as if they were the real thing. But the appeals of the editors for poetry and literary prose; their occasional sardonic comments upon the apathy of the college reading public,—especially during the waning later years of the Magazine, before it was absorbed into the monthly issue of the News,—would seem to indicate that the pure, literary imagination is as rare at Wellesley as it is in the world at large. Yet there are shining ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... fixed on the door, remained plunged in grief over her mother's sudden departure. She gazed around her; the room was empty and silent; but she could still hear the waning sounds of hurrying footsteps and rustling skirts, and last the slamming of the outer door. Then nothing stirred, and she ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... he was in far too ecstatic a mood to think of sleep. "One has too few of such godlike moments to steep them in unconsciousness," he said to himself. And so he sat smoking and thinking and watching the waning moon sink lower and lower, until it was no longer night, but ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... more I went on in the waning light, my heart throbbing with the excitement of it all, and so came out at last upon a vast jutting promontory of rock that was thrust forth from the mountain's face eastwardly. Here was an open space of an acre or more, ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... and Afric, on each other gaze! Lands of the dark-eyed maid and dusky Moor, Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate's blaze: How softly on the Spanish shore she plays, Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown, Distinct, though darkening with her waning phase: But Mauritania's giant-shadows frown, From mountain-cliff to coast descending ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... and for a moment seemed dazed. Then his eyes fell on the eight soldiers standing back of the boys. His waning courage returned, and drawing himself up, he pointed his finger at O'Connor as he addressed ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich

... the threat of a waning moon And the wail of an ebbing tide, But many a woman has lived for less, And many a man has died; For life upon life took hold and passed, Strong in a fate set free, Out of the deep, into the dark, On for the ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley

... but the carriages had no such reassuring legend. As darkness fell, the train started with a series of crashes, and clanked unpromisingly away into the gloom. It was a weary journey, and bitterly cold. Mac could not sleep and watched, by the silver light of the waning moon, a not displeasing vista of palm trees, crops, houses and villages which went jogging steadily by. Twice they crossed great rivers, and the whole carriage bestirred itself to see its first of what might be the Nile. Then there were many ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... The waning of the moon brought new songsters, with many a nightingale among them. A low bush near the plain was vocal during the full moon with the sweet but disconnected music of the yellow-breasted chat. The forest rang again and again with a wild, torrential strain of music that ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... taken birth among the intermediate orders, ascertaining the diverse declarations of the Vedas, the courses of seasons, the fading of years, of months, of fortnights, and of days, beholding directly the waxing and the waning of the Moon, seeing the rising and the ebbing of the seas, and the diminution of wealth and its increase once more, and the separation of united objects, the lapse of Yugas, the destruction of mountains, the drying up ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... of a whole system. It was a time of rebirth for the whole American stage. Nearly all the old stars were gone or were passing from view. Forrest, McCullough, Cushman, Janauschek were gone; Modjeska's power was waning; Clara Morris was soon to leave the stage world; Lawrence Barrett and W.J. Florence were dead; ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... dog, I went on with my business in my dreams; till my legs jerked and woke me, to see a waning moon peering in from the west, through the hole that served the hut for a chimney, and I rose to go back to Billy Jones. For I dreamed there was a gang of men in a cellar under the very hut I slept in, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... Public interest in the abortive attempt to reinstate Dom Corria De Sylva as President was waning rapidly when it was fanned into fresh activity by news that reached this port to-day. It appears that on the 31st ulto. a daring effort was made to free De Sylva, who, with certain other ministers ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... with me—that when my failing age needs your young hand, it shall be ready; and that so the master's waning powers may be forgotten in the ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... the direction of the village. But Domini remained looking after Androvsky. She saw nothing but the grim palms and the spectral atmosphere in which the desert lay. Yet she did not move till a red spear was thrust up out of the east towards the last waning star. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... at the waning of day, When it passes and murmurs "Good-bye." The dear little breeze — how it wishes to stay Where the flowers are in bloom, where the singing birds play; How it sighs when it flies on its wearisome way. Ask it what ails it: it will not reply; Its voice is a sad one, it never told why. ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)

... and then another, and finally we swept swiftly down a long slope densely bordered by trees and with irregular piles of rock uprearing ugly heads on either hand. A little edge of the waning moon began to peep over the ridge of the hill, and yielded sufficient light to enable our eyes to discern dimly the faint track we followed. I remember remarking the blacker figure of the Sergeant ahead of us, and ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... which a versed critic must distinguish as stamped, beyond the others, with the skilled ease, the flow as of original composition, the sustained spirit, and force, and fervour—in short, by the mastery, and by the keen zest of Writing. They are the works of his more than matured mind—of his waning life; and they show a rare instance of a talent so steadfastly and perseveringly self-improved, as that, in life's seventh decennium, the growth of Art overweighed the detriment of Time. But, in good truth, no detriment of time is here perceptible; youthful fire ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... Even before the death of Saul, David's strength had been rapidly increasing, by a constant stream of fugitives from the confusion and misery into which the kingdom had fallen. Even Benjamin, Saul's own tribe, sent him some of its famous archers—a sinister omen of the king's waning fortunes; the hardy half-independent men of Manasseh and Gad, from the pastoral uplands on the east of Jordan, "whose faces," according to the vivid description of the chronicler (1 Chron. xii. 8), "were like the ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... waning Queen walks forth to rule the later night; Crownd with the sparkle of a Star, and throned on orb ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... attack to the other side of the line. Paul and Gillam, both pretty well punished, still held out stubbornly. Yard by yard the remaining distance was covered. On her fifteen yards, almost under the shadow of her goal-posts, Erskine was given ten yards for off-side play, and the waning hopes of the breathless watchers on the north ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour

... watched him from behind a tree. He stood there long, his right hand negligently upon the horse's neck, his left hand shielding his eyes as he looked; and to the posture, somehow, the whole landscape gradually changed its aspect, seemed to take on an air subtly theatrical, the waning sunlight like calcium, the rocks like cardboard, the trees painted. "Where, oh, where have I seen that before?" murmured Charles-Norton, intrigued in the midst of ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... to the housekeeper and an inspection on the part of the nurse, brought forth permission for Tom to see the patient. Though he had never known Mr. Keith he could see that the man's health was indeed fast waning. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... waning as he rounded a bend in the stream. To the left was a small cove, and it was here that one of the trails overland to the Great Lake and the river beyond began. Dane knew of the log cabin tucked away among ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody

... me up, for I may never again despise that which she hath loved as she hath loved me. And yet again a thought smote me, and it was as an arrow of the lightning, and its barb was the truth: But she will grow old, it said, and will wither before thy face, and be as the waning moon in the heavens. And my heart cried out in an agony. But my will sought to comfort my heart, and said, Cry not out, for, in spite of old age as in spite of death, I will love her still. Then something began to writhe ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald



Words linked to "Waning" :   waxing, wane, decrease, lessening, drop-off



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