"Withered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leaves of the forest when summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen; Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... obstacles, and preparing expedients, the great soul, without fuss or noise, takes the step, and lo, the mountain has been leveled and the way lies open. Learn, then, to will strongly and decisively; thus fix your floating life and leave it no longer to be carried hither and thither, like a withered leaf, by every wind that blows. An undecided man is like the turnstile at a fair, which is in everybody's way ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... of certain London types, especially among the "criminal classes," and of the old women with withered, simian faces and wearing shawls, slinking in or out of public-houses at the street corners; and also of some people of a better class I had known personally—some even in the House of Commons; and I felt that I could not agree with her, much as I wished to do ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... return. Pons was a little withered old man. He was born in our house—I know, for it chanced that mention was made of it this very day I am describing. Pons was all of sixty years. He was mostly toothless, and, despite a pronounced ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... broken hedge with icy thorn: - "Why do I live, when I desire to be At once from life and life's long labour free? Like leaves in spring, the young are blown away, Without the sorrows of a slow decay; I, like yon withered leaf remain behind, Nipt by the frost, and shivering in the wind; There it abides till younger buds come on As I, now all my fellow-swains are gone, Then from the rising generation thrust, It falls, like me, unnoticed to the dust. "These fruitful fields, these numerous flocks ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... life is impossible, the portion of the body thus situated must die, paralyzed or withered. Motion, use, are the law of life, and the frog of the horse's hoof with a function as essential and well-defined as any portion of his body is subject to the general law. Without use it dries, hardens, and becomes a shelly excrescence upon a foot, benumbed by the percussion of heavy iron upon hard ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... many-volumed gains, Those withered leaves forever turning, To win, at best, for all your pains, A nature mummy-wrapt in ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... be the general watershed of the district, ran several small streams, that united in the middle of it in one deep gulch, which overflowed in winter with a foaming torrent— although there was now little or no water, and the grass and shrubs around seemed parched and withered for want of moisture. The "location," however, was a pleasant one, possessing all the proper requisites for a stationary camp such as they contemplated; for, within hand-reach they could have wood, water, and forage for their baggage animals. The teams they had hired were at once ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... shall be glad when it's over, for I think my mother 'ull perhaps get easier then. It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off, and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree." ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... which he had been gathering the dead leaves in the avenue; his back bent, partly with years, partly with the obeisance of a servitor. There was something so marked in this contrast, in this old man standing in the shadow of the fading year, himself as dried and withered as the leaves he was raking, yet pausing to make his reverence to this passing sunshine of youth and prosperity in the presence of his coming master, that the consul, as they swept by, looked after him ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Take her away!" screamed Madam Conway; while Hagar, raising her withered hand deprecatingly, said: "Hear me first. Do you know where Margaret is? ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... couch under bridges or in caves or holes of the earth. On the skirts of the tobacco plantations and in the swampy malarial region where the ground never gets dry I slept beside bonfires. I learned of the natives to safeguard against fever by placing withered leaves on bark or wilted bracken leaves between myself and the ground. At a little settlement called Olginka I slept on an accumulation of logs outside the village church. On this occasion I wrapped myself up in ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... woman—some aged trifle of an elder day, sad, withered, devitalized, intemperately reminiscent—steeped in traditions that would leave her formidable, and impracticable as a friend to me. I had fancied her thus, from Clem's fragmentary and chance descriptions and my own knowledge of what she should be by all laws of the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... wearing only a gray flannel shirt, lost his footing; he fell, and rolled over and over down the deck stupidly, inertly, without making the slightest effort to save himself, without uttering the least cry; he brought up suddenly against the rail, with a great jar, the shock of his soft, withered body against the hard wood sounding like the sodden impact of a bundle of damp clothes. There was a cry; they thought him killed—Vandover had seen his head gashed against a sharp angle of iron—but he jumped up with sudden agility, ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... who was taken from his mother when three nights old?" The Stag said, "When first I came hither there was a plain all around me, without any trees save one oak sapling, which grew up to be an oak with an hundred branches. And that oak has since perished, so that now nothing remains of it but the withered stump; and from that day to this I have been here, yet have I never heard of the man for whom you enquire. Nevertheless, being an embassy from Arthur, I will be your guide to the place where there is an animal which ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... deep brown, again to flash forth with the brilliancy of precious gems. Often they may be observed flying round the deep, cup-shaped calix of the scarlet trumpet-flower, which with its rich foliage clings in clusters round the gnarled stem of some withered oak, clothing it with a verdure not its own. Into these deep and capacious tubes the ruby-throat, with its long bill, probes, and draws forth either the sweets it produces, or picks up the multitude of ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... these, So withered and so wild in their attire That look not like th' inhabitants of earth And yet ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... half from the town, was the Women's Laager, visited not seldom by the enemy's shell-fire, in spite of the Red-Cross Flag. Fever and rheumatism, pneumonia and diphtheria stalked among the dwellers in these tainted burrows, claiming their human toll. Women languished and little children pined and withered, dying for lack of exercise and fresh air, with the free veld spreading away on all sides to the horizon, and the burning blue South African sky overhead. Famine had not yet appeared among the Europeans, though ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... beside him; and a book of sculduddery sangs was put betwixt the leaves, to keep it open at the place where it bore evidence against the goodman of Primrose Knowe, as behind the hand with his mails and duties. Sir Robert gave my gudesire a look, as if he would have withered his heart in his bosom. Ye maun ken he had a way of bending his brows that men saw the visible mark of a horseshoe in his forehead, deep-dinted, as if it had been ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... its charms, when it was "the prettiest little baby that ever was seen. Dear mother, I wish you could see her! Without any pershality, I do think she will grow up a regular bewty!" I thought of Miss Jenkyns, grey, withered, and wrinkled, and I wondered if her mother had known her in the courts of heaven: and then I knew that she had, and that they stood there in ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Watch her through its transparent walls;—her bosom is heaving; but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle, compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the "Book of Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that frightened her most. How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... thoughts; to numbers, doubtless, before him they had occurred; but these numbers had looked abroad, and seen nothing around them to justify what they felt, and their feelings had, in consequence, either festered within them, or withered away. But when a man, thus constituted within, falls under the shadow of Catholicism without, then the mighty Creed at once produces an influence upon him. He see that it justifies his thoughts, explains his feelings; he understands that it numbers, corrects, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... thee the last will soon be o'er. Rest thee, oh, rest thee! Flowers have withered thus before,— And, my poor heart, what wouldst thou more? ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... had done Their work on them by turns, and thinned them to Such things a mother had not known her son Amidst the skeletons of that gaunt crew;[144] By night chilled, by day scorched, thus one by one They perished, until withered to these few, But chiefly by a species of self-slaughter, In washing down ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Inca woman grabbed the coin and hid it away in the recesses of her girdle. "Quite sufficient, gallant cavalier," she replied. "Your generosity has not withered with the years. You are a brave man; and I would that I might have shown you a more pleasant ending to your life; but fate is fate, and there is no changing it. Adios, senores, adios; I do not think ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... criminal things on me. If you must, wait till we drive away from the house. My wife mustn't see them. Let me tell you suthin'. Down the hill yander under a tree there's a grave an' in it the most precious dust human flesh ever withered into. Drag me there an' I will put my hand on that grave an' sw'ar that I won't attempt ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... afternoon when Theron walked out of his yard, bestowing no glance upon the withered and tarnished show of the garden, and started with a definite step down the street. The tendency to ruminative loitering, which those who saw him abroad always associated with his tall, spare figure, was not suggested today. He moved forward like a ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... memorable in the annals of New Brunswick's history. Many there are still living who distinctly remember that awful visitation. The season of drought was unparalleled. Farmers looked aghast and trembled as they viewed the scanty, withered products of the land. All joined in the common uneasiness, daily awaiting relief. None felt more anxiety than Sir Howard Douglas, whose sole interests were those of ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... could see the green light in the princess's room, and where, even in the broad daylight, he would be in no danger of being discovered from the opposite shore. It was a sort of cave in the rock, where he provided himself a bed of withered leaves, and lay down too tired for hunger to keep him awake. All night long he dreamed that he ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... it for Bellerophon that the gentle child had grown so fond of him, and was never weary of keeping him company. Every morning the child gave him a new hope to put in his bosom, instead of yesterday's withered one. ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... Fitzgerald at this period was an old man in appearance, though by no means an old man in years, being hardly more than fifty. Why he should have withered away, as it were, into premature greyness, and loss of the muscle and energy of life, none knew; unless, indeed, his wife did know. But so it was. He had, one may say, all that a kind fortune could give him. He ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... he became famous by many feats, among others, by destroying the submarine stronghold of a race of sea-folk who had carried off his mother. Into their abode he let a flood of sunshine, and they, being children of the darkness, withered and died in the light. The fame of Tawhaki rose to the skies, and one of the daughters of heaven stole down to behold him at night, vanishing away at dawn. At last the celestial one became his wife. But he was not pleased with ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... to have it dried in my old pocket book, when it's really withered," continued the boy, "and then I shall be able ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... Mochuda on another occasion with her husband, a woman named Brigh whose hand lay withered and useless by her side: she besought the saint to cure her hand. Moreover she was pregnant at the time. Mochuda held out an apple in his hand to her as he had done before to Flandnait, the daughter of Cuana, saying—"Alleluia, put forth your nerveless hand ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... hunting. One after another the vehicles rolled out along the road, past Sant' Agnese, down the hill and across the Ponte Nomentana, and far up beyond to a place where three roads met and there was a broad open stretch of wet, withered grass. Here the carriages turned in and ranged themselves side by side, as though they were pausing in the afternoon drive upon the Pincio, instead of being five miles ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... were sorry to see the rich cream spilled, but they remembered the warning of Lady Greensleeves; and seeing they could do no better, each got a withered branch and began to help the lords, scratching up the ground with the sharp end, and planting acorns. But their fathers took no notice of them, nor of all that they could say. When the sun grew warm at noon, they went again to drink at the ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... villany and rampant vice, but few listened to their warnings. They were jeered at by the vulgar, fined, imprisoned, or banished by Ministers and Magistrates. All that was good, noble, and generous in the nation withered in the uncongenial atmosphere. The language of Pascal and of Corneille became the medium of corrupting the minds of millions. The events of the day were some actress who had discovered a new way to outrage decency, or some new ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... abstractedly to his feet. Tydomin was talking to her dead husband. She was peering into the hideous face of ivory, and fondling his violet hair. When she perceived Maskull, she hastily kissed the withered lips, and got up from her knees. Lifting the corpse with all three arms, she staggered with it to the extreme edge of the gulf and, after an instant's hesitation, allowed it to drop into the lava. It disappeared immediately without sound; a metallic splash came ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... of my health, Conuaid me from their crooked nets and bands: So I escapt the furious Pirrhus wrath: Who then ran to the pallace of the King, And at Ioues Altar finding Priamus, About whose withered necke hung Hecuba, Foulding his hand in hers, and ioyntly both Beating their breasts and falling on the ground, He with his faulchions poynt raisde vp at once, And with Megeras eyes stared in their face, Threatning a thousand deaths at euery glaunce. To whom the aged King thus trembling spoke: ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe
... On the ground, in the corner of a small tent, lies a poor soldier. Bandages stained with blood are lying about. The poor sufferer is very pale, and his face shows marks of pain. An old woman, whose face is full of anxious love, sits by his side and holds his hand. The young man lifts the old withered hand to his lips and kisses it; he looks up through the thin canvas of his tent, and says, "Thank God, dear Mother, that you are here with me now to take care of me, else I think I should die. Forgive my ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... The fear of death, under which I laboured, turned all my food into poison. I fell into a languishing distemper, which proved my safety; for the blacks having killed and eaten my companions, seeing me to be withered, lean, and sick, deferred ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... followed the suggestion, and the soft wheep, wheep of unscabbarded knives followed the chuckle. It was an excellent notion, and met a long felt want of the tribe. The Mullah sprang to his feet, glaring with withered eyeballs at the drawn death he could not see, and calling down the curses of God and Mahomed on the tribe. Then began a game of blind man's buff round and between the fires, whereof Khuruk Shah, the tribal poet, has sung in verse ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... withered, and fell. But the mighty stem had grown richer through the beautiful bloom of ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... stern air, telling him, he came to the island as a spy, to take it from him who was the lord of it. "Follow me," said be. "I will tie your neck and feet together. You shall drink sea-water; shell-fish, withered roots, and husks of ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... drove down Whitehall the sun brightened to a naked midday heat, throwing its cloak of mists behind it. The gilding on the Clock Tower sparkled in the light; even the dusty, airless street, with its withered planes, was on a sudden flooded with gaiety. Two or three official or Parliamentary acquaintances saluted the successful minister as he passed; and each was conscious of a certain impatience with the gravity of the well-known face. That a great man should ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... came presently to a green hill by the wayside. On the slope was a dilapidated Swiss cottage, surrounded by a veranda on slender wooden pillars, about which clung a few tendrils of withered creeper, their stray ends still swinging from the recent wind, now momentarily hushed as if listening for the coming of the rain. Access from the roadway was by a rough wooden gate in the hedge. ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... the prophet had said this, Jeroboam fell into a passion, and stretched out his hand, and bid them lay hold of him; but that hand which he stretched out was enfeebled, and he was not able to pull it in again to him, for it was become withered, and hung down, as if it were a dead hand. The altar also was broken to pieces, and all that was upon it was poured out, as the prophet had foretold should come to pass. So the king understood that he was a man of veracity, and had ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest; it was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs: but now in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk. It is now at best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air. It is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... smitten down, and withered like grass. I am even as a sparrow that sitteth alone on ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... road in the white moonlight they stamped as wantonly as any herd of kine; youths and maids with arms about each other, and all with faces flushed with ale-drinking, and the maids with tossing hair and draggled coats, and all the fresh garlands withered or scattered. And the old graybeard who was Maid Marion was riotously drunk, and borne aloft with mad and feeble gesturings on the shoulders of two staggering young men, and after him came the aged morris dancers, only upheld from collapse in ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... halting-place. Food was cooked; the queen filled the king's plate and then her own plate, and again she told her, servants to bring from the neighbouring village any one who was hungry and too poor to buy food. They came upon a petty farmer, whose well had dried up and whose crops had withered. He was sitting sadly by his field when they called him to go with them and listen to the queen's tale. He went with them to the camp. There the queen brought six pearls and gave three of them to the farmer and kept three of them herself. Then she told ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... Montreal. The King's minister, Sully, as he himself tells us, opposed the plan, on the ground that the colonization of this northern wilderness would never repay the outlay; but De Monts gained his point. He was made Lieutenant-General in Acadia, with viceregal powers; and withered Feudalism, with her antique forms and tinselled follies, was again to seek a new home among the rocks and pine-trees of Nova Scotia. The foundation of the enterprise was a monopoly of the fur-trade, and in its favor all past ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... here to watch them buried there. He said there would always be a place next your mother for you. 'Tell the boy that,' he said." Chad put his arms around the tombstone and then sank on one knee by his mother's grave. It was strewn with withered violets. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... several starting-points. At five minutes before midnight, to the tick of their synchronized watches, each began to glide through the tall grass. But it was late September. The grass was dry. Old briar-veins dragged at brittle stalks. Shimmering whispers of withered leaves echoed to the smallest touch; and when the men were still some two hundred yards from the cabin the sharp ears of a dog caught the rumor of all these tiny ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... live!" cried the Tree, rejoicingly, and spread its branches far out; but, alas! they were all withered and yellow, and it lay in the corner among nettles and weeds. The tinsel star was still upon it, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... machine-made by men who have learned to express finely what is not worth expressing at all, leads them to distrust the teaching of English composition. They condemn, however, a method of teaching that long since withered under their scorn. The aim of the college course in composition today is not the making of literature, but writing; not the production of imaginative masterpieces, but the orderly arrangement of thought in words. Through no foresight of our own, but thanks to the pressure of our immigrants upon ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with (by way of local colour) on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... enjoy life," said he, exultingly, and spread out his branches; but, alas! they were all withered and yellow. It was in a corner that he lay, among weeds and nettles. The golden star of tinsel was still on the top of the Tree, and glittered ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... demands a share; Loki strikes the eagle, who flies off with him, releasing him only on condition that he will betray to the giants Idunn, "the care-healing maid who understands the renewal of youth." He does so, and the Gods, who grow old and withered for want of her apples, force him to go and bring her ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... one well calculated to take a strong hold upon the imagination. The eminences, rising gradually from the river's banks, were dotted with white canvas tents, mingled with the more sombre-looking huts, constructed with once green but now withered branches. A few hundred yards from the river lay a large heap of planks and framings, which I was told were intended for constructing a store; the owner of which, a sallow Yankee, with a large pluffy cigaretto in his mouth, was labouring ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... but one plant of a kind, and in order to keep that one blooming at its best I have been in the habit of keeping the withered flowers cut off, and not allowing them to ripen seed, but there are many possibilities in this way of increasing plants. By exchanges with friends last fall I received several varieties of Geraniums, that were new to me. Among them was one named Albert Delarix; the flower is bright pink, shaded ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... youth towards age, and of health towards infirmity. And as almost unconsciously she exulted in her own youth, and strength, delicate little poniards of tragic grief for Mrs. Maldon's helpless and withered senility seemed to stab through that personal pride. The shiny, veined right hand of the old woman emerged from under the bedclothes and closed with hot, fragile grasp ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... "whoso with blood and tears would dig Art out of his soul, may lavish his golden prime in pursuit of emptiness, or, striking treasure, find only fairy gold, so that when his eyes are purged of the spell of morning, he sees his hands are full of withered leaves." ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... a glazed frame, there hung a bouquet of withered flowers; they were almost fifty years old; they looked so ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... at the customary hour—to wit, eleven P.M. —and had a real treat as our train left the mainland and went gliding far out, seemingly right through the placid Adriatic, to where the beaded lights of Venice showed like a necklace about the withered throat of a long-abandoned bride, waiting in the rags of her moldered wedding finery for a bridegroom ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... advantage from a kindred cause, From strenuous toil his hours of sweetest ease. The sedentary stretch their lazy length When custom bids, but no refreshment find, For none they need: the languid eye, the cheek Deserted of its bloom, the flaccid, shrunk, And withered muscle, and the vapid soul, Reproach their owner with that love of rest To which he forfeits even the rest he loves. Not such the alert and active. Measure life By its true worth, the comforts it affords, And theirs alone seems worthy of the name Good health, and, its associate ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... had it not been for the providential change of the wind and the falling of the rain, must in a few minutes have been destroyed. The prairie was covered with cinders, and the grass was burned and withered. The forest on the other side of the stream, to a great extent, was burned down; some of the largest trees still remained, throwing out their blackened arms, now leafless and branchless, to the sky, but they were never to throw forth ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... Dearg had a daughter, Scathniamh, the Flower of Brightness, that gave her love to Caoilte in the time of the Fianna; and they were forced to part from one another, and they never met again till the time Caoilte was, old and withered, and one of the last that was left of the Fianna. And she came to him out of the cave of Cruachan, and asked him for the bride-price he had promised her, and that she was never able to come and ask for till then. And Caoilte went to a cairn that was ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... one of those glorious afternoons that sometimes come in the African spring, although it was so intensely still. Everywhere appeared the proofs of evidences of life. The winter was over, and now, from the sadness and sterility of its withered age, sprang youth and lovely summer clad in sunshine, bediamonded with dew, and fragrant with the breath of flowers. Jess lay back and looked up into the infinite depths above. How blue they were, and how measureless! She could not see the angry clouds that lay like ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... system stood on the brink of bankruptcy, a double victim of our economic ills. First, a decade of rampant inflation drained its reserves as we tried to protect beneficiaries from the spiraling cost of living. Then the recession and the sudden end of inflation withered the expanding wage base and increasing revenues the system needs to support the 36 million Americans who depend ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... songs of pale emaciate hours, The fungus-growth of years of peace, Withered before us like mown flowers; We found no pleasure more in these When bullets ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... language training. Only by diligent practice and incessant exercise of attention and care, could Milton have educated his susceptibility to the specific power of words, to the nicety which he attained beyond any other of our poets. Part of this education is recorded in the seemingly withered leaves of his Latin Thesaurus, though the larger part must have been achieved, not by a reflective and critical collection of examples, but by ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... to the last moment. I am the traitor. I have eaten of the salt, warmed myself at the fire, shared the kindness, of these Christian white people, and it was I that told them of their danger. I am a withered, leafless, branchless trunk. Cut me down, if you will: I ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... after to-morrow only, and there is a change; some of the grass is riper, some is thicker, with further blades which have pushed up, some browner. Cold northern winds cause it to wear a dry, withered aspect; under warm showers it visibly opens itself; in a hurricane it tosses itself wildly to and fro; it laughs ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... and gave him a look. No, it was not a look; it was the merest fraction of a look, but it withered him up. ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... that one does not dare to look at. Through his obscure, violent, and miserable talk, Clerambault at last made out what it was that tore the hearts of these young men. It is easy enough for dried-up egotists, withered intellectuals, to sneer at this love of life in the young, and their despair at the loss of it; but it was not alone their ruined, blasted youth that pressed on these poor soldiers,—though that was terrible enough—the worst was not to know the reason for this sacrifice, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... to whom I meane it most, And eke to her whose faire immortall beame Hath darted fyre into my feeble ghost, That now it wasted is with woes extreame, 25 It may so please, that she at length will streame Some deaw of grace into my withered hart, After long sorrow ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... that sweet name, seemed to be three or four months old, but, being such an unthrifty changeling, might have been considerably older. It was all covered with blotches, and preternaturally dark and discolored; it was withered away, quite shrunken and fleshless; it breathed only amid pantings and gaspings, and moaned painfully at every gasp. The only comfort in reference to it was the evident impossibility of its surviving to draw many ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... away, that our early dinner-hour drew close at hand, and Estella left us to prepare herself. We had stopped near the centre of the long table, and Miss Havisham, with one of her withered arms stretched out of the chair, rested that clenched hand upon the yellow cloth. As Estella looked back over her shoulder before going out at the door, Miss Havisham kissed that hand to her, with a ravenous intensity that was of ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Osmia's habits. Amid the tangle of a hedge, a bramble-stalk is selected, still standing, but a mere withered stump. In this the insect digs a more or less deep tunnel, an easy piece of work owing to the abundance of soft pith. Provisions are heaped up right at the bottom of the tunnel and an egg is laid on the ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... a short time—from February to April; for in May a burning wind from the desert sweeps over the flowery meadows, and in one short day the grass has withered and its flower has faded. All "the grace of the fashion of it perishes," and there is no more beauty in the fields till the return of spring makes them ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... only half deserved. For I never yet was conscious—alas, that the confession should be forced from me!—of winning the heart of any maiden, whether native or Italian; and as for such delicacy of imagination as to work up a lovely damsel out of the withered remnant that forty odd years of Italian life can spare, I can assure my middle-aged friends, (and it may serve as a caveat,) I can lay no claim ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... And now happened one of those wonderful things which sometimes occur in real life, but which, in novels, we pronounce improbable. Whilst we were speaking a train arrived; and I noticed a little withered old man,—a little smirking mummy of a man,—with a face all wrinkles and smiles, coming out of the building with his coat on his arm. I noticed him, because he was so ancient and dried up, and yet so happy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Frequently we took over a hundred skins in a single day, while at every camp cords of fallen flint hides were accumulating. The heat of summer was upon us, the wind arose daily, sand storms and dust clouds swept across the country, until our once prosperous range looked like a desert, withered and accursed. Young cows forsook their offspring in the hour of their birth. Motherless calves wandered about the range, hollow-eyed, their piteous appeals unheeded, until some lurking wolf sucked their blood and spread a feast to the vultures, constantly wheeling in great flights ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... Used.—A wide variety of material is used by birds that build open nests. Cotton and feathers enter largely into the composition of the lining of a Shrike's nest. In Florida the Mockingbird shows a decided preference for the withered leaves and stems of life-everlasting, better known as the plant that produces "rabbit tobacco." The nest of the Summer Tanager is made almost entirely of grasses, the outer half being green, freshly plucked blades that ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... his sight had long since faded, his hearing was still acute, and the slightest sound penetrated to the glimmering intelligence which yet abode behind the withered forehead, but which no longer gazed forth upon the things of the world. Ah! that was Sit-cum-to-ha, shrilly anathematizing the dogs as she cuffed and beat them into the harnesses. Sit-cum-to-ha was his daughter's daughter, but she was ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... had grown and withered, and grown again and young saplings were now rising in their beds, nourished by the moisture that still remained; but the large forest trees were drooping and many were dead. The emus, with outstretched necks, gasping for breath, searched the channels ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... pupae and larvae, not gathered together, but dispersed, apparently irregularly, throughout the flocculent mass. This mass, which I have called the ant-food, proved, on examination, to be composed of minutely subdivided pieces of leaves, withered to a brown colour, and overgrown and lightly connected together by a minute white fungus that ramified in every direction throughout it. I not only found this fungus in every chamber I opened, but also in the chambers of the nest of a distinct species that generally comes ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... the islands there ran tales of charred derelicts at sea, of sudden glares seen afar in the night-time, and of withered bodies stretched upon the sand of waterless Bahama Keys. All the old signs were there to show that Sharkey was at his bloody game ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a glove. Her hand became lost in her bosom. When she drew it forth she extended it, palm upward. Upon it lay a faded, withered rose. Once more she turned ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... reminded him of the gladsome morning hour, or invited him to take a moment's rest from his grievous journey. All was lonely and comfortless; and sighing bitterly over the wide devastation, he concealed the fatal sword and the horn under his cloak, and with a staff which he broke from a withered tree, took his way down the winding craigs. Many a pointed flint pierced his aged feet, while exploring the almost trackless paths, which by their direction he hoped would lead him at length to the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... which for the greater facility of communication with the stars he had fixed in the loftiest apartment of the house, our trio knocked at the door, which, after some hesitation, was opened by an ancient Sybil, who was presently joined by her counterpart, both "so withered and so wild in their attire," that "they looked not like inhabitants o' th' earth, and yet were on it." On the party requiring to see the Doctor, the two hags explained in a breath that the Doctor received only one visitor at a time; and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... indulgent to Olivia as you are to me: indeed you are prejudiced against her; and because you see some faults, you think her whole character vicious. But would you cut down a fine tree because a leaf is withered, or because the canker-worm has eaten into the bud? Even if a main branch were decayed, are there not remedies which, skilfully applied, can save the tree from destruction, and perhaps restore it ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... the flower sweet, and it drops off into withered leaves. And her eyes looked askance at M'sieu Ralph, yet she hath a husband. Come, eat of thy bird and bread, and to-morrow maybe thou wilt run about lest thy limbs stiffen up ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... boy did as he was bid, but Daddy Jack grunted ungraciously and made no response to the salutation. He was evidently not fond of children. Uncle Remus glanced curiously at the dwarfed and withered figure, and ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... she has not heard the good news yet. We will be the first to communicate it," they whispered, standing before the dilapidated, withered-looking door. ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... no longer be robbed by the 'System.' In leaving you, the Exchange, and stock-gambling forever, as I shall when I leave this platform, I will say from the depth of a heart that has been broken, from the profoundity of a soul that has been withered by the 'System's' poison, with a full sense of my responsibility to my fellow-man and to my God, that I advise every one of you to do what I have done and to do it quickly, before the doing of it by others shall have made it impossible, ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... affectionate welcome she so well deserved in many homes, where friends vied with each other to fill the void in her sensitive heart. She was of too wise a nature, and too sympathizing a habit, to shut out new interests and affections, but her old ones never withered, nor were they ever replaced; were the love of such a sister-friend—the watchful tenderness and uncompromising love of a mother—ever "replaced," to a lonely sister or a bereaved daughter! Miss Porter's pen had been laid aside for some time, when suddenly she ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... detachment who lay around it. At intervals during the day the British right flank was annoyed by shots from Boers on the plain to the east of the Riet. These men several times appeared to be about to make a serious attack upon this part of the line, but their purpose always withered up under the fire of the Grenadiers' Maxim gun, of detachments of the Guards left to hold the southern reservoir, and of the mounted infantry and 9th Lancers on the ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... died. When I was old enough to take care of myself I went to Silver Bayou. . . . Many people in that town had died; some still survived. I found the parish records. I found one of the camp doctors who remembered that accursed year of plague—an old man, withered, indifferent, sleeping his days away on the rotting gallery of his tumble-down house. He knew. . . . And I found some of the militia still surviving; and one among them retained a confused memory of my mother—among the ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... read this invoice of his love, he sat long before the little fire as one dead. Then he rose, felt in his bosom, and drew out two flowers, one withered, the other fresh. He dropped these among the embers, straightened himself; lifted his arms toward heaven, ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... world has offered so great encouragement, whether in fame or money, to men of science and literature, as the present. Formerly, authors flourished under the patronage of princes, or withered by their neglect; but now they are encouraged and paid by the people, and reap where they have sown, whether kings will or not. The poverty of authors was once proverbial; but now the only authors who are poor are poor authors. Good learning, integrity, and ability, are well compensated in all ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... her love lay cold in death, Sunk in the black and silent tomb, All sere and withered was the wreath That wont ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... provision-thieves, the grub-murderers and the house-grabbers who levy tribute on the Mason-bee. Does that end the list? Not at all. The old nests are cities of the dead. They contain Bees who, on achieving the perfect state, were unable to open the exit-door through the cement and who withered in their cells; they contain dead larvae, turned into black, brittle cylinders; untouched provisions, both mouldy and fresh, on which the egg has come to grief; tattered cocoons; shreds of skins; relics ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... unconscious of the gigantic scythe wielded by the gigantic dishevelled Death, and which, in a second, will descend and mow them to the ground; but the crowd of beggars, ragged, maimed, paralyzed, leprous, grovelling on their withered limbs, see and implore Death, and cry stretching forth their arms, their stumps, and their crutches. Further on, three kings in long embroidered robes and gold-trimmed shovel caps, Lewis the Emperor, Uguccione of Pisa, and Castruccio of Lucca, with their retinue of ladies and squires, and hounds ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... without and apprehended and incorporated with ourselves through the medium of the understanding or of the heart. There is an old story in the history of Israel about a young king that was bid by the prophet to bend his bow against the enemies of Israel, as a symbol; and the old prophet put his withered, skinny brown hand on the young man's fleshy one, and then said to him, 'Shoot.' But this Divine Spirit comes to strengthen us in a more intimate and blessed fashion than that, for it glides into our hearts and dwells in our spirits, and our work, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the emperor: if he took the wings of the morning, and fled to the uttermost parts of the earth, there also was the emperor or his lieutenants. But the same omnipresence of imperial anger and retribution which withered the hopes of the poor humble prisoner, met and confounded the emperor himself, when hurled from his giddy elevation by some fortunate rival. All the kingdoms of the earth, to one in that situation, became but so ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... dreaded it more than my brandished knife. She never thought of imploring mercy, for she supposed it was useless after the discovery, and that her hour was come; she therefore lifted the cup to her withered lip, and was just going to fulfil her destiny and to drink, when I dashed it out of her hand, and broke it in a thousand pieces on the floor, darting, at the same time, a fierce look at Carlotta, who threw herself ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... summons from Dodd to get up and look at the mountains. There was hardly a breath of air astir, and the atmosphere had that peculiar crystalline transparency which may sometimes be seen in California. A heavy hoar-frost lay white on the boats and grass, and a few withered leaves dropped wavering through the still cool air from the yellow birch trees which overhung our tent. There was not a sound to break harshly upon the silence of dawn; and only the tracks of wild reindeer ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the departure was a sad farewell to a life which she had entered upon so full of abounding hope and charity, so full of love for God and man, that she could not believe that all her bright hopes had withered and only ashes remained. The way was dark. The path was hedged ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... royal prince; his four members bent down with toil, his head and neck deprived of their glossy look, whinnying as he went on with grief, he refused night and day his grass and water, because he had lost his lord, the deliverer of men. Returning thus to Kapilavastu, the whole country appeared withered and bare, as when one comes back to a deserted village; or as when the sun hidden behind Sumeru causes darkness to spread over the world. The fountains of water sparkled no more, the flowers and fruits were withered and dead, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... and Catholic, ascribe it to the influence of the church, not by direct emancipatory decrees, but, following the example of God through Moses, by gradually restricting the master's power, and protecting the slave; by girdling the poison tree till it withered and fell, though, sad to say, the ruins still disfigure too much field, of the fair fields of ...
— Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible? • Isaac Allen
... about their neck, three times round the house, and this last is always great fun. Or, maybe, a young, upsetting fellow, will be sent to kiss some toothless, slavering, ould woman, just to punish him; or if a young woman is any way saucy, she'll have to kiss some ould, withered fellow, his tongue hanging with age half way down his chin, and the tobacco water trickling from each ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... she were still this ruffian's prisoner when the long Arctic night fell, she would suffer the tortures of the damned. She faced the fact squarely, though her cheeks blanched at the prospect and the heart inside her withered. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... an acorn thirty years ago, is the same tree I saw spring up then a little twig, which not even a moderate sceptic will deny; though he takes so much pains to persuade plain folks out of their own existence, by laughing us out of the dull notion that he who dies a withered old fellow at fourscore, should ever be considered as the same person whom his mother brought forth a pretty little plump baby eighty years before—when, says he cunningly, you are forced yourself to confess, that his mother, who died four months afterwards, would ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... faults at home be spread abroad? Tis grief enough within doors. At first sight Mine Uncle could run o'er his prodigal life As perfectly, as if his serious eye Had numbered all his follies: Knew of his mortgaged lands, his friends in bonds, Himself withered with debts: And in that minute Had I added his usage and unkindness, Twould have confounded every thought of good: Where now, fathering his riots on his youth, Which time and tame experience will shake off, Guessing his kindness to me (as I smoothd him With all the skill I had) though ...
— A Yorkshire Tragedy • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... soon lie quiet together, you and I," said old Jehan Daas, stretching out to stroke the head of Patrasche with the old withered hand which had always shared with him its one poor crust of bread; and the hearts of the old man and the old dog ached together with one thought: When they were gone who would ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... corrupt masters and a corrupt State policy; and after he had been one night overtaken and had played the buffoon in his cups, sternly, though not without tact, suppressed all reference to his escapade. It was a treat to see him manage this: the various jesters withered under his gaze, and you were forced to recognise in him a certain steely force, and a gift of command which might have ruled ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... outright. When we made the nation the sole trustee of the wealth of the people, and guaranteed to all abundant maintenance, on the one hand abolishing want, and on the other checking the accumulation of riches, we cut this root, and the poison tree that overshadowed your society withered, like Jonah's gourd, in a day. As for the comparatively small class of violent crimes against persons, unconnected with any idea of gain, they were almost wholly confined, even in your day, to the ignorant and bestial; and in these days, when education and good manners are not ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy |
