"Withering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blasted the whole earth. And the misery was the more miserable and awful because it had all been foretold, and in it God was but doing 'as He had said' and sworn. It is a dreadful picture of the all-withering effect of God's anger,—a picture which is repeated in inmost verity in many an ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... irresistible energy of argument, and such power of elocution as struck his hearers with astonishment and admiration. It flashed like the lightning of heaven against the ministers and sons of corruption, blasting where it smote, and withering the nerves of opposition; but his more substantial praise was founded upon his disinterested integrity his incorruptible heart, his unconquerable spirit of independence, and his invariable attachment to the interest and liberty ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... as the warm weather closed in, in the summer of 1604, the malaria in the Tower began to affect Raleigh's health. As he tells Cecil, now Lord Cranborne, in a most dolorous letter, he was withering in body and mind. The plague had come close to him, his son having lain a fortnight with only a paper wall between him and a woman whose child was dying of that terrible complaint. Lady Raleigh, at last, had been able to bear the terror of infection ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... the day Mr. Bangs rode over, and made excuses for Matilda, who thought it wrong to go into society so soon after her husband's death. Finally, the constable appeared in full regimentals, with the stalwart Mrs. Rigby on his arm. That lady bestowed on the faithless Ben a glance of withering contempt, but the constable shook hands with him, as if he had been his greatest ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... and twining shrubs, but to trees, that gripe the rock with their naked roots, and seem to struggle hard for footing and for soil enough to live upon. These are fir-trees; but oaks hang their heavy branches from above, and throw down acorns on the beach, and shed their withering foliage upon the waves. At this autumnal season, the precipice is decked with variegated splendor; trailing wreaths of scarlet flaunt from the summit downward; tufts of yellow-flowering shrubs, and rose-bushes, with their reddened ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... foul steam to pollute the common light; there are kennels of uncleanness, running with the waste of human lives, sweeping along with the death-gurgle of human souls; there is a dry-rot of impurity infecting the town-air, withering the dearest sanctities of society and of home—and over this kind of evil we cannot be facetious. Think how much is risked here, and how much is lost! Domestic happiness, reputation, honor, health, order, the prospects of the young, the peace ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... her the lesson admirably," said the Baroness with withering scorn. "She told me the same ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of their character is assisted by a contrast with the English clergy of the same day, and which reveals shameful deformities on the part of the latter—avarice, indolence, and gluttony. Of such, Milton spake in Lycidas, with withering contempt, as ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... issues now upon the horizon, between the gross, luxurious, unthinking, unaspiring, uncreating life of today, and everything that has, in happier ages, given us the heritage of the soul—the issues between increasing comforts and withering ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... carnage!" he cried, as he saw his former friends and comrades fall before the withering blast. Seeing several of his men aiming their pieces at the only officer remaining unhurt, he darted forward and struck up their muskets, exclaiming: "For God's sake, lads, don't fire at that man! I love him as I do my brother." It was Major Small, ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... who does not shudder on hearing M. Leroux exclaim, "There is neither a paradise nor a hell; the wicked will not be punished, nor the good rewarded. Mortals! cease to hope and fear; you revolve in a circle of appearances; humanity is an immortal tree, whose branches, withering one after another, feed with their debris the root which is always young!" Where is the man who, on hearing this desolate confession of faith, does not demand with terror, "Is it then true that I am only an aggregate of elements organized by an unknown force, an ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... on, still on our column kept, Through walls of flame its withering way; Where fell the dead, the living stept, Still charging on the guns which swept ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... rectitude as he saw it. And he made painful and unremitting effort to see it and see it correctly. He was approachable, but repelled familiarity, and whoever attempted this was met with a perfectly withering look. He rarely laughed, and he was without humor, though he wrote and conversed well. He had the integrity of Aristides. His account with Congress while general shows scrupulousness to the uttermost farthing. To subordinate, to foe, even to malicious plotters against him, he was almost guiltily ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... measures; and he discussed this proposal with Priestley and Magellan. While Watt was examining the constituent parts of water, he had opportunities of familiar intercourse not only with Priestley, but with Withering, Keir, Edgeworth, Galton, Darwin, and his own partner, Boulton—all men above the average for their common interest in scientific inquiries. Dr. Parr frequently attended their meetings, and they kept up a correspondence ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... this he was mistaken; for, no sooner had he made her thoroughly cognizant of the fact that he was not an innocent, but a willing, instrument in the abduction of poor Kate, than she sprang to her feet, and with a glance the most withering, and full of unconquerable hate and aversion, without a single other word, left the apartment and ascended ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... be regarded, would make us all as beautiful in outward seeming as we strive to be, no doubt, in spirit. Ever so pure and lovely a soul in an unhealthy body is like a bird trying to thrive and sing in an ill-kept cage, or a flower blooming with a blight set deep within its withering petals. You or I can serve neither heaven nor mankind worthily if we disregard the laws of health, and bear about with us a frail and poorly nurtured body. There are "shut in" spirits, to be sure, captives ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... sparkling in the morning beam; And to the turf its helpless hands were frozen: For she, the woeful mother, had gone mad, And laid it down, regardless of its fate And of her own. Yet had she many days Of sorrow in the world, but never wept. She lived on alms; and carried in her hand Some withering stalks, she gathered in the spring; When they asked the cause, she smiled, and said, They were her sisters, and would come and watch Her grave when she was dead. She never spoke Of her deceiver, father, mother, home, Or child, or heaven, or ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... more, you petty spirits of region low, Offend our hearing; hush! How dare you ghosts Accuse the thunderer, whose bolt, you know, Sky-planted batters all rebelling coasts? Poor shadows of Elysium, hence, and rest Upon your never-withering banks of flowers. Be not with mortal accidents opprest: No care of yours it is; you know 'tis ours. Whom best I love I cross; to make my gift, The more delay'd, delighted. Be content; Your low-laid son our godhead will uplift. His comforts ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... at his comrade was withering in the extreme. So great was his faith in Ned's ability that he would not have hesitated at anything, no matter ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... know thee by my throbbing heart: Thy withering power inspired each mournful line: Though gentle Pity claim her mingled part, Yet all the thunders of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... moment a withering volley was poured upon the boat, and a savage yell of agony followed, while the rowers—who remained unhurt—paused for an instant as if paralysed. Next instant they recovered, and another stroke would have brought them almost alongside, when Captain Ellice pointed the little carronade and fired. ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... finally shame and anger. For, feeling my eyes upon her, she looked up and met what she must have thought the impudent stare of an appraiser. Her face, which had been without color, pale and clear like the sky about the evening star, went crimson in a moment. She bit her lip and shot at me one withering glance, then dropped her eyelids and hid the lightning. When I looked at her again, covertly, and from under my hand raised as though to push back my hair, she was pale once more, and her dark eyes were fixed upon the water and the green trees ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... enters into the spirit of the true American character, so remarkable for its mildness and disposition to mercy, in carrying out the powers of government, to permit such a struggle as would be likely to produce long-continued, or very withering local distress. Compromises in some form or other would be resorted to, to restore the course of the commerce of the country; and although it might be, and probably would be, that this could only be accomplished in the midst of the triumph of disorder, irresponsibility, ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... time when she was young, and as the weeks went by his sorrow took on a wistful, vague longing for the past. Through the gate of memory he reentered the world of his youth and walked once more with William and David and Luke. The mists which filled his eyes had nothing hot or withering in their touch—they comforted him. Whether he hoped to meet his love in some other world or not I do not know—but ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... be taken away back and set down with a jar in about two seconds if you are seized with another of those spells," promised Tom Gray, turning a withering ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... tell me thy heart's desire. Be good to me Kate, I love thee so; I must tell thee, it cuts me to the quick to have thee so set against me. Thou wilt espouse me some day, sweet one?" Katherine stood up and shot a withering glance full ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... not been in that place; hence he was struck by neglect in it, and poverty. The brick wall was falling, in the garden the trees were withering, in the yard a lean goat moved around and a few hens ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... sad, wicked, or strange, will very soon do. Had it not been for the silent, shut-up castle, standing summer and winter on the loch-side, with its flower-gardens blossoming for none to gather, and its woods— the pride of the whole country—budding and withering, with scarcely a foot to cross, or an eye to notice their wonderful beauty, people would ere long have forgotten the very existence of the ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... goes on, my aunt will have an administration as important as that of a European state. Oh! you are happy here, you people; you are busy. I amuse myself! And if you knew how it wearies me! I am withering, consuming myself, I ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... sharply, then, with a withering look that encompassed both the man and his jug, she struck the horses with her whip ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... slave himself; the suspicion that a Nat. Turner might be in every family—that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time, and in any place—that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion. Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension, nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependants to protect, nothing but this could have thrown a brave people into consternation, or could ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... "your father came one day to talk about your portrait, and I showed him the place which I dignify with the name of terrace. It is but a small square of zinc, on which a few sickly plants are withering. It was not worthy to ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... temptation to seize the phlegmatic page by the collar, and give him such another shaking as he would not get over for a week to come; but suddenly recollecting he was Leoline's brother, and by the same token a marquis or thereabouts, he merely paused to cast a withering look upon him, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... ambition, and would have gone to the house of her brother and have expended herself in nursing her nephews and nieces. But luckily for her—or unluckily, as it may be—this money had come to her before her time for withering had arrived. In heart, and energy, and desire, there was still much of strength left to her. Indeed it may be said of her, that she had come so late in life to whatever of ripeness was to be vouchsafed to her, that perhaps the period of her thraldom had not terminated itself a day ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... and periwinkle were thought to inspire love; while the agnus castus and the Saraca Indica (one of the sacred plants of India), a species of the willow, were supposed to drive away all feelings of love. Similarly in Voigtland, the common basil was regarded as a test of chastity, withering in the hands of the impure. The mandrake, which is still worn in France as a love-charm, was employed by witches in the composition of their philtres; and in Bohemia, it is said that if a maiden can secretly put a sprig ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... "Oh, Chesnel, no one but you would think of such a thing!" she added, with a withering look; before such a look from a woman's eyes no mortal can stand. "There is but one crime that a noble can commit—the crime of high treason; and when he is beheaded, the block is covered with a black cloth, ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... the same door almost as hastily, but she was a stately and rather handsome woman of forty, who gave the intruder such a withering look from her serene blue eyes that the unrefined member of the Seven Arts slunk out and could be heard ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... with a lurid glare spread far and wide over the cloudless sky, rises above the arid plains, drawing up every particle of moisture, and withering with the intense heat of his rays every blade of grass and green leaf, till it seems as if the whole region were doomed to eternal desolation. At length, however, a wonderful change takes place over the hitherto arid waste. A thick ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... advantage over us, for they were always ready, had cover, and always knew the ground to their immediate front; whereas we, their assailants, had to grope our way over unknown ground, and generally found a cleared field or prepared entanglements that held us for a time under a close and withering fire. Rarely did the opposing lines in compact order come into actual contact, but when, as at Peach-Tree Creek and Atlanta, the lines did become commingled, the men fought individually in every possible ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... of men often dies with the shout that proclaims it. Another idol appears and the feverish worship is transferred to him. The world's garland begins to fade as soon as it is laid upon the brow. The morning after the coronation I possess a handful of withering leaves. But the garland of God's praise acquires new grace and beauty with the years. It is never so fresh and flourishing as just when everything else is fading away. It is glorious in the hour of death! The soul goes, wearing ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... and reaction; working continually forward, phasis after phasis, by unalterable laws, towards prescribed issues? How often must we say, and yet not rightly lay to heart: The seed that is sown, it will spring! Given the summer's blossoming, then there is also given the autumnal withering: so is it ordered not with seedfields only, but with transactions, arrangements, philosophies, societies, French Revolutions, whatsoever man works with in this lower world. The Beginning holds in it the End, and all that leads thereto; as the acorn does the oak and its fortunes. Solemn enough, did ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... they should be absorbed in their husbands and children—but single women often like each other much, and derive great solace from their mutual regard. Friendship, however, is a plant which cannot be forced. True friendship is no gourd, springing in a night and withering in a day. When I first saw Ellen I did not care for her; we were school-fellows. In course of time we learnt each other's faults and good points. We were contrasts—still, we suited. Affection was first a germ, then a sapling, then a strong tree—now, no new friend, however ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... abides, And never withering flowers; Death, like a narrow sea, divides This heavenly ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... A deadly, withering attack on Christian Science enfilading its every position. Mr. Wyckoff's searching analysis of the pretensions, errors, follies, and non-sense of so-called Christian Science should prove as convincing as ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... British front extended some distance west of the railroad. Here a rising ground, parallel to the river course, concealed the troops in their advance until its summit was reached, but there the same withering fire checked them. About 2 in the afternoon, however, two companies of light infantry succeeded by a rush in carrying the farm-house in front of the Boer lines, and almost at the same moment another detachment dislodged the enemy from the advanced kopjes on his extreme ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... worldly honors; than place or power? And is he not serenest and happiest whose life rests on these as a house upon its foundations? You cannot shake such a man. You cannot throw him down. Wealth may go, and friends drop away like withering autumn leaves, but he stands fast, with the light of heaven upon his brow. He has faith in virtue—he has trust in God—he knows that all will come out right in the end, and that he will be a wiser and better man for the trial that tested his principles—for the ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... a withering havoc among his followers; and under the sheds and hovels that shielded them from the sun lay a score of wretches slowly wasting away with the diseases contracted at St. Domingo. Of the soldiers enlisted for the expedition by La Salle's agents, many are affirmed ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... in on a charge as fearless and reckless as any the Confederates had delivered in the past. With the sharpness of one of their own sabers, they slashed out a trotting arc of men, cutting at Armstrong's veterans in the earthworks to be curled back under a withering fire, losing a general, senior officers, and men. But the ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... rose distilled, Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, Grows, lives, and dies in ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... as if it would have perished in his bosom; for the company he had seen the lads with, and the talk they had held, and above all their recklessness of principle, came upon him like a withering flash of fire. He, however, replied soberly, that he had seen them both the night before, and that they were well in health ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... family; a parricide consequent on passionate love, differing religions, and the Montague-and-Capulet-school of hating feudal fathers—Theodore Clopton having been a Catholic, Alice Beauvoir a Protestant; an introductory recountal of old Beauvoir's withering curse on the Clopton family for Theodore's abduction of his daughter, followed by the tragic event of the father and son, Cloptons', mutual hatred, and the former found in his own park with the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... unveiled beyond the walls of the harem; in America a sentiment no less arbitrary presumes to mark out for her the precise boundaries of womanly propriety; and she who ventures to step beyond them, must do it at the peril of encountering low sneers, coarse allusions, and the withering imputation of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... was not hatred's tiger-glare, Nor the wild anguish of despair; It was not either misery Which quickens friendship's sympathy; No—lightning all unearthly shone Deep in that dark eye's circling zone, Such withering lightning as we deem None but a spirit's look may beam; And glad were all when he turned away And wrapt him in his mantle grey, And hid his head upon his arm, And veiled from view ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the Sioux sprang from their ambush and rushed forward, hoping to surprise enemies who had grown careless. But they were met by a withering fire that drove them headlong to cover again. Nevertheless they kept up the siege throughout all the following day and night, firing incessantly from ambush, and at times giving forth whoops full of taunt ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... removing his hat, "pray accept my apologies. You are free to return to your seats whenever you choose. This gentleman was evidently mistaken," he added, speaking with withering sarcasm and turning sharply toward his coadjutor. "You oughtn't to come to these places in your present condition, sir. Take my advice and ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... got consciences—your sort?" cried de Loubersac, casting a glance of withering contempt at the supposed ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... climatesto mingle in political intrigue, or to retire to the stern seclusion of the anchorites of our religion;all these are thoughts which have alternately passed through my mind, but each required an energy, which was mine no longer, after the withering stroke I had received. I vegetated on as I could in the same spotfancy, feeling, judgment, and health, gradually decaying, like a tree whose bark has been destroyed,when first the blossoms fade, then the boughs, until its state resembles ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... cried Mr Stormcock, jumping up in the launch as the Opossum dropped down towards us on the ebb tide, away from the withering fire. "Can't we do something to ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... But on a private loss, and sweetened with so many circumstances as yours, to be impatient, to be uncomfortable would be to dispute with God. Though an only son be inestimable, yet it is like Jonah's sin, to be angry at God for the withering of his shadow. Zipporah, though the delay had almost cost her husband his life, yet, when he did but circumcise her son, in a womanish peevishness reproached Moses as a bloody husband. But if God take the son himself, but spare the father, shall we say that He is a bloody God? He that gave His ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... remember, sir? And now, sir, you would abandon her also. And you are angry, you storm and rave when a respectable person wants to save the unfortunate child from having her innocence corrupted, save her from withering away profitlessly in the claws of a pack of gross, rowdy, street-lounging, rake-hell young profligates, from living a life of wretchedness and shame, from dying abandoned and accursed, to say nothing of the fire ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Her morning dawned after a restless, sleepless night. Phantoms of terror haunted her couch. The agonies of anticipated remorse had cast a withering shadow on her thoughts. She could not believe her own depravity in entertaining for a moment such ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... tragic meaning packed in a syllable, a gesture, a dumb silence. Miss Gale riddles the tedious affectations of the Deacon household almost without a word of comment; none the less she exhibits them under a withering light. The daughter, she says, "was as primitive as pollen"—and biology rushes in to explain Di's blind philanderings. "In the conversations of Dwight and Ina," it is said of the husband and wife, "you saw the historical ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... through his grief, The early grief that lined his withering brow, As one by one her stars were quenched. And now He that so mourned can play, though ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... Alameda, mowed a path between them—a Spartan business, for it reaped Imperialists among Republicans. However, a second and third blast were better gauged, and these carpeted the new alley-way with Republican bodies. Also, the Imperialists were re-forming, and under a withering fire the little band of victors had to draw ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... indifferent or hostile scrutiny, he thought how much easier it would be to face a rain of bullets than this withering glare of criticism. A sudden longing to escape, to be done with it all, came over him with sickening force. His nerves ached with the physical strain of holding himself upright on his horse, of preserving the statuesque erectness proper to the occasion. He felt like one of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... deadly cup, And led her down from love and light, From all that made her pathway bright, And chained her there 'mid want and strife, That lowly thing,—a drunkard's wife! And stamped on childhood's brow so mild, That withering blight, a drunkard's child! ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... the records she has carved on the rocks, reconstruct, however imperfectly, the landscapes of the past, we also learn that as these we now behold have succeeded those of the pre-glacial age, so they in turn are withering and vanishing to be succeeded by others ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... of that distasteful life—the slow withering away of youth and hope and ambition into a gray waste of ineffectual submissive labor—not only of her life, but of thousands upon thousands like her—it all rose up like a flood in ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... do you answer me this Question; which is the most pleasant Sight, a Rose fresh and fair upon the Tree, or one gathered and withering in ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... of years, I thought, withering away under the disconsolation of an ill-spent life, old without peace, and gray without wisdom, flattering himself that he is religious because he prays, and making a merit of offering to God that which Satan had rejected; thinking, too, that he has withdrawn from sin, because the ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... lifted her into the heavenly peace of dewy palms, and held to parched lips the sparkling draught a glimpse of which electrified her. Would starvation entitle her to drink? Over the head of pleading love stretched the arm of stony-eyed duty, striking into the dust the crystal drops, withering the palms; and following her stern beckon, the thirsty pilgrim re-trod the sands of surrender, more intolerable than before, because the oasis was still in sight. Duty! Rugged incorruptible Spartan dame, whose inflexible mandate is ever: "With your ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... not stop here. Death rarely lays his withering hand upon one household flower without touching another, and causing it to droop, wither, and fall to the ground. So it was in this case. William, the manly, intelligent, promising boy, upon whom the father had ever looked with love and pride so evenly balanced, ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... with us as he does. She's far too indulgent to him—a posing, affected prig, always talking about the wonderful things he's going to write! He had the impudence to tell me I didn't know the most elementary laws of the sonnet this morning! Withering repartee seems to have no effect whatever on him, I wish I had some of PODBURY's faculty for flippant chaff! I wonder if he and the PRENDERGASTS really are at Milan. I certainly thought I recognised ——. If they ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... cashier without an exchange of badinage and open compliment. Many of them went to greater lengths and dropped promissory hints of theatre tickets and chocolates. The older men spoke plainly of orange blossoms, generally withering the tentative petals by after-allusions to Harlem flats. One broker, who had been squeezed by copper proposed to Miss Merriam more ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... composts of single vegetable materials like cotton residues, cane trash, weeds, fresh green sweet clover, or the waste of field peas. These experiments were always unsatisfactory. So Howard wisely mixed his vegetation, first withering and drying green materials by spreading them thinly in the sun to prevent their premature decomposition, and then taking great care to preserve a uniform mixture of vegetation types when charging his compost pits. This strategy ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... she and Rodney's wife started a little drama of incompetency, which should end as the hotel-keeping ended. Wastefulness, cheap luxury, tawdry living, took the place of the old, frugal, simple life. But the mother went about with that unchanging sweetness of face, and a body withering about a fretted soul. She had no bitterness, only a miserable distress. But every slight that was put upon her, every change, every new-fangled idea, from the white sugar to the scented soap and the yellow buggy, rankled in the old man's heart. He had resentment both for the old wife ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... crept over the eastern horizon, and the cold chill of the shadows gave place to the burning glare of the September sun. Hot and withering it beat down upon us and upon the unburied dead that lay all about us. The braves that had fallen in the strife strewed the island's edges. Their blood lay dark on the sandy shoals of the stream and stained to duller brown the trampled grasses. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... a withering glance. "It does not begin to be as hard as your shameful conduct merits. To think of losing a fortune like that for the sake of sentimental folly! I didn't think you were such ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... She flounced her full skirts, cast a withering glance at young Bell, and once more looked out of the ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... of the New England Society, leaped to his feet and denounced the platform in withering tones. He fairly ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... roused. "Never did that before," gurgled out of his net, just as we were dropping off once more; but a withering request from the Dandy to "gather experience somewhere else," silenced him till dawn, when he had the wisdom to rise ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... the belt on the engine was slipping and squealing. Bergmann maintained that he must be mistaken. The landlord kept going among his tenants and finally discovered the dynamo. 'Oh! Mr. Bergmann, now I know where my power goes to,' pointing to the dynamo. Bergmann gave him a withering look of scorn, and said, 'Come here and I will show you.' Throwing off the belt and disconnecting the wires, he spun the armature around by hand. 'There,' said Bergmann, 'you see it's not here that you must look for your loss.' This satisfied the landlord, and he started ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the latter were wont in the month of February to parade the streets in a state of utter nudity. When a bachelor wished to marry a widow he was first united to a swallow-wort plant, and this was immediately dug up and transplanted, and withering away left him at liberty to marry the widow. If a lady survived the sorrow caused by the death of two or three husbands she could not again enter the holy state unless she consented to be married with a fowl under her armpit; the unfortunate bird being ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... her a withering glance and squirmed up into the saddle with the help of both horn and cantle and by the grace of good luck. Miss Allen gasped ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... O angel, are there, The myrrhic rapture of young hair, The lips of lust; And all the stenches of dust, Even the palm and the fingers of a hand burnt bare With a curling sweet-smelling crust, And the bitter staleness of old hair, Powder on a withering bust . ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... sacred rites have been disturbed By demons, or some evil has befallen The innocent herds, their favourites, that graze Within the precincts of the hermitage, Or haply, through my sins, some withering blight Has nipped the creeping plants that spread their arms Around the hallowed grove. Such troubled thoughts Crowd through my mind, ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... especially above the door, where the sunlight streamed through the gaping wound from a cannon shot. The door and window shutters were of heavy oak, swinging inward and fastening with bars; yet now they were open, and through them could be seen a dreary stretch of river bottom, withering beneath the rays ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... talk about money!" retorted Allison, with withering scorn; "but for me, who makes every penny I earns, he may think hisself well off to get the five shillin's I gives him every year for those blessed schools. I'll stick to that five, neither more nor less, unless the squire gets his way; and then I won't ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... our men to stop firing. Then, in awe-inspiring tones, he sobs forth a tale of dark and dismal war, how our soldiers respected the white flag and rested on their arms, only to be mowed down by a withering rifle fire from the canaille who represent the enemy in the field. Having got so far, he does not feel justified in stopping until he has thrown in some flowery language concerning a Boer cannonade upon British ambulance waggons, full of wounded; from that he drifts by easy and natural ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... bright mounds Of flowers, with juniper and aniseed; While sage, all newly cut for this great need, Covers the Persian carpet that is spread Beneath the table, and so helps to shed Around a perfume of the balmy spring. Beyond is desolation withering. One hears within the hollow dreary space Across the grove, made fresh by summer's grace, The wind that ever is with mystic might A spirit ripple of the Infinite. The glass restored to frames to creak is made ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... a withering reply, And vanity I always do my best to mortify; A charitable action I can skilfully dissect; And interested motives I'm delighted to detect. I know everybody's income and what everybody earns, And I carefully compare it with the income-tax returns; But to benefit humanity, however ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Brett. Were you just going out? I'm glad I did not disturb you. Shall I hold it open for you?" She stepped to one side and waited gravely without moving a muscle till Lucine after a withering stare had stalked angrily back to her window. The corner of Berta's mouth gave a quick, queer little twitch before settling ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... change of color in the leaves at a time when they should be perfectly green indicates that the tree is not growing under normal conditions, possibly because of an insufficiency of moisture or light or an overdose of foreign gases or salts. Withering of the leaves is another sign of irregularity in water supply. Dead tops point to some difficulty in the soil conditions or to some disease of the roots or branches. Spotted leaves and mushroom-like growths or brackets protruding from the bark as in Fig. ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... among the delightful phenomena which are observable at the commencement of the rainy season, (immediately following that of the withering hot winds,) the joy displayed by the peacocks is one of the most pleasing. These birds assemble in groups upon some retired spot of verdant grass; jump about in the most animated manner, and make the air re-echo with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... a fairly developed man, but looks thin and worn, and his shoulders have the stoop of age, which scholars mostly anticipate. His face is much corrugated, but it bears the traces of vivacious thought and emotion, not the withering print of passion. Of his eyes I have already spoken; they are wise, kind, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... share in the fame of Lee as an inheritance rightfully belonging to us, and endowed with which we shall piously cherish, though all calamities should rain upon us, true poverty—the poverty indeed that abases and starves the spirit can never approach us with its noisome breath and withering look. ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... find that whenever the occasion demands it his style rises to supreme force and beauty. The metamorphosis of the serpent, the entry of Lamia and Lycius into Corinth, the building by Lamia of the Fairy Hall, and her final withering under the eye of Apollonius—these are the most important points in the story, and the passages in which they are described are also the most striking ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... with a withering look; "it's virgin gold, that ring is. And where d'ye s'pose I found ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Roger opened fire again, sending violent shock charges into the beast's hide. Caught in the withering cross fire, it turned blindly on the boys and charged at them. The two cadets fired coolly, rapidly, unable to miss the great bulk. The air became acrid with the sharp odor of ionized air. Maddened now beyond the limits of its endurance, hit ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... funeral: he, the injured husband, lies in his coffin with a gentle smile on his lips, and she, pale, tortured by remorse, follows the coffin like a Niobe, not knowing where to hide herself to escape from the withering, contemptuous looks cast upon ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... A lady with taste must at one time at least have presided in it—but then withering does so much for beauty—and that not of stuffs and THINGS only! The furniture of it was very modern compared with the house, but not much of it was younger than the last James, or Queen Anne, and it had all a stately old-maidish look. Such ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... through some twelve months of his ex-royal exile! The memories of all this folk, flown guests and masters of the still-abiding palace-chambers, haunt us as we hurry through. They are but filmy shadows. We cannot grasp them, localise them, people surrounding emptiness with more than withering cobweb forms. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... blackening in time to his pulling at it, smoked on alone in the dusk. In the nibbling, iterative way of the old, he started a kind of reflection; but it was as if a harmattan had blown along the usual courses of his thought, drying up his little brooklet of recollection and withering the old aquatic star-flowers that grew along its banks. His mind, in its meandering among old images, groped, paused, fell pensive. His head sank lower between his shoulders, and the shoulders eased back against the wall behind his bench. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... first speech swept like a hurricane over a garden in June—withering, blasting, uprooting. He began by denying, absolutely, that the great victory of 1813 which expelled for Prussia the French invaders was based on so low a consideration as the promise of a paper Constitution. ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... make much of herself yet. It was one of those Spring evenings which you could not tell from an Autumn one except for a certain something in the air appealing to an undefined sense—rather that of smell than any other. There were green buds and not withering leaves in it—life and not death; and the voices of the gathering guests were of the season, and pleasant to the soul. Of course Nature did not then affect me so definitely as to make me give forms of thought to her influences. It is now first that I ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Mrs. Pryor was withering in her disapproval, and this time Mrs. Corbin touched Miss Matoaca's foot. "I suppose you allude to the streets of Yorkburg, the schools, and library—and some other things. All these Western and Northern ideas which Mary Cary has brought back are very distasteful to the Virginians of ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... swear, and don't ever get frightened because I am out of sight." Then she cast one withering glance at Rhodes, adding,—"and if you engage range bosses like this one no one on Granados will ever get ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... spent for the good of the Nation. In more recent times, one of the great statesmen and soldiers of the United States, Henry L. Stimson, has added his witness to the value of this force in all enterprise: "I know the withering effect of limited commitments and I know the regenerative effect of full action." Though he was speaking particularly of the larger affairs of war and nation policy, his words apply with full weight ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... the shadeless prairies with the intensity of a living flame. But it seemed as nothing to the heat of his own passion—his own fiery rebellion against the decree of destiny—altogether powerless against the withering despair that had choked all the aspirations and ambitions which, his whole life long, he had cultivated and nourished in the soil of ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... pause here to say that Cooper, though not a manufacturer of verse, was in the highest sense of the word a poet; his imagination wrought nobly and grandly, and imposed its creations on the mind of the reader for realities. With him there was no withering, or decline, or disuse of the poetic faculty; as he stepped downwards from the zenith of life, no shadow or chill came over it; it was like the year of some genial climates, a perpetual season of verdure, bloom, and fruitfulness. As these works came out, I was rejoiced to see that he ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... YOUR FATHER has remained long in exile. I have seen the fields of Europe where your laurels are now withering, and I have communed with the dead who repose beneath them. They ask where are our children? Where is France? Europe no longer glitters with the shine of its triumphant bayonets—echoes no more with the shouts of its victorious ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hills farther within the country; their sides all spotted with woods and savannahs. But these on the mountains' sides appeared of a rusty colour, not so pleasant and flourishing as those that we saw on the south side of the island; for the trees seemed to be small and withering; and the grass in the savannahs also looked dry, as if it wanted moisture. But in the valleys, and by the sea side, the trees looked here also more green. Yet we saw no good anchoring-place, or opening, that gave us any encouragement to put in; till the 30th ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... far advanced when we were in New Orleans, the roses and magnolia blossoms were falling; but here in St. Paul it was the snow, In New Orleans we had caught an occasional withering breath from over a crater, apparently; here in St. Paul we caught a frequent benumbing one from over a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which involve a change of substance and those in which the substance remains the same and the change is one of quality or quantity. An example of the former is the change of Moses's rod into a serpent and of the water of Egypt into blood; of the latter, Moses's hand becoming leprous, and the withering of the hand of Jeroboam. We may further divide the miracles into those in which the prophet was told in advance, as Moses was of the ten plagues, and those in which he was not, as for example the reviving of the dead by Elijah and many other ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... havoc among, play the mischief among, play the deuce among, play the very devil among; decimate. Adj. unimproved &c (improve) &c 658; deteriorated &c v.; altered, altered for the worse; injured &c v.; sprung; withering, spoiling &c v.; on the wane, on the decline; tabid^; degenerate; marescent^; worse; the worse for, all the worse for; out of repair, out of tune; imperfect &c 651; the worse for wear; battered; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... um with a hook, couldn't you?' asked the old man, in a tone that was meant to convey withering contempt of a machine that could only do one thing, and must perforce lie idle ten ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... per cent. of the soldiers get a fortnight's leave of absence and a free pass; and there is joy in peasant homes over peasant charcoal pans. The dusky shades of evening are stealing over olive grove and withering vineyard, and every house lights up its tiny oil lamp, and every image of the Virgin is illuminated with a taper. In Eija, near Cordova, an image or portrait of the Virgin and the Babe new-born, hangs in well-nigh ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Hooker offered no further reply than a withering rebuke of the waiter, a genteel abstraction, and a lofty change of subject. He pressed upon them two tickets for the performance, of which he seemed to have a number neatly clasped in an india-rubber band, and advised ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... to which is the captain now," whispered Condy so soon as the other had removed from him a glance of withering scorn. ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... a huge silver tray. On it were a decanter, two little queer-shaped glasses, and a plate of very thin seed cakes. He deposited this on a spindle-legged table, which he drew up in front of his mistress, and, with another glance, which he intended to be very withering, cast upon Rachel, but which she didn't see at ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... withering. She was not angry. She was pale, and her gentle face was troubled—dear God! how sorely troubled! To me it almost seemed that ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... feeling springing up everywhere against the tyranny of examinations, against the cramping and withering influence which they are supposed to exercise on the youth of England. I cannot join in that outcry. I well remember that the first letters which I ventured to address to the Times, in very imperfect English, were in favor of examinations. They ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... who, wishing to disembarrass herself of her husband, demanded of a venerable priest, as the most natural thing in the world, that he should say a mass for her to St. Secaire; she was convinced that, this saint, unknown to martyrology, had the power of withering up (secher) and killing troublesome individuals, to accommodate ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... Oh, the pretty, withering human flower! How closely the little girl had grown into her heart, how impossible it seemed to give her up! With tearful eyes, she pressed her forehead on her clasped hands, which rested on the head-board of the little bed, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the younger ones were beginning to feel tired, she suggested to Bell that she might start a dance if she had a mind to, either in the kitchen or parlor, it did not matter where, and "Ephraim would not care an atom," a remark which brought from Mrs. Deacon Bannister a most withering look of reproach, and slightly endangered Aunt Betsy's standing in the church. Perhaps Bell Cameron suspected as much, for she replied that they were having a splendid time as it was, and as Dr. Grant did ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... purpose, pride, and energy animate them. They have contrasted the free and noble with the mean and servile. Its magic has entered their natures and quickened their souls. In all there is a lofty scorn for the little and mean. The same withering contempt for the cringing and cowardly is met in every one of them. Their impulses are generous, and their aspirations noble, with hearts as soft and tender as love, pity, and compassion can form. Yet in them there is, too, the fire of chivalry, the scorn of ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... by day, does the fever-fire trace Its incessant course down her fast-withering cheek, Till the smile that made light in the glow of her face, But the faint, fading glimpses of vigour bespeak, And her reason will fitfully pass into night— Into night even deeper than that of the blind, As the shade of the gibbet-tree looms in her ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... the muteness of it—was a rapture sacred to themselves alone; not to be pried upon or set down. Such moments—come they but once in a lifetime, to one among a hundred—are God's reiterate answers to the problem of creation. The man or woman who has passed that way will never ask the soul's most withering question: To what end was I born? 'The rest may reason and welcome.' They are of the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... Philip Perry, and held an opinion, not altogether unfounded in human experience, that in course of time, when quite deserted by Patty Baxter, his heart might possibly be caught on the rebound. It was only a chance, but Lucy would almost have preferred remaining unmarried, even to the withering age of twenty-five, rather than not be at liberty to accept Philip Perry in case she should ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Nikita's mother from Zouevo, my dearie. Good afternoon to you. He's withering, withering away, poor dear—your brother, I mean. He came out himself. "Send for my sister," he said, "because," said he.... Dear me, why, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... between summer and winter. In spring of course the solitary date-palm here and there threw out its spathe of young green leaves, to add to the number of those which, grey or brown, hung drooping down the stem, withering but not decaying for many a year in that dry atmosphere; or perhaps the accacia bushes looked somewhat gayer for a few weeks, and the Retama broom, from which as well as from the palm leaves he plaited his baskets, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... emphatic step, Wildeve's eye passing over his form in withering derision, as if he were no more than a heath-cropper. When the reddleman's figure could no longer be seen, Wildeve himself descended and plunged into the rayless ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... withering, from the withering of the yam vine and other plants, which become coloured "like ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... showed an almost imperceptible withering of the texture of the delicate skin. She raised her sleeves and showed Camille the same slight withering of the wrists, where the transparent tissue suffered the blue network of swollen veins to be visible, and three deep lines made ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... lodging in the sand bags protecting the steam-drum. Groping on by the flash of the guns and the light of the burning rafts, the Brooklyn, just clearing a thirteen-foot shoal, found herself close under St. Philip, from whose exposed barbette guns the gunners fled at her withering fire, as they had from that ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... hang about her "like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief." In this year (Port Folio, page 463) is heard the first note of alarm. New England is gaining; "with such rivalry Philadelphia must yield the proud title which she has borne, or rouse from the withering lethargy in which she slumbers." New York jealousy is increasing. In 1820 Salmagundi says that "one of the editors of the Port Folio was discharged—for writing common-sense." These trifles indicate a shifting of the balance of power. Three ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... had so exquisite a pleasure in the mere sense of living that old age, as it comes near, terrifies me by its dull eyes and gray hairs. I have lived the life of a butterfly. Summer is over, and I see my flowers withering; and my wings are chilled by the first airs of winter. Yes, I envy Trevanion; for in public life no man is ever young, and while he can ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with the dew and the sunlight. Down in the hollow a farmyard is half hidden behind the yellowing elms; a boy is driving a flock of white geese along the twisting road; the hedges are red with the withering briers. Up here, along the hillsides, the woods of scrub-oak are glowing with every imaginable hue of gold, crimson and bronze, except where a few dark firs appear, or where a tuft of broom, pure and bright ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... syllable. Slowly she moved her face, so that their eyes encountered in one long mournful look. Ten years of continued suffering could not have exacted a heavier tribute from Grace Huntley's beauty. No language can express the withering effects of the few hours' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... they not, in their light, great critics, too? Don't they know when to laugh, when to blubber, and when to applaud, and don't they know when to hiss, though! What a fiat is their withering hiss! What poor actor dare brave it? It has gone deep, deep into many a poor player's ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... no more of it. Whom have I to fear here? All fall on their knees before me. Before thee they would stand on their heads even! Go to the garden; it is as beautiful as paradise. Look out at the field, see the wheat harvest; sit down in the carved boat the owner of which is withering from anxiety to see thee and take ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... to the house, and hesitated. It had occurred to her that she might add another perfectly withering verse to that poem. It could start: "While sailing in my airplane boat, I'll ask Venus to ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... its unreachable superiority—in its completeness as a whole—that is not to be disturbed. Her delivery of 'Casta Diva' is a transcendent effort of vocalization. In the scene where she discovers the treachery of Pollio, and discharges upon his guilty head a torrent of withering and indignant reproof, she exhibits a power, bordering on the sublime, which belongs exclusively to her, giving to the character of the insulted priestess a dramatic importance which would be remarkable even if entirely separated from the vocal preeminence with which it is allied. But, in all ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... brought into action by the impulse of private malice. They occasioned mortality of greater or less extent in man and beast. They blighted the opening prospect of a plentiful harvest. They covered the heavens with clouds, and sent abroad withering and malignant blasts. They undermined the health of those who were so unfortunate as to incur their animosity, and caused them to waste away gradually with incurable disease. They were notorious two or three centuries ago ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... Have you neglected to obtain information on that point? Of course it is of no consequence," he added, with a withering smile. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... said his friend, glancing at him. "If he had been a countryman of mine there would have been less marvel. But here is none of the sadness of decay none of the withering if the tokens of old age are seen at all it is in the majestic honours that crown a glorious life the graces of a matured and ripened character. This has nothing in common, Rossitur, with those dull moralists who are always ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Turning a withering and glassy eye in our direction, my brother-in-law explained the position and desired permission to enter and write a ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... resemblance to the passion of the same name, which has risen up with the general intercourse of the sexes, and chivalrous manners of modern Europe. It is represented rather as a fever, as a fit of insanity, than any thing else; and is usually held forth as the withering blast inflicted by an offended deity, or the mania bequeathed as an inheritance on an accursed race. The refined and ennobling passion, so well-known and exquisitely described by the great masters of the human heart in modern ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... magistrates who act for this town, some of whom attend at the public office, in Moor-street, every Monday and Thursday, are the Rev. Dr. Spencer, of Aston; William Villers, Esq. of Moseley; George Simcox and Theodore Price, Esqrs. of Harborne; Wm. Withering, Esq. of the Larches; William Bedford, Esq. of Birch's Green; William Hamper, Esq. Deritend House; Edmund Outram, D.D. St. Philip's Parsonage; and Isaac Spooner, Esq. ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... comes within the sphere of man, there will remain still some chrysanthemums about which something could be written, two stanzas on the 'shadow of the chrysanthemums,' and the 'dream about chrysanthemums' must be tagged on as numbers ten and eleven. While the last section should be 'the withering of the chrysanthemums' so as to bring to a close the sentiments expressed in the foregoing subjects. In this wise the fine scenery and fine doings of the third part of autumn, will both alike be included ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... withering glance at his daughter. He suspected her of a ruse which would force him to reveal his secret. For a second, the most furious passion contracted ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... Ammar was as busy and as lively as if it was pitched in the heart of France. The followers had built up little cabins out of the branches of trees, with their leaves on, interwoven together, all in straight lines, forming streets, very commodious, and perfectly impervious to the withering sun. There were restaurants, cafes, debis de vin et d'eau-de-vie, sausage-sellers, butchers, grocers—in fact, there was every trade almost, and everything you required; not very cheap certainly, but you must recollect, that this little town had sprung up, ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... being inevitably overtaken, she ran at once to the river and galloped madly down the shallow margin. Before the flames were actually upon her, she was beyond the zone of their fury. But she felt the withering blast of them, and their appalling roar was in her ears. With starting eyes and wide, palpitating nostrils, she ran on and on, and stopped only when she sank exhausted in a rude cove. There she lay with panting sides ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... rode on at full trot to charge the Highlanders. With the steadiness of old soldiers, the clans came on in their ranks, till within ten yards of the enemy. Then Lord George gave the signal by presenting his own piece, and at once a withering volley broke the ranks of the dragoons. About 400 fell under this deadly fire and the rest fled, fled as wildly and ingloriously as their fellows had done at Coltbridge or Prestonpans. A wild storm of rain dashing straight in their faces during the attack added ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... from us, considerably passed the line of demarcation. Lady de Brantefield, with all the pride of all the De Brantefields since the Norman Conquest concentrated in her countenance, threw an excommunicating, withering look upon the arm—but the elbow felt it not—it never stirred. The lady seemed not to be made of penetrable stuff. In happy ignorance she sat fanning herself for a few seconds; then suddenly starting and stretching ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... came to Billy Byrne the withering, numbing knowledge that his love must forever be a hopeless one—that this girl of the aristocracy could never be for ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Autumn, and incessant Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, And, like living coals, the apples Burned among the withering leaves. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... you do not know what you are talking about," he finally blustered with withering contempt. "You are an Argentinian and do not understand the affairs ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... shallow cleverness and conventional good-temper is more withering to the soul of the artist than the blindest bigotry which has the recklessness of genuine ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... suspicion and scorn of the sorcerer. "Yes, take it," said he, with uncalled-for vehemence, "but you can't stop it; there's water below here, and you can't help its bending, if you break your back trying to hold it." So he gave me the twig, and awaited, with a smile which was meant to express withering sarcasm, the discomfiture of the supposed scoffer. But when I proceeded to walk four or five times across the mysterious place, the rod pointing steadfastly toward the zenith all the while, our friend became ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... between her and this cruel mockery and temptation? "Mother, mother, how could you be false to your trust? Were you, too, cheated and bereft of your due? left a cold, shrinking woman, withering, not suddenly, but ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... visions prophetical burst on my sight, As he carried me forth in the power of his might. Around me I saw in a desolate heap The relics of those who had slept their death-sleep, In the midst of the valley, all reckless and bare, Like the hope of my country, lie withering there,— ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... Vasselot that such frankness is imprudent; he may regret it," put in the notary with a solemn face. And Denise gave him a glance of withering pity. The poor man, it seemed, was ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... unacceptable if offered by the hand of true regard such visions have for ever fled and all is cancelled but being aware that tender relations are in contemplation beg to state that I heartily wish well to both and find no fault with either not the least, it may be withering to know that ere the hand of Time had made me much less slim than formerly and dreadfully red on the slightest exertion particularly after eating I well know when it takes the form of a rash, it might have been and was not through the interruption of parents and mental torpor ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... tumultuous notes threw a light upon that of very fine ladies in the seventeenth century. She made no effort to be exact, and much of her correspondence was made obscure by initials, which she expected her friends to interpret by divination. From a withering denunciation of the Government she expressly excepts Mr. John Burns and "that much-abused Mr. Birhell, whom I like." From about 1899 to 1903, I think that Lord Wolseley was the friend who occupied most of her thoughts. In her letters of those ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... looked this faltering faint-heart all over from head to heel with withering scorn, and demanded: "Ain't you got sportin' blood enough to know the difference between a high-station game-cock and that old bow-legged Mormon down there scratchin' ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day |
