"Bleak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these, again, in their turn, introduced me to many writers and various literature. I do not think that at this time I cared much for novel reading. Scott seemed to me on a par with Burke's speeches; that is to say, too impersonal for my very personal taste. Dickens I knew by heart, and "Bleak House" I thought his greatest achievement. Thackeray left no deep impression on my mind; in no way did he hold my thoughts. He was not picturesque like Dickens, and I was at that time curiously eager for some adequate philosophy of life, and his social satire ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... that the history of civilization is the history of great men. Confessing this, let us go on and note that the history of all great men is the history of their ideal hours, realized in conduct and character. Waking at midnight in his bleak garret, the vision splendid rose before John Milton. The boy of twelve would fain write a poem that the world would not willingly let die. He knew that whoever would write a heroic poem must first live a heroic life. From that hour the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... following the April 1999 coup d'etat - for operating expenses and public investment. In 2000-01, the World Bank approved a structural adjustment loan of $105 million to help support fiscal reforms. However, reforms could prove difficult given the government's bleak financial situation. The IMF approved a $73 million poverty reduction and growth facility for Niger in 2000 and announced $115 million in debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. Further disbursements of aid occurred ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... mill-girl; the lowly Thornton home, where Charlotte was born; the cottage where she visited Harriet Martineau; the school where she found Caroline Helstone and Rose and Jessy Yorke; the Fieldhead, Lowood, and Thornfield of her tales; the Villette where she knew her hero; but it is the bleak Haworth hilltop where the Brontes wrote the wonderful books and lived the pathetic lives that most attracts and longest holds our steps. Our way is along Airedale, now a highway of toil and trade, desolated by the need of hungry poverty and greed of hungrier wealth; meads ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... my garret bleak and bare I tilted back on my broken chair, And my three old pals were with me there, Hunger and Thirst and Cold; Hunger scowled at his scurvy mate: Cold cowered down by the hollow grate, And I hated them with a deadly hate As old as ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... single exception—one star shining in the blackness. And my career has been so bleak that, although it ended in deeper sadness than I had known before, I look back to the episode with gratitude. The bank of clouds which shut out this sole light of my life quickened its brilliancy before they ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... the overland trip to California, which took about nine days at that time. Now, travelling with a year-old baby and a five-year-old boy was quite troublesome, and we were very glad when the train had crossed the bleak Sierras and swept down into the ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... only the hardiest crops, apple orchards sparsely mingled with fields of oats and rye. And yet again we seem to be traversing a Scotch or Yorkshire moor—so vast and lonely the heather-clad wastes, so bleak and wild the heavens. ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... of the salt sea air. They had their quarrels of course. It pleased a certain young lady to treat the south coast of England with much supercilious contempt. You would have imagined from her talk that there was something criminal in one's living even within twenty miles of the bleak downs, the shabby precipices, and the muddy sea which, according to her, were the only recognizable features of our southern shores. She would not admit indeed that there was any sea at all there; there was only churned chalk. Was it fair to say, even under the exasperation of continual goading, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Fleece Our more adventurous Argo fain would seek, But save, O Sons of Jove, Your blended light go with us, vain employ It were to rove This bleak Blind waste. To unimagined joy Guide us, ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... a rough road at the best of times, but on a bleak night with snow there is real danger. The trap will take you over in no time when it comes in, or as soon as it is ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... more, my altar this bleak sand; That Thou O God my life hast lighted, With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee, Light rare untellable, lighting the very light, Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages; For that O God, be it my latest word, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... the window beside the gate. The sands of the Desert of Candor stretched orange and bleak under the bronze sky. Somewhere out there to the south, across those sands, under that sky, lay the shining ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... his bleak bedroom, late that night, he found a note pinned upon his pillow. Of course the landlady needed her rent—all landladies were in need of money—and of course he would get out in the morning. He was glad she ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... morning, showed symptoms of coming to five to three. In the meantime, by no means abashed at finding themselves the cynosure of so many eyes, the Englishmen proceeded to keep up their circulation by leap-frog and horse-play, for their jerseys were thin and the wind bleak. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this must be the Rattler camp, and inspected its display of tall smokestacks, high hoists, skeleton tramways, and bleak dumps. Before they could make any reply, the gate behind them slammed shut with a vicious bang that attracted their attention. They turned to see the watchman hurrying back up the road. Fixed to the barricade was a sign, crudely lettered, ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... with a raw wind blowing. Gulls dipped and screamed over the wake of the ferryboat that carried the Pages to Oakland, and after the warm cabin and the heated train, they all shivered miserably as they got out at the appointed corner. Oakland looked bleak and dreary, the wind was blowing chaff and papers against ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Whether a gentleman who hath seen a little of the world, and observed how men live elsewhere, can contentedly sit down in a cold, damp, sordid habitation, in the midst of a bleak country, inhabited by thieves ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... father-in-law. Langerac, the States' ambassador there, who but yesterday had been turning at every moment to the Advocate for light and warmth as to the sun, now hastened to disavow all respect or regard for him. He scoffed at the slender sympathy van der Myle was finding in the bleak political atmosphere. He had done his best to find out what he had been negotiating with the members of the council and was glad to say that it was so inconsiderable as to be not worth reporting. He had not spoken ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... tales of their sires. To pierce the great mountains of the south, to fight the tamers of the fiery Moors, to follow the greatest captain of the age, to find sunny cornfields and vineyards, when the marches of Picardy and Normandy were as rare and bleak as the Jedburgh forests—here was a golden prospect for a race of warriors. From sea to sea there was stringing of bows in the cottage and clang of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and bleak howled the November blast, and ruthlessly drove the fleet against the shivering panes, exposed without, though shielded within by Venetian folding shutters, on that gray morning, when a passing whisper from most ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... figure, too, had vanished, leaving that one breast desolate, save when a lightsome shadow flitted across its ever-verdant memory. The summer cottage looked dreary, with its closed blinds, and the autumn leaves rustling about it in the bleak winds; but the little tombstone still gleamed in the sunlight, that cast a pleasant and warm halo upon it, and the birds and squirrels sung and leaped about in the beauteous grove as blithesome and glad as if life's rolling seasons brought no sad changes. The man of God walked ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... The bedroom bore a bleak look, despite the fact that the furniture was all in threes—three narrow beds, three washstands, three chests of drawers—topped by miniature mirrors—and three small cane-seated chairs. Each of the three inmates had a portion of the ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... bleak, blowy day when Katherine took the boys to school, and on returning she went straight to Miss Payne, who had promised to have tea ready ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... to explore the coast for a suitable site for a colony. His men sailed by way of the Canaries, and came upon North America in the neighborhood of Pamlico Sound, avoiding the stormy route directly across the Atlantic which Gilbert had followed. They found, therefore, instead of the bleak shore of Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, the genial climate of ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... showed a fine sturdiness he had never seen exceeded elsewhere. He went on musing over the permanence of things and the mutability of mortal joy, wondering if, in this world He had made without remedies for its native ills, God could take pleasure in the bleak framework of it. And when he had nearly reached the top of the slope, the three firs, where a turn to the left would bring him to the log cabin door, suddenly he stopped as if his inner self heard the command to halt. He looked about him, and his heart ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... moon's faint glow The washerman's bat resounds afar, And the autumn breeze sighs tenderly. But my heart has gone to the Tartar war, To bleak Kansuh and the steppes of snow, Calling my husband back ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... four days later the slush-ice between the floes froze definitely. The Boreal's way was thus blocked. We warped her with ice-anchors and the capstan into the position in which she should lay up for her winter's drift. This was in about 79 deg. 20' N. The sun had now totally vanished from our bleak sky, not to reappear till the ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... time since yesterday we have an unobstructed view. I dismount and look round. Backward stretches an endless expanse of bleak and stormy-swept billowy mountains; before us looms, in serried phalanx, the western Cordillera, dazzling white, all save one black-throated colossus, who vomits skyward thick clouds of ashes and smoke, and down whose ragged flanks course streams ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... not much to my taste, being as bleak as the bleakest parts of Scotland, and nothing like so pointed and characteristic. It has a flavour of its own, though, which I may try and catch, if I find the space, in the proposed article. 'Will o' the Mill' I sent, red hot, to Stephen in a fit of haste, and ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... desert women that have wandering souls and pine in Babbulkund, and one for the princesses of his own kith, whose brown cheeks blush with the blood of ancient Pharaohs and who exult with Babbulkund in her surpassing beauty, and who know nought of the desert or the jungle or the bleak hills to the north. Quite unadorned and clad in simple garments go all the kith of Nehemoth, for they know well that he grows weary of pomp. Unadorned all save one, the Princess Linderith, who weareth Ong Zwarba and the three lesser gems of the sea. Such ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... was seldom rash. Enthusiasm is not common in the bleak northern dales, whose inhabitants are, for the most part, conservative and slow. Wind and rain had hardened him and he had inherited a reserved strength and quietness from ancestors who had braved the storms that raged about Ashness. ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... marvels of the place—that, no matter where you go, no matter how late the hour or how outlying and obscure the district, there is always a trim taxicab just round the next corner waiting to come instantly at your whistle, and with it a beggar with a bleak, hopeless face, to open the cab door for you and stand, hat in hand, for the penny ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... the lady's toils the wizard clears His limbs, as thrush escapes the fowler's snare; With him as well his castle disappears, And leaves the prisoned troop in open air; From their gay lodgings, dames and cavaliers, Unhoused upon that desert, bleak and bare. And many at the freedom felt annoy, Which dispossessed them of such ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Colden, and Miss Philipse's negro boy, Cuff, all riding northward on the Albany post-road, a few miles above King's Bridge, but still within territory patrolled daily by the King's troops, constituted, on that bleak November evening in 1778, a group unusual to the time ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the point of seeking Mr. Cherry and his promised assistance, when out of the bleak expanse of that awful and lonely platform Providence had sent this other help: a Man with reassuring grey hairs and a smile which she could not possibly mistake for anything but kindness. She seized it gratefully: and there would be no embarrassment of a Mrs. Cherry connected ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... up and beyond Barley. He saw the dark outline of the bleak, wet goal posts, saw the tense faces of the Canton team ... then his ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... northern winters; but for her—for this beautiful, sensitive, tender-hearted girl—surely some other and gentler fate was in store. What he, at least, could do he would. He would lay his life at her feet; and if she chose to go away from this bleak and cruel home to the sunnier South, would not he devote himself, as never a man had given himself to a woman before, to the constant duty of enriching her life with all the treasures of admiration ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... man marked by the Redeemer for a Gospel herald is not the only sort of Christian who feels uneasy in the crowded nursery, and groans to be torn out and transplanted on some bleak hillside where, shaken by fierce winds, his roots may strike deep, his branches spread wide, and ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... mild and equable. This is due in part to its geographical position; midway, as it were, between the northern and southern limits of the Union. Two other causes concur to modify it; the one, the lofty Appalachian chain, which forms, to some extent, a shield from the bleak winds of the northwest; the other, the softening influence of the Gulf Stream, the current of which sweeps ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... that deep truth. It is desolating to think that a second visit will reveal to me the blindness, the distortions, and the wrong-headedness of my first. But even as a Chinaman I did notice subtle differences between New York and Chicago. As one who was brought up in a bleak and uncanny climate, where soft coal is in universal use, I at once felt more at home in Chicago than I could ever do in New York. The old instinct to wash the hands and change the collar every couple of hours instantly returned to ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... the bleak snow is falling, The beasts of the forest from hunger do call; There are desolate evenings, comfortless mornings, And gloomy noontides for one and ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... began to die out; but here we were on the top of a rock, without food or water, and with only so much powder and shot as each man carried in his pouch. Still, we had saved our lives and our horses, and had reason to be thankful. The spot was a bleak one to camp in, but we had no choice. To protect ourselves from the wind, we built up a hedge of brushwood, and lighted a fire. Food we could not hope to obtain until the morning, but Pierre and one of the Indians volunteered to go down to the river, and to ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... opulence of manufactures cannot remove." He considers that "at an uncertain period during the occupancy of the Lacies, the first principle of population" (in these forests) commenced; it was found that these wilds, bleak and barren as they were, might be occupied to some advantage in breeding young and depasturing lean "cattle, which were afterwards fattened in the lower domains. Vaccaries, or great upland pastures, were laid out for this purpose; ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... about it to Dill, because he had a constitutional aversion to piling up agony ahead of him; besides, Dill could see for himself that the loss would be heavy, though just how heavy he hadn't the experience with which to estimate. As March came in with a blizzard and went, a succession of bleak days, into April, Billy knew more than he cared to admit even to himself. He would lie awake at night when the wind and snow raved over the land, and picture the bare open that he knew, with lean, Double-Crank stock drifting tail to the wind. He could fancy them coming ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... his seat, and trusted all now to the wise and considerate driver who had proposed such a plan. The night was just as black as a hat, and the wind and rain moaned over the bleak and lonesome plains. They were far out in Nebraska, and, although they were near the Platte River, it was one of the most thinly inhabited sections of the state. They had not seen a light since leaving the last speaking-place ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... do!" Whistler answered. "I should hate, for example, to be standing opposite a man who was a better shot than I, far away out in the forest, in the bleak, cold, early morning. Fancy me, the master, standing out in the open as a target to be shot at. Pshaw! It would be foolish and inartistic. I never mind calling a man out; but I always have the sense to know he ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... crossed "Death Valley," so called because two men were once found frozen in it; a bleak, barren expanse, five or six miles across, with a great gale blowing right down it, charged not only with particles of hard snow but with spicules of ice and grains of sand. Our course was south and the gale blew from the northwest, and the right side of one's body and the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... invoke to be your guide: Then spread the sail, and boldly stem the tide. Whether the stormy inlet you explore, Where the surge laves the bleak Cyanean shore, Or down the Egean homeward bend your way, Still as you pass the wonted tribute pay, An humble cake of meal: for Philo here, Antipater's good son, this shrine did rear, A pleasing omen, as you ply the sail, And sure prognostic ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... among rocks, that it is almost hidden from view. On a rock opposite the town are the ruins of the fortress Bogus. Now the scenery begins to be a little more diversified, and forests are mingled with the bleak rocks; little valleys appear on both the shores; and the river itself, here divided by an islet, frequently expands to a considerable breadth. The peasants' cottages were larger and better than ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... said, "one." Her voice was bleak; the gayety had dropped out of it; for an instant she looked ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... of all, December, The year's sands nearly run, Speeds on the shortest day, Curtails the sun; With its bleak raw wind Lays the last leaves low, Brings back the nightly frosts, Brings ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... sensibility to be an unerring sign of a soul formed for the fine arts; and Canova used to say that he was in love when but five years old. But these instances, however, prove nothing. Calf-love, as it is called in the country, is common; and in Italy it may arise earlier than in the bleak and barren regions of Lochynagar. This movement of juvenile sentiment is not, however, love—that strong masculine avidity, which, in its highest excitement, is unrestrained, by the laws alike of God and man. In truth, the feeling of this kind ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... of the year 1421 was bleak and dreary in that wild lonely vale, and large was the fire burning on the hearth in the castle hall, in the full warmth of which there sat, with a light blue cloth cloak drawn tightly round him, a tall old man, of the giant mould ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been a number of days on the road,—our lives imperceptibly growing into a closer and more intimate companionship as the days ambled slowly away with the bleak snow-clad mountains that we left behind.... Descending down the slopes into a fertile valley, the hillsides terraced with a series of rice yards, and our paths softly shaded with the mulberry tree.... Behind ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... an Alpine peak, Stands, when the sunrise lifts the East, And gilds the crown and lights the cheek Of largest monarch down to least, Of all the summits cold and bleak, ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... sweep the sky clean; Sweep the house fronts, And leave them bleak in sleep. High up the empty ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... other night—grotesque bundles of rags lying under the verandas of the old Fruit Markets and York Street shops, with their heads to the wall and their feet to the gutter. It was raining and cold that night, and the unemployed had been driven in from Hyde Park and the bleak Domain—from dripping trees, damp seats, and drenched grass—from the rain, and cold, and the wind. Some had sheets of old newspapers to cover them-and some hadn't. Two were mates, and they divided a Herald between them. One had ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... they said of it, was hardly a likely place to find a thing by searching. It was a huge high moor, very bleak and desolate and altogether trackless. It seemed a lonely place from what they said. The Normans when they came had called it Mal Lieu and afterwards Mallintown and so it changed to Mallington. Though what a town can ever have had to do with a place so utterly desolate I do not ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... western limits of the parish of St. Ouen's. Plemont, Grosnez, L'Etacq, all that giant headland could well take care of itself—the precipitous cliffs were their own defence. A watch-house here and there sufficed. No one lived at L'Etacq, no one at Grosnez; they were too bleak, too distant and solitary. There ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... business," he went on, "that northern industrial country. There's a grandeur about it—the bare valleys, the steep bleak fields, the dead or dying trees, the huge factories. Those great furnaces, with tall iron cylinders and galleries, and spidery contrivances, and black pipes, and engines swinging vast burdens about, and moving ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... take their one meal at about seven in the evening. I can't support this, and take tea in the morning, besides munching dates at intervals through the day. Nay, I feel ravenous, under the influence of the bleak air of The Desert. About an hour before sunrise all the people get up and make large fires, warming their feet and legs, for these are mostly bare and are very sensible to the cold. I'm sorry I've been obliged to scold Said twice, once ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... formed by the Mount of Olives and the Mount of Offence, so called from the idolatry which oppresses the fame of Solomon. These two hills are nearly naked, and of a dull red colour. On their slopes are seen, here and there, a few bleak and parched vines, some groves of wild olive-trees, wastes covered with hyssop, chapels, oratories, and mosques in ruins. At the bottom of the valley you discover a bridge of a single arch, thrown across the channel ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... dark depths of which we are now about to descend, is the most celebrated mine in the great mining county of Cornwall. It stands on the sea coast, a little more than a mile to the north of St. Just. The region around it is somewhat bleak and almost destitute of trees. In approaching it, the eyes of the traveller are presented with a view of engine-houses, and piles of stones and rubbish, in the midst of which stand a number of uncouth yet picturesque objects, composed of boards and timber, wheels, ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... and passion—to the land and to the folk that gave it birth? A land thrust further into the gloom and cold of stormy seas than the Southern Kingdom; a land whose spare gifts are but the more esteemed by its children because they are given so grudgingly, whose high and bleak and stern features make the valleys they shelter the more lovely and loved from the contrast; a race whose blood has been blended of many strains, and tempered by long centuries of struggle with nature and with outside enemies; perfervid of spirit and dour of will; ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... sentiment as for clothes. Moreover, the dinner was good as well as cheap. And when the streets of Rome were rivers of rain, as they often were that winter, it was brought to our rooms in a dinner pail by a waiter, after he had first come half a mile to submit the menu to us, and in that cold, bleak interior, wrapped in blankets, a scaldino at our feet, a newspaper for tablecloth, we made a picnic of it, freezing, but thankful not to be drowned. And on great holidays, the padrone spared us a ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... and aid towards the Lord and Master whom he served grew upon him. Neither the gazelle-eyed Ayesha nor the prosperous village life presented any great temptation. He would have given them all for one bleak day of mist on a Border moss; it was the appalling contrast with the hold of a Moorish galley that at times startled him, together with the only too great probability that he should be utterly incapable of saving poor little ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... livery wit a little lace and a few frogs and buttons, so that Thackeray himself should hardly recognise him. And then of a sudden there came to me memories of a young Irishman, with whom I was once intimate, and had spent long nights walking and talking with, upon a very desolate coast in a bleak autumn: I recalled him as a youth of an extraordinary moral simplicity—almost vacancy; plastic to any influence, the creature of his admirations: and putting such a youth in fancy into the career of a soldier of fortune, ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bleak east-wind day towards the end of March. Aldous was at work in the library at the Court, writing at his grandfather's table, where in general he got through his estate and county affairs, keeping his old sitting-room ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... acres of shingle, rock, and heather, too barren to support even an agrarian outrage, but embracing a small and fairly deep bay where the lobster yield was good in most seasons. There was a bleak little house on the property, and for those who liked lobsters and solitude, and were able to accept an Irish cook's ideas as to what might be perpetrated in the name of mayonnaise, Innisgluther ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... bitter query, the essential attitude of spirit which lay behind it, struck into me with a poignancy that stopped me where I stood. Was I, then, all wrong about the world? I actually had a kind of fear lest when I should look up again I should find the earth grown wan and bleak and unfriendly, so that I should no ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... a bleak early spring with snow on the uplands of Thrace. For those who travel from Paris to Constantinople on that Western moving shuttle, the Orient Express, there would be nothing to trouble the mind unpleasantly—except ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... description. Except on its northern face, to which the sulphurous vapor does not appear to reach, it is utterly destitute of vegetation: here and there are a few patches of underwood; but in every other direction the island is bald, bleak, and furrowed into countless deep-worn ravines. The centre of the island has been hollowed out by the crater of the volcano into a capacious basin, almost circular, and, excepting to the south, where there is a huge cleft or rent, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Spaniards. Built in front of the island of San Juan de Ulua, it has one interesting recollection attached to it, since on the same arid shores, Cortes disembarked more than three centuries ago. Unlike the green and fertile coast which gladdened the eyes of Columbus, the Spanish conqueror beheld a bleak and burning desert, whose cheerless aspect might well have deterred a feebler mind from going further in search of the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... he came to the shore. The sea was quite black and thick, and it was breaking high on the beach; the foam was flying about, and the wind was blowing; everything looked bleak. The fisherman was chilled with fear. He stood ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... doubt that Charles James Fox ..." Mr. Burley began; but here Mrs. Stretton told him that she knew his sister well; had stayed with her not six weeks ago; and thought the house charming, but bleak in winter. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... rode forth at an early hour in the morning. It was hot in the city, but it looked cold and bleak on the heights. Comfortable wraps were taken along, and provision was made for luncheon at an inn half way up the slope. Quinnox regaled Beverly with stories in which Grenfall Lorry was the hero and Yetive the heroine. He told her of the days when Lorry, a fugitive with a price upon his head, charged ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... storm and stress, a sanctuary where love feeds the flame upon the domestic altar. There, the atmosphere, like that of St. Peter's Church, never changes. It refreshes when the breath of the world is a simoon, withering heart and strength. When the winds of adversity are bleak, the shivering wanderer returns to the fold, "curtained and closed and warm—" to gather ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... like to walk in my neighbor's garden better than to work in my own. I do not drink milk, and I do drink coffee; and I had rather run my risk with the average of city milk than with the average of country coffee. Fresh air is very desirable; but the air on the bleak hills of the Hudson in March is at times a trifle too fresh. The pure snow as it lies on field, and fence, and tree, is beautiful, I confess. But when one goes out to walk, it is convenient to have ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... them all, you know. But I think Habakkuk is my favorite; though of course he's not so stunning as Isaiah. Then they run down to Obadiah and Malachi. Joel is just peeping over Habakkuk's left shoulder. That long bleak range is Jeremiah." She laughed, very faintly. "You know, Miss Willis, they are really very beautiful. Isn't it strange, I couldn't see it? For I honestly couldn't. I've been lying there, thinking. And I found I could remember all their outlines, under snow ... and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... during the winter it lay deep and heavy on the ground, making the roads almost impassable and their isolation more complete. Both husband and wife began to feel an almost uncontrollable depression amid these bleak surroundings, aggravated as they were by many deaths among the patients. As ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... all languages and the speech of birds and beasts. The winds of Finland were angry because he slighted their country, and a great storm arose and blew the ship out of her course. The birds sang to the helmsman and told him by their song that his ship was being driven on the bleak ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... Island - bleak and mountainous, with a quiescent volcano; McDonald Islands - small and rocky lowest point: Indian Ocean 0 m highest point: Big Ben ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes, And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind Like aged warriors westward, tragic, thinned Of half their tribe, and over the flattened rushes, Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak, Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek,— Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes My heart. I know that Beauty must ail and die, And will be born again,—but ah, to see Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky! Oh, Autumn! ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... and when March once began, there seemed no pause or breathing-time for Ellen Carley till the 10th. And yet she had little business to occupy her during those bleak days of early spring. It was the horror of that rapid flight of time, which seemed independent of her own life in its hideous swiftness. Idle or busy, it was all the same. The days would not linger for her; the dreaded 10th ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... in Mr. Polly's mind, and so did the close-wedged drive to the churchyard, bunched in between two young women in confused dull and shiny black, and the fact that the wind was bleak and that the officiating clergyman had a cold, and sniffed between his sentences. The wonder of life! The wonder of everything! What had he expected that this should all be so ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... stove was burning, and the temperature was exceedingly pleasant after the bleak air outside, where the raw wind ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... winter bleak has charms to me, When winds rave thro' the naked tree; Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree Are hoary gray; Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... And the fat olive swell with floods of oil: We envy not the warmer clime, that lies In ten degrees of more indulgent skies, Nor at the coarseness of our heaven repine, Though o'er our heads the frozen Pleiads shine: 'Tis liberty that crowns Britannia's isle, And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile. 140 Others with towering piles may please the sight, And in their proud aspiring domes delight; A nicer touch to the stretched canvas give, Or teach their animated rocks to live: 'Tis Britain's care to watch o'er Europe's fate, And hold in balance each contending state, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... indeed," answered Sylva, as she lighted a bright fire in the polished grate. "How your father expects to rear so fragile a bud in this bleak region I do ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... while we can discuss the manner in which you are to return to the colonies, around a bottle of liquor, which my friend Manual there assures me has come from the sunny side of the island of Madeira, to be drunk in a bleak corner of that of Britain. By my palate! but the rascals brighten at the thought. They know by instinct, sir, that a shipwrecked mariner is a fitter companion to a ration of beef and a pot of porter than to such unsightly things as ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ago the day was cold and bleak. It drizzled through the dreary hours, freezing as it fell. But to many loving hearts, its sleet and rain were not its gloom. On this day was laid to rest in Mother Earth the loved remains of one numbered in the health-seeking trio of the year before. What a contrast with that day one year ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... Bay and the wide estuary of the Shannon spread the moorlands of Clare, bleak under Atlantic gales, with never a tree for miles inward from the sea. Like a watch-tower above the moorlands stand. Slieve Callan, the crown of the mountain abruptly shorn. Under the shoulder of the great hill, with the rolling moorlands ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... no sooner blown but blasted, Soft silken Primrose fading timelesslie; Summer's chief honour, if thou hadst outlasted Bleak winter's force that made thy ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Edelweiss is built along the side of the mountain, its narrow streets winding upward and past countless terraces to the very base of the rocky, jagged eminence at whose top, a full mile above the last sprinkling of houses, stands the isolated, bleak Monastery. The view from these upper streets, before one enters the circuitous and hidden Monastery road that winds afar in its climb, is never to be forgotten by the spectator, no matter how often he traverses the lofty thoroughfares. As far as the eye can reach, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the world's needs, and for some healing remedy for the evils which had massacred its youth. The League of Nations, which had seemed to promise so well, was hedged round by limitations which made it look bleak and barren. Still it was peace, and the rivers of blood had ceased to flow, and the men were coming home ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... absorbing spell of the pursuit as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the sight of human faces in the remote and solitary region whither they had ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the nearest settlement, while scant a mile above their heads was that bleak verge where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle of forest-trees and either robe themselves in clouds or tower naked into the sky. The roar of the Amonoosuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a solitary man had listened while the mountain-stream talked ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sampling the impromptu dessert, assured his hostess that her husband's eulogy had been only too moderate. He vowed he had never eaten such apple sauce. But Mrs. Merriam still looked bleak. She knew she could make a better deep-dish peach pie than Mrs. Allen could. And, then, to give the minister apple sauce and nabiscos!—the first time he had eaten at ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... output of elevators in the former USSR. Armenia has some deposits of nonferrous metal ores (bauxite, copper, zinc, and molybdenum) that are largely unexploited. For the mid-term, Armenia's economic prospects seem particularly bleak because of ethnic strife and the unusually high dependence on outside areas, themselves in a chaotic state of transformation. The dramatic drop in output in 1992 is attributable largely to the cumulative impact of the blockade; of particular importance was the shutting off in the summer of ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... cherished an ill-feeling for Miss Mamie, I forgave her now; so brave and kind, so pretty and venturesome, was her decision. The weather frowned overhead with a leaden sky, and San Francisco had never (in all my experience) looked so bleak and gaunt, and shoddy, and crazy, like a city prematurely old; but through all my wanderings and errands to and fro, by the dock side or in the jostling street, among rude sounds and ugly sights, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... knife-grinder! whither are you going? Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order, Bleak blows the blast; your hat has got a hole in't, So have your breeches! Weary knife-grinder! little think the proud ones, Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-road, What hard work 'tis crying ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... will go to sea; cut my kind uncles and aunts, and sympathizing patrons, and leave no heavy hearts but those in my own home, and take none along but the one which aches in my bosom. Cold, bitter cold as December, and bleak as its blasts, seemed the world then to me; there is no misanthrope like a boy disappointed; and such was I, with the warmth of me flogged out by adversity. But these thoughts are bitter enough even now, for they have not yet gone quite away; and they must be uncongenial ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... had ever pressed it. Beyond this, through breaks and frames, and arches made by the trees, the broad Severn glittered in the wavy light. It was a beautiful landscape in every direction. We returned home by sea wall and the shore of the Severn, which seemed rather bare and bleak after the soft loveliness we ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Denali's crest And he gazed on his acres wide— Barren and bleak, from each mountain peak And swamp to the Arctic's tide. The Devil grinned as he stood and gazed Said he, "This is just what I need, It's the place of my plan, for the downfall of man Where I'll ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... road to the club, the bleak barrenness of the country struck me anew. Twenty-four hours before Jim had been alive. Twenty-four hours before we had been in our office discussing the proof of Woods' guilt, and Woods had telephoned to Jim, asking him to come to ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... he mused, as he ran his eye along the row of green and gilt books, and "Bleak House" seems especially fit for the hour. "We'll begin ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... changeless too And sharp and salt with unshed tear on tear And cold and fierce and barren; and my soul, Sickening, swam weakly with bated breath In a deep sea like death, And felt the wind buffet her face with brine Hard, and harsh thought on thought in long bleak roll Blown by keen gusts of memory sad as thine Heap the weight up of pain, and break, and leave Strength scarce enough to grieve In the sick heavy spirit, unmanned with strife Of waves that beat at the tired lips ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the sea. For every 300 feet we go up, the temperature becomes one degree cooler. At about 1,000 feet it becomes too cold for wheat; at about 1,500 it becomes too cold for corn; at about 2,000 it is too cold for cattle; mountain ponies graze still higher; the bleak upper slopes are left to the small and ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... at Changchau. Along this route in many parts, more especially in that part lying between Tang-oa and Changchau, very large camphor-trees are met with. I have frequently travelled over this road. The road from Fuchau to Chinchew, which also takes five days to travel over, is bleak and barren, lying chiefly along the sea-coast, and in winter a most uncomfortable journey. But few trees are met with; a banyan here and there, but no camphor-trees along this route; but there is one extremely interesting feature on it that would strike the most unobservant traveller, viz.; ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... impassable by carts. It was necessary to bring up supplies on the backs of horses; but the horses perished from famine and from excessive labour. The men were too few, too weak, too destitute of the helpful ways of English sailors, to assist in providing for themselves. Thus penned up on the bleak promontory, cholera-stricken, mocked rather than sustained during their benumbing toil with rations of uncooked meat and green coffee-berries, the British soldiery wasted away. Their effective force ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... comfortable surtouts!—thou old housewife, darning thy decayed stockings with thy ancient spectacles on thy aged nose!—lead me, hand me in thy clutching palsied fist, up those heights, and through those thickets, hitherto inaccessible, and impervious to my anxious, weary feet:—not those Parnassian crags, bleak and barren, where the hungry worshippers of fame are, breathless, clambering, hanging between heaven and hell; but those glittering cliffs of Potosi, where the all-sufficient, all-powerful deity, wealth, holds his immediate court of joy and pleasures; ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and a number of well-built churches, not all of the Establishment, however. The solid old houses, consisting entirely of the local stone, are not uninteresting and are in keeping with the dour and bleak scenery of the island. The mistake of importing alien red bricks of a most aggressive hue has not been made here. Those that flame from the hill slope above Portland station only succeed in emphasizing the general bleakness of their surroundings. At Easton clock tower a ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... a long time, unaccustomed to being alone and disturbed by the bleak north wind which beat against ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... me who the nabobs are, nor why they choose to be sidetracked in this forsaken stone-quarry," remarked the stranger, eyeing the bleak hills around him in the growing ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... lamps smouldered on. No one was visible for the moment, though smoke was rising from many of the chimneys to greet its sister mist. At the house of the detective across the way the blinds were still down and the shutters up. Yet the familiar, prosaic aspect of the street calmed her. The bleak air set her coughing; she slammed the door to, and returned to the kitchen to make fresh tea for Constant, who could only be in a deep sleep. But the canister trembled in her grasp. She did not know whether she dropped it ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... stoicism, and a sense of lights fading out into the night. His words in praise of death, and much else of his, had of course a great distinction. Yet in his private intercourse with Marcus Aurelius, Marius was not satisfied, nor was it the bleak sense that all is vanity which troubled him, but rather a feeling of mediocrity—of a too easy acceptance of the world—in the imperial philosophy. For in the companionship of Cornelius there was a foil to the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, and ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... town of Sorrento is situated on an elevated plateau, which stretches into the sunny waters of the Mediterranean, guarded on all sides by a barrier of mountains which defend it from bleak winds and serve to it the purpose of walls to a garden. Here, groves of oranges and lemons,—with their almost fabulous coincidence of fruitage with flowers, fill the air with perfume, which blends with that of roses and jessamines; and the fields ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... John Bleak—Jan. 26, 1899. Killed by Mexicans, near Hackberry, Mohave County. The body was found with many knife thrusts, with indications of a desperate ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... Davis had halted his head of column on a wooded ridge, overlooking an extensive slope of cultivated country, about ten miles short of Milledgeville, and was deploying his troops for camp when I got up. There was a high, raw wind blowing, and I asked him why he had chosen so cold and bleak a position. He explained that he had accomplished his full distance for the day, and had there an abundance of wood and water. He explained further that his advance-guard was a mile or so ahead; so ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... scaled the peak and found no shelter in fame's bleak and barren height. Lead me, my Guide, before the light fades, into the valley of quiet where life's harvest ...
— Stray Birds • Rabindranath Tagore
... doctor came to the bleak Labrador coast and there in saving life made expiation. In dignity, simplicity, humor, in sympathetic etching of a sturdy fisher people, and above all in the echoes of the sea, Doctor Luke is worthy of great ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... was the old town, with its red roofs, its quaint architecture, its crowded, narrow, picturesque streets. But this time they seemed almost deserted, and the whole effect of the place was bleak and dreary. The leaves had dropped from the trees, the flowers had faded, the vines that covered the cottage walls were brown and bare. He was pleasantly conscious of the warmth of a sable-lined coat he had brought ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... incomes, material comforts, and health and educational standards equal to those of Western Europe. In contrast, most of the remaining population suffers from the poverty patterns of the Third World, including unemployment, lack of job skills, and bleak living conditions. The main strength of the economy lies in its rich mineral resources, which provide two-thirds of exports. Economic developments for the remainder of the 1990s will be driven largely ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... bleak, chilly afternoon in March, when Charles Osmond, returning from a long round of parish work, thought he would look in for a few minutes at the Raeburns'; he had a proposal to make to Erica, some fresh work which he thought might interest her. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... chill wind from the mountain peak, From the snow five thousand summers old; On open wold and hilltop bleak It had gathered all the cold, And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; It carried a shiver everywhere From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; The little brook heard it, and built a roof 'Neath which he could house him ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... shipping of beef. At night the coyotes yap quaveringly and prowl abroad after the long-eared jack rabbits, which bounce away at their hunger-driven approach. In winter it is not good to be there; even the beasts shrink then from the bleak, level reaches, and shun the ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... from the bleak north; tearing through the moaning pine forest, that tossed and swayed before the tempest, gnawing Catherine's nose and fingers, and snatching up, as it were, handfuls of snow, and hurling them in a rage through the air. Poor Catherine was nearly frozen, yet she struggled ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the crow upon the stack, And other birds all black, While bleak November's frowning wearily; And the black cloud's dropping rain, Till the floods hide half the plain, And everything is dreariness ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... panting, groaning, quivering from stem to stern ... like an enchanted thing doomed to perpetual labours, striving vainly to break bonds invisible that transfixed her to one spot forever-more, in the midst of that bleak purgatory of ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... not the burning of 'Pickwick' and 'Bleak House' by the common hangman do more to appease Nonconformist susceptibility than even Disestablishment? 'Salem Chapel,' again, and 'Adam Bede.' Fancy 'Adam Bede 'without Mr Irwine, who yet is not held ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... type at the case, for that was what I did; and it was not altogether imitated from Ik Marvel either, for I drew upon the easier art of Dickens at times, and helped myself out with bald parodies of Bleak House in many places. It was all very well at the beginning, but I had not reckoned with the future sufficiently to have started with any clear ending in my mind, and as I went on I began to find myself more and more in doubt about it. My material gave out; incidents ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells |
