"Cathay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over her eyes again. A vision of Solomon in all his glory swept across her. Even to Walton had spread rumors of the immense fortunes acquired in the China and India trade, and the gold of Cathay seemed to shimmer over the form before her, so strong, so able to contend with, and compel, if need ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... there was not a way across the Atlantic to open those routes again, they were closed forever; and Columbus set out not to discover America, for he did not know that it existed, but to discover the eastern shores of Asia. He set sail for Cathay and stumbled upon America. With that change in the outlook of the world, what happened? England, that had been at the back of Europe with an unknown sea behind her, found that all things had turned as if upon a pivot and she was at the front of Europe; and since then all the tides ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... Shooting, fishing, pig-spearing; polo, dances, rajahs, pretty women, pow-wows of sorts, and a chance of a fight. All in a year, my friend—I beg your pardon—and ten days. Quick work, eh? One crowded year of glorious life. A cycle of Cathay." ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Viareggio, having discovered the village of Corsanico on the heights yonder and, in that village, a family altogether to my liking. How one stumbles upon delightful folks! Set me down in furthest Cathay and I will undertake to find, soon afterwards, some person with whom I am quite prepared to spend the remaining years of ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... that have known the wonder zone Of islands far away; You that have heard the dinky bird And roamed in rich Cathay; You that have sailed o'er unknown seas To woods of Amfalula trees Where craggy dragons play: Oh, girl or woman, boy or man, You've plucked the Flower ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... spread through Venice the good citizens crowded to their house, all eager to embrace and welcome the far-travelled men and to pay them homage. "The young men came daily to visit and converse with the ever polite and gracious Messer Marco, and to ask him questions about Cathay and the Great Can, all which he answered with such kindly courtesy that every man felt himself in a manner his debtor." But when he talked of the Great Khan's immense wealth, and of other treasures accumulated in Eastern lands, he continually spoke ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... eleven when he had begun on The Quest of the Lady Elaine. "'One crowded hour of glorious life is worth'—what idiot said it was worth anything?" groaned Harlan, inwardly. "Anyway, I've had the crowded hour. 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay'"—the line sang itself into his consciousness. "Europe be everlastingly condemned," he muttered. "Oh, how ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... to the sea. The Diadem was gilded first, and down the beach the long light tremulously disclosed the faint scarlet of the flamboyant-trees, their full, magnificent color yet to be revealed, and their elegant contours like those graceful, red-tiled pagodas on the journey to Canton in far Cathay. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Cattajo. This word is usually translated Cathay, i.e. China; but semble Boccaccio meant rather the Dalmatian province of Cattaro, which would better answer the description in the text, Nathan's estate being described as adjoining a highway leading from ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... severer tastes of later ages. Some of these magatama—curved jewels or perforated cylinders—were made of very hard stone which requires skill to drill, cut and polish. Among the substances used was jade, a mineral found only in Cathay.[3] Indeed, we cannot follow the lines of industry and manufactures, of personal adornment and household decoration, of scientific terms and expressions, of literary, intellectual and religious experiment, without continually finding that ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... groves, and solid floods, That stretch athwart the solitary vast Their icy horrors to the frozen main; And cheerless towns far distant, never bless'd, Save when its annual course the caravan Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... the shadow of the world we sweep into the younger day: Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." Than fifty years of Europe ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... flowed the Great River. For an explorer and a patriot the opportunity was priceless. The acquisition of vast territory for the French crown, the enlargement of the trade zone, the discovery of a route to Cathay, the prospect of Arcadian joys and exciting adventures—beside such promptings hardship and danger became negligible. And when exploring the wilderness Champlain was in full command. {85} Off the coast of Norumbega his wishes, as geographer, had ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... arrived at Juana, I followed the coast to the westward, and found it so extensive that I considered it must be a continent and a province of Cathay. And as I found no towns or villages by the seaside, excepting some small settlements, with the people of which I could not communicate because they all ran away, I continued my course to the westward, thinking I should not fail to find some ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... leave the fierce energy of the Northmen westwards and turn to another energy, which was leading men toward the east, to the lands beyond the Euphrates, to India, across central Asia, even into far Cathay. ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... my pippy.' 'Oh! Whither away? To the land of Cathay?' 'But no; to the far Mississippi, Where a beautiful Queen hath sway, Who has stolen my heart away.' 'I am yours! And the bounty?' 'What you will: ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... current of history. All through ancient and mediaeval times the country lay, vague and mysterious, in the haze of the world's horizon. During the Middle Ages the land was known to Europe under the name of Cathay. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... brow for ever frowns on the opposing continent. And, borne on spirit-plumed wings, let fancy soar far from that sunless clime, to the warm South, where soft skies slumber through the cloudless noon, o'er the gold palaces of fair Cathay. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... think of shrines in Hindustan, Of cloistral glooms in Spain, Of minarets in Ispahan, Of St. Sophia's fane, Of convent towers in Palestine, Of temples in Cathay, And as I stretch and sip my wine They pray and pray ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... Cathay!" he cried sibilantly, "in what have I sinned that this catastrophe has been visited upon my head! Learn, my two dear friends, that the sacred white peacock, brought to these misty shores for my undying glory has been lost to me! Death is the penalty ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... before them like a morning in far Cathay, and they stepped off down the street toward the Old South Church, which had been omitted from uncle Ezra's scheme of entertainment by reason of difficulty in leaving the horse. The discovery that the door would not be open for nearly another hour ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... was to him the Bruneswald, such things as he saw; but beyond, things unspeakable,—dragons, giants, rocs, orcs, witch-whales, griffins, chimeras, satyrs, enchanters, Paynims, Saracen Emirs and Sultans, Kaisers of Constantinople, Kaisers of Ind and of Cathay, and beyond them again of lands as yet unknown. At the very least he could go to Brittany, to the forest of Brocheliaunde, where (so all men said) fairies might be seen bathing in the fountains, and possibly ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... away plucking out his beard, and crying: Oh, Fo! Oh, Pe! Oh, Le! and all the monosyllabic and circumflex gods of Cathay, take pity on your people; for, there has come to us an Emperor of the English school, and I see very plainly that, in a little while, we shall be in want of everything, since it will not be necessary for us ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... the new world, he was in search of a western route to Cathay and India, whence he expected to bring back, if not treasures of gold and gems, intelligence of the wonderful land Marco Polo had described. It was not until long after the discovery of the continents of North and South America, that it was ascertained that a new region, broad as the Atlantic, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... in some pavilion of fancy, some peculiar residence, find him in no porch of philosophy nor academic grove, but in a plain white house by the wayside, ready to entertain every comer as an ambassador from some remote Cathay of speculation whence the stars are more nearly seen. But the familiar reader of our author will not be surprised to find the "walking eye-ball" simply sheltered, and the "endless experimenter with no past at my back" housed without ornament. Such a reader will have felt the Spartan ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... narrations, caused a deposition to be made before a notary, on the 12th of June, 1494, in which sixty of his companions, pilots, sailors and passengers certified upon oath that the southern coast of Cuba was a part of the continent of India. The description of the treasures of Cathay and Cipango, of the celestial town of Quinsay and the province of Mango, which had fired the admiral's ambition in early life, pursued him like phantoms in his declining days. In his fourth and ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... underlying purpose, though occurring in different periods, may be arranged under one topic for review; for example, all the voyages of discovery to America may be grouped under the topic, "The Road to Cathay." (See p. 92.) In this way a comprehensive knowledge is gained. This method gives a full treatment of each topic and may be used to best advantage in connection with reviews in junior classes and occasionally as a text-book or library ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... generous livers, not "acid ghouls" or bran-eating valetudinarians. Shakespeare died at fifty-one, but great thinkers and poets have generally been long-lived. "Better fifty years of Europe" or America "than a cycle of" rice-eating "Cathay." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... do not know, and we can not know without a trial, how new environment will affect it, and what new traits of character it will develop under radically different conditions. The gentle dove of Europe may become the tyrant dove of Cathay. The Repressed Rabbit of the Old World becomes in Australia the Uncontrollable Rabbit, a devastator and a ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Gouverneur was compelled to go through the formality of requesting an interview with this high official. These audiences were always promptly granted and were conducted with a great amount of pomp and ceremony very dear to the inhabitants of "far Cathay," but exceedingly tiresome to others. Some distance from us, and in another quarter of the city, was a large building called Examination Hall, used by the natives exclusively in connection with the ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... told, was rich, but Spain was richer. Its soil was as fertile as that of Syria, its climate as mild and sweet as that of Araby the Blest. The far-famed mines of distant Cathay did not equal it in wealth of minerals and gems; nowhere else were such harbors, nowhere such highlands and plains. The mountain-ranges, beautiful to see, enclosed valleys of inexhaustible fertility. It ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... Barbarous Turks swept westward. Arabia, Syria, the Isles of Greece, and, at last, in 1453, Constantinople itself, fell into their hands. The Eastern Empire, the last survival of the Empire of the Romans, perished beneath the sword of Mahomet. Then the pathway by land to Asia, to the fabled empires of Cathay and Cipango, was blocked by the Turkish conquest. Commerce, however, remained alert and enterprising, and men's minds soon turned to the hopes of a western passage which should provide a new route ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... the balm of her Southern vineyards, she loudly calls for a sister's rights. Not the isles of Greece, nor any cycle of Cathay, can compete with her horticultural resources, her Salt River, her Colorado, her San Pedro, her Gila, her hundred irrigated valleys, each one surpassing the shaded Paradise of the Nile, where thousands ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... first time, Elizabeth had shown herself willing to trust her favourite in person on the perilous western seas. Raleigh was to command the fleet of fifteen ships, and under him was to serve the morose hero of Cathay, the dreadful Sir Martin Frobisher. Raleigh was not only to be admiral of the expedition, but its chief adventurer also, and in order to bear this expense he had collected his available fortune from various quarters, stripping himself of all immediate resources. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Venetian, had traveled, as every one knows, across Asia to Cathay (China) in the thirteenth century and had visited the Great Khan or Emperor. On his return he wrote the "Relation," a most exaggerated but fascinating account of the wealth of that remote land and of Cipango (Japan) also, which the Chinese had told him about. ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... background of olive ochre there blazed great splashes and characters of the red of jasper framed in black. Toward the front Nature had tried heavy black stippling, but it clouded the pattern and she had given it up in order that I might think of Egypt and Cathay. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... let in by a hole in the handle to a pin on the gunwale. She was also provided with a sail hoisting on a spar that fitted in amidships. The sail was laced vertically: a point, by the way, for telling a Japanese junk from a Chinese one at sea, for Cathay always laces horizontally. ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... India and Persia had been connected by commercial treaties. Cosmas Indicopleustes (545) found some Persians amongst the principal traders settled along the coasts of the Indian Ocean (Migne, Patrologiae Cursus, lxxxviii. 446; Yule, Cathay, 1, clxxvii.-clxxix.), and his assertion as to the existence of a Persian bishop at the head of the Christian communities of Kalyan (Yule, Cathay, 1, clxxi.), discloses close relations between Thana and the Persian Gulf. Shortly after the time of Cosmas, the empire of the seas passed from ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... been a major objective of English adventure since the middle of the sixteenth century, when the Muscovy Company had had its origins in an attempt to find a northeast passage around the Scandinavian peninsula leading to Cathay—Marco Polo's fabulous kingdom of northern China. The explorers found instead a profitable trade with the territories of Ivan the Terrible, but the Muscovy merchants continued to support a variety of ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... his name scarcely mentioned at the time in the records of that town; how still stranger that Columbus never knew that he had discovered a new continent, but believed that, as he had originally intended, he had reached the shores of the Indies and China or Cathay by a new route, and therefore gave them the name which has ever since attached to the islands where he first landed, of the West Indies, and called the natives, Indians; and, strangest of all, that four hundred and six years after he first landed at San Salvador, the remains of the great discoverer ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... conduct that jarred upon his own simple directness. "You know that nothing can part us now. I was wrong to let my little girl worry herself all alone here, but I—I—thought it was all so—so bright and free out on this hill,—looking far away beyond the Golden Gate,—as far as Cathay, you know, and such a change from those dismal flats of Tasajara and that awful stretch of tules. But it's all right now. And now that I know how you feel, we'll ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... westwards; and persisted in that denomination, even after he had certainly ascertained that they were interposed between the Atlantic ocean and Japan, the Zipangu, or Zipangri of Marco Polo, of which and Cathay or China, he first proposed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... war with the Moors and had camped near the Pyrenees with his host, determined to conquer their leaders, Marsilius of Spain and Agramant of Africa. To his camp came Orlando, the great paladin, with the beautiful Angelica, princess of Cathay, in search of whom he had roamed the world over. Orlando's cousin, Rinaldo, another of the great lords of Charlemagne, also loved Angelica, for he had seen her immediately after drinking of the Fountain of Love in the forest of Arden, and Charlemagne, fearing trouble ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Hilda. "He may win to Cathay [China] by my good will; and if he turn not again till mine hair be white, then will I give my patron saint a measure in wax. But what ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... the road to Mombas-a, Drawing nearer toward Cathay, Where the north star now is under, 'Neath ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... sorry to miss it myself," said a voice which Jacqueline recognized, behind the headlight. "Better one night of Kentucky than a cycle of Cathay." ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... boats of drift-wood, and launching them on voyages across the cove, with the feather of a sea-gull for a sail. If the voice of ages tell me true, this is as wise an occupation as to build ships of five hundred tons, and launch them forth upon the main, bound to "far Cathay." Yet, how would ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we adventured for, who shall say, Nor yet what our port might be?— A magical city of old Cathay, Or a castle of Muscovy, With our atheist bo'sun, Bill, Black Bill, Under the swinging Bear, Whistling at night for a seaman to light ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the throne. There was none to tell them of the doom that the East, whence come light and life, death and the decrees of God, had loosed upon the world. Not one in a multitude in Europe had ever even heard of those vast lands of far Cathay peopled with hundreds of millions of cold-faced yellow men, lands which had grown very old before our own familiar states and empires were carved out of mountain, of forest, and of savage-haunted plain. Yet if their ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... course—why, to be sure—we'll send him anywhere that thou dost say, Golden-heart: to Persia or Cathay—ay, to the far side of the green-cheese moon, or to the court of Tamburlaine the Great," and he laughed a quick, dry, nervous laugh that had no laughter in it. "I had one of De Lannoy's red Bohemian bottles, Nick," he rattled on feverishly; ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... of your balcony Smiles down two stars, that say to me More peril than Angelica Wrought with her beauty in Cathay. ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... England might still be able to secure a slice. This time Henry VII. listened. Two small ships were fitted out at Bristol, crossed the Atlantic, discovered Newfoundland, coasted down to Florida looking for a passage to Cathay, but could not find one. The elder Cabot died; the younger came home. The expedition failed, and no ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... Aladdin; and fairy pavilions, sylvan paradises, bevies of dancing girls, and princes bearing gifts of gold and jewels, had all obeyed our conjuration. I could have walked down to the naphtha pleasure-boat and bidden the engineer put me down at Khorassan, or some dreamful port of far Cathay, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... board and succeeded in securing two young men to be taken to France. This villainy accomplished, he sailed for home in great glee, not doubting that the wide estuary whose mouth he had entered was the opening of the long-sought passage to Cathay. In France {56} his report excited wild enthusiasm. The way to the Indies was open! France had found and France ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... preach the same doctrine." A new reign has come; the Empress Dowager, dying, has been succeeded by a mere boy, whose father, the Prince Regent, holds the imperial sceptre. But the sceptre is no longer all-powerful. {94} For the first time in all the cycles of Cathay the voice of the people is stronger than the voice of the Throne. Men do not hesitate any day to say things for which, ten years ago, they would have paid the ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... you," said Edith, who suddenly bethought herself that Cathay and Cipango were the old names for China and Japan. This had been part of her history lesson a few days ago. ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... great Babylon in the land and in the power of the said soldan, but it is in the power and the lordship of Persia, but he holdeth it of the great Chan, that is the greatest emperor and the most sovereign lord of all the parts beyond, and he is lord of the isles of Cathay and of many other isles and of a great part of Ind, and his land marcheth unto Prester John's Land, and he holdeth so much land, that he knoweth not the end: and he is more mighty and greater lord without comparison than is the soldan: of his royal estate ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... set out on his expedition; but with his story we have nothing to do, for he did not discover the continent of North America, and in fact never saw it. But after John Cabot and his son Sebastian, then looking for a passage to Cathay in the interest of the King of England, made a voyage to North America, and had contented themselves with discovering Newfoundland, Sebastian came back again, and accomplished a great deal more. He sailed along the coast from Labrador to the southern end of Florida, and in the course of ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... Cathay, Who long hast shunned the staring day, Hid in mists of poet's dreams By thy blue and yellow streams,— Let us thy shadowed form behold,— Teach us as thou ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... alteration—apparently reflecting a mental change—so often to be seen in one who has consorted with Chinamen. Even the light eyes seemed to have grown slightly oblique; the voice, the unimpassioned greeting, were those of a son of Cathay. He carried himself with a stoop and had ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... we may believe the report of certain Genoese, and other folk that have been in those regions, there dwelt of yore in the parts of Cathay one Nathan, a man of noble lineage and incomparable wealth. Who, having a seat hard by a road, by which whoso would travel from the West eastward, or from the East westward, must needs pass, and being magnanimous and liberal, and zealous to approve himself ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... mainland as narrow indeed. Apparently, they conceived it as a kind of extended Central America. The huge rivers puzzled them. There existed a notion that these might be estuaries, curling and curving through the land from sea to sea. India—Cathay—spices and wonders and Orient wealth—lay beyond the South Sea, and the South Sea was but a few days' march from Hatteras or Chesapeake. The Virginia familiar to the mind of the time lay extended, and she was very slender. Her right hand touched the eastern ocean, ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... "One day we shall be lions and eagles and bold prophets! Then our tongue shall taste much beside India and Cathay!" ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... persons of lively imaginations, is illustrated by this word, tea. While to one person it may suggest only refreshment and personal comfort, and to another, scenes of home life, to still others it will bring into being all that the dreamer has read or heard of China, that land of Cathay, and of its slant-eyed, mild mannered wearers of the pig-tail, and their real or fabulous characteristics. Not the least interesting of such associations are memories of the queer manners and habits of the Chinese people, some of which to us outside barbarians, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... golden Cathay, with its vast cities rich in manufactures, and also Cipango, Hindustan, and Indo-China. He knew of the Indies Islands, rich in spices, and he described Siberia, and told of the sledges drawn by dogs, and of the polar bears. The fact that an ocean washed ...
— Discoverers and Explorers • Edward R. Shaw
... riches; he saw fabled Cathay; he saw the uttermost isles of the distant sea. His imagination took the wings of the morning and soared over worlds and countries that no one but he had ever dreamed of, all to be the fiefs of the King of Castile. It is interesting to note ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... many were they then of yesterday, Who bore me gifts of attar and of myrrh, And leaves of roses delicate that were Sprung from a garden-close in far Cathay; While I, unheeding, let them pass their way Nor cared for all the gifts they might confer, Watching in vain for one dear loiterer, Who never dreamed ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night it would be this. Since your sober bed-time, at eleven, you have had rest enough to take off the pressure of yesterday's fatigue; while before you till the sun comes from "far Cathay" to brighten your window there is almost the space of a summer night; one hour to be spent in thought, with the mind's eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams, and two in that strangest of enjoyments, the forgetfulness alike of joy ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... God; come, heavenly thrill! We wait thy coming,—and we will. The world is vast, and very far Its utmost verge and boundaries are; But thou hast kept thy word to-day In India and in dim Cathay, And the same mighty care shall reach Each humblest rock-pool of this beach. The gasping fish, the stranded keel, This dull dry soul of mine, shall feel Thy freshening touch, and, satisfied, Shall drink the ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... suggestive ring have those three words for "the foreigner in far Cathay."[*] What visions do they conjure up of ill-served tiffins, of wages forestalled, of petty thefts and perhaps a burglary; what thoughts of horrid tom-toms and ruthless fire-crackers, making day hideous as well as night; what apparitions of gaudily-dressed butlers ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... to heathenism, see the apathetic indolence, the unprogressive torpor, 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.' Sin lames for service of God; it leaves the lower nature free to act, and that freedom paralyses all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... unlike the child. Life is measured by action, not duration. The brilliant epoch of the first Persian invasion was more to Greece than its slumbering centuries under Turkish rule, and "fifty years of Europe" more "than a cycle of Cathay." We shall look back upon a past. We shall have a truly national existence. It will be but natural, as it will be most wise, that we take heed of those elements which have ever been so potent in strengthening national character. One of these has been briefly hinted at above. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the banks and the homes below them of the leisure, which it is hoped is not dishonest. But, honest or dishonest, it is there apparently to stay in the house-boats which line the shores by thousands, and repeat on Occidental terms in our new land the river-life of old and far Cathay. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... ancient castle crowns the hill That flanks our sunlit rockbound bay, Where, in the spacious days of old, Stout ALBUQUERQUE set his hold Dealing in slaves and silks and gold From Hormuz to Cathay. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... any one. But undoubtedly, had the Queen's wary counsellors given their sanction, Ralegh would have been among the adventurers. The next year he accepted a command in the expedition Gilbert was equipping for 'Norimbega,' in search, it was said, for the North-West passage to Cathay. By a Royal charter Gilbert had been authorized for six years from 1578 to discover and occupy heathen territory not actually possessed by any Christian prince or people. The adventure was retarded. A Seville merchant complained of the seizure of ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... and the Oriental geographers, the names of Cathay and Mangi distinguish the northern and southern empires, which, from A.D. 1234 to 1279, were those of the great khan, and of the Chinese. The search of Cathay, after China had been found, excited and misled ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... ocean, Waving darkly o'er Youth's Paradise, Back gaze we ever with dim tearful eyes, Seeking old joys beyond its rude commotion, Seeking the old world glories pass'd away, Seeking the golden shores of Life's Cathay. ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... know, unless I go To Cairo and Cathay, Whether or not this blessed spot Is blest in ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... terrors of the straits that separate South America from the Land of Fire must be essayed: and beyond that a voyage of thirteen thousand miles across the Pacific, during which the little caravels must slowly make their way northward again till the latitude of Cathay was reached, parallel to that of Spain itself. For any other sea-way to Asia the known coast-line of America offered an impassable barrier. In only one region, and that as yet unknown, might an easier and more direct way be found towards the eastern empires. This was by way ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock |
