"Cul-de-sac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the only ground that was of any real importance. The troops in the section opened a series of counterattacks, and in a very short time the French grenadiers had gained the upper hand again. The capture of Frise brought the Germans into a cul-de-sac, for their advance was still barred by the Somme Canal, behind which there lay a deep marsh. Maneuvers were quite impossible here, hence the village could not serve as a base for any further operations. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... and, after walking over three fields, found themselves in a narrow lane which terminated in a pond. It was such an evident cul-de-sac that there was nothing for it but to turn back. When they again reached the stiles they found Geraldine sitting upon the right-hand one. Her expression was thundery, and her greeting the ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... shaft below and the fumes came up and made us all a little faint, so we decided to come to the earth's surface without going down about two hundred feet lower, which we could have done. In one long gallery we came upon a single miner working away in a cul-de-sac, with, it seemed, absolutely no air. Think of the courage and endurance it must take to continue this, day after day! I do admire them. Then they have the knowledge that if they like to chance things and go off with ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... N. closure, occlusion, blockade; shutting up &c v.; obstruction &c (hindrance) 706; embolus; contraction &c 195; infarction; constipation, obstipation^; blind alley, blind corner; keddah^; cul-de-sac, caecum; imperforation^, imperviousness &c adj.; impermeability; stopper &c 263. V. close, occlude, plug; block up, stop up, fill up, bung up, cork up, button up, stuff up, shut up, dam up; blockade, obstruct &c (hinder) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of him, gallops, gets thither some minutes within time, for Lepelletier was also on march that way: the cannon are ours. And now beset this post and beset that; rapid and firm; at Wicket of the Louvre, in Cul-de-sac Dauphin, in Rue St. Honore, from Pont Neuf all along the North Quays, southward to the Pont ci-devant Royal, rank round the sanctuary of the Tuilleries, a ring of steel discipline; let every gunner have his match ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... would absolutely none of;) which they saw as a fearful and wonderful, though seemingly effective, preparation of the young for English life and an English career, but related to that situation only, so little related in fact to any other as to make it, in a differing case, an educational cul-de-sac, the worst of economies. They had doubtless heard claimed for it just that no other method for boys was so splendidly general, but they had, I judge, their own sense of the matter—which would have been that it all depended on what was meant ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... place," Jesson explained, "the city itself stands at the arm of the river, in a sort of cul-de-sac, with absolutely untraversable mountains on three sides of it. All the roads have to come around the plain and enter from eastwards. There is only one line of railway, so that all the approaches into ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... collected, beating with sticks the rushes they had gathered to make mats. After reaching the mountains on the northern side of the plain, an ascent of an hour and a-half, through a narrow glen, brought us to Nazareth, which is situated in a cul-de-sac, under the highest peaks of the range. As we were passing a rocky part of the road, Mr. Harrison's horse fell with him and severely injured his leg. We were fortunately near our destination, and on reaching the Latin Convent, Fra Joachim, to whose surgical abilities the traveller's ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... staff," said Gianapolis, "is not yet arrived. Mr. Ho-Pin is the manager. The lane, in which the establishment is situated, communicates with Limehouse Causeway, and, being a cul-de-sac, is little frequented. Only this one firm has premises actually opening into it and I have converted the small corner building at the extremity of the wharf into a garage for my car. There are no means of communication between the premises ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... from it we stopped. The yellow luminescence streamed through a slit not more than a foot wide in the wall. We were in a cul-de-sac for the opening was not wide enough for either Drake or me to push through. Through it with the light gushed the ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... It may be, as has been said, and as seems extremely probable, that Bowring used his "facility in acquiring and translating tongues deliberately as a ladder to an administrative post abroad," {86a} but if Borrow "put a wrong construction upon his sympathy" and was led into "a veritable cul-de-sac of literature," {86b} it was ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... care not to talk to them of the restoration of slavery, but talk to them of freedom, you may with this word chain them down to their labor. How did Toussaint succeed? How did I succeed before his time in the plain of the Cul-de-Sac on the plantation of Gouraud, during more than eight months after liberty had been granted to the slaves? Let those who knew me at that time, let the blacks themselves be asked. They will all reply that not a single ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Beke, that it is an enormous blunder to transfer Midian, the "East Country," to the west of El-'Arabah, and to place it south of the South Country (El-Negeb, Gen. xx. I). I own that it is ridiculous to make the Lawgiver lead his fugitives into a veritable cul-de-sac, then a centre of Egyptian conquest. Evidently we have still to find the "true Mount Sinai," if at least it be not a myth, pure and simple. The profound Egyptologist, Dr. Heinrich Brugsch-Bey, observes that the vulgar official site lies ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... narrow lane driven between the tall sides of the houses. It was a cul-de-sac. At the open end I could see the glimmer of street lamps. It had stopped raining and the air was fresh and pleasant. Carrying my bag I walked briskly down the lane and presently emerged in a quiet thoroughfare traversed by a canal—probably the street, ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... ladders and ropes for escalades at different points. An armed schooner, named the Gaspe, captured during the autumn, was prepared as a fire-ship to drift down and destroy the craft that was moored in the Cul-de-Sac, at the eastern extremity of Lower Town. Other vessels destined for a similar service were also made ready. At nine o'clock on the night of the 3rd of May, the attempt was actually made. One of the fire-ships turned out from Levis, and advanced near to the Quebec shore without ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... itself, or loitering to bedeck itself with flowers. It seems as innocent of a destination as a boy on an errand; but, after taking at least six times as long as any other road in the kingdom for its amount of work, you usually find it dip down of a sudden into some lovely natural cul-de-sac, a meadow-bottom surrounded by trees, with a stream spreading itself in fantastic silver shallows through its midst, and a cottage half hidden at the end. Had the lane been going to some great house, it would have made more haste, we may ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... Gracebury, which as everyone knows is a cul-de-sac of no considerable extent, Hugh stopped his taxi and got out. He walked down the wide pavement till he ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... you are saying—are you not? And perhaps sentiment with me is only an ancient instinct, a latent ancestral quality for which I, ages later, have no use." She was laughing easily. "No use for sentiment, as our bodies have no use for that fashionable little cul-de-sac, you know, though wise men say it once served its purpose, too. ... Stephen Siward, what do you ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... and I found the Ecole Feminine in the Boulevard Beausejour all and more than Mlle. Thompson had taken the time to portray in detail. The entrance was at the side of the house and one approached it through a large gateway which led to a cul-de-sac lined with villas and filled with beautiful old trees that enchanted my eye. I cursed those trees later but at the moment they almost decided me ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... scrub on my left also gave place to the sturdy tree which had been in my mind all day. Finally we found ourselves passing through an alley of box,—which, no long time before, had been clipped and dressed,—until a final turn brought me into a cul-de-sac, a kind of arbor, carpeted with grass, and so thickly set about as to afford no exit save by the entrance. Here the dog placidly stood and wagged its ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... of species Nature gets, as it were, into a cul-de-sac; she cannot make her way through, and is disinclined to turn back. Hence the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... guarantees respecting her territorial integrity. Provided these guarantees were observed faithfully, the closing of the Scheldt by Holland in time of war, the critical situation on the Eastern frontier created by the indefensible cul-de-sac of Dutch Limburg, and the supremacy in Luxemburg of a foreign Power, did not seriously jeopardize the country's security. The treaties of 1839 were considered as forming a whole, the moral safeguard of guaranteed neutrality counterbalancing, ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... the Oxford Street end of the thoroughfare, and suddenly he started. A girl was walking toward him. At this hour there was very little wheeled traffic, for Lattice Street is almost a cul-de-sac, and she had taken the middle of the road. She was dressed with that effective neatness which brings the wealthy and the work-girl to a baffling level, in a blue serge costume of severe cut; a plain white linen coat-collar and a small hat, which covered, ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... Town. The Siege Raised. Retreat. Burgoyne's Advance. The British Plan. Ticonderoga again in British Hands. On to Fort Edward. St. Leger's Expedition. Battle of Oriskany. St. Leger Driven Back. Baume's Expedition. Battle of Bennington. Stark. Burgoyne in a Cul-de-sac. Gates Succeeds Schuyler. First Battle of Bemis's Heights or Stillwater. Burgoyne's Position Critical. No Tidings from Clinton. Second Battle. Arnold the Hero. The Briton Retreats. Capitulates. Little Thanks to Gates, Importance ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... attempt to secure the entire race. The plan adopted was nearly similar to that of the great hunting-matches in India: a line was formed reaching across the island, with the intention of driving the natives into a cul-de-sac on Tasman's peninsula. The attempt failed; the natives, having tied up their dogs, stole during one night through the lines. This is far from surprising, when their practised senses and usual manner of crawling after wild animals is considered. I have been assured that they can conceal ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... that, if the unoccupied space marks the end of the laying, nothing tells us that the beginning is actually at the bottom of the cul-de-sac, at the other end of the tunnel. You may also say that the laying is done in shifts, separated by intervals of rest. The space left empty in the channel would mean that one of these shifts was finished and not that there were no ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... about ten thousand inhabitants. Built on a plateau overlooking the Viorne, and resting on the north side against the Garrigues hills, one of the last spurs of the Alps, the town is situated, as it were, in the depths of a cul-de-sac. In 1851 it communicated with the adjoining country by two roads only, the Nice road, which runs down to the east, and the Lyons road, which rises to the west, the one continuing the other on almost parallel lines. Since that time a railway has been built ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... shortly afterward narrowed, so that the two men, touching fingertips in the middle, could have placed their free hands on the rock walls on either side. It threatened to terminate in a cul-de-sac, but just when the road seemed least promising, and they were shut in by cliffs on all sides, a hitherto unperceived bend brought them suddenly into the open. They emerged through a mere crack in the line ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... face the fire that leapt close at his heel. It was burning at the back of a caravan, in a dark cul-de-sac away from the main thoroughfare; to its blazing light the bare boards and ugly plankings of the booth, splashed here and there with torn paper that rustled a little in the evening breeze, were all that offered themselves. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... has two great glass bird-cages (inclosed balconies), one looking toward the Rhine Valley and sunset, the other looking up the Neckar cul-de-sac, and naturally we spend pearly all our time in these. We have tables and chairs in them; we do our reading, writing, studying, smoking, and suppering in them.... It must have been a noble genius who devised this hotel. Lord, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... quick and comprehensive mind it immediately suggested itself, that if the attack of the American army should be awaited, the result, under the circumstances already alluded to, and in the position occupied by the British force (literally a Cul-de-Sac) must inevitably be attended by their utter discomfiture, if not annihilation. On the contrary, he felt persuaded that, even with the small force at the disposal of the British General, there was every probability ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... and he went on his errand. With a sense of leisure, as if she had strayed into a cul-de-sac of time, and since there is no going backwards must stay there for ever, she sat down and looked about her. Roger did not frighten her at all. If his spirit was in the room it was sickly and innocuous, like the smell of a peardrop. But the horror of all that had happened ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... from the roof of that building on the west side, had been whirled up clean over the roof: and we can only surmise that the winds rushing from the west and north-west, and meeting the bastions of Glaramara and the Sty-head slopes, were whirled round in the 'cul-de-sac' of the valley, and moved with churning motion back from east to west over the Seathwaite Farm, and so in straight line across the beck, and up the slope to the Yew-tree cluster. With what a wrenching, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... was sufficiently far ahead along a footpath which led under a high, bare hedge, went forth again down the high road until, after crossing the brook, they turned to the right into Asheldham village, where, half-way between that place and New Hall, they turned up a short by-road, a cul-de-sac, at the end of which a big, old-fashioned, red-brick house of the days of Queen Anne, half hidden by a belt of high Scotch ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... puzzling problem was maddening me. In my investigations I now found myself in a cul-de-sac from which there seemed no escape. The net, cleverly woven without a doubt, was slowly closing about my poor darling, now so ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... hardened to these scenes, paid no heed to them. He had heard it so often, that cry in the night, followed by death-like silence; it came from comfortable bourgeois houses, from squalid lodgings, or lonely cul-de-sac, wherever some hunted quarry was run to earth by the newly-organised spies of ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... fortified place, which could only be taken by assault. The line of defence extended, on the left side of the Tuileries along the river, from the Pont Neuf to the Pont Louis XV.; on the right, in all the small streets opening on the Rue Saint Honore, from the Rues de Rohan, de l'Echelle and the Cul-de-sac Dauphin, to the Place de la Revolution. In front, the Louvre, the Jardin de l'Infante, and the Carrousel were planted with cannon; and behind, the Pont Tournant and the Place de la Revolution formed a park of reserve. In this position the ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... should be no more than the cattle in the fields. Nor is the quest in vain. We follow this trail and that, catch at this hint of a meaning and that gleam of vision, and though we find this path ends in a cul-de-sac, and that brings us back to the place from whence we started, we are learning all the time about the mysteries of our wilderness. And one day, perhaps—suddenly, it may be, as that vision of the great white mountains of the Oberland breaks upon the sight of the traveller—we ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... Sim that any way he turned his face he encountered a cul-de-sac of mortal danger—and it left him in a perplexity that fretted him and edged ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... up, and at daylight countermarched two miles. Halted all day. Bivouacked in a cul-de-sac of the Conedoguinet Creek, at a place called Orr's Bridge. Day warm ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... up in a cul-de-sac. His face was tense and disturbed. He stood by the table; and now, as by accident, he put out his hand and took up the Japanese crystal supported by the necks of the three bronze storks. He appeared unconscious of the ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... the shortest passage. It is perfectly free along its entire length. We shall search in vain for the rubbish which such an excavation must apparently produce; we shall find nothing of the sort. The burrow terminates in a cul-de-sac, in a fairly roomy chamber with unbroken walls, which shows not the least vestige of communication with any other burrow or prolongation of ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... go back to Lotty and Rose; it would be tiresome to be discovered and hemmed into the cul-de-sac by Mr. Briggs. ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... of old, although it had changed perhaps a dozen times since he had seen it. It was a cul-de-sac, and at the end of it, just as on his previous visit, there stood a stone mosque, whose roof leaned back at a steep angle against the mountain-side. The fact that it was a mosque, and that it was the only building used as such in Khinjan, had saved it from being leveled to ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... here before," said he, when they got out of the taxi in a short, untidy, indeterminate street that was a cul-de-sac. The prospect ended in a garage, near which two women chauffeurs were discussing a topic that interested them. A hurdy-gurdy was playing close by, and a few ragged children stared at the hurdy-gurdy, on the end of which a baby was cradled. The fact ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... confusion in the ranks of the attackers, the two sprang to where an exit in the far wall promised an avenue of escape. Down a broad passage they rushed. Seemingly the passage ended in a cul-de-sac, for a wall of blank whiteness barred further progress. Behind them came charging the greenish giants uttering appalling cries. Desperately the two Americans turned, resolved to sell their lives as dearly as ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg
... MY DEAR HOWELLS,—....divinely located. From this airy porch among the shining groves we look down upon Heidelberg Castle, and upon the swift Neckar, and the town, and out over the wide green level of the Rhine valley—a marvelous prospect. We are in a Cul-de-sac formed of hill-ranges and river; we are on the side of a steep mountain; the river at our feet is walled, on its other side, (yes, on both sides,) by a steep and wooded mountain-range which rises abruptly aloft from the water's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... plain, surrounded on all sides by wooded hills, steep and in places precipitous. Here the mass of the Ephthalite troops was cunningly concealed amid the foliage of the woods, while a small number, remaining visible, led the Persians into the cul-de-sac, the whole army unsuspectingly entering, and only learning their danger when they saw the road whereby they had entered blocked up by the troops from the hills. The officers then apprehended the true state of the case, and perceived that they had been cleverly ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... wallet, reticule, knapsack, pocket, cul-de-sac, haversack, portmanteau, poke, scrip, satchel, suitcase, quiver, valise, sporran, gunny sack; udder; cyst, vesicle, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming |
