"Desultory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... followed a desultory conversation about nothing in particular, though Mr. Octavius Quirk was doing his best to say clever things and show off his boisterous humor. Indeed, it was not until that gentleman's very substantial supper was being brought in that Lionel ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... always preferred to style himself El-Hichmakani, a facetious "lackab" or surname, meaning "Of No-hall, Nowhere." He had travelled far and wide with his eyes open; as appears by his "couplets." To a natural facility, a knack of language learning, he added a store of desultory various reading; scraps of Chinese and old Egyptian; of Hebrew and Syriac; of Sanskrit and Prakrit; of Slav, especially Lithuanian; of Latin and Greek, including Romaic; of Berber, the Nubian dialect, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... a moment, then she put her nose to her embroidery, which had a dingy, desultory aspect. "Ah, I am a Provencale by birth; but I ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James
... not so with the Pilgrim's Progress. That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it. Dr. Johnson, all whose studies were desultory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an exception in favour of the Pilgrim's Progress. That work was one of the two or three works which he wished longer. It was by no common merit ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... desultory, as they proceeded for at least a mile along a cart-track through soft-tufted grass and heath and young fir- trees. It ended in a broad open moor, stony; and full of damp boggy hollows, forlorn and desolate under ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... whether the General in command of the troops had the brains to recognize that the post which Bob Power held was the key to the whole situation. He did a good deal of desultory street fighting in other places, and though he made a strong show of attacking Bob Power in the end I think he was drawn ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... warfare, either organized or desultory, must have been recognized in Jurassic times, millions of years ago, by the reptiles of that period. Throughout the animal kingdom below man the blessings of peace now are thoroughly known. This first law is obeyed by all species save man. We doubt whether all the testimony of the rocks ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... no wind, no motion; the little whirlwinds of dust that arose settled quickly down, the desultory breezes which had caused them departing as mysteriously as they had come. In the blighting heat the country lay, dead, spreading to the infinite horizons; in the sky no speck floated against the ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... answer the bishop in his own cathedral. Her father rose, and then I saw her sway with faintness. I know not what might have occurred, for the bishop stood with hand upraised and a great indignation in his face, about to speak, when out of the desultory firing from our batteries there came a shell, which burst even at the cathedral entrance, tore away a portion of the wall, and killed and wounded a number ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... tent, formed of the canvas across two posts, lay three white men, whose work it was to watch the pots and guard the camp. They were all three Colonial Englishmen, and lay on the ground on their stomachs, passing the time by carrying on a desultory conversation, or taking a few whiffs, slowly, and with care, from their pipes, for tobacco ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... formerly much used. Thus in Shakspeare (Antony and Cleopatra), "I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service, as a partizan I could not heave." Also, a useful stirring man, fit for all sorts of desultory duties. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... to secure the picket, the regiments went forward, just as a desultory firing from the front showed that the alarm had been given by Sullivan's attack. Pushing on, a sight of the enemy was gained,—a confused mass of men some three hundred yards away, but in front of them two guns were already being wheeled ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... good family, and was originally intended for the bar, of which he is now a member. He kept seven or eight terms at Cambridge, but left the university without taking a degree, for the purpose of becoming an artist. After about three years' desultory practice, he devoted himself to literature, abandoning the design of making a position as a painter, and only employed his pictorial talents in illustration of his own writings. For a short time, he conducted a literary and artistic review, similar in plan ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... should be oftener in the rear or the centre than the extreme front. The secret of permanent leadership is to know how to be moderate. The rashness of conception that makes opportunity, the gallantry that heads the advance, may win admiration, may possibly achieve a desultory and indecisive exploit; but it is the slow steadiness of temper, bent always on the main design and the general movement, that gains by degrees a confidence as unshakable as its own, the only basis for permanent power ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... A good deal of desultory fighting took place at first, without any marked result upon either side. Tyrone got possession of the English fort which commanded the passage of the river, but it was in turn snatched from him by the lately arrived deputy, Lord Borough, who, however, was so severely ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... than Gabrielle d'Estrees, Mademoiselle d'Entragues was even more attractive from the graceful vivacity of her manner, her brilliant sallies, and her aptitude in availing herself of the resources of an extensive and desultory course of study. She remembered that, in all probability, death alone had prevented Gabrielle d'Estrees from ascending the French throne; and she was aware that, although less classically beautiful than the deceased Duchess, she was eminently ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... desultory firing from both armies. As when, on the Fourth of July, you set off a whole bunch of firecrackers, there is at first a crackling roar, and afterward a little explosion here and a little explosion there, so Gettysburg must have sounded ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... should not the men and women working in "sweating" trades combine, and insist upon higher wages, shorter hours, more regular employment, and better sanitary conditions? Well, it may be regarded as an axiom in practical economies, that any concerted action, however weak and desultory, has its value. Union is always strength. An employer who can easily resist any number of individual claims for higher wages by his power to replace each worker by an outsider, can less easily resist the united pressure ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... been lamentably desultory and immethodical. Odd, out of the way, old English plays, and treatises, have supplied me with most of my notions, and ways of feeling. In every thing that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world. I should have scarcely cut a figure among ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... and of the material on which he had worked, with a statement of the reasons which made all existing versions unsatisfactory to the student, and incomplete. Captain Burton saw fit to reprint these desultory paragraphs as a kind of circular or advertisement on his forthcoming book. He did not think it necessary to ask leave to do this, nor did I know to what use my letter had been put till it was too late to object. In any ordinary case it would have been of no consequence, but Captain ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the dancing as much as her guests enjoyed participating in it, was interrupted in her desultory conversation with two chaperons by one of the club attendants. Upon receiving his message she made her way to where Kathleen and her partner had just ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... still going on, but in a confused, desultory way; and for the moment it seemed as if we had made good our escape, and had nothing to do but mount and ride quietly away. That was how it struck me, and I ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... and make him abhor low pursuits; if anything more than pride and better than pride mingled with it, the father's discernment could not reach so far. He had a love for knowledge too, that from a child made him eager in seeking it, in ways both regular and desultory; and tastes which his mother laughingly said would give him all the elegance of a woman, joined to the strong manly character which no one ever doubted he possessed. She looked mostly at the outside, willing, if that pleased her, to take everything else upon trust; and ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of La Vendee more a subject of reflection than narrative, and have purposely avoided military details, which would be not only uninteresting, but disgusting. You would learn no more from these desultory hostilities, than that the defeats of the republican armies were, if possible, more sanguinary than their victories; that the royalists, who began the war with humanity, were at length irritated to reprisals; and that more than two hundred thousand lives have already ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... treason defined by the Constitution, hurrying your affairs to the precipice of destruction, endangering your domestic tranquillity, plundering you of the means of defense, alienating the affections of your allies and promoting the spirit of discord; must the tardy, tedious, desultory road by way of impeachment be traveled to overtake the man who, barely confining himself within the letter of the law, is employed in drawing off the vital principle of the Government? The nature of things, the great objects of society, the express objects of the Constitution ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... not bring her. The hours wore on—Mr. Ingelow at his easel, Mollie with her book, Susan Sharpe with her needle, conversation desultory and lagging. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... several new beginnings and resumptions and formal or artificial connections; we miss the 'callida junctura' of the earlier dialogues. His speculations about the Eternal, his theories of creation, his mathematical anticipations, are supplemented by desultory remarks on the one immortal and the two mortal souls of man, on the functions of the bodily organs in health and disease, on sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. He soars into the heavens, and then, as if his wings were ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... to me! Nor is this all. My happiest moments for composition are broken in upon by the reflection that I must make haste. I am too late! I am already months behind! I have received my pay beforehand! Oh, wayward and desultory spirit of genius! Ill canst thou brook a taskmaster! The tenderest touch from the hand of obligation, wounds thee ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... altogether of the Hogarth kind, and was principally remarkable in the pen-and-ink sketches of character and situation, which he dashed off for the amusement of his friends. At the end of two or three years of desultory application he gave up the notion of becoming a painter, and took to literature. He set up and edited with marked ability a weekly journal, on the plan of The Athenaeum and Literary Gazette, but was ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... his direction, and left the room. The maid arranged the tea-tray and departed. Hester showed no signs of being aware that anything unusual had happened. She made a little desultory ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... understanding of Captain Noah Poke. My auditor contrived to get one ear entirely clear of the bison's skin, and nodded approbation of what fell from me, with a proper degree of human and clannish spirit. We might possibly have harangued in this desultory manner, to the present time, had not the amiable Chatterissa advanced, and, with the tact and delicacy which distinguish her sex, by placing her pretty patte on the mouth of the young nobleman, effectually checked his volubility. When a horse is running away, he usually comes to a dead stop, after ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... naturally of a very impatient temper, and his maxims of philosophy encouraged him to the most unrestrained expression of his feelings—the maxims of his philosophy —for he had read, though in most desultory manner, and he had thought often deeply, and not seldom justly. The turns of his mind, and the questions he asked, were sometimes utterly unexpected. "Pray, now," said he to Harry, who stood beside his bed, "now ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... extent."[23] Indeed, all that an American slaver need do was to run up a Spanish or a Portuguese flag, to be absolutely secure from all attack or inquiry on the part of United States vessels. Even this desultory method of suppression was not regular: in 1826 "no vessel has been despatched to the coast of Africa for several months,"[24] and from that time until 1839 this country probably had no slave-trade police upon the seas, except ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Willie was of an age to go to school too; but his father, who was not a rich man, could not afford to send him just then, and therefore instructed him himself, together with Duncan and Seymour, though rather in a desultory fashion, as he was a doctor, and could ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... a curse because they saw themselves surpassed and put in the shade by a stranger, who, they were confident, could hardly construct a hexameter. He never quarrelled with them nor did he grossly patronise them, but he always let them know that he considered himself above them. His reading was desultory; in fact, everything he did was desultory. He was not selfish in the ordinary sense of the word. Rather was he distinguished by a large and liberal open- handedness; but he was liberal also to himself ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... Lunch, desultory shopping and tea with friends in Cairo had been the order of the afternoon following the dawn which had found her grace at the window trying to come to a decision about her god-daughter. They were just returning from these festivities and were ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... of the house took a long time, conducted in this somewhat desultory and dawdling manner; but the closing in of night and the sound of the dinner-gong gave the signal for ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... day we have had desultory picket firing, and the great guns in the naval battery have spoken whenever an opportunity presented itself. The opposing outpost lines are drawn so far apart that with the best intentions they can scarcely ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... which was the only recreation my life knew, it was of a most desultory, though always mercenary sort. I read every book I could get out of the circulating library which, from its title or general character as summarized in the newspaper reviews, I thought might help me to solve the problem ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... that two travelling through the world under the conduct of chance should have been both directed to the same path, and it will not often happen that either will quit the track which custom has made pleasing. When the desultory levity of youth has settled into regularity, it is soon succeeded by pride ashamed to yield, or obstinacy delighting to contend. And even though mutual esteem produces mutual desire to please, time itself, as it modifies unchangeably the ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... Hatfield, leaving their town in ruins. Hatfield, Northfield, Springfield, and Westfield were attacked in turn, and though the defense was sometimes successful, more often the defenders were ambushed and killed. So widespread was the uprising that during the autumn, a desultory warfare was carried on as far north as Falmouth, Brunswick, and Casco Bay, where at least fifty Englishmen were slain by members of the Saco ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... A desultory battle was fought all day on the 5th, near Williamsburg, the enemy withdrawing at night. McClellan now moved slowly up the peninsula, the last of May finding his army within ten miles of Richmond, encamped on both sides of the Chickahominy. By this time ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Smoking their pipes over their fire, Bob detailed these plans to the young men, who perfectly agreed with their judiciousness, and determined to put them in practice on the following day. They then fell into a desultory conversation; through which we will not trouble the reader by following; but merely remark that it was principally upon the occupants of the station on the river, the character of the blacks in the neighbourhood, ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... had spent about a week in his new lodging, Father Moran called on him. The priest sat beside the fire for more than an hour chatting in a desultory manner. He drank tea and smoked, and it was not until he rose to go that the real ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... so small and simple-looking an instrument. Its expressiveness, power, and the extraordinary combinations which its stringing admits of, truly constitute it the king of musical instruments. These somewhat desultory remarks may suffice to trace the origin of the value set upon the Violin both as a work of art and as ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... guns, automatics, rifles—each one straining for a speed record—roared and crashed and rattled in greedy chorus, while the clock ticked perhaps a hundred times. Thus famished savages might boll their food in a time limit. Thereafter, for a while, the battle was desultory. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... it sung in so inspiriting a manner; and when I called for three cheers for the King, the Germans in their front line trenches,—which were certainly within earshot,—must have imagined an attack in force was about to take place. Such desultory gatherings go far to cheer a padre's heart as he proceeds on the daily ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... Calmet compiled the work now in the reader's hands—as the foundation on which to rear what superstructure of system they pleased; and secondly, as a means of giving his own opinions, in a detached and desultory way, as the subjects came under his notice. The value of the first will consist in their evidence—and of this the reader will be as capable of judging as the compiler; that of the second will depend on their truth—and of this, too, we are as well, and in some respects better, able to ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... passed, and I had forgotten not only the little brush that I had picked up, but even the episode of the old man and his strange trance, when one afternoon a man presented himself to be shaved, who, after some desultory discourse on passing topics, mentioned that he had heard of my attendance on the old miser, and inquired as to the condition in which I had found him, and all the ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... the two kept up a desultory conversation. But little sympathy existed between them, and the situation grew momentarily more strained. Grace caught Evelyn taking sly peeps at the magazine which she still held. With her usual good nature, Grace hailed the boy who passed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... occupation in a wide circle of general reading. His own account of the acquirements he had made at this period, and of the various branches of study which he had cultivated with more or less assiduity, proves that, however desultory may have been the nature of his reading, and however unformed or incoherent were his literary projects, he possessed, in ample measure, even at this period, the great elements of future fame; viz. the habit of vigorous industry, and the power ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... party, is highly irregular. The information must also be positive, not founded on belief or opinion, but derived from a legitimate source. And, lastly, it must not have been received casually, but for the very purpose of being used for masonic purposes. For one to say to another in the course of a desultory conversation: "A.B. is a Mason," is not sufficient. He may not be speaking with due caution, under the expectation that his words will be considered of weight. He must say something to this effect: "I know this man to be a Master Mason," for such or such reasons, and you may safely ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... of its reasoning. The speaker, however, did not profess to offer anything like argument on that occasion, but rather a sentiment. I have no prepared address to deliver to you, being unaccustomed to speak in that way; but I felt a wish to offer some views for your consideration, though in a desultory manner, which may lead to such reflection and discussion as will present the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... his speech in a rambling, desultory sort of fashion and quite a low tone of voice, as if he were addressing a ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... less formality at a kettle-drum than at a larger day reception. The time is spent in desultory conversation with friends, in listening to music, or such entertainment as has ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... door clanged behind her, and the sound annoyed her nephew. He had no idea why she thus used inoffensive wood and wire to dramatize her departure from the veranda, the impression remaining with him being that she was critical of his mother upon some point of funeral millinery. Throughout the desultory conversation he had been profoundly concerned with his own disturbing affairs, and now was preoccupied with a dialogue taking place (in his mind) between himself and Miss Lucy Morgan. As he beheld the vision, Lucy had just thrown herself at his feet. "George, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... along the road would be more agreeable than that melancholy garden," he said; and, if I pleased, he would escort me part of the way back. So we returned, and after a few desultory observations, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... of the flanking party redoubled, and were accompanied by a desultory firing, which the four men opposing them answered in the same way. Then I saw the sparkling water of the pool cut off from my sight, and knew that a body of men stood on the slope between ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... gleams of happiness enjoyed by so good and so afflicted a man. "I cannot think," he wrote, when under the pressure of dreaded calamity—that of seeing his wife insane; "I am too much agitated and distrait (as Lord Chesterfield would say) to read anything that is not very desultory; I cannot play at cards; I could never learn to smoke; and my musical days are over. My first excursion, if ever I make any, must be to ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... about twenty miles from the Turkish border. It was midday. V—— was quietly breakfasting in his tent, the horses picketed, the men smoking or asleep. Suddenly the sound of firing was heard about a mile off, not sharp and loud, but slow and desultory, like the pop, pop, pop of a rifle or revolver. V—— was not in the least alarmed, but, the firing continuing for some time, he thought well at last to inquire into the matter. What was his surprise, on emerging from his tent, to ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... been examining his favorite books for marked passages. She now resumed this search, not setting methodically to work, but standing perched on the library ladder, taking down volume after volume, and occasionally dipping into the contents for a few pages or so. At this desultory work the time passed as imperceptibly as the shadows lengthened. The last book she examined was a volume of poems. There were no marks in it; but it opened at a page which had evidently lain open often before. The first words Lydia ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... in the wide hall, through the open doors of which was a slight draught of air. All had donned their coolest costumes, and their talk was quite as languid as the occasional notes and chirpings of the birds without. Amy was reading a magazine in a very desultory way, her eyelids drooping over every page before it was finished, Webb and Burt furtively admiring the exquisite hues that the heat brought into her face, and the soft lustre of her eyes. Old Mr. Clifford nodded over his newspaper until his spectacles clattered to the floor, at which they ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... previous winter she had passed three months with some relatives in England, and there she had learned to ride to hounds, had first met Gerard Maule, and had made acquaintance with Lady Chiltern. Gerard Maule had wandered to Italy after her, appearing at Florence in his desultory way, having no definite purpose, not even that of asking Adelaide to be his wife,—but still pursuing her, as though he wanted her without knowing what he wanted. In the course of the Spring, however, he had proposed, and had been almost ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... girl. It was no make-believe that led them to follow the immemorial way and glory only in the companionship of each other; they felt the desire, and love that had awakened so tardily and moved in a manner so desultory, seemed concerned to ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... draft Russian gun-boats came down the river, and began to fire shell and shot at a long range at the small town and fortifications of Sulina. This was answered by the temporary batteries alone, the ships being out of range. Desultory fighting went on for about twenty-four hours, when the Russians, finding the hopelessness of the enterprise, especially now that the troops had retired, gave it up as a bad job and steamed up the Danube again. This ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... of methodical habits in the tillers of the soil was adverted to. Whilst on this subject, the King spoke of the utter disregard showed for any regularity in the hours of commencing and leaving off work. This desultory system is greatly aided by the want of stated hours for taking food and retiring to rest. If there were a common hour for breakfast and dinner, the hours for labor would be regulated and understood. The ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... became deeply alarmed. The desultory attacks of the Iroquois were now to be exchanged for a deliberate assault in which the whole strength of the Five Nations should be thrown into the struggle. The Ursulines and nuns of the Hotel-Dieu forsook their convents to take refuge in ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... come and see her flowers in the bay window of the drawing-room, which she had fitted up as a tiny conservatory; while her mother sat down to the piano and played dreamy music in a desultory fashion. I like dreamy music, although it always makes me melancholy— indeed, all music affects me the same way, in spite of my not being by any means what you would call a sad person. On the ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... age; but there is some comfort in thinking that future years may be more varied, and therefore more tolerable, than the past. You give me more credit than I deserve in supposing that I have led a studious life. I have indeed turned over a good many books, but in so desultory a way that it cannot be called study, nor has it left me the fruits of study.... I have another great difficulty in the lack of materials; for I have seen so little of the world that I have nothing but thin air to concoct my stories of, and it is not easy ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... gathered and stored with their kind. But instead of making an anthology, we have gone on the assumption that something more than accidental identity of subject-matter holds together the apparently desultory remarks of poets on the subject of the poet's eyebrows, his taste in liquors, his addiction to midnight rambles, and whatnot. We have followed a labyrinthine path through the subject with faith that, if we were but patient in observing the ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... uttered a monstrous folly—some momentary willingness to be maimed or crippled all my days if I might pass them in such a place. In fact half the pleasure of inhabiting this spacious saloon would be that of using one's legs, of strolling up and down past the windows, one by one, and making desultory journeys from station to station and corner to corner. Near by is a colossal ball-room, domed and pilastered like a Renaissance cathedral, and super-abundantly decorated with marble effigies, all yellow and grey with ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the occupant she found, Weaving a crate; and, with a gladsome cry, The dog frisked out, although the Cyclops frowned With all the terrors of his single eye; Then from a mound came running, too, the goat, Uttering her plaintive, desultory note. ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... insurgents, afforded great courage and support to these feudal volunteers, who considered it as a stronghold to which they might retreat, in case it should become impossible for them to maintain the desultory war they were now about ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Scythic origin, and after a time reduced them to subjection [PLATE XVII]. He then became involved in a quarrel with some of the natives of Afghanistan, who were at this time regarded as "Indians." A long and desultory contest followed without definite result, which was not concluded by the year A.D. 283, when he found himself suddenly engaged in hostilities on the opposite side ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... half a year after this that his desultory studies became concentrated on electricity, and after a time this took them to Munich. During the course of these studies he began to write, quite spontaneously. The students had formed a society, and ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... confidently hope, at no very distant period, to see melo-drama take the lofty position it deserves in the histrionic literature of this country. We feel that there is a wide field here laid open for the exercise of British talent, and have therefore, made a few desultory mems. on the subject, which we subjoin; intended as modest hints for the guidance of composers of melodramatic music. The situations we have selected from the most popular Melos. of the day; the music to be employed in each instance, we have endeavoured to describe in such a manner as to render ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... with his whole work which it is part of the business of the introducer to acquire, and adjust for the better understanding of the particular book. Of course, if an Introduction is imperfectly furnished with fact and thought and reading—if it is desultory, in bad taste, and so forth—it had better not be there. But this is only saying that a bad Introduction is a bad thing, which does not get us much beyond the intellectual edification of the niece of Gorboduc. Unless the introducer is a boggler, the Introduction ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... us the enemy had retired, except around the angle in the Seventeenth Corps, known as Leggett's or Bald Hill. Here there was a continuous fire, desultory and at close quarters, the enemy in places occupying ground close up to our intrenchments. To relieve these men of the Seventeenth Army Corps holding this angle, who were worn out, at the request of General Blair I sent two Regiments of Mersey's Brigade. They crawled ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... reading will be a method from nature, and not a mechanical one of hours and pages. It holds each student to a pursuit of his native aim, instead of a desultory miscellany. Let him read what is proper to him, and not waste his memory on a crowd of mediocrities. As whole nations have derived their culture from a single book,—as the Bible has been the literature as well as the religion of large portions of Europe,—as Hafiz was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... action appeared to have become general. Ali Pacha, who commanded the rear-guard, now committed the grave error of halting the three battalions of his brigade, and wasted most valuable time in performing desultory movements, and in firing volleys of grape and musketry, without arriving at any practical results. At one point, however, the rebels, who were advancing in force with loud cries of fanatical vengeance, received a substantial check. Two companies of Turks had been ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... follow do not pretend to be a history of piracy, but are simply an attempt to gather together, from various sources, particulars of those redoubtable pirates and buccaneers whose names have been handed down to us in a desultory way. ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... his guests to the care of Merridew, the under-butler, and James and Alfred, the footmen, returning only for a few minutes to lend tone and distinction to the distribution of cigars and liqueurs—those whose rank entitled them to do so made their way to the housekeeper's room, to pass in desultory conversation the interval before Mr. Beach should arrive, and a kitchen maid, with the appearance of one who has been straining at the leash and has at last managed to get free, opened the door, with the announcement: "Mr. Beach, ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... must be owing to the nature of its situation. There are some fine marble statues that adorn the tombs of certain individuals here interred; but they are mostly in the French taste, which is quite contrary to the simplicity of the antients. Their attitudes are affected, unnatural, and desultory; and their draperies fantastic; or, as one of our English artists expressed himself, they are all of a flutter. As for the treasures, which are shewn on certain days to the populace gratis, they are contained in a number of presses, or armoires, and, if the stones are genuine, they must be ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... punitive expedition she had planned had brought punishment mainly upon herself, and that not merely at the hands of Serbia's powerful patron, but at those of the little people who were to be chastised. The early fighting was of a desultory character, and Austria's two first-line corps having been withdrawn to meet the Russians, the Serbs and Montenegrins made a combined effort on 12 August to invade Bosnia and capture Serajevo. No great progress was made, and on the 16th the Austrians retaliated with the capture of Shabatz in the ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... bye, don't let me forget to ask you to bring with you my Persian Dictionary in case you come into these Parts. I read very very little: and get very desultory: but when Winter comes again must take to some dull Study to keep from Suicide, I suppose. The River, the Sea, etc., serve ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... any attacks. Only desultory firing. But a cordon had been drawn around the fortress, and the process of starvation ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... group of smaller children playing a desultory game of lic-lic for pieces of candy and cigarettes. Slowly he climbed the stairs of a stone flat. He prepared a supper for himself and ate it without either enjoyment or distaste. He lay down, fully clothed, on ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... it. The soldiers had had a few scuffles with rowdies at Blue Island and the stock yards. They had chased the toughs in and out among the long lines of freight cars, and fired a few shots. Even the newspapers couldn't magnify the desultory lawlessness into organized rebellion. It was becoming a matter of the courts now. The general managers had imported workmen from the East. The leaders of the strike—especially Debs and Howard—were giving out more and more incendiary, hysterical utterances. All workingmen were to be called out ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... peppered one another with harmless comments on the weather and the state of the crops. He advanced cabbages and I countered with sugar-beets. I am quite aware that there are good tacticians who deprecate the use of skirmish lines and the desultory fire of the musketry of small talk. They would advance in grim silence and open at once with the crushing fire ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... the year 1782, the settlements only suffered from the accustomed desultory warfare of the savages. No numerous collection of Indians had crossed their border,—no powerful army of warriors, threatening destruction to the forts, those asylums of their safety, had appeared among them.—But the scene ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... relieve a tension of mind which neither of us cared to reveal, we drifted into desultory and indifferent conversation. In the course of our talk Emma told me that her aunt had written to her that if she could leave the coach at Orizaba she would be within fifty miles of the hacienda of La Concepcion, whereas when she reached Mexico City she would still be eighty ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... A desultory discussion followed now, and Lord Kitchener urged that the Governments should make a proposal in accordance with what he had suggested; and both the Presidents replied that the Governments, according ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... His reading was desultory and pretty general, with spasms of passion for this study or that, this author or the other. And he has remarked, most regretfully, that these passions were all short-lived, none ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... last army of law and order in the lava beds of California extinguished the final fires of enlightened patriotism and quenched in blood the monarchical revival. Thenceforth armed opposition to anarchy was confined to desultory and insignificant warfare waged by small gangs of mercenaries in the service of wealthy individuals and equally feeble bands of prescripts fighting for their lives. In that year, too, "the Three Presidents" were driven from their capitals, Cincinnati, New Orleans and Duluth, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... actually it was an apartment which in Europe I would not put a horse into, and the door was merely a wide, worm-eaten board placed on end. In the middle of the night I heard a noise—yea, a rattle. The said board fell down, inwards, almost upon me. A light was flashed swiftly into my eyes, and desultory remarks which suddenly escaped me were rudely interrupted by shrill screams. My boy ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... of the closing of the unfortunate Valletort with his enemy, the Indians, hastening to the assistance of their chief, had come up, and a desultory fire had already commenced, diverting, in a great degree, the attention of the troops from the pursued. Emboldened by this new aspect of things Wacousta now deliberately grasped the rifle that had been abandoned by Johnstone; and raising ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... learned from him not only the art of war, but his special strategies. His secret consists in the rapidity of his movements. He has made Macchiavelli's words his own: 'A short and vigorous war insures victory!' He must, therefore, be opposed by a protracted and desultory war—his enemies must fight long, not with heavy columns, but with light battalions, now here, now there; they must take care not to bring on a general battle, but slowly thin the ranks of his army, and exhaust his resources and his patience. This was the course which the Spaniards pursued, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... All at once this desultory, almost unresisted attack came to an end, as a fresh body of Indians cantered up; many of the latter leading horses, to which the attacking party from the canyon now made their way; and just at sundown the whole body galloped off, without so much as giving the beleaguered ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... announced that the Germans intended to regard the whole of Belgium as a German province and to administer it as such, at least during the continuance of the war. The Belgian army retired to the north within the fortifications of Antwerp, where they were joined by French troops, but desultory fighting against the German invader continued at many points and the Franco-British allies soon came into contact with the advancing ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... as if by the hand of man, across that primeval colourless slope. The line of it can be traced distinctly over the hill and out of sight. It takes a moment's thinking to realise that the grey streak was once a road. It is a road which one has read of as the centre of some desultory fighting. I dare say it will appear in its own small way in history. "The battalion next attacked along the Bapaume-Cambrai road"—to give it a name it does not own; and readers will picture the troops in khaki dodging along a hedge, beneath green, ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... confident of victory, he knew that his deck was, at that moment, the most glorious theatre of human nature. For an hour, the battle raged. Our fire was regular, distinctive, and terrible; that of the enemy was becoming desultory and ill-directed. When the signal-lieutenant called out, that number 39, (to discontinue the action) was thrown out by the commander in chief, then about four miles off, Lord Nelson refused to believe ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... had not gone through. He laughed the idea to scorn of getting a tiger there, saying there was no cover. One elephant, however, was sent while we were talking. Our elephants were all standing in a group, and the mahout on his solitary elephant was listlessly jogging on in a purposeless and desultory manner, when we suddenly heard the elephant pipe out a shrill note of alarm, and the mahout yelled 'Bagh! Bagh!' tiger! tiger! The Captain was again the lucky man. The tiger, a much finer and stronger built animal than the one we had already killed, was standing not eighty ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... soon after. The tea was ready, and he sat down opposite his mother. She did not speak many words; and as for him, something had been just done and some words had been just said on the hill which prevented him from beginning a desultory chat. His mother's taciturnity was not without ominousness, but he appeared not to care. He knew why she said so little, but he could not remove the cause of her bearing towards him. These half-silent sittings were ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... no excuse of haste, or of a want of time, to offer for the defect of these volumes. All I ask is, that they may be viewed as no more than they profess to be. They are the gleanings of a harvest already gathered, thrown together in a desultory manner, and without the slightest, or, at least, very small pretensions, to any of those arithmetical and statistical accounts that properly belong to works of a graver character. They contain the passing remarks of one who has certainly seen something of the world, whether ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... some fierce torrent swoln with show'rs, Or sudden Cataracts of melting Snow, Which from the Alps its headlong Deluge pours, And foams, and thunders o'er the Vales below, With desultory fury borne along, Rolls his impetuous, ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... while they strained their ears for the faintest sound, but the fresh breeze wafted nothing to them. On a neighboring gallery two housewives were gossiping; a child was playing on the walk beneath, and his piping laughter sounded strangely incongruous. From across the way rose that desultory pounding as spikes were driven home and beams were nailed in place. Through a grated aperture in the prison wall an armed man peered down ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... the other; and crowds of volunteers and self-made officers join them, in the hope of present pillage or future emolument. Barricades appear in the streets; and at intervals there is to be heard the roaring of cannon, and desultory firing of musketry from the flat roofs, killing a peaceable citizen now and then, but doing ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... for Goethe a time of high emotional tension, from which he sought relief in rapid, desultory, and multifarious writing. Exquisite songs, musical comedies of a sentimental tinge, humorous and satiric skits in dramatic form, prose tragedy of passionate error, and poetic tragedy of titanic revolt—all these ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... A desultory bombardment was continued for some days, and some shots were fired against Colaba; but Kennery was now well provided with ammunition, and could return two shots for every one fired by the Bombay squadron. On the 11th, Angria sent a flag ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... afternoon of the day after our encounter with Bothwell—to be more accurate, just after four bells. Miss Wallace and I were sitting under the deck awning, she working in a desultory fashion upon a piece of embroidery while I ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... These desultory recitals continued for some time, until one day, as I met my young friends in the ordinary way, only somewhat earlier than common, I saw that there was something unusual in the wind. They mustered stronger than was their wont, and ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... the Turks that reenforcements had been sent to the relief of the British commander, and they hoped to capture the Kut before these arrived. On December 8, 1915, they shelled the British position all day; the bombardment was continued on the 9th and they made some desultory attacks on all sides. From the British point of view the attitude of the Arabs at this time was satisfactory. General Townshend received encouraging news that a relieving force was pushing its way rapidly ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... with a deep inspiration. And now they walked back and forth in silence broken only by a casual word or desultory phrase. Once Staniford had thought the conditions of these promenades perilously suggestive of love-making; another time he had blamed himself for not thinking of this; now he neither thought nor blamed himself for not thinking. The fact justified itself, ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... my lady thinks poor Kally too handsome for it to be good for a young clergyman to have much to say to her. They have not been so cordial to them of late, but that is partly owing to poor Mrs. White's foolish talk, and in part to young Alexis having been desultory and mopy of late—-not taking the interest in his music he did. Mr. Lee says he is sure some young woman is at the bottom ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... schoolboy, and who ought to have been added to the roll of the College benefactors, as having been the founder of the Cricket and the Whist Club, and restored to its old place on the river, at much cost and pains, the boat which had been withdrawn for the last five years, and reduced the sundry desultory idlenesses of the under-graduates into something like method and order—Charley White was now rector of a poor and populous parish in Yorkshire, busily engaged in building a new church and schools, opening Provident Societies, and shutting up beer-shops, and instructing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... put an end to poor Henry's desultory life. His house, in a crowded part of London, was especially doomed by the deadly sickness; and out of the whole family the sole survivors were a little girl of ten months old, and a boy of seven years, the latter of whom was with his ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... want of order, a rambling, unconnected, desultory manner, is commonly objected; as Hume styles it, "extreme carelessness of method;" and this is so often observed, as to be justly an object of dread. But this is occasioned by that indolence and want of discipline to which we have just alluded. It is not a necessary evil. If a ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... McMahon's shed at the Drovers' Arms by day and night. His behaviour in drink was original and erratic. He would fraternise with the man at the bar for a time, and then go roaming at large about the township in a desultory way, sleeping casually in all sorts of absurd places; but Waddy had a large experience in ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... protect the navigation of Great Britain, and secure its coast from invasion; but these purposes might be as effectually answered, at a much smaller expense, by the shipping alone. Should it be judged expedient, however, to prosecute this desultory kind of war, the commanders employed in it will do well to consider, that a descent ought never to be hazarded in an enemy's country, without having taken proper precautions to secure a retreat; that the severest discipline ought to be preserved during all the operations of the campaign; that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... should accomplish a great deal more and be infinitely more effective and progressive if we devoted our minds to the definite working-out of necessary problems whenever those times occur in which we are apt to be desultory. I wish here to make a plea for desultoriness and for an idleness which goes even beyond the idleness of the man who reads the newspaper and forgets what he has read. It seems to me better, whether we are sick or well, to allow long periods ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... drift in, inquiring for the heads of the firm. Then Fox would hang one leg over the arm of his swinging chair, light a cigar, and enter into desultory conversation. To Bob a great deal of time seemed thus to be wasted. He did not know that big deals were decided in apparently ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... desultory conversation just related had been carried on in subdued voices, the canoes were dropping slowly down with the current within the deep shadows of the western shore, the paddles being used merely to preserve the desired direction and proper positions. The strength of the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... has a message for to-day, and for its brilliant character drawing, and that gossipy desultory style of writing that stamps Mr. White's literary work, will earn a high place in fiction. It is good and clean and provides a vacation from the cares of the hour. It resembles a Chinese play, because it begins with the hero's boyhood, describes his long, busy life, and ends with his death. Its tone ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... main facts known respecting the American pitcher-plants have, as was natural, been ascertained in this country; and we gave an abstract, two years ago, of our then incipient knowledge. Much has been learned since, although all the observations have been of a desultory character. If space permitted, an instructive narrative might be drawn up, as well of the economy of the Sarracenias as of how we came to know what we do of it. But the very little we have room for will be strictly supplementary to our ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... the latter, one was sleeping soundly and the other lying awake occupied with his desultory thoughts, when daylight came to them bringing with it the desire to rise; for the lazy down was never a delight to Don Quixote, victor or vanquished. Altisidora, come back from death to life as Don Quixote ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... way thither, this February afternoon, they talked in a desultory way about some new War-Office reforms, which, as usual, the entire Army believed to be merely intended—wilfully and deliberately—for its destruction; about a recent gambling scandal in the regiment, or the peculiarities ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I could hear the sound of desultory firing across the bridge, and inquired what was ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... all were happier that morning, though none knew why. Days passed, desultory and sweet, and with a pile of books about him, he lay in a long cane chair under the trees; then the book would drop on his knees, and blowing smoke in curling wreaths, he lost himself in dramatic meditations. ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... considerable knowledge of life and manners. Having mentioned his sermons, it is proper to add, that as a preacher he almost wholly failed. His sermons were sometimes interesting and pathetic; but they were always desultory, and almost always immeasurably long. The editor has lately published his Short Life of Sir ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler |
