"Emptier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her mother, washing her hands and face and arranging her hair, which was beautiful, black and silky; then she tidied up the "room," which only had the result of making it look emptier and poorer still. ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... woman could be lazier, emptier of head, more inane of life than her sister Martha. "She wouldn't even keep clean if it wasn't the easiest thing in the world for her to do, and a help at filling in her long idle day." Yet—Martha Galland had every comfort and most of the luxuries, ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... impulsion he will soon cease to draw on the accumulated wisdom of the past and the new resources of the present, and as he grows older, he will live in a mental atmosphere which is always growing thinner and emptier. Do we not all know many people who seem to live in a mental vacuum—to whom indeed, we have great difficulty in attributing immortality because they apparently have so little life except that of the body? Fifteen minutes a day of good reading would ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... tea drew to an end, and the plates of toast, bread and butter, and tea-cake grew emptier, and the slop-basin filled, and only Maggie's flowers remained fresh and immaculate amid the untidy debris of the meal; and as Edwin and Clara became gradually indifferent to jam, and then inimical to it; and as the sounds of the street took on the softer quality ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... bless her rescuer; she heaped maledictions upon his head—mild ones at first, but growing perceptibly more forcible and less genteel as the way grew rougher, and her feet grew wearier, and her stomach emptier. Then, as if her troubles were all to come in a lump—as they have a way of doing—she stepped squarely into a bunch of ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... dead, not sadly and hopelessly, though life for many of us is emptier forever, and for many so much harder, and we wear very little mourning. We mourn silently, and with a sure faith that our men's supreme sacrifice is not in vain. "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend." The little white crosses of our graves ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... of the portico which they would probably shake to pieces if ever they should be fired. Inside the routine was as it used to be, and when I turned down the passage to get my permit to go upstairs, I could hardly believe that I had been away for so long. The place is emptier than it was. There is not the same eager crowd of country delegates pressing up and down the corridors and collecting literature from the stalls that I used to see in the old days when the serious little workman from the Viborg side ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... Crown. Here Cousin, seize y Crown: Here Cousin, on this side my Hand, on that side thine. Now is this Golden Crowne like a deepe Well, That owes two Buckets, filling one another, The emptier euer dancing in the ayre, The other downe, vnseene, and full of Water: That Bucket downe, and full of Teares am I, Drinking my Griefes, whil'st you mount ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... distance away, he knew, a good hour's walk on hard pavement and through considerable heat. But he had made forced marches in Sonora as badly shod and on even an emptier stomach. For Justus Miles, though he might not have looked it, was a bona fide soldier of fortune, stranded in New York. Five feet eight in height, he was, loose and rangy in build, and with deceptively mild blue eyes. He had fought through the World War, served under Kemal Pasha ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg
... so many weeks or so many years, that is a matter of supreme uncertainty. I never am in the same mind very long together. But I am heartily sick of knocking about abroad, and I cannot possibly find life emptier or duller here than I have found it in places that ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... Representatives was early deserted. An adjournment would hardly have made it emptier. The speaker, it is true, retained his chair, but no business of moment was or could be attended to. Members all rushed in to hear Mr. Webster, and no call of the House or other parliamentary proceedings could call them back. The floor of the Senate was ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... and through the day she thought of Mildred Caniper's room as of a hermitage, but without the nurse the house was so much emptier of human life that it became peopled with the thoughts of all who had lived in it; and while Helen waited for George's coming, she felt them moving ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... means a soulless round of labour varied by the public-house and the "pictures," so to the half-educated it is apt, except in war time, to mean the office and the club, with interests that do not go beyond golf and motoring and bridge. If our lives are emptier and our interests narrower than they need be, it is partly the result of a narrow and unsatisfying education, which leaves half our powers undeveloped and interests untouched, and too often only succeeds in giving us a distaste for those which it ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... o' brave man will slap children, an' call a boy a calf, an' bully timid women, an' knock down little Chinks and dagoes! Oh, A know his kind o' thunder-barrel bravery, that makes the more noise the emptier and bigger it is—they're thick as louse ticks under the slimy side of a dirty board in this world, Wayland; an' they're thick in the girth an' thicker in the skull." Matthews had taken one of the Forest axes from the saddle. He left the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... and their best Have fought ten years to bring her back to nest? Is this your meed of honour? Was it for this You flung forth fortune—to ensure him his? And he made snug at home, we seek our lands Barer than we left them, with emptier hands, And some with fewer members, shed that he Might fare as soft and trim as formerly! Not so went I adventuring, good friend; Not so look I this business to have end: Nay, but I fight to live, not live to fight, And so will live by day as thou by night, Sating my eyes with ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... housed the old man's deranged spirit, empty as now it was—aye, emptier than Duggle's tomb—was still to be witness of one more earthly scene and unwittingly ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... a part of it. Hitherto New York had been a sort of varied hotel, an entertainment. Now it was to be her scene, and she had begun already to take possession. It had all come about very naturally, shortly after her father's death. While she was dreading the return to St. Louis, which must be emptier than ever without the Colonel, and she and her mother were discussing the possibility of Europe, John's new position had come. A Western road had made him an offer; for he had a splendid record as a "traffic getter." The Atlantic and Pacific could not lose him; ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... "have been all this day in the Palais-Royal;" the press is so great that an apple thrown from a balcony on the moving floor of heads would not reach the ground. The condition of these heads may be imagined; they are emptier of ballast than any in France, the most inflated with speculative ideas, the most excitable and the most excited. In this pell-mell of improvised politicians no one knows who is speaking; nobody is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... crisis is at hand. The Poles are united in their resistance to the despotic sway of the government. Witness the late bloody massacres in Warsaw (1862), against which the whole civilized world cries aloud in horror! They will not now be satisfied with empty professions and still emptier concessions. They demand a Constitution—not a mere paper Constitution, like that of 1815, made to be violated by every lackey of the government sent to coerce them. They demand civil, political, and religious liberty. Can the emperor grant it to a dependency, and withhold it from ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... still an emptier sound, The modern fair-one's jest; On earth unseen, or only found To warm the ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... some more miles and pretty soon I'm that empty that I couldn't be no emptier than I am without a surgical operation. My voice gets weak, and objects ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... shore For emptier groves below! Ye charming solitudes, Ye tall ascending woods, Ye glassy lakes and prattling streams. Whose aspect still was sweet, Whether the sun did greet, Or the pale moon embrace you with her beams— Adieu to all! Adieu, ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... braced the nation, summoned its dormant energies. It had not been severe enough to destroy, and only fierce enough to force folk to shake off the torpor that had lain upon them during the two previous regimes. People began to work again, bellies were somewhat emptier and heads somewhat fuller than they had been under Louis-Philippe and Louis-Napoleon. Above all, the vapid and superficial life of the Second Empire was ended. People were more sober and inward and realistic than they had been. ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... longer in the world of bodily people bore, in consequence, the reverting brunt of their double selfishness. But the remnant of life seemed a poor thing to-night. The further it stretched, in his suddenly stirred imagination, the poorer, the emptier, it seemed. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to the stagnation of my mind, I grasped at with the fondness and eagerness of a child. Thus, you found me surrounding myself with luxuries which palled upon my taste the instant that their novelty had passed: now striving for the vanity of literary fame; now, for the emptier baubles which riches could procure. At one time I shrouded myself in my closet, and brooded over the dogmas of the learned and the errors of the wise; at another, I plunged into the more engrossing ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... London certainly seemed no emptier than usual. Streams of motor-cars, taxis, and buses hurried along Piccadilly, the streets were busy with people coming and going. Out of the shadows just by the Burlington Arcade a woman spoke to him—little whispered words that ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... paper still; long years have passed: it is only a crumpled little yellow fragment; but the world would be poorer and emptier to ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... retire, As from her outmost works, a broken foe, With tumult less and with less hostile din; That Satan with less toil, and now with ease, Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light, And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn; Or in the emptier waste, resembling air, Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold Far off th' empyreal Heaven, extended wide In circuit, undetermined square or round, With opal towers and battlements adorned Of living ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... out for a walk. In his presence I had to keep up a forced cheerfulness, and I believe the pretence did me good. We took a path up the Berg among groves of stinkwood and essenwood, where a failing stream made an easy route. It may have been fancy, but it seemed to me that the wood was emptier and that we were followed less closely. I remember it was a lovely evening, and in the clear fragrant gloaming every foreland of the Berg stood out like a great ship above the dark green sea of the bush. When we reached the edge of the plateau we saw the sun sinking ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... stepped into a nearby doorway and stood motionless. There was no change in his expression except that possibly his eyes became a shade emptier. ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... no emptier than the cottages about which our friends strolled. But the cottages were all ready, the rows of new chairs stood on the fresh piazzas, the windows were invitingly open, the pathetic little patches ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the electric cars were rushing along and there were cabs and carriages, but there were no waggons about, no brewers' and butchers' carts. Everything was so much quieter, as though subdued, softened. The streets seemed broader than usual because they were emptier, and the faces of the people who walked there looked different from what ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig |
