"Withered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with common sense of the big business before them. The evening consultations were all that we gave to the future. The past was even less openly recognised; but it proclaimed itself eloquently in the withered bunches of flowers on this and that cabin table, in the demand for the ship's notepaper, in the women's trinkets worn by men who, under ordinary circumstances, would rather wear sack-cloth than jewellery: emblems, all ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... your story, Lucy; cut out the sob stuff!" This from an unsympathetic brother, who should have withered next minute beneath the scathing searchlight of scorn turned ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... of the superiority of the workmanship put into federal buildings. The old mint building, surrounded by a wide space of pavement, was absolutely unharmed. Not even the few palm trees which stand on either side of its broad entrance were withered by the flames that devoured ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... and burthen lay;" a shadowy sorrow dropped its pall of darkness over his mind and obscured his perception of all awakening, quickening inspirations; a smouldering fire within him withered up every vernal shoot of impulse and turned all the spring-time foliage of thought and fancy sere. His voice, his look, his mien, betrayed that an ever-living woe encompassed him ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... your rage Cannot inforce a recantacion from me: I doe pronounce her light as is a leafe In withered Autumne shaken from the trees By the rude winds: noe specld serpent weares More spotts than ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... enough to satisfy Walpole. He discovers another cause for the decline of the art, the want of models. Nothing worth painting, it seems, was left to paint. "How picturesque," he exclaims, "was the figure of an Anabaptist!"—as if puritanism had put out the sun and withered the trees; as if the civil wars had blotted out the expression of character and passion from the human lip and brow; as if many of the men whom Vandyke painted had not been living in the time of the Commonwealth, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the disembarcation was simple. Nor was the ascent of the cliff a harsh task. Half an hour after the landing the exploring party stood on the summit of the hill, where the black flag waved over a scene of utter desolation. The vegetation was withered to pallid rags: even the tiniest weedling in the rock crevices had been ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... his, Morten Bruus called the men to the corner in question. The earth here was covered by some withered cabbage stalks, broken twigs, and other brush which he pushed aside ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... as soon as I was on the ground, and thanked me, and bade me good-night. I hope I'll never see his face again. I got into bed, and couldn't sleep for a long time; and when I examined my five guineas this morning, that I left in the table drawer the last thing, I found five withered leaves of oak—bad ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... live thing except ourselves. Not a beast, not a bird had we seen since we entered it; and in the lake, as we found presently, there were no fish; the only sign that animal life ever had existed here was that dried and withered remnant of a woman that we had found in the deserted house, and the bones which we had seen gleaming below us in the lake. This was, in truth, as we came thus to call ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... exotics, not from another climate, but from another age; the breath of scorn fell on them, and having no root in the hearts and beliefs of men any more, but only in the sentimentalities and make-beliefs, they withered and sank. And yet, in their place as historical phenomena they are as remarkable as any of the pagan mythologies; to the full as remarkable, perhaps far more so, if the length and firmness of hold they once exercised on the conviction of mankind ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... speaker quickly, feeling a warm glow suffuse his withered body at the hint of encouragement for his private hopes. What more natural, he reasoned, than for Blake to wish his future wife to accept the highest social honor that New Orleans can confer? Norvin's next words offered ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... throwing of three spoonfuls of dried leaves into a teapot, but the transformation of the green leaf of a camellia into the familiar black spirals of our breakfast-tables—is quite an art in itself. The "tea-maker" has to judge when the freshly gathered leaves are sufficiently withered for him to begin the process, into the complications of which I will not attempt to enter. I was much gratified, both in Ceylon and Assam, at noting how much of the tea-making machinery is manufactured in Belfast, for though Ulster enterprise is proverbial, I should never have ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... street is the Temple of Luxor, where the curious pass under the deity-covered portal, and gaze upon the reproduced wonders of ancient Egypt. They bend over withered mummies of kings dead 5,000 years ago, and listen to music that has not ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... smoothing out a piece of paper shakily, "that's Sir George!" and his withered finger-tips trembled on the middle of the page: 'Joshua Creed, in my service five years as butler, during which time I have found him all that a servant should be.' And this 'ere'—he fumbled with another—"this 'ere 's Lady Glengow: 'Joshua Creed—' I thought ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that withered tongue Could tell us what those sightless orbs have seen— How the world looked when it was fresh and young And the great deluge still had left it green; Or was it then so old that history's pages Contained no record ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... gateways as of yore, and as woodenly as if they had never stirred since 1861. They were unchanged in attitude, but how changed they were in person: so dwarfed, so shrunken, as if the intervening years had sapped the juices of their joints and let their bones fall together, like those of withered old men! ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... comment, for the reader's quiet study, as showing the exuberance of imagination which other men at this time in Italy allowed to waste itself in idle arabesque, restrained by Botticelli to his most earnest purposes; and giving the withered tree-trunks, hewn for the rude throne of the aged prophetess, the same harmony with her fading spirit which the rose has with youth, or the laurel with victory. Also in its weird characters, you have the best example I can show you of the ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... tentatively, in twos and threes. Next moment a storm of rapid rifle fire broke from the trench. The grey figures turned and ran. Some disappeared over the horizon, others dropped flat, others simply curled up and withered. In three minutes solitude reigned again, ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... said the old lady, "I suppose I must obey orders. But my, how beautiful it is, too beautiful for the likes of me!" And Celestina stroked the lovely cloth with her gnarled and withered fingers. "How very good the dear Lord is! And now if you don't mind, let us pray together here to thank Him for all His mercies." Celestina who could not kneel, placed her hands on our bowed heads, and after ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... placed among the Stars; partly also Python, Juno's Serpent, arising out of the putrid Earth (after Deucalions Flood) made hot by the Rayes of the Sun; partly also the Fire, with which Medea kindled seven Lights; partly also the Moon, inflamed by the burning of Phaeton; partly also the Withered Olive Branch, a new; flourishing and bearing Fruit; yea, becoming a new and tender Olive Tree; partly also Arcadia, where Jupiter was wont to walk; partly also the Habitation of Pluto, at the Gate whereof lay the Three-headed Cerberus; & also partly that Mountain, where Hercules burned all his ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... have seen men smile whoso whole life was a scene of misfortune, and yet this emblem of happiness has lit their features. It is outward show—a fruit, whose surface presents a tempting appearance to the eye, but which is blasted and withered within. Smiles are often like the fruit called the Guava. It is a beautiful looking fruit which grows in the West Indies, and to the taste is very luscious, but when examined through a microscope, it presents the appearance of a moving ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... used—and with good reason—to consider mahogany as a durable wood, but of the half-dozen of mahogany copies of the old oak chair, each one has suffered some break of legs or arms or spindles, while the original remains as firm in its withered old age as it was the day I rescued it from the "out-kitchen" ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... her miserable existence, she had never possessed a single gold piece, and the sight of the scattered louis before her eyes almost dazzled her. Grasping a few in her withered fingers, she held them up to the light, trying to catch the sun's rays that she might feast her hungry ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... was, as might be expected from one of his race, always at the point of danger throughout the retirement, and as he crossed the open zone among the last, a sharp-shooter at close range, from behind a withered ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... close up to the little table in front of Lady Maulevrier's couch, and looked down at her, a strange, uncanny being, withered and bent, with pale, faded eyes in which there was a ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... disaffection will decline, and the withered head of tyranny expire in America. The ravages of the enemy will be short and limited, and like all their former ones, will produce a ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... From 1831 to 1836 she left her husband, going with a lover, Andrea Marcosini, who abandoned her at the end of five years to marry a dancer; and in January, 1837, she returned to her husband's home emaciated, withered and faded, "a sort of nervous skeleton," to resume a life ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... tobacco into the tunnel, and wafted it down towards the entrance with his jacket. Then with his knife he cut the lashings from the dead man's hands and feet, and carried him across—he was very light, for all his substance had long since withered out of him—and laid him in the tunnel as though he was making ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... fast. For two years the priests denied the sacraments to the living and funeral prayers for the dead. At the end of that time the Pope, by a bull of excommunication (S167), cut off the King as a withered branch from the Church. John laughed at the interdict, and met the decree of excommunication with such cruel treatment of the priests that they fled terrified from ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... one's loneliness, where one rode for sweltering miles for the chance of meeting a collector or police officer, with whom most likely on closer acquaintance one had hardly two ideas in common, where female society was represented at long intervals by some climate-withered woman missionary or official's wife, where food and sickness and veterinary lore became at last the three outstanding subjects on which the mind settled or rather sank. That was the life he foresaw and dreaded, and that was the life he was going ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... reedy tarn, and a woodcock that sprang out of a holly thicket in a bog. It was a day of gleams of sunlight, passing showers, and mist that rolled about the hills and swept away, leaving the long slopes in transient brightness, checkered with the green of mosses and the red of withered fern. The sky cleared as they turned homewards, and when they reached the Garth an angry crimson ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... giving the last call. Then the boy took her in his arms and kissed her withered cheek, which took on a happy glow that made us all look the ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... the black in his hair withered to an ashen white. His flesh fell away. He could neither eat nor sleep. He shambled through the obscure streets of Warchester, or lingered wistfully in the beech woods behind his own palatial home in Acredale, staring at the window ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... mountains, he had come on a dried-up wisp of a man with long, iron-gray hair, a sharp, withered face, and hands like the claws of a bird. He rode a fine bay gelding, and had stopped Bill to ask some questions about the region above the timberline because he was drifting south and intended to cross the summits. Bill had described the way, and suddenly, out of their talk, ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... scene. The wretched man would not have listened to the plea of the dying girl had not the remonstrances of his confessor constrained him. Thus, reluctantly, he entered the dying chamber. He found Mary Angelica faded, withered, and ghastly—all unlike the radiant beauty whom for a few brief months he had almost worshiped. Egotist as he was, he could not restrain his tears. Her glassy eyes were riveted upon his countenance. Her ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... heard his voice he smiled; yes—his shrunk, pale, withered face was lit up by a wild, indescribable ecstasy, whose startling expression waa borrowed, one would think, as much from the light of insanity as from that of returning consciousness. He sucked in his thin cheeks, smacked his parched, skinny lips, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... o'clock, yesterday, Mrs. President Grant had a grand reception at the White House. There hasn't been the ghost of one while Lent kept people down to a fish diet and morning meetings; but now, when the flowers of Easter-Sunday have all withered up, people begin to visit one another again, and this grand reception at the White House sort of opens the way and sets the ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... themselves "while a girl is walking, gathering wood, or working in the field, she runs to the river and hides herself among the reeds for the day, so as not to be seen by men. She covers her head carefully with her blanket that the sun may not shine on it and shrivel her up into a withered skeleton, as would result from exposure to the sun's beams. After dark she returns to her home and is secluded" in a hut for some time.[65] During her seclusion, which lasts for about a fortnight, neither she nor the girls who wait upon her may drink any milk, lest the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... covered over with their vegetable impressions, did certainly remind me, when I first examined them some fifteen years ago, of the bottom of some stagnant ditch beside some decaying hedge, as it appears in middle spring, when paved with fragments of dead branches and withered grass, and mottled with its life-impregnated patches of the gelid substance regarding which a provincial poet tells his readers, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Indra's hand in seven had cleft:(213) "No fault, O Lord of Gods, is thine; The blame herein is only mine. But for one grace I fain would pray, As thou hast reft this hope away. This bud, O Indra, which a blight Has withered ere it saw the light— From this may seven fair spirits rise To rule the regions of the skies. Be theirs through heaven's unbounded space On shoulders of the winds to race, My children, drest in heavenly forms, Far-famed as Maruts, Gods of storms. One God to Brahma's sphere assign, Let one, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... great flame of ionized air was the only result. A new ray reached out from the other ship, a fan-like spreading ray. It struck the Ancient Mariner, and did not harm it, though the hillside behind was suddenly withered and blackened, then smoking ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... she was duly interested, even if a trifle shy of the red brother who stared so fixedly. She entered a lodge with Bill, and listened to him make laundry arrangements in broken English with a withered old beldame whose features resembled a ham that had hung overlong in the smokehouse. Two or three blanketed bucks squatted by the fire that sent its blue smoke streaming out the apex of ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... mother Venus iealous of my health, Conuaid me from their crooked nets and bands: So I escapt the furious Pirrhus wrath: Who then ran to the pallace of the King, And at Ioues Altar finding Priamus, About whose withered necke hung Hecuba, Foulding his hand in hers, and ioyntly both Beating their breasts and falling on the ground, He with his faulchions poynt raisde vp at once, And with Megeras eyes stared in their face, Threatning a thousand deaths at euery glaunce. ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe
... precipice from 20 to 40 feet high. The rugged slopes at its foot are covered by impenetrable green jungle, and abound with dens formed of fallen blocks of rock, the suitable retreats of Tigers, Bears, and Hyaenas. The western slopes are less rugged, but the soil is parched, and the forests seem withered by excess of heat. The summit of the mountain presents a mixture of open lawns and woods. There were once twenty-five villages on Myn Pat, but they have long been deserted, on account of the number and ferocity of the ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... a little, dull, close courtyard, where the yellow leaves of a withered gourd trailed drearily over the gray, uneven stones. The clamor of the applause and the ring of the music from the dancing-hall echoed with a whirling din in his ear, and made in sharper, stranger contrast the quiet of the narrow court with its ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... I had hoped that it might be Cristel herself?—let me in. In by-gone days, I dimly remembered him as old and small and withered. Advancing years had wasted him away, in the interval, until his white miller's clothes hung about him in empty folds. His fleshless face would have looked like the face of a mummy, but for the restless brightness of his ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... spirits were over. The conversation flagged; and when her brother returned from a visit to the next table, she rose and invited the party to come and see her garden. Again the nebula followed her, but Fink was no longer at her side. That burning glance had withered the green tendrils that had been drawing them together. Sabine turned to Anton, and tried to be cheerful, but he saw ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... the sun came up, and the sun shone down, And the little white heads were withered and brown; Long were their faces, their pride had a fall— They were nothing ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... be half as indulgent to Olivia as you are to me: indeed you are prejudiced against her; and because you see some faults, you think her whole character vicious. But would you cut down a fine tree because a leaf is withered, or because the canker-worm has eaten into the bud? Even if a main branch were decayed, are there not remedies which, skilfully applied, can save the tree from destruction, and perhaps restore ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... phrase, but smothering it the next minute as best I could, I followed Sally, not without trepidation, up the short flight of steps, and into the wide hall, where the air was heavy with the perfume of fading roses. Great silver bowls of them drooped now, with blighted heads, amid the withered smilax, and the floor was strewn thickly with petals, as if a strong wind had blown down the staircase. From the dining room came a delicious aroma of coffee, and as we crossed the threshold, I saw that the two ladies, in their lace morning caps, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... us, you see," said Sadie, slowly finishing a baked apple which looked like a head-hunter's withered trophy. "On the low prices they're obliged to charge they can't make a cent offen us. Besides if all the guyls et in the house they'd have to give up more of their valuable room. They'd rather we'd go out, so long as we're back in time. Only ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... which bordered the garden. She had her water-vase in her hand, and she sprinkled the thirsting plants, which seemed to brighten at her approach. She bent to inhale their odor. She touched them timidly and caressingly. She felt, along their stems, if any withered leaf or creeping insect marred their beauty. And as she hovered from flower to flower, with her earnest and youthful countenance and graceful motions, you could not have imagined a fitter handmaid for ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... every thing together. It seemed more like a tropical than a northern forest, there were so many glossy evergreen leaves. We recognized among them the holly-leaf barberry (known also as the Oregon grape), one of the most beautiful of shrubs. Its pretty clusters of yellow flowers were withered, and its fruit not yet ripe. We found also the sallal,—the Indian's berry,—the salmon-colored raspberry, and the coral-red huckleberry. Occasionally we heard the scream of a hawk, or the whirring of great wings above our heads; but, for the most part, we tramped on in perfect silence. ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... enterprise—must have raged at large. And perhaps the other did not rage enough. Youth feels deeply it is true, but it has not the same vivid sense of lost opportunities. It believes in the absolute reality of time. And then, in that abominable scamp with his youth already soiled, withered like a plucked flower ready to be flung on some rotting heap of rubbish, no very genuine feeling about anything could exist—not even about the hazards of his own unclean existence. A sneering half-laugh with some such remark as: "We are properly ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... here and there by patches of wiry shrubs, used as fuel at the desert stations, or lines of hillocks succeeding each other like waves on the surface of the shoreless deep. The wind, even more than the natural barrenness of the soil, prevents the growth of any vegetation except low, pliant herbage. Withered plants are uprooted and scattered by the gale like patches of foam on the stormy sea. These terrible winds, which of course were against us, with the frequently heavy cart-tracks, would make it quite impossible to ride. ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... one to discover, no one to add blame to blame, to pile shame upon shame. Just blackness—blackness all at once, and no light or anything any more. The fruit all gone from the trees, the garden all withered, the bower all ruined, the children all dead—the pretty children all dead forever, the pretty children that never were born, that never lived ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her love lay cold in death, Sunk in the black and silent tomb, All sere and withered was the wreath That wont so ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dust return, groveling meanwhile as best we may, amid the wreck of our illusions. It costs me something to admit the failure of the Great Experiment, its horrible and tragic failure! To lose a hand, an eye, a limb, to be withered by disease, one can replace, repair, renew; but an ideal, a system of philosophy, ingrained into one's very life! It is this that ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... variety bore me next morning through a country of barbed wire, gun emplacements and fields seamed with trenches to Tapiau, a town withered in the blast of war. Two ruined bridges in the Pregel bore silent testimony to the straits of the retreating Germans, for the remaining ends on the further shore were barricaded with scraps of iron and wood gathered ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... the steep, stony steps to the door of the Baron's house, old Ursela came running down to meet him. She flung her withered arms around him and hugged him close to her. "My little child," she cried, and then fell to sobbing as though her ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... with you," answered Mr. Harman, "but may I first thank your wife?" Charlotte Home's bonnet had fallen off as she knelt on the floor, now suddenly a withered and trembling hand was placed on her head. "God bless you! Even from a sinner like me, such words from a full ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... like a crown of leaves From the old winter oak near mother's home, That withered when a young dishonored woman With piercing cries distraught ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... met me one day, with a "scatter-gun" in my hands and old Don following obediently at heel. Thinking that in his long life he must have learned many things in the woods that I would be glad to know, I had invited him cordially to join me. But he only withered me with the contempt in his hawk eyes, and wiggled his toe as if holding back a kick from my honest dog ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... glorious September days were gone. The hazy October had passed away, and the autumn winds had swept the withered leaves from the tall trees which grew around Rose Hill; when one cold, rainy November morning, a messenger was sent to Mrs. Deane, saying that Mrs. Hastings was sick, and wished to ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... came stooping into Sylvia's bedroom, a slight woman with a narrow bent back, brown hair smoothed neatly down on each side of a withered, dried-up face, with a patch of red on the cheek bones, and sunken brown eyes roving restlessly to right and left. She wore a black stuff dress, a satin apron with pockets and an edging of jet, and knitted mittens over her ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... gloom pervaded everything. It was the close of autumn; the air was full of withered leaves; they rustled beneath the tread at every step, and the wind ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... moving, and shortly before ten o'clock we heard the opening rattle of Rustum Khan's stinging defense. There was intended to be no deception about that part of our arrangements; nor was there. The oncoming enemy was met with a hail of destruction that checked and withered his ranks, and made the succeeding companies only too willing to turn at the castle road instead of ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... touch of bitterness on my mouth Like salt, burning in. And my hand withered in your hand. For you were straining with a wild heart, back, back again, Back to those children you had left behind, to all the aeons of the past. And I was here in the ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... bank to bank like a rough kind of natural bridge, with the stream roaring and foaming only six feet below. The girls scrambled over its upturned roots, and stood looking at the straight trunk and withered branches that ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... to do my darling a service, and I cared little for my own soul. So young and so beautiful too. And it's a nice pair ye would have made. And it's I that have kilt him! Och hone!" cried Norah, wringing her withered hands. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in a dark forsaken tower, Crowned with a withered cypress flower, Is a bowed head turned away; A face like carved marble white, Sweet eyes drooping away from the light, Shunning ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... leaving all to 'Cash;' of quietly shutting-up the God's Temple, and gradually opening wide-open the Mammon's Temple, with 'Laissez-faire, and Every man for himself,'—have led us in these days! We have Upper, speaking Classes, who indeed do 'speak' as never man spake before; the withered flimsiness, the godless baseness and barrenness of whose Speech might of itself indicate what kind of Doing and practical Governing went on under it! For Speech is the gaseous element out of which most kinds of Practice and Performance, especially all kinds of moral Performance, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... passed the line of vision, each soft lump of crystals gleamed purest white as it joined the ever-deepening mass below. Every gate and stump and rubbish heap was a thing of beauty, glorified by the ethereal covering of the snow; the dead clumps of ragwort by the road side, the withered branches of oak, the shrivelled trails of bramble all seemed transformed by the feathery particles ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... status quo, we're not utilizing the efforts of more than a fraction of our people. Nine out of ten of us spend our lives sitting before the Telly, sucking tranks. Meanwhile, the motivation for continued progress seems to have withered away. Our Upper political circles are afraid some seemingly minor change might avalanche, so more and more we lean upon the old ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... had reached an angle of the road where a few withered tree branches alone separated them from the others. They perceived the brown body of the carriage, half open like a huge rat-trap, and beside it the forbidding faces of their would-be captors. Trenck launched these words through ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... our springs, like old men's children, be Decayed and withered from their infancy: No kindly showers fall on our barren earth, To hatch the season in a timely birth: Our summer such a russet livery wears, As in a ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... He is a hero and a battle-god: The spoils and the rewards he justly won, Others have seized, and left his haughty heart A withered laurel. ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... Magyars in Hungary were led to faith through loyalty to their temporal monarch, their royal missioner St. Stephen. The heathen Danes reappear as the chivalrous Normans, the haughty but true sons and vassals of St. Peter. The Saracens even, who gave birth to an imposture, withered away at the end of 300 or 400 years, and had not the power, though they had the will, to persevere in their enmity to the Cross. The Tartars had both the will and the power, but they were far off from ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... cried old Barr, clapping his withered hands together. "You shall be well rewarded, never fear. But now about your purchase in ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... utterly the discussion that had provoked it. Many people had noted the curious effect of that tone and had resolved to defy it at the next opportunity, "just to see what the consequences would be." But when the opportunity had come, their courage had always withered. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... bliss), condemned For ever now to have their lot in pain— Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced Of Heaven, and from eternal splendours flung For his revolt—yet faithful how they stood, Their glory withered; as, when heaven's fire Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines, With singed top their stately growth, though bare, Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they bend From wing to wing, and half enclose him round With all his peers: attention ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... was littered with its contents—gloves and handkerchiefs and ribbons. She held a shabby, empty purse in her limp hand, and it was as though she had sat down because she had no longer the strength to stand. He had not known before how grey her hair was. Her face was grey, too, and withered like a dead leaf. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... many days Of sorrow in the world, but never wept. She lived on alms, and carried in her hand Some withered stalks she gathered in the spring. When any asked the cause she smiled, and said They were her sisters, and would come and watch Her grave when she was dead. She never spoke Of her deceiver, father, mother, home, Or child, or ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... and kissed the Judge on his withered cheek. "You are so good to me," she said, evasively, and with another kiss, she ran ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... bronchitis, complicated with spasm of the glottis; and, in a dead, flat voice, with a sunken eye that looked and saw not, told me what washes, gargles, pastilles, and inhalations she had proved most beneficial. From her I was passed on to her younger sister, Miss Elizabeth, a small and withered thing with twitching lips, victim, she told me, to very much the same sort of throat, but secretly devoted to another set of medicines. When she went away with Baxter and the bath-chair, I fell across a major of the Indian army with gout in his glassy ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... death, Nestor-like aged, in an Age of Care, Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer. These Eyes like Lampes, whose wasting Oyle is spent, Waxe dimme, as drawing to their Exigent. Weake Shoulders, ouer-borne with burthening Griefe, And pyth-lesse Armes, like to a withered Vine, That droupes his sappe-lesse Branches to the ground. Yet are these Feet, whose strength-lesse stay is numme, (Vnable to support this Lumpe of Clay) Swift-winged with desire to get a Graue, As ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the Abbot rose, the chain whereby His thoughts went upward broken by that cry, And, looking from the casement, saw below A wretched woman, with gray hair aflow, And withered hands stretched up to him, who cried For alms as one who might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... able to reach in the world if it had not been for the young energy and inspiration of Kendricks, and they had put me in a certain seat with Miss Gage's wraps beside me where they could find me, they went off and danced for hours and hours. For hours and hours? For ages and ages! while I withered away amid mouldering mothers, and saw my charges through the dreadful half- dreams of such a state whirling in the waltz, hopping in the polka, sliding in the galop, and then endlessly walking up and down between the dances, and eating and drinking the chill refreshments that it made my ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... three men, two women and a child in the room. They were all Dry-towners and had an obscure family likeness, and they all wore rich garments of fur dyed in many colors. One of the men, old and stooped and withered, was doing something to the brazier. A slim boy of fourteen was sitting cross-legged on a pile of cushions in the corner. There was ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... the triple loss with equanimity. Then Peggy Conover, hitherto under the eclipse of boarding-schools, finishing schools and foreign travel, swam, at the age of twenty, within his orbit. When first they met, after a year's absence, she very gracefully withered the symptoms of the cousinly kiss, to which they had been accustomed all their lives, by stretching out a long, frank, and defensive arm. Perhaps if she had allowed the salute, there would have been an end of the matter. But there came the phenomenon ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... smile that sat singularly on his withered face, he took up a newspaper and went towards the fireplace, where he sat stiffly in an armchair, taking an enormous interest in the morning's news. He read a single piece of news three times over, and a fourth ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... knees, with your eyes buried in the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give the revenue officer: full statement of your income. Now you know these things yourself, don't you? Very well, then what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as "ornery" and unlovable as you are yourselves, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... invoke the clouds, and by a series of conjugations cause the heavens to open their floodgates. The women had become clamorous and implored the medicine-men to intercede for rain, that their corn patches, which were now turning pale and yellow, might not be withered and they be deprived of the customary annual festivity and the joyful occasion of the "roasting ears" ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... permission to remain at Auxonne with the regiment, now known as the First. Probably the real ground of his disinclination was the fear that a residence at Valence might revive the painful emotions which time had somewhat withered. He may also have felt how discordant the radical opinions he was beginning to hold would be with those still cherished by his former friends. But the authorities were inexorable, and on June fourteenth the brothers departed, Napoleon for the first time leaving debts which he could not discharge: ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... salve. "I'll rub some of it on my eyes, at any rate," said she; whereupon she did so. Then she looked again, and, lo and behold! there stood a little old man, no taller than Tommy Lamb. His face was as brown, and as withered, and as wrinkled as a winter's crab-apple left on the bare tree when the frost is about. He was dressed all in green from top to toe, and on his head was a tall green cap, with a bell at the peak, which tinkled at every ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... and regarded us with indifference. He was cast for an old and withered Mephistopheles, his lines all downward, his few teeth fangs, and his smile a threatening leer, as if he thought of a joke he could not tell to decent visitors, but which almost choked him to withhold. His clothes were rags, and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... who were the conquerors of Ulietea, and the terror of all the other islands, Lieutenant Cook and his companions expected to see a young and vigorous chief, with an intelligent countenance, and the marks of an enterprising spirit; instead of which they found a feeble wretch, withered and decrepit, half blind with age, and so sluggish and stupid, that he scarcely appeared to be possessed even of a common degree of understanding. Otaha being the principal place of Opoony's residence, he went with our navigators to that island on the next day; and they were in ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... house in one of those streets, if the house has a long, dark, damp, and evil-smelling passage-way, at the end of which flickers the pallid gleam of an oil lamp, and if beneath that gleam appears the horrid face of a withered old woman with fleshless fingers, ah, then! and we say it in the interests of young and pretty women, that woman is lost. She is at the mercy of the first man of her acquaintance who sees her in that Parisian slough. There is more than one street in Paris ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... transparent walls;—her bosom is heaving; but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle, compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the "Book of Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that frightened her most. How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the garden, and came to a gray house; withered flowers lay about it, while briers and nettle-bushes clung to its walls; but, worse than all this, there came forth from the house angry, hateful words, and noises of a mad strife. Ruth feared to pass this place, and clung closely ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... rose-quartz and beryl crystals and mica were still scattered along on the narrow ledges of the old beams, and hanging to a nail overhead were two dusty bunches of pennyroyal, which had left a mild fragrance behind them as they withered. ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... dearest treasure that we own'd. She was the centre of our souls' affections— She was the bud, that underneath our strong And sheltering arms, spread over her, did blow. So grew this fair, fair girl, till envious fate Brought on the hour when she was withered. Thy father, sir—now mark—for 'tis the point And moral of my tale—thy father, then, Was, by my sire, in war ta'en prisoner— Wounded almost to death, he brought him home, Shelter'd him,—cherish'd him,—and, with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... therefore, advancing forward, be addressed the prince with a stern air, telling him, he came to the island as a spy, to take it from him who was the lord of it. "Follow me," said be. "I will tie your neck and feet together. You shall drink sea-water; shell-fish, withered roots, and husks of acorns shall ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... breathing space of time, those inside assuming their fiercest and most aggressive attitudes, and as they came repeatedly urging the demon to increased exertions. Their speed exceeded that of the swallow in his hymeneal flight, all shrubs and flowers by the wayside withered incapably at the demon's contaminating glance, running water ceased to flow, and the road itself was scorched at their passage, the earth emitting a dull bluish flame. These facts, and the times and the distances, this person has further ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... fishermen on the Darling. They camp along the banks in all sorts of tents, and move about in little box boats that will only float one man. The fisherman is never heavy. He is mostly a withered little old madman, with black claws, dirty rags (which he never changes), unkempt hair and beard, and a "ratty" expression. We cannot say that we ever saw him catch a fish, or even get a bite, and we certainly never saw him ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... Pale, withered rose, bereft and shorn Of all thy primal glory, All leafless now, thy piercing thorn Reveals a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... four years before the Tenas Tyee found the centre of the great salt-chuck oluk and plunged his hunting-knife into its evil heart. In its death-agony it writhed through the Narrows, leaving a trail of blackness on the waters. Its huge body began to shrink, to shrivel; it became dwarfed and withered, until nothing but the bones of its back remained, and they, sea-bleached and lifeless, soon sank to the bed of the ocean leagues off from the rim of land. But as the Tenas Tyee swam homeward and his clean, young body crossed through the black stain left by the ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... now hatched, but I had to wait four or five weeks before they were fit to be taken. I began again to find solitude tedious. The flowers in my garden had all bloomed and withered, and there was not so much to interest me. I recommenced reading the Bible, and the narratives in the Old and New Testaments again afforded me pleasure. I hardly need say to the reader that I read the Bible as I would have ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... of Mary, and their walk in the wood, and the sprained ankle, and all the sayings and doings of that eventful autumn day. And then he opened his desk, and examined certain treasures therein concealed, including a withered rose-bud, a sprig of heather, a cut boot-lace, and a scrap or two of writing. Having gone through some extravagant forms of worship, not necessary to be specified, he put them away. Would ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Bascomb. "If I can lay my hand upon those four familiars I'll make them wish their hands had withered rather than that they had laid them upon an Englishman! But there seems to be a good deal of uncertainty even now about this story of yours, senor interpreter, and I think our best plan will be to take up and ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... return. Pons was a little withered old man. He was born in our house—I know, for it chanced that mention was made of it this very day I am describing. Pons was all of sixty years. He was mostly toothless, and, despite a pronounced limp that compelled him to go slippity-hop, he was very alert and ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... animals, and that of vegetables, was with him wicked, antagonistic to the Church of Scotland, and inconsistent with her perfect doctrine. The very word ghost would bring upon his face an expression he meant for withering scorn, and indeed it withered his face, rendering it yet more unpleasant to behold. Coming to the benighted country, then, with all the gathered wisdom of Edinburgh in his gallinaceous cranium, and what he counted a vast experience of worldly affairs besides, he brought ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... are greatly mistaken, madame. After the Count de Chalusse's death, a package of letters, a glove and some withered flowers were found in one of the drawers ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... ground the instant there is no wind to bear it up. The whole of that region is covered with huge docks, shipyards, manufactories, and a wilderness of small houses, all full of life and happiness in brisk times, but in dull times withered and lifeless, like the deserts we read of in the East. Now their brief spring is over. There is no one to blame for this; it is the result of Nature's simplest laws!" We must all agree that it is impossible that [238] anything can be firmer than this, or show a surer ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... to you. You have broken your word to her, that you might possess what was hers. Perhaps you think of being happy, as she once was, and of having beautiful children such as hers, who will thrust hers aside. God is too just for that. The man you have married has a withered heart. His best young love was mine: you could not take that from me when you took the rest. It is dead: but I am the grave in which your chance of happiness is buried as well as mine. You had your warning. You have chosen to injure me and my children. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... weeds had grown and withered, and grown again and young saplings were now rising in their beds, nourished by the moisture that still remained; but the large forest trees were drooping and many were dead. The emus, with outstretched necks, gasping for breath, searched the channels ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... become the sun of my life, and when your face was turned away, the flower that spread itself joyfully in the light, drooped and faded. And now, the light has come back again; but it cannot warm into freshness and beauty the withered blossom." ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... faint rudiments of Greek learning, which Petrarch had encouraged and Boccace had planted, soon withered and expired. The succeeding generation was content for a while with the improvement of Latin eloquence; nor was it before the end of the fourteenth century that a new and perpetual flame was rekindled in Italy. [96] Previous to his own journey ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... brought with it the short ninth branch, which projects in front and functions as a servant. What mystery had the generations which followed one another read into this form of art, at once so simple and natural? And our artist wondered to himself if it were not possible to animate again the withered form of the Menorah, to water its roots, as one would a tree. The mere sound of the name, which he now pronounced every evening to his children, gave him great pleasure. There was a lovable ring to the word when it came from the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... is a whole life-time for you, but for me—" and the faded blue eyes filled with tears, and the wrinkled lips trembled a little as she recalled the past—"for me! I had lived my life before you were born. My husband was dead, my boy drowned, and my little Mari, the last and brightest, had suddenly withered and died before my eyes—a fever they say, perhaps it was indeed; but the sun has never shone so brightly, whatever, since then; the flowers are not so sweet—they remind me of my child's grave; the sea does not ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... dissensions of the Reformation, at a time when old Nuernberg was tottering to its fall, worn down by mental toil, and withered at heart by one of the worst wives on record, died Albert Duerer at ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... with his withered hands the old one took the offered support, and, rising, moved ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... harvest in November and December, the most temperate months in all the year. The ground is not inclosed, except near towns and villages, which stand very thick. They do not mow their grass for hay as we do; but cut it either green or withered, when wanted. They sow abundance of tobacco, but know not the way to cure it and make it strong, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... cry sharply,—'Dickon, a fresh pipe of tobacco!'—and—'Dickon, another coal for my pipe!'—and have it into thy pretty mouth as speedily as may be. Else, instead of a gallant gentleman, in a gold-laced coat, thou wilt be but a jumble of sticks and tattered clothes, and a bag of straw, and a withered pumpkin! Now depart, my treasure, and good luck ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... "Bless my withered heart!" Cappy declared, and opened his other eye. "You don't tell me? Well, well, well! All Hands And Feet is making good right off the bat, isn't he?" Cappy chuckled. "Skinner, my dear boy," he bragged, ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... Hepburn of Hailes, and carried to Dunbar Castle, probably to serve as hostages, for they were fairly well treated, though never allowed to go beyond the walls. The Queen's health had, however, been greatly shaken, the cold blasts of the north wind withered her up, and she died in the ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little longer in town, Rose saw more clearly the workings of that ambition which had undermined her cousin's happiness. She saw where the canker ate and withered, but she did not know how it could be eradicated. Something which women understand, prevented her laying open the secrets of the house to Edward; and yet she desired counsel. Possessing much observation as to the workings of the human ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall |
