"Withering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Captain Polkington hoed; at least he did for a little while, then he gradually ceased and stood leaning upon his hoe, lost in unhappy thought. At last he moved, and, gathering the withering weeds that lay beside the path, carried them to an old basket which he had left beside the garden wall. With the weeds he picked up the torn fragments of card which Julia had dropped beside the doorstep; he let them fall into the basket ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... rebels quaked before the withering storm of shot belched forth by the guns of the battery. "They shake! Give ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... person's shallow cleverness and conventional good-temper is more withering to the soul of the artist than the blindest bigotry which has the recklessness ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... a withering rebuke to a conceited though clever young statesman, Lord Nugent, who, in a previous part of the debate, insisted that the honour and dignity of the kingdom obligated them to compel the execution of the Stamp ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... and as I passed out with a fascinating bow I thought I detected a light in the woman's eye that was gently ironical; and when I looked back from the street, and she was laughing all to herself about something or other, I said to myself with withering sarcasm, "Oh, certainly; you know how to put on kid gloves, don't you? A self-complacent ass, ready to be flattered out of your senses by every petticoat that chooses to take ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... highest sense whose receptivity is not equal to its power to contribute to the world with which its destiny is bound up. It is only at its best when it is a part of the vital current of movement, of sympathy, of hope, of enthusiasm of the world at large. There is no doctrine so belittling, so withering to our national life, as that which conceives our destiny to be a life of exclusion of the affairs and interests of the whole globe, hemmed in to the selfish development of our material wealth and strength, surrounded by a Chinese wall built of strata of prejudice on the outside and of ignorance ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sight of the axe, and stamped upon his mind a look which he has stamped on mine as though I had stood beside him in the concourse. The guilty palace of the Cenci: blighting a whole quarter of the town, as it stands withering away by grains: had that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch, and at its black, blind windows, and flitting up and down its dreary stairs, and growing out of the darkness of the ghostly galleries. The ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... with the parts still spread about the floor. Elihu Titus told Sharon the boy was only playing with them. Sharon said he was glad they could furnish amusement, and mentally composed the beginning of what would be a letter of withering ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Abram, with withering scorn, his white, quivering old face terrible to see. "Young man, I got a couple o' things to say to you. You'r' shaped like a man, an' you'r' dressed like a man, an' yet the smartest person livin' would never take you for anything but an egg-suckin' dog, this minute. All the time God ever spent ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... afternoon when he reached it, and the wine shop was deserted. Outside, the California August lay withering and suffocating over all the land. The far hills were burnt to dry, hay-like grass and brittle clods. The eucalyptus trees in front of the wine shop (the first trees Felipe had seen all that day) were coated with ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... fancy, and reflects on the fierce cruelties that are done in his name. It was a withering satire on Russian imperialism, and it stirred a wide response. This encouraged Clemens to something even more pretentious and effective in the same line. He wrote "King Leopold's Soliloquy," the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... moral complaints and demands? What is it that has united all of us against the Prussian, as against a mad dog? It is the presence of a certain spirit, as unmistakable as a pungent smell, which we feel is capable of withering all the good things in this world. The burglary of Belgium, the bribe to betray France, these are not excuses; they are facts. But they are only the facts by which we came to know of the presence of the spirit. They do not suffice ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... with the law that binds him thus! Unworthy freemen, let it find No refuge from the withering curse Of God and human-kind Open the prison's living tomb, And usher from its brooding gloom The victims of your savage code To the free sun and air of God; No longer dare as crime to brand The chastening of the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... tray. On it were a decanter, two little queer-shaped glasses, and a plate of very thin seed cakes. He deposited this on a spindle-legged table, which he drew up in front of his mistress, and, with another glance, which he intended to be very withering, cast upon Rachel, but which she didn't see at all, ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... wealth, or worldly honors; than place or power? And is he not serenest and happiest whose life rests on these as a house upon its foundations? You cannot shake such a man. You cannot throw him down. Wealth may go, and friends drop away like withering autumn leaves, but he stands fast, with the light of heaven upon his brow. He has faith in virtue—he has trust in God—he knows that all will come out right in the end, and that he will be a wiser and better man for the trial that tested his principles—for the storms ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... harmonizing with them. On this occasion he appeared in a blue coat, a buff vest, black pants and white cravat; a costume strikingly in keeping with his face and expression. The human face never wore an expression of more withering, relentless scorn than when the orator replied to Hayne's allusion to the "Murdered Coalition"—a piece of stale political trumpery well understood ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... men, struck the palisade with his sword before he gave the order to fire. Then desperately the British strove to knock down the palisade and attack their enemy with the bayonet, but the structure was too strong, and the gallant force melted away under the withering fire kept up by the great force of French infantry which occupied ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... but measured movements when he was thus engaged became irregular and nervous; and he frequently cast glances towards the entrance, as if expecting the arrival of some one; and twice in the midst of withering cross-examinations, stopped short at the sight of individuals elbowing their way through the crowd; gazing upon them enquiringly and with an air of expectation, until, passing, they became embedded in the serried mass of spectators; when, with a look ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... but ripens slowly To the full goldenness of fruitful prime, Enduring with a firmness that defies 50 All shallow tricks of circumstance and time, By a sure insight knowing where to cling, And where it clingeth never withering;— These are Irene's dowry, which no fate Can shake from their ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... were no more to him than that there was no hope left in her life. For Keith might ply from port to port, seeing in her only one girl for his amusement; but he had spoilt her for another man. No other man could escape the withering comparison with Keith. To Jenny he was a king among men, incomparable; and if he did not love her, then the proud Jenny Blanchard, who unhesitatingly saw life and character with an immovable reserve, was the merest trivial legend of Kennington Park. She was like every other ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... in the world not so much by doing services as receiving them. You take a withering twig and put it in the ground, and then you water it because you ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... opening year, fresh with the dew of heaven and the blush of innocence, coming up in this wild garden of a world, what would the gardener do without you? Where would all beauty and sweetness be found among the thorny bushes and the withering old shrubs and the rotting weeds, were it not for you? Maidens with clean hands and pure hearts, in whose touch there is something that heals the ills and soothes the pains of mortality, roses whose petals are yet unspotted by dust and rain, and whose divine perfume the hot south wind has ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... been fully portrayed. No pencil is black enough to paint the picture and do it full justice. No tongue is eloquent enough to tell the sad, sad story in all its details. It has so spread itself as to compel us to style it a wide and verily a withering curse. It is the parent of many physical disorders, that begin with bleared eyes, a blistered tongue, general derangement of the stomach, paralysis of the nerves, and hardening of the liver; and to so great an extent it poisons the blood as to cause coagulation of the brain. All of which, ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... the pleasant month of June, sometime, maybe six or eight days, after the birth-day of our good old King George the Third—for I recollect the withering branches of lily-oak and flowers still sticking up behind the signs, and over the lampposts,—that my respected acquaintance and customer, Peter Farrel the baker, to whom I have made many a good suit of pepper-and-salt ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... of Arbaces ran over the writing; the Neapolitan did not dare to gaze upon him: she did not see the deadly paleness that came over his countenance—she marked not his withering frown, nor the quivering of his lip, nor the convulsions that heaved his breast. He read it to the end, and then, as the letter fell from his hand, he said, in a voice of ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... time rolled on, and little Louis was born. This might have been a blessing, but while family cares and expenses were growing upon them, Panpan's strength and energies were withering away. He suffered little pain, but what there was seemed to spring from the old wound; and there were whole days when he lay a mere wreck, without the power or will to move; and when his feeble breath seemed passing away for ever. Happily, these relapses occurred ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... fellow who first said that. Maybe I wouldn't enlighten him, and tell him what a hypocrite he was. Whoever said it, it is a decided untruth, and I know I wish to goodness I was grown up, because then," with withering emphasis, "I should not ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... completely hide the actual feelings of the men engaged that the inexperienced may be pardoned the thought, that, having donned the insignia of a soldier, a man instantly becomes filled with martial ardor, and eager to face the most withering fire of musketry or artillery. But the reality is far different; very few men are so constituted, or are so reckless of their lives, that they can listen to the unearthly screech of the shell or the crash of solid shot, mingled ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... about him with a withering smile; and, holding out his right hand at arm's length (as the manner of all Slackbridges is), to still the thundering sea, waited until there ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... through his grief, The early grief that lined his withering brow, As one by one her stars were quenched. And now He that so mourned can play, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... rose distilled Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, Grows, lives, and dies, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... in the inadvertence of my bewildered mind, to address you once more by the title of husband; but that holy name must hereafter perish on my lips, and be banished like a withering curse from my heart. Yet it was that alone which, holding a sacred charter over my bosom, bound me to the cheerful endurance of many a bitter hour, ere I knew that through him who bore it, a descendant of the house of Percy would be banded as an adulteress; and her child as the nameless ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... one moment came under a particularly withering fire. For a moment—not more—it wavered. Its most gallant commanding officer, Lieut. Col. Burchill, carrying, after an old fashion, a light cane, coolly and cheerfully rallied his men and, at the very moment when his example ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a general laugh. The boatswain's tone was well-known. It was wonderful what withering contempt he could throw into it. The men dreaded it more than they did even his rattan, and that, in his hand, was a somewhat formidable weapon. I remembered his promise when Spellman was quizzing me, on our return from capturing the Chevrette, and I found that he had ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... you. Alas! poor girl—she cannot hear the words which fall from my lips! neither shall you communicate their import to her by writing, nor by the language of the fingers. And remember that while I bestow upon you my blessing—my dying blessing—may that blessing become a withering curse—the curse of hell upon you—if in any way you violate one tittle of the injunctions which I have ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... suppose he'll go peaching to his big brother. Never mind, we'll pay you out, see if we don't! Go and kiss your mammy, and tell your big brother what they did to little duckie Steevie, did they then? they shouldn't! Give him a suck of his bottle! oh, my!" and he finished up with a most withering laugh. Then, suddenly remembering his errand, he walked up to the table, and said, "I ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... withering look of contempt at her husband, folded her arms and leaned back in her chair, more puzzled than ever ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... began to read it with the very same expression of indignant scorn, which, upon the majestic features of Pott, had paralysed his energies an hour before. The man observed too, that, whereas Mr. Pott's scorn had been roused by a newspaper headed the Eatanswill INDEPENDENT, this gentleman's withering contempt was awakened by a ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... you'd laugh," exclaimed Mrs. Beaseley, in withering scorn, inside the vehicle, "when I've smashed my best bonnet, and shook that bird to death—like enough he'll die—and tromped all up the front breadth to my dress." But as there was no one to hear her, and Mr. Tisbett still laughed on, seeming unable to stop himself, the stage-coach ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... a reason for her husband's departure occurred to her appalled mind, and a loss of health became quickly apparent. She dwindled thin in the face, and the veins in her temples could all be distinctly traced. An inner fire seemed to be withering her away. Her rings fell off her fingers, and her arms hung like the flails of the threshers, though they had till lately been so round and so elastic. She wrote to her husband repeatedly, begging him to return to her; but he, being in extreme and wretched doubt, moreover, knowing nothing ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... as well take a phonograph with you as Nellie," he said, casting a look of withering scorn on that delinquent. "She talked the whole time, and didn't give me a ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... holding up Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton as dangerous examples of freedom for women. The Rev. A. D. Mayo, Unitarian clergyman of Albany, heretofore Susan's loyal champion, now made a point of reproving her. "You are not married," he declared with withering scorn. "You have no business to be discussing marriage." To this she retorted, "Well, Mr. Mayo, you are not a slave. Suppose you quit lecturing ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... in yer whole bones while ye hev got 'em," Tad returned, with withering sarcasm. "When dad kems home, some of 'em 'll git bruk, sure. Warn't ye tole not ter leave him fur nuthin', ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... desirable. Can there be any doubt that whatever may be lost, cannot be properly classed in the number of those things which complete a happy life? for of all that constitutes a happy life, nothing will admit of withering, or growing old, or wearing out, or decaying; for whoever is apprehensive of any loss of these things cannot be happy; the happy man should be safe, well fenced, well fortified, out of the reach of all annoyance, not like a man under trifling apprehensions, but free from all such. As ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... get as much as your father. When do you expect to pay the rest, I'd like to know? I s'pose you expect me to go on trustin', and mebbe six months from now you'll pay me another eight dollars," said the storekeeper, with withering sarcasm. ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... that he knew; sometimes it looks, as it looked to-night, interminable, a way leading right into the heart of the red sundown; sometimes, again, it shrinks together, as if for warmth, on one of the withering, clear east-windy days, until it seems to lie ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... syllable of that fervent prayer, reef, and come home to her? Then I need not have written this history, and all would have been well in Dreamland. But he didn't. He heard nothing but the sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of nothing but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his cabin, and of the wound in his heart that was gaping and as fresh as ever. So the night-winds hurried him onward, and the darkness absorbed the outlines ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... take a boat to St. Cloud or go to the station and catch a train for Versailles. As she loafed along, an ogling old man joined her and with voluble protestations assured her of his admiration of her beauty. Judy gave him a withering glance and, quickening her pace, soon ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... was suddenly discovered to be a time-server, a spy, a concealed aristocrat. Such paltry talent as I had, I had prostituted for the sake of fame. I had deserted The People's Cause for filthy lucre—an allurement which Mr. O'Flynn had always treated with withering scorn—in print. Nay, more, I would write, and notoriously did write, in any paper, Whig, Tory, or Radical, where I could earn a shilling by an enormous gooseberry, or a scrap of private slander. And the working men were solemnly ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... grew paler and thinner continually, that the brown eyes greatened in the dark sockets, and that the fragile limbs weakened and sharpened themselves more and more, as though some terrible blight, like the curse of an old enchantment or of an evil eye, hung over the sweet girl, withering and poisoning all the life and the youth in her veins. She lay on a sofa one afternoon, leaning her golden head upon one of her pale wan hands, and gazing dreamily through the open casement into the depths of the broad April sky, over whose clear ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... The withering look of scorn that Perez bent upon him caused him to hesitate and stop. Captain Perez ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... respecting them. Some, among whom are Dr. Priestly and Mr. Jessop, upon practical and scientific observations, attributed them to lightning, but their experiments did not prove altogether satisfactory. Drs. Wollaston, Withering, and others, who had duly examined these spots, ascribed them to the growth of fungi, which opinion seems undoubtedly the best.—The rings vary in size and shape, some having seven yards of bare, with a patch of green grass a foot broad ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... fondly indulging a tender passion which preyed upon his peace, and deeply disturbed his repose. He looked anxiously to the hour when Melissa was to make her decision. He wished, yet dreaded the event. In that he foresaw, or thought he foresaw, a withering blight to his budding hopes, and a final consummation to his foreboding fears. He had pressed Melissa, perhaps too urgently, to a declaration.—Had her predilection been in his favour, would she have hesitated to avow it? Her parents had advised her to relinquish, and had permitted her to retain ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... their surly hymn. But, oh, the little land of peace and love That those night-loving wings had poised above,— Where was it gone? Lost, lost forevermore! Only a cottage, dull and gray, In the cold light of dawn, With iron bars across the door: Only a garden where the withering heads Of flowers, presaging decay, Hung over barren beds: Only a desolate field that lay Untilled beneath the desolate day,— Where Eden seemed to bloom I found but these! So, wondering, I passed along my way, With anger in my heart, too deep for words, Against that grove ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... These, he remembered, could lie hundreds of feet deep in water, and still retain sufficient heat to drive the water away in vapor; and as a result of this thought the haunted room was heated by steam to a withering degree, and the heir for six months attended daily the Turkish baths, so that when Christmas Eve came he could himself withstand the awful ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... the pale purple tint of his sullen, morose, and bloated features. The cardinal took no notice of the clamour around him, but now and then, when an expression of dislike was uttered against him, for he had already begun to be unpopular with the people, he would raise his eyes and direct a withering glance at the hardy speaker. But these expressions were few, for, though tottering, Wolsey was yet too formidable to be insulted with impunity. On either side of him were two mounted attend ants, each caring a gilt poleaxe, who, if he had given the word, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... all the time he could honestly spare from his ordinary work to soothe and enlighten the suffering youth. But it became clearer every week that nothing would avail to entice the torn roots of his being to clasp again the soil of the world: he was withering away out of it. Ere long symptoms appeared which no one could well mistake, and Lingard himself knew that he was dying. Wingfold had dreaded that his discovery of the fact might reveal that he had imagined some ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... armistice, although the French Government had given him no authority to take so much power into his own hands. He then drove back the Austrians and defeated them in the battle of Lodi, where he carried a standard with his own hands and rallied his troops in the face of a withering fire. ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... met too many of her kind—in Rome, in Florence, in Dresden—to feel any wish for a more intimate relationship. She was fond of Miss Robinson, but she prayed that fate did not reserve for her a withering to the like brisk, colourless spinsterhood. This hope, the necessity for such hope, was the final depth of her gloomy mood, and she found herself looking at something very dark as she stood holding Miss Robinson's expensive roses. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... as if the knowledge that an enemy was in Russia, aroused the Russians from a torpor. Pamphlets and other publications denouncing the government in withering terms, seemed to spring up from the pavement. "Arise, Oh Russia!" says one unknown writer, "Devoured (p. 216) by enemies, ruined by slavery, shamefully oppressed by the stupidity of tchinovnik and spies, awaken from ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... lawns and dreary wastes 200 Retiring Autumn flings her howling blasts, Bends in tumultuous waves the struggling woods, And showers their leafy honours on the floods, In withering heaps collects the flowery spoil, And each chill insect sinks beneath the soil; 205 Quick flies fair TULIPA the loud alarms, And folds her infant closer in her arms; In some lone cave, secure pavilion, lies, And waits the courtship ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... for else this same vilest of travesties, Mr. Nahum's Lear, would consecrate his name to everlasting scorn. For himself, he belonged to the age of Dryden rather than of Pope: he "flourished," if we can use such a phrase of one who was always withering, about the era of the Revolution; and his Lear, we believe, was arranged in the year 1682. But the family to which he belongs is abundantly recorded in the Dunciad, and his own name will be found amongst its ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... in black array Veiling her Rizpah-misery, to the gate Comes, and with gold and moving speech sedate Buys down the thing aloft, and bears away Snatch'd from the withering wind and ravens' prey: And as a mother's eyes, joy-soften'd, shed Tears o'er her young child's head, Golden and sweet, from evil saved; so she O'er this, sad-smilingly, Mangled and gray, unwarm'd by human breath, Clasping death's relic ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... self-loathing. She trusted him. She looked to him for protection. She leaned upon his strength. She needed him. He could not—it almost seemed as if in common chivalry he could not—reveal to her the contemptible weakness which lay like a withering blight upon his whole nature. To own himself the slave of a married woman, and that woman her closest friend, would be to throw her utterly upon her own resources at a time when she most needed the support and guidance of a helping hand. Moreover, the episode was over; so at least both ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... for buttons and patches on my tattered uniform, for steering me clear of the camp followers; but more than all for the cheery words of solace for those 'gone West,' for the blessed face of a woman from the homeland in the midst of withering blight and desolation—for these I am ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... the sentence. I can imagine that there is something rich and voluptuous and sating about amber, its color, and its lustre, and its scent; but for others, not for me. Yea, you have beauty, after all," turning suddenly, and withering me with his eye,—"beauty, after all, as you didn't say just now.—Mr. Willoughby is in the garden. I must go before he comes in, or he'll make me stay. There are some to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... of the majestic empire of the Romans. There can be no question that civilization achieved most splendid triumphs, even under the influence of pagan institutions. But it was not paganism which achieved these victories; it was the will and the reason of a noble race, in spite of its withering effects. It was the proud reason of man which soared to such lofty heights, and attempted to secure happiness and prosperity. These great ends were measurably attained, and a self-sufficient philosopher might have pointed to these victories ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... relatives and the goodness of neighbours as kind as ever breathed, our furniture was our own again, but what were we to do for a living? Our crops were withering in the fields for want of rain, and we had but five cows—not an over-bright outlook. As I was getting to bed one night my mother came into my room and said seriously, "Sybylla, I want to ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... If he could only go far enough out there, he felt as if his eyesight would be purged and clarified, as if his hearing would grow more delicate, and his very breath would come and go with luxury. He was transplanted and withering where he was; he lay in a strange country and was sick for home. Bit by bit, he pieced together broken notions of the world below: of the river, ever moving and growing until it sailed forth into the majestic ocean; of the cities, full of brisk and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Look a here, Mary, what ails you, anyway? You're getting so lately you turn them tears on every night. Be a good fellow, and don't make a lot of gents think we're running a morgue. You've blowed half your make-up as it is." Mary, alias Alice, gave the head waiter one withering look, and left the place. We started to move on, but found it was impossible to bring old K. C. back. We pounded him and yelled at him for ten minutes, but there wasn't a leaf stirring, except once, when he came to long enough to remark that he ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... something was wrong, now looked at her more closely, after which, with a withering frown, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... her in withering scorn. "Need or not," said she, "the one that owns this back breadth is going to have it. I rather think she ain't going to be laid away without a back breadth ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... has no quarrel with knowledge or speculation: perhaps it excludes materialists, because they have no common ground with religion, but it tolerates even the Sankhya philosophy which has nothing to say about God or worship. It is truly dynamic and in the past whenever it has seemed in danger of withering it has never failed to bud with new life and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... they used to be; still, they are not much concerned about it. They are resting very easy. Such satisfaction is a curse. What such folks need is a good case of dissatisfaction; for that is the only thing that will keep them from drying up and withering away. I know of people who once had a glorious experience but who for years have been so satisfied with themselves that they have not progressed an inch. Instead, they have gone backwards, with the result that today they are cold and formal. They are ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... Such moments—come they but once in a lifetime, to one among a hundred—are God's reiterate answers to the problem of creation. The man or woman who has passed that way will never ask the soul's most withering question: To what end was I born? 'The rest may reason and welcome.' They are of the few ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... under this indifferent or hostile scrutiny, he thought how much easier it would be to face a rain of bullets than this withering glare of criticism. A sudden longing to escape, to be done with it all, came over him with sickening force. His nerves ached with the physical strain of holding himself upright on his horse, of preserving the statuesque erectness proper to the occasion. He felt ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... one answer to a supreme shock, there is a sudden end of the plant's power to give any response. This supreme shock is the shock of death. Even in this crisis, there is no immediate change in the placid appearance of the plant. Drooping and withering are events that occur long after death itself. How does the plant then, give this last answer? In man, at the critical moment, a spasm passes through the whole body, and similarly in the plant, I find ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... then?' he asked lightly. 'It ruins a complexion no less than before. Or does a complexion cease to count? Look!' He leaned forward. A pink carnation was in a glass in front of him, already withering from the heat. He touched the faded tips of the petals. 'That is the ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Hamilton!" while a suspicion of the truth flashed like lightning upon her. The next moment he stood before them, Uncle Nat, his glittering black eyes fixed upon Eugenia, who quailed beneath that withering glance. ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... but our vanishing helped. The tree, where there had been no tree before—that helped. The insane and uncanny variety of fruits—the sudden withering—all these things are helps. Let him think as he may, reason as he may, one thing is certain, he will water the tree. But between this and night he will begin his changed career with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Families meet as in England. Two per cent. of the soldiers get a fortnight's leave of absence and a free pass; and there is joy in peasant homes over peasant charcoal pans. The dusky shades of evening are stealing over olive grove and withering vineyard, and every house lights up its tiny oil lamp, and every image of the Virgin is illuminated with a taper. In Eija, near Cordova, an image or portrait of the Virgin and the Babe new-born, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... on the floor of the United States Senate, in the course of which he paid the following just compliment to Mr. Fillmore's integrity, and to his efficiency in "pacifying the country," while he was President. We quote from the Congressional Globe, and hold it up as a withering rebuke to those "lesser lights" of Democracy, who are now defaming this pure and ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... the flash of the guns and the light of the burning rafts, the Brooklyn, just clearing a thirteen-foot shoal, found herself close under St. Philip, from whose exposed barbette guns the gunners fled at her withering fire, as they had ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... not have been more astonished. Not one, but twenty copies of the Athenaeum in a house where never a book was read. I looked at the dates—three-and-thirty years ago. At that moment she was gathering some withering apples from the floor. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... other English stories, written in a more amiable mood, he applied it in a more amiable manner; but he could apply it to an American too, when he was writing in that mood and manner. We can see it in the witty and withering criticism delivered by the Yankee traveller in the musty refreshment room of Mugby Junction; a genuine example of a genuinely American fun and freedom satirising a genuinely British stuffiness and snobbery. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Nikta's mother from Zoevo, my dearie. Good afternoon to you. He's withering, withering away, poor dear—your brother, I mean. He came out himself. "Send for my sister," he said, "because," said he ... Dear me, why, I do ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... rampart; others leapt the horses into it, and standing up in their saddles, cut at the spearmen with their swords, and fired their pistols among them. Many, again, tried to leap their horses over ditch and rampart, but the pikemen stood firm, while at short intervals withering volleys tore into ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... time!" the Hare answered with withering scorn. "What sort of a time would you have had if some one had shot you all over the back and you must creep away to die of pain and starvation? How would you have enjoyed it if, from day to day, you had been forced to live in terror of cunning monsters, ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... Turning a withering and glassy eye in our direction, my brother-in-law explained the position and desired permission to enter and write a note. This ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... vehemence, "but you can't stop it; there's water below here, and you can't help its bending, if you break your back trying to hold it." So he gave me the twig, and awaited, with a smile which was meant to express withering sarcasm, the discomfiture of the supposed scoffer. But when I proceeded to walk four or five times across the mysterious place, the rod pointing steadfastly toward the zenith all the while, our friend became grave and began to philosophize. ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... extravagant accelerator of waste the world has ever endured. His withering blight has fallen upon every living thing within his reach, himself not excepted; and his besom of destruction in the uncontrolled hands of a generation has swept into the sea soil fertility which only centuries of life could accumulate, and yet this fertility is the substratum of all that ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... nothing about dynamite. Dynamic was the word I used," replied Professor Zepplin, casting a withering glance at ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... and pressed it to his lips, without articulating a single syllable. Slowly she moved her face, so that their eyes encountered in one long mournful look. Ten years of continued suffering could not have exacted a heavier tribute from Grace Huntley's beauty. No language can express the withering effects of the few hours' agony. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... Autumn, and incessant Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, And, like living coals, the apples Burned among the withering leaves. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... overshadowed with care. We need scarcely say, that there was a great deal of contrast in the gaze she received from Phil and our friend Solomon. That of Phil was the gross, impudent stare of a libertine and fool—a stare, which, in the eye of a virtuous woman, soon receives its own withering rebuke of scorn and indignation. That of Solomon, on the other hand, was a look in which there lurked a vast deal of cunning, regulated and sharpened by experience, and disguised by hypocrisy into something that absolutely resembled the open, ardent admiration of a child, or of some ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the lady, casting upon her brother a withering glance, "I never mean to marry a widower—an uncle—who brings with him nephews so like himself." Miss Dorothy swept from the room, leaving her brother ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... with the glossy occupant of the hearth-rug. George Eliot, as a true artist, sees what is faulty in the catastrophe, but she will not unsex her creation. Another of her characters, Rosamond, she pursues with a minute, withering, one would say vindictive, contempt. It is the beautiful, distinguished young creature who marries Lydgate on account of his high connections, and who trains him to do up her plaits of hair for her, and allows him to talk the "little language" of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... consequent hilarity and loud and long applause, perhaps, that the Professor was relieved from the explanation of this rather astounding phenomenon of the idealistic workings of a purely practical brain—or, as my impious friend scoffed the incongruity later, in a particularly withering allusion, as the "blank- blanked fallacy, don't you know, of staying the hunger of a howling mob by feeding 'em ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... attack upon the electrical ships stationed round the building. But fortunately they had none of their larger engines at hand, and with their hand arms alone they had not been able to stand up against the disintegrators. They were blown away before the withering fire of the ships by the hundreds until, fleeing from destruction, they rushed madly, driving their unarmed companions before them into the seething waters of ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... quite still. Perhaps at that moment of detachment he realized more keenly than ever the withering nature of this battle through which he had passed. Indeed, he felt older. Those days at Enton lay very far back, yet the girl by his side made him feel as though they had been but yesterday. He glanced at her covertly. Gracious, fresh, and as beautiful as the spring ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... old influences, it is true, still survive, and even appear to be supreme. We have had ample evidence to-night of their apparent vitality. But underneath them is growing up the sturdy plant of science. Already it has dislodged their roots; and though they still seem to bear flower, the flower is withering before our eyes. In its place, before long, will appear the new and splendid blossom whose appearance ends and begins an epoch of evolution. That is a consummation nothing can delay. We need not fret or hurry. We have only to work on silently at the foundations. ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... charge at the last minute by the cuirassiers of the Emperor Francis' guard almost completed the annihilation of the first battalion of the regiment. The survivors sought to form a square, under a withering gun fire, to meet the uplifted sabers of the heavy cavalry. There were not enough of them left. They were ridden down. Two hundred and fifty of the four hundred who went into that fight lay dead on that field. Of the survivors scarce a handful got across the river. Some ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... yet how we waste our short opportunities for enjoyment! Soon youth will have slipped away, and we shall be too old for love. Roses fade fastest, Arthur, when the sun is bright; in the evening when they have fallen, and the ground is red with withering petals, do you not think we shall wish that we ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... been a joyous household. I looked for my old sweetheart's home. It was there, but strangers lived in it. A servant I spoke to on her way to the post told me they had been moved to Chislehurst some time. The last ditch! In a way I felt it, this crumbling and withering of the old order, the order of which my parents had vainly tried to become companions. For it was typical of England. I felt it most when I walked out on the Great North Road through Barnet and saw the huge notice-boards up ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... everlasting spring abides, And never withering flowers: Death like a narrow sea divides This heavenly land ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... have chosen. And yet it is not too late. Repent and cast these men in prison and it may not be too late. The gods have never wept. And yet when they think upon damnation and the dooms that are withering a myriad bones, then almost, were they not divine, they could weep. Be quick. Repent of ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... break in a long series of delightfully cool, transparent days, characteristic of Labrador during the month of September, when Nature pauses to take breath and assemble her forces preparatory to casting upon the land the smothering snows and withering ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... herself away on a poor man, it was surely no one else's business to say a dissenting word. Percival might go home and lecture his own wife if he liked. 'It is a pity you and Gage are so worldly,' she said, in what was meant to be a withering tone. Audrey had never been so near ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... with so many circumstances as yours, to be impatient, to be uncomfortable would be to dispute with God. Though an only son be inestimable, yet it is like Jonah's sin, to be angry at God for the withering of his shadow. Zipporah, though the delay had almost cost her husband his life, yet, when he did but circumcise her son, in a womanish peevishness reproached Moses as a bloody husband. But if God take the ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... long the gale had blown he could not tell, Only the world had changed, his life had died. A moment now was everlasting hell. Nature an onslaught from the weather side, A withering rush of death, a frost that cried, Shrieked, till he withered at the heart; a hail Plastered his oilskins with ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... path between them—a Spartan business, for it reaped Imperialists among Republicans. However, a second and third blast were better gauged, and these carpeted the new alley-way with Republican bodies. Also, the Imperialists were re-forming, and under a withering fire the little band of victors had to ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... poor-houses, at our county jails, or at the state penitentiary. These debasing and corrupting appendages of civilization spent not all their influence upon the white man; and this is what gave pungency to the withering satire of the chief. They were at once working the ruin of the red man and of his ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... of colours, perfumes, velvety feeling of the corolla, and the number of leaflets in it are next discovered and described by the pupils. Lastly, in a withering flower they discover the seed cases and ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... withstood the fiercest attacks of power, the most valuable truths, the most generous sentiments, the noblest and most graceful images, the purest reputations, the most august institutions, began to look mean and loathsome as soon as that withering smile was turned upon them. To every opponent, however strong in his cause and his talents, in his station and his character, who ventured to encounter the great scoffer, might be addressed the caution which was given of old to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in her heart forgiving him for all he had made her suffer. At such times, John would resolve never again to treat her unkindly, but alas! his resolutions were too easily broken. Had he married Nellie, a more faithful, affectionate husband there could not have been. But now it was different. A withering blight had fallen upon his earthly prospects, and forgetting that he alone was to blame, he unjustly laid the fault upon his innocent wife, who, as far as she was able, loved him as deeply as Nellie ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... achievements of immortal fame He purposes, and he shall answer—None. His warfare is within. There unfatigued His fervent spirit labours. There he fights, And there obtains fresh triumphs o'er himself, And never-withering wreaths, compared with which The laurels that a Caesar reaps are weeds. Perhaps the self-approving haughty world, That, as she sweeps him with her whistling silks, Scarce deigns to notice him, or if she see, Deems him a cipher in the works ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... of the green taxi, saw that. And he was so fearful lest the driver of the red omnibus should lose one withering participle of the apostrophe he had provoked, that he could not be bothered with the exigencies of traffic and the Rule ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... withering look upon the culprits, who were already digging their fingers into the remnants of a meat-pie, and ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... day the sun, with a lurid glare spread far and wide over the cloudless sky, rises above the arid plains, drawing up every particle of moisture, and withering with the intense heat of his rays every blade of grass and green leaf, till it seems as if the whole region were doomed to eternal desolation. At length, however, a wonderful change takes place over the hitherto arid waste. A ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... before it, and being inevitably overtaken, she ran at once to the river and galloped madly down the shallow margin. Before the flames were actually upon her, she was beyond the zone of their fury. But she felt the withering blast of them, and their appalling roar was in her ears. With starting eyes and wide, palpitating nostrils, she ran on and on, and stopped only when she sank exhausted in a rude cove. There she lay with panting sides and watched far behind her the wide red arc of ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... lawyer Desroches also considered asking the hand of Malvina, but he too gave up the idea. The young girl was counseled by Eugene de Rastignac, who took it upon himself to see that she got married. Nevertheless, she ended by being an old maid, withering day by day, giving piano lessons, living rather meagrely with her mother in a modest flat on the third floor, in the rue du Mont-Thabor. [The ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... wish that we were sitting down in some safe place, instead of travelling on horseback over this withering tract, and that I had the map before me to ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... longer a child," said Lilian, "Her father writes that he hardly dares call her the same name, she is so changed. While I have been withering up in the North, two equatorial years down here have wrought upon her as they do upon the flowers. He says no Spanish woman rivals her. Well, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... her little bow of blue ribbon. She had hardly dared to hope for success, as Catherine had been rather withering over her Catechism, and had warned her that she would probably be disqualified. It was pleasant to meet with encouragement, and especially to be commended before the whole school. She had never dreamt ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... said Iff with a withering glance. "The door to Miss Landis' suite opens directly opposite the head of the main companionway, which is in constant use—people going up and down all the time. Can you see anybody, however expert, picking a lock with ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... beginning to feel tired, she suggested to Bell that she might start a dance if she had a mind to, either in the kitchen or parlor, it did not matter where, and "Ephraim would not care an atom," a remark which brought from Mrs. Deacon Bannister a most withering look of reproach, and slightly endangered Aunt Betsy's standing in the church. Perhaps Bell Cameron suspected as much, for she replied that they were having a splendid time as it was, and as Dr. Grant did not dance, they might as well dispense with it altogether. And so it happened ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... stand the withering fire that was poured in on them and they wheeled their plunging horses in the swirling stream and made for the opposite shore ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... portion of the army, and had not actively participated in the conflict. He therefore brought fresh troops to the assault. McClernand was also ordered to reform his shattered ranks and advance. The combined forces charged with splendid valor up the rocky steeps, in the blaze of a withering fire poured down upon them from the fort. They did not falter for a single instant, but reaching the summit, swept over and into the Confederate works with ringing cheers. On the next morning a white flag was seen flying from ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... lesson admirably," said the Baroness with withering scorn. "She told me the same story almost ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the tide of battle, though brief, transferred the brunt of conflict to another quarter. A withering rain of spears struck the enemy on the flank and rear, and down from the opposite hilltop rushed the mob that had formed the other boulder squad at the beginning of the fight, but who had done nothing after the first charge of the Oolooz men up the hill. They threw themselves ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... pulling at it, smoked on alone in the dusk. In the nibbling, iterative way of the old, he started a kind of reflection; but it was as if a harmattan had blown along the usual courses of his thought, drying up his little brooklet of recollection and withering the old aquatic star-flowers that grew along its banks. His mind, in its meandering among old images, groped, paused, fell pensive. His head sank lower between his shoulders, and the shoulders eased back against the wall ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... even more insupportable. There was a certain moisture and softness about the high temperature at Colombo, which we had experienced a month before; while here there was a dry, burning directness of the sun's power which was absolutely withering. As we passed over the road, swayed hither and thither upon the backs of the huge animals, it was amusing to watch the gambols of the wild monkeys in the trees, and to observe the flocks of wild peacocks in the open fields, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... on their returnless flight since that night of withering sorrow. Kenneth Gordon still lived, a sad and broken-spirited man; but time, that great tamer of the human heart, which dulls the arrows of affliction, and softens the bright tints of joy down to a sober hue, had shed its healing influence even over his wounded heart. Mary Gordon ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... too evident to us that his body was withering, but not so his spirit—that was expanding more and more, ripening for heaven. It seemed to burn with a deep and unextinguishable love for the conversion of all the islanders among whom he had so ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... offered no further reply than a withering rebuke of the waiter, a genteel abstraction, and a lofty change of subject. He pressed upon them two tickets for the performance, of which he seemed to have a number neatly clasped in an india-rubber band, ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... conceived of malignant blandishment. It was the appalling beauty of the King of Hell. The frightful discord vibrated through my whole frame, and I turned for relief to the figure below.... But I had turned from the first, only to witness in the second object, its withering fascination. I beheld the mortal conflict between the conscience and the will—the visible struggle of a soul ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... suggested, that he had small expectation of finding fruit, and that even before he reached the tree with its early leaves he felt a likeness between it and the nation of hypocrites whose fate was so clear in his mind. The withering of the fig-tree set his disciples thinking; and Jesus showed that it was an object lesson, promising that the disciples, by the exercise of but a little faith, could do more, even remove mountains,—such mountains ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... that the teachings of the bible have no other foundations to stand upon. Well the multitude would not believe him then as you and others will not now. See what confusion and shame they suffered and bore in withering silence from his simple direction about enforcing the old law for the violation of the seventh commandment. Here she is master, "Now Moses in the law, (not God's code of laws,) commanded that such should be stoned. But what sayest thou?" "Let him that is without ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... indeed!" she muttered angrily as she hobbled away, not in the least heeding my last remark, which I believed to be withering. ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... its yellow sheaves; For thee alike the circling seasons flow Till the first blossoms heave the latest snow. In the stiff clod below the whirling drifts, In the loose soil the springing herbage lifts, In the hot dust beneath the parching weeds, Life's withering flower shall drop its shrivelled seeds; Its germ entranced in thy unbreathing sleep Till what thou ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... one important miracle, that of cursing and withering the fig tree. Some consider that a miraculous power was also used in the cleansing of the temple. The teachings may be grouped as follows: (a) The question about Christ's authority and his reply by question and the three parables of warning; (b) Three questions ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... high ideal of what is beautiful and noble in art, in life. I believe that you will never let despair get the upper hand of you. If it does you may as well die; yes, you may as well. And I entreat you not to lose your entire faith in humanity. There is nothing like that for withering up the very core of the heart. I tell you, humanity and nature have so much in common with each other that if you lose part of your pleasure in the latter; you will see less beauty in the trees, the flowers, ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... YOUR FATHER has remained long in exile. I have seen the fields of Europe where your laurels are now withering, and I have communed with the dead who repose beneath them. They ask where are our children? Where is France? Europe no longer glitters with the shine of its triumphant bayonets—echoes no more with the shouts of its victorious cannon. Who could reply ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... giddy height on a burning and tottering house, and is cheered enthusiastically by the crowd, that his courage is most severely tried. It is when he has to creep on hands and knees through dense smoke, and hold the branch in the face of withering heat, while beams are cracking over his head, and burning rubbish is dropping around, and threatening to overwhelm him—it is in such circumstances, when the public know nothing of what is going on, and when no eye sees him ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... on they ran, in their withering indictment. There could be no doubt that it was Alethia's cousin and prospective host to whom they were referring; the allusion to a Parliamentary candidature settled that. What could Robert Bludward have done, what manner of man could ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... pure heart there was an unclean cast and a withering effect prevalent throughout all the departments of this hall, and my heart burned as I continued observing how the agents of Satan plied their subtle influences so as to popularize this cosmopolitan resort. So effectually has Satan entrenched his views that some of the strong ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... retorted Byrd, favoring his questioner with a withering stare, "I am a Bohemian, and damnably sorry that I ever have to see ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... foes. Still they continued to assail us with their missiles, both from fire-arms and bows; and with remarkable courage they again rushed on to the assault. We let them approach until they were close up to the stockade, when we once more opened so withering a fire that few made the attempt to climb up, and those who did quickly dropped down, either with cloven heads or hands well-nigh chopped off. The whole force, apparently seeing that they had no chance of getting into the fort, ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... kind of summer we had in Naples in 1884. The newspapers of all lands teemed with the story of its horrors. The cholera walked abroad like a destroying demon; under its withering touch scores of people, young and old, dropped down in the streets to die. The fell disease, born of dirt and criminal neglect of sanitary precautions, gained on the city with awful rapidity, and worse even than the plague was the unreasoning but universal panic. The never-to-be-forgotten ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... gate's rusty latch. The grass was crushed enough to form a path to the front door, which stood open. She led the way into a large, low room off the little hall. The floor was bare. There was a large table in the centre, heaped with books, and some withering flowers stood in a glass. A couple of common chairs, a mattress, on which was thrown an antique curtain of faded blue as a drapery; on the white-washed wall, a tiny and coquetish slipper of yellowish silk, nailed through the sole. This was ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... been women who have crucified their very souls and the lineal ancestors of the present-day "antis" with withering scorn and criticism opposed every step. Yet some of those modern anti-suffragists possess a college degree, an opportunity which other women won for them in the face of universal ridicule; they own ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... the Sharpsburg road curves around the hill held by us so that for a little way it was parallel to our position. As the enemy came down the hill forming the other side of the gap, across the road and up again to our line, they were met by so withering a fire that they were checked quickly, and even drifted more to the right where their descent was continuous. Here Willcox's line volleyed into them a destructive fire, followed by a charge that swept them in confusion ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... peace and joyful love! And may the countenance of Heaven's King Beam on us when we leave behind Our bodies blind and withering. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... without regard to abilities or fitness. There was not indeed the tyranny of Spain or Naples or Austria; but everything indicated a movement toward it. Those six years which comprised the reign of Charles X. were a period of reaction,—a return to the Middle Ages in both State and Church, a withering blast on all noble aspirations. Even the prime minister Villele, a legitimatist and an ultra-royalist, was too liberal for the king; and he was dismissed to make room for Martignac, and he again for Polignac, who had neither foresight nor prudence nor ability. The ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... there was a stone wall about five feet in height; beyond this was a broad, rolling field, and farther on, a barb-wire fence and a boggy stream which oozed its way down toward the Potomac. Far away across the valley the wooded hills were drying and withering and thinning, with splashes of yellow and red. A flock of birds speckled the fleecy October clouds, and a mild breeze ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... there is nothing more than negative difficulty to be feared, have you ever tried in thought to change places with such a girl? Have you ever considered how impossible it is for such a one to grow? The simple grace of continuance is in danger of withering when all help of every sort is absolutely cut off, and the soul is, to begin with, not deeply rooted in God. Plants, even when they have life, need water and sunshine and ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... speech swept like a hurricane over a garden in June—withering, blasting, uprooting. He began by denying, absolutely, that the great victory of 1813 which expelled for Prussia the French invaders was based on so low a consideration as the promise of a paper Constitution. Not at all! It was an exhibition ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... summer wore away, and September came to produce a new aspect of beauty in the landscape, by tinging the fading flowers and withering leaves with various shades of brown and crimson, purple and orange. One day, early in the month, when Tom came with the carriage, she told him to drive to Magnolia Lawn. She had long been wishing to revisit the scene where she ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... some more fully than others in perhaps a hundred lines, some only in ten. Most of them are types of a class, a profession or a business, yet there is always a touch or two which isolates each of them so that they do not only represent a class but a personal character. He hated, like Morris, the withering of the individual, nor did he believe, nor any man who knows and feels mankind, that by that the world grew more and more. The poem is full of such individualities. It were well, as one example, to read the whole account ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke |
