"Cumber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and torn, and their red blood oozes slowly from their bodies in thin and trickling streams. You think of Ossian's heroes, of Thor and his hammer, of the Anakim or of the steeple-high Brobdignagian cavalry, and almost expect to hear groans issuing from the colossal trunks that cumber the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... that say, shepherds use few ceremonies, for that they acquaint themselves with few subtleties: to frame myself, therefore, to your country fashion with much faith and little flattery, know, beautiful shepherdess, that whilst I lived in the court I knew not love's cumber, but I held affection as a toy, not as a malady; using fancy as the Hyperborei do their flowers, which they wear in their bosom all day, and cast them in the fire for fuel at night. I liked all, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent, I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent, Which yet find room, Through care and cumber, coldness and decay, To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day And make the sad earth happier for ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... laird to red the cumber,[150] Which would not be for all his boast;— What could we doe with sic a number? Fyve thousand men into a host. Then Henry Purdie proved his cost,[151] And very narrowlie had mischiefed him, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... need be no delay. I have no wife nor children to cumber me. My trunks are already packed; my resolve made; my last business transacted I have some lands in Alabama which I mean to sell. This done, I am off for the great field of performance, south and southwest. You shall hear ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... it is tenanted by the soul of their first ancestor and that it rules their destiny. Sometimes there is a sacred grove near a village, where the trees are suffered to rot and die on the spot. Their fallen branches cumber the ground, and no one may remove them unless he has first asked leave of the spirit of the tree and offered him a sacrifice. Among the Maraves of Southern Africa the burial-ground is always regarded as a holy place where neither a tree may be felled nor ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... my father!" she exclaimed; "save him from worse than death! Let us fly together at once," she continued; "no, not together, I would cumber your flight; but make your escape, O my father, from this wicked court, this barbarous king, this life which, to a son of Hadassah, must be misery and bondage indeed! Oh, fly, fly; be safe, be free; be again what you were once! it is not too late! it is not too late!" There was intense delight ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... we resided has long since been swept away, with its barns, its piggery, and its shippon. Never more will its cornricks gladden the eye—never more will busy agricultural life be carried on in its precincts. Streets and courts full of houses cumber the ground. No more will the lark be heard over the cornfield—the brook seen running its silvery course—or the apple in the orchard reddening on the bending bough. The lark is represented by a canary in a gilded cage hanging out of a first-floor window—the ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... to those most frequently mispronounced, thus reducing the book to a practical working field at small cost. Many of the words in most books on orthoepy are very rarely mispronounced, and they serve only to cumber the work. Those who desire an exhaustive reference book should consult the dictionaries. Second, the plan of exhibiting the weight of authorities where authorities differ is of great practical value. In these ...
— A Manual of Pronunciation - For Practical Use in Schools and Families • Otis Ashmore
... the maiden Who calls on you now— Arise! from your dreaming In violet bowers, To duty beseeming These star-litten hours— And shake from your tresses Encumber'd with dew The breath of those kisses That cumber them too— (O! how, without you, Love! Could angels be blest?) Those kisses of true love That lull'd ye to rest! Up!—shake from your wing Each hindering thing: The dew of the night— It would weigh down your flight; And true love caresses— ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... also the monks of every district and city shall be subject to the bishop, that they shall love peace and quiet and observe the fasts and prayers in the places where they are assigned continually; that they shall not cumber themselves with ecclesiastical and secular business and shall not take part in such; they shall not leave their cloisters except when in cases of necessity they may be commissioned by the bishop of the city with such; that no slave shall ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... you've lost your way,—you, whom people so cosset and praise Sir. You won't be hurried, and you can't be flurried, and you're always as cool as a cucumber. Can a little 'un like me, your own child, don't you see, such a smart pioneer as are you cumber? You, the modern Theseus? Where's your Ariadne? Oh, I know you are cool, and clever. Yet I feel a doubt. When shall we get out?—which I can't ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... lad: thews that lie and cumber Sunlit pallets never thrive; Morns abed and daylight slumber Were ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... met below, They, too, have long roam'd to and fro; They ramble, leaving, where they pass, Their fragments on the cumber'd grass. And often to some kindly place Chance guides the migratory race, Where, though long wanderings intervene, They recognise a former scene. The dingy tents are pitch'd; the fires Give to the wind their wavering spires; In dark knots crouch ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Emerson says: "I pray you, O excellent wife, cumber not yourself and me to get a curiously rich dinner for this man and woman who have just alighted at our gate. These things, if they desire them, they can get for a few shillings at any village inn; but rather let that stranger see, if ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... cats in Kilkenny till both were "eaten up:" the Gudabirsi fix the event at the period when their forefathers still inhabited Bulhar on the coast,—about 300 years ago. If the date be correct, the substantial ruins have fought a stern fight with time. Remnants of houses cumber the soil, and the carefully built wells are filled with rubbish: the palace was pointed out to me with its walls of stone and clay intersected by layers of woodwork. The mosque is a large roofless building containing twelve square pillars of rude masonry, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... town, With more respect he and his dog are known: A brisker face he wears at wake or fair, Nor views with longing eyes the pedlar's ware, But buys at will or ribands, gloves, or beads, And willing maidens to the ale-house leads: And, Oh! secure from toils which cumber life, He makes the maid he loves an easy wife. Ah, Nelly! can'st thou with contented mind, Become the help-mate of a lab'ring hind, And share his lot, whate'er the chances be, Who hath no dow'r, but love, to fix on thee? Yes, gayest maid may meekest matron prove, And things of little note may 'token ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... beholds Some sunken feature of the mummied Past, But oftener only the embroidered folds And soiled magnificence of her rent robe Whose tattered skirts are ruined dynasties That sweep the dust of aeons in our eyes And with their trailing pride cumber the globe.— For lo! the high, imperial Past is dead: The air is full of its dissolved bones; Invincible armies long since vanquished, Kings that remember not their awful thrones, Powerless potentates and foolish sages, Impede the slow steps ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Turkish, capitals it met much the same reception. Nowhere did it reach the eye of a Departmental Head. It went to Siam, to the Prince of Monaco, to Ecuador, and was tossed to cumber a basket, or moulder on ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... there is an assurance that they have enough to eat and drink and to spare, and idleness is joined therewith; just as we still see, the richer cities are the more shamefully do men live in them; but where there is hunger and cumber there the sins are so much the fewer. Therefore God permits, in regard to those that are His, that their education should be severe, ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... storm-winds of Autumn . . . . . Ye are bound for the mountains— Ah, with you let me go . . . . . Hark! fast by the window The rushing winds go, To the ice-cumber'd gorges, The vast seas of snow. There the torrents drive upward Their rock-strangled hum, There the avalanche thunders The hoarse torrent dumb. —I come, O ye mountains! Ye torrents, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... livest, my beloved, the Giver of Life sends down upon thee sometimes things of sadness; but I, the singer, shall make thee glad in the place of difficulty, in the place of cumber. ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... hill, and pasture. Great numbers of them have become standards; we see them following the lines of old stone walls that skirt the bounds and avenues of the farm, in company with the Ash and the Maple. In these situations, where they would not "cumber the ground," they have been allowed to grow, without exciting the jealousy of the proprietor of the land. Accident, under these circumstances, has reared many a beautiful tree, which would in any other place have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... earliest and foggiest period, whose only memorials are the stones which still cumber the ground, or those subtler traces of occupation of which philology keeps the key, and pushing aside a long and uncounted crowd of kings, with names as uncertain as their deeds, pushing aside, too, the legends and coming to hard fact, we must picture Ireland ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... prophet: "There where dragons roamed, In later days the grass shall grow—the reed"? I choose those rocky hills that, on our left, Drag down the skiey waters to the woods: Such loved I from my youth: to me they said, "Bandits this hour usurp our heights, and beasts Cumber our caves: expel the seed accurst, And yield us back to God!"' The King gave ear; And Cedd within those mountains passed his Lent, Driving with prayer and fast the spirits accurst With ignominy forth. Foundations next He ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... It would also follow that the names of substances would not only have, as in truth they have, but would also be supposed to have different significations, as used by different men, which would very much cumber the use of language. For if every distinct quality that were discovered in any matter by any one were supposed to make a necessary part of the complex idea signified by the common name given to it, it must follow, that ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... for the security of those who depended on their vigilance, with their own lives. These assurances had, beyond a doubt, a soothing influence on the apprehensions of Ruth and her handmaidens; but they somewhat failed of their effect, with those unwelcome visiters who still continued to cumber Wish-Ton-Wish with their presence. Though they had evidently abandoned all ideas connected with the original object of their visit, they spoke not of departure. On the contrary as night approached, their chief entered into council with old Mark Heathcote, and made certain propositions ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... and as many women slaves or concubines as a man can properly and with decency provide for, the children of the latter, if recognised by the father, sharing equally with the offspring of the former. Though why a man who has found his love should wish to cumber his house with other women, seething with jealousy and peevish from want of occupation, is beyond my ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... only astonish the world, that is enough. Its citizens fondly hope that everything they do is on the largest scale. Size, speed, and prominence are the three gods of their idolatry. They are not content until they—the citizens—are all prominent, and their buildings are all the largest that cumber the earth. It is a great comfort to those who gamble away their substance in the Board of Trade to reflect that the weathercock that surmounts its tower is the biggest ever seen by human eye. There is not one of them ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... life, just as if the business of this mighty world could be carried on by innocent people fond of ease and quiet, or that Providence would permit innocent, quiet drones to occupy any portion of the earth and to cumber it. God had at any rate decreed that this man should not cumber it as a drone. He brings a certain affliction upon him, the agony of which produces that terrible whirling of the brain which, unless it is stopped in time, produces madness; ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... some places an iron rod laid on the surface would sink by its own weight. Like many other difficulties in this world, the solidification of the Chat Moss was said to be impossible, but the great engineer scarce admitted the propriety of allowing the word "impossible" to cumber our dictionaries. He began the work at once by forming an embankment twenty feet high, which he carried some distance across the treacherous soil, when the whole affair sank down one day and disappeared! Undismayed, Stephenson began ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... German Fiddles, which may be bought new for a few shillings, has swamped English makers of cheap instruments, of which there are by this time five times as many in the market as there is any occasion for. Hence it is that Fiddles meet us everywhere; they cumber the toy-shop; they house with the furniture dealer; they swarm by thousands in the pawnbrokers' stores, and block out the light from his windows; they hang on the tobacconists' walls; they are raffled at public-houses; and they form an item in ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... then his whip he flourished, Cracked his whip, all bead-embroidered, Quick he sped upon his journey, Lurched the sledge, the way was shortened, 10 Loudly rang the birchwood runners, And the rowan cumber rattled. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... same longings, for among the many proclamations against the residence in London of country gentlemen in unofficial positions is one of James I., noticing "those swarms of gentry, who, through the instigation of their wives, do neglect their country hospitality and cumber the city, a general nuisance to the kingdom;" and the royal Solomon elsewhere observes that "gentlemen resident on their estates are like ships in port—their value and magnitude are felt and acknowledged; but when at a distance, as their size seemeth insignificant, so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit thereon, and found none. 7 And he said unto the vinedresser, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why doth it also cumber the ground? 8 And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: 9 and if it bear fruit thenceforth, well; but if not, thou ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... the French differ from us and from the Spaniards, is that they do not embarrass or cumber themselves with too much Plot. They only represent so much of a Story as will constitute One whole and great Action sufficient for a Play. We, who undertake more, do but multiply Adventures [pp. 541, 552]; which (not ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... For the upper classes of all countries, the people who travel, and have to stand the nuisance and loss of changing their money at every frontier, the bankers and international merchants who have to cumber their accounts with the fluctuating item of exchange between commercial centres will insist upon it. All the European nations, with the exception of Russia and Turkey, are ready for the change, and when these ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... correi, Sage counsel in cumber, Red hand in the foray, How sound is thy slumber! Like dew on the mountain, 390 Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... with some of the finest and most characteristic work of the author, would be rather a puzzle in a more "serious" writer than Hamilton; but in his case there is no need to distress, or in any way to cumber, oneself about the matter. The whole thing was a "compliment," as the age would have said, to Fantasy; and the rules of the Court of Quintessence, though not non-existent as dull fools suppose, are ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... surely, sir,—too strange to be believable," quoth Shelby. "You are a traitor, Captain Ireton—of the kind we need not cumber ourselves with on ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... scarcely grown? Or hast thou told of the Volsungs, and the gathered heart of these, And their still unquenched desire for garnering fame's increase? E'en so do I hearken thy words: for I wot how they deem it long Till a man from their seed be arisen to deal with the cumber and wrong. Bid me therefore to sit by thy side, for behold I wend on my way, And the gates swing-to behind me, and each day of mine is a day With deeds in the eve and the morning, nor deeds shall the noontide ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... dear child, but sometimes a little glimpse. But you should see the pictures of our holy Father Angelico, to whom the angels appeared constantly; for so blessed was the life he lived, that it was more in heaven than on earth. He would never cumber his mind with the things of this world, and would not paint for money, nor for prince's favor; nor would he take places of power and trust in the Church, or else, so great was his piety, they had made a bishop of him; but he kept ever aloof and walked in the shade. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... No Persian cumber, boy, for me; I hate your garlands linden-plaited; Leave winter's rose where on the tree It hangs belated. Wreath me plain myrtle; never think Plain myrtle either's wear unfitting, Yours as you wait, mine as ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... and with a feeling of consternation and pity, as she thought of the orphan boy, she accepted his greeting with duteous welcome as he said, "Kinswoman, I am come to cumber you, whilst I inquire into this matter. I give your son thanks for the honesty and faithfulness he hath shown in the matter, as befitted his father's son. I should wish ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from him. In the first place, he was by no means sure that escape was what he wanted—not yet, at any rate; in the second place, if Gabriel Druse passed the word along the subterranean wires of the Romany world that Jethro Fawe should vanish, he would not long cumber ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cigars—and those disgusting cigarettes," said Mr. Flint, with conviction. "There are a lot of worthless young men in these days, anyhow. They come to my house and loaf and drink and smoke, and talk a lot of nonsense about games and automobiles and clubs, and cumber the earth generally. There's a young man named Crewe over at Leith, for instance—you may have seen him. Not that he's dissipated —but he don't do anything but talk about railroads and the stock market to make you sick, and don't know any more ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a cumber-ground long already, and wilt thou continue so still? Thy sin has brought this army to thy walls, and shall it bring it in judgment to do execution into thy town? Thou hast heard what the captains have said, but as yet thou shuttest thy gates. Speak out, Mansoul; wilt thou do so still, or wilt ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... the Filipinas ships, and the sailors have been permitted to take two or three very large boxes, under pretext that these contain wearing apparel, and thus cumber the ships. We order that no irregularity be permitted in this, and that the utmost circumspection be exercised; and that the sailors be not allowed to carry more boxes or clothing on the said ships than that indispensably needed for ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... head the plunging pilot rears, Clogg'd with his clothes, and cumber'd with his years: Now dropping wet, he climbs the cliff with pain. The crowd, that saw him fall and float again, Shout from the distant shore; and loudly laugh'd, To see his heaving breast disgorge the briny draught. The following Centaur, and the Dolphin's crew, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... say, not exceed three or four hairs at the most; though you may fish a little stronger above, in the upper part of your line: but if you can attain to angle with one hair, you shall have more rises, and catch more fish. Now you must be sure not to cumber yourself with too long a line, as most do. And before you begin to angle, cast to have the wind on your back; and the sun, if it shines, to be before you; and to fish down the stream; and carry the point ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... couple. But this rare result, which is not intended by the directing power, is the sole good purpose these agencies were ever known to serve. Lord Mansfield, it must be admitted, once seemed to justify the use of private detectives in divorce suits, but he was careful to cumber the faint praise with which he damned them by making honesty in the discharge of these delicate duties a first essential. Had he lived to see the iniquitous perfection the business has now attained, he would undoubtedly have withheld even that quasi-endorsement of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... themselves; what the world has lost by that compulsory expression of genius, in a form which may not have been its most natural form of expression, or only one of its forms, no one can ever know. Even in the little third-rate novelist whose works cumber the ground, we see often a pathetic figure, when we recognise that beneath that failure in a complex and difficult art, may lie buried a sound legislator, an able architect, an original scientific investigator, or a good judge. Scientifically speaking, ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... rare, that they have desired the seeds of them out of England, and preserve them with extraordinary care in their best gardens; this I learn out of our Johnson's Herbal; by which we may consider, that what is reputed a curse, and a cumber in some places, is esteem'd the ornament and blessing of another: But we shall not need go so far for this, since both beech and birch are almost as great strangers in many parts of this nation, particularly Northampton and Oxfordshire. Mr. Cook is much ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... into a consistent body, illustrated by one series of plates, purchasable in separate parts, and numbered consecutively. Of other prefatory matter, once intended,—apologetic mostly,—the reader shall be spared the cumber: and a clear prospectus issued by the publisher of the new series of plates, as soon as they are in ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... up the artificial valley, between high, grassy hills, completely covered with what at a distance resembled loose boards, but which were actually the long marble seats of the stadium. Urging our horses over piles of loose blocks, we reached the base of the theatre, climbed the fragments that cumber the main entrance, and looked on the spacious arena and galleries within. Although greatly ruined, the materials of the whole structure remain, and might be put together again. It is a grand wreck; the colossal fragments which have tumbled from the arched proscenium fill ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... on the corrie, Sage counsel in cumber, Red hand in the foray, How sound is thy slumber! Like the dew on the mountain, Like the foam on the river, Like the bubble on the fountain, Thou ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... dwindles to about six fathoms for the next fourteen miles, the channel at the same time narrowing down to a width varying from about two miles to less than half-a-mile in some parts, notably at the spot where it begins to thread its devious way among the islands that cumber the stream for a length of fully thirty miles, at a distance of about twenty-eight ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... enlarged. We have a memorable instance of this policy in the Athenian envoys, who, upon receiving a most ominous doom, but obscurely expressed, from the Delphic Oracle, which politely concluded by saying, "And so get out, you vagabonds, from my temple—don't cumber my decks any longer;" were advised to answer sturdily—"No!—we shall not get out—we mean to sit here forever, until you think proper to give us a more reasonable reply." Upon which spirited rejoinder, the Pythia saw the policy of revising her truly ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... 'Oh, why cumber yourself with such a useless thing,' cried the Lala in disgust; 'have you not enough to occupy your hands and mind, without taking an extra burden?' But the prince, who liked having his own way, paid no heed to him, and paying the high price asked by the man, he carried the bird back to the inn, ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... thou bringest no dream of frost to the flowers that slumber, Though no tree for its leaves, doomed of thy voice, maketh moan, Yet with th' unconscious earth's boded evil my soul thou dost cumber, And in the year's lost youth makest me still ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... south-west, bending at last in a picturesque bow, with a shallow sag. The material is the taua or blood-red marl of the Brazil, banded with white and brown, green, chocolate, and yellow; huge heaps of "rotten earth," washed down by the rains, cumber the base of the ruined sea-wall north of the town; in front is a pellucid sea with the usual trimmings, while behind roll the upland stubbles of autumn, here mottled black with fire, there scattered ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... does not seek opportunity to revel in mere rhetoric. He goes for the heart of his subject and his literary charms are displayed quite incidentally to his progress thereto. His stylism does not clog his story or cumber his argument. The result is that he produced a tract of the Church of Man which is a powerful argument for a realization in Man of the Church of God. His book is superbly human and "Ginx's Baby" deserves immortality with other dream- children of good men's hearts and ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... would be a strange shame for this age if it were not so: for as every age of the world has its own troubles to confuse it, and its own follies to cumber it, so has each its own work to do, pointed out to it by unfailing signs of the times; and it is unmanly and stupid for the children of any age to say: We will not set our hands to the work; we did not make the troubles, we will not weary ourselves seeking a remedy for them: ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... Augustus—the beach is a-spray; Blithesome the bee and the hive full alway; Better work than the bow hath the sickle to-day; Fuller the stack than the House of the Play; The Churl who cares neither to work nor to pray Now why should he cumber the earth with his clay? Justly St. Breda, the sapient, would say "As many to evil as ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... would rather that the wound should be ever fresh than that the image of the dear past should fade. It would be a loss to our best life if it would fade. There is no sting in such a faith. Such remembrance as this, which keeps the heart green, will not cumber the life. True sentiment does not weaken, but becomes an inspiration to make our life worthy of our love. It can save even a squalid lot from sordidness; for however poor we may be in the world's goods, we are rich in happy associations in the past, and in sweet communion in the present, ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... aim, it were all, in sooth, That any soul needs, to climb to heaven, And we would not cumber the way of truth With dreary dogmas, or rites ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to me lately more possible than I knew, to carry a friendship greatly, on one side, without due correspondence on the other. Why should I cumber myself with regrets that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness educate the crude and cold companion.... Yet ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... why not? What use are these manikins in creation? Only to cumber the earth. Well, mozo, you ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... would be a dead weight on the community, and "cumber the ground," be a Drunkard; for that will render you useless, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... there, are due to its impact against these obstacles. I doubt this explanation. At all events, there is another sufficient reason to be taken into account. Boulders derived from the adjacent cliffs visibly cumber the sides of the river. Against these the water rises and sinks rhythmically but violently, large waves being thus produced. On the generation of each wave, there is an immediate compounding of the wave-motion with he river-motion. The ridges, which in still water would proceed in circular curves ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... follower of yours he must be looked to; I'll send Callum to you; but diaoul! ceade millia mottigheart,' continued the impatient Chieftain, 'what made an old soldier like Bradwardine send dying men here to cumber us?' ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... that upsets their stereotyped calculations—any new combination, any strange factor, any fresh variant. And you will be all that to them, Mr. Harnish. And I repeat, they are gamblers, and they will deserve all that befalls them. They clog and cumber all legitimate enterprise. You have no idea of the trouble they cause men like us—sometimes, by their gambling tactics, upsetting the soundest plans, even overturning the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... denied, and then it strikes in and makes poets—perhaps the most daring adventurers of all. It must be difficult for the beaters of iron and the barterers in swine to understand why such useless timber is allowed to cumber the great workhouse; but then we don't know exactly what the trilobites were good for, and the utilitarians may find comfort in the reflection that at the present rate the obnoxious family is likely to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... onward for his life. But very soon the power of his charge was gone, his limbs could not rise, and his breath was taken from him; the hole that he had made was filled up behind him; fresh volumes from the shaken height came pouring down upon him; his flanks and his back were wedged fast in the cumber, and he stood still and trembled, being ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... result of the duel was to deprive Burr of all power and influence. He killed Hamilton, but he fell himself by the same shot that carried death to his opponent; and so complete was his fall that he never could rise again, though he continued to cumber the earth for more than thirty-two years. Hamilton's quarrel with Burr, as his son and biographer truly observes, "was the quarrel of his country. It was the last act in the great drama of his life. It was the deliberate sacrifice of that life ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... exclaimed, "there is enough clothing in those two cases to last us for the rest of our lives; to say nothing of that third case which you say is full of unmade silks and linen. Surely it was scarcely necessary to cumber yourself with ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of her mother) or they were sad (as of Keggo) or they were appealing (as the happy schoolgirl memories) but they must not touch or sadden or appeal too closely. They must be estimated in their degree and in their place; they must not be assumed, be shouldered, be permitted to cumber. No good could be done to them by encumbrance with them. That was the point. What good could it do them? No ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... ablutions of the faithful. But now no man comes to this old place, no murmur to God disturbs the heavy silence. And the silence, and the emptiness, and the greyness under the long arcades, all seem to make a tremulous proclamation; all seem to whisper, "I am very old, I am useless, I cumber the earth." Even the mosque of Amru, which stands also on ground that looks gone to waste, near dingy and squat houses built with grey bricks, seems less old than this mosque of Ibn-Tulun. For its long facade is striped with white and apricot, and there are lebbek-trees growing in its court ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... what it does in private: that man to whom God intendeth to reveal great things, he taketh him aside from the lumber and cumber of this world, and carrieth him away in the solace and contemplation of the ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin |
