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More "Thorny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deplorably unprofitable. The boy we would breed has a great deal less time to spare; he owes but the first fifteen or sixteen years of his life to education; the remainder is due to action. Let us, therefore, employ that short time in necessary instruction. Away with the thorny subtleties of dialectics; they are abuses, things by which our lives can never be amended: take the plain philosophical discourses, learn how rightly to choose, and then rightly to apply them; they are more easy to be understood than one of Boccaccio's novels; a child from nurse is much ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... what point does statecraft permit superstition to be destroyed? This is a very thorny question; it is like asking up to what point one should make an incision in a dropsical person, who may die under the operation. It is a ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... hopes, by loves, by life, a living, and, at last, perfectly authoritative ideal of righteousness, but more than all a gradual growth of such moral power as would be commanding in the redeeming self-sacrifice and love of Jesus Christ. Every page of the Old Testament was only preparatory, as the thorny bush is preparatory for the rose. Christ is the end of the long, weary human history that leads to Him. If the laws of Sinai had been enough, there never would have been a Calvary. No one for a moment dreams that the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... now, therefore, that you have safely arrived. Now, then, let us smoke the pipe together. Because all around are hostile agencies which are each thinking, "I will frustrate their purpose." Here thorny ways, and here falling trees, and here wild beasts lying in ambush. Either by these you might have perished, my offspring, or, here by floods you might have been destroyed, my offspring, or by the ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... attend her: She will bring, in spite of frost, Beauties that the earth hath lost; She will bring thee, all together, All delights of summer weather; All the buds and bells of May, From dewy sward or thorny spray; All the heaped Autumn's wealth, With a still, mysterious stealth: She will mix these pleasures up, Like three fit wines in a cup, And ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... all are dignified with a purpose, with a determination to correct some error, to remedy some abuse, to do good in any number of instances. They are not unlike a field of teasels in blossom—there are the thorny points of this strange plant, and the delicate and exceedingly beautiful blossom beside, resting on the very points of a hundred lances, with their lovely lilac bloom. Those who have lived where teasels grow will understand this illustration. We doubt ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... forth to discover what is the matter. With confused cries they pour from the palace and, recognising in Parsifal the whole of the enemy, assail him with abuse scarcely more unendurable than a pelting with thorny rose-buds. "You there! You there! Why did you do us this injury? A curse upon you! A curse upon you!" As Parsifal undismayed leaps down into the garden, they fall to twittering like angry sparrows: "Ha! You bold thing! Do you dare to brave us? Why did you beat our beloved?" ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... despatched a large boar and two full-grown sows, and were in chase of others. We came up with them when they were engaged with a fine young boar which had sheltered and come to bay in a clump of thorny scrub (wild Irishman, so called). Neither dogs nor men could reach him, and the only plan was to irritate him till he bolted. This was difficult, but at length successful, and the beast made a rush straight for ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... "Toil is no thorny crown of pain, Bound round man's brow for sin; True souls from it all strength may gain, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... followed him through some brushwood and then up a rough incline. Here the bushes growing between the rocks aided them, although they had to put on gloves, to keep from getting their hands badly scratched, for some of the growth was thorny. ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... in the traditions of the art of Europe by the springing of the acanthus round the basket of the canephora, strictly the basket for bread, the idea of bread {105} including all sacred things carried at the feasts of Demeter, Bacchus, and the Queen of the Air. And this springing of the thorny weeds round the basket of reed, distinctly taken up by the Byzantine Italians in the basketwork capital of the twelfth century, (which I have already illustrated at length in the 'Stones of Venice,') becomes the germ of all capitals ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... have an outlet. He circled round it, clambering over fallen trees and forcing his way through thorny vines, till he saw, amid roots of alder-bushes, a streamlet flow from the lakeside. This he hopefully followed. Not far had he gone before a dull roar met his ears, breaking the sullen silence of the woods. It was the sound of falling waters. He hastened forward. The wood grew thinner. Light ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... costly splendour, fabrics by the artist wove, Dry wood from the thorny jungle, perfume from ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... adventures which to them seemed so exciting, not to say tragical, the effect astonished them immensely, as their audience went into gales of laughter, especially at the wheelbarrow episode, which Bab insisted on telling, with grateful minuteness, to Ben's confusion. Thorny shouted, and even tender-hearted Betty forgot her tears over the lost dog to join in the familiar melody when Bab mimicked Pat's quotation ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... electric light (and that is the modern light) gayety is almost as pathetic as suffering. Before the Montana girl hit upon the happy device that gave her notoriety, her feet, whose every twinkle now was worth a gold eagle, had trod a thorny path. There was a fortune now in the whirl of her illusory robes, but any day—such are the whims of fashion—she might be wandering again, sick at heart, about the great city, knocking at the side doors of variety shows for any engagement that would give her a pittance of a few dollars a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... our story is ended. If you have followed us thus far, neglect not to receive what we have faintly endeavored to inculcate; and ever remember, while treading life's thorny vale, that "a kind word is of more value than gold ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... why we find that good men and women cling to the belief, and are pained by its being questioned. But, surely, it is not legitimate to assume that, in the order of the universe, whatever is desirable is true. Optimism, even when a God is already believed in, is a thorny doctrine to maintain, and had to be taken by Leibnitz in the limited sense, that the universe being made by a good being, is the best universe possible, not the best absolutely: that the Divine power, in short, was not equal to making it more free from imperfections ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... sinner saved, a poor Son plucked as brand from the burning?"God, the Most High, give His blessing on it, then!" concludes the paternal Majesty: "And as He often, by wondrous guidances, strange paths and thorny steps, will bring men into the Kingdom of Christ, so may our Divine Redeemer help that this prodigal son be brought into His communion. That his godless heart be beaten till it is softened and changed; and so he be snatched from the claws of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to basaltic rocks. They passed from groups of mhowa trees and left behind a wide shallow stream, its bed dotted with pools fringed by great kowa trees, and its banks lined by a thick green cover of jamun and karonda. Thorny babul thrust their spiked branches out over the roadway, white with tufts of cotton torn by its thorns from bales, loose pressed, on their way to market in buffalo carts; "Babul the thief," the natives called this acacia. ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... goodness that He will turn the eyes of His mercy upon the Bride of Christ and His Vicar, and upon me, freeing me from my defects and ignorance; but upon His Bride, by giving her the refreshment of peace and renewal, with much endurance (for in no way without toils can be uprooted the many thorny faults that choke the garden of Holy Church), and that God will give him grace in those parts where he wants to be a manly man, and not to look back, for any toil or persecution that may befall him from his wicked sons; constant ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... nothing half so silly, as to be concerned about such problems. But so respectability and the duties of society haunt and burden their poor devotees; and what seems at first the very primrose path of life, proves difficult and thorny like the rest. And the time comes to Pepys, as to all the merely respectable, when he must not only order his pleasures, but even clip his virtuous movements, to the public pattern of the age. There was some juggling among officials to avoid direct taxation; and Pepys, with ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... morning, having been up late consuming numerous bocks in amicable emulation of the local prowess. He had not got around to his lesson and had concluded he did not think much of his present grammar. Herr Preceptor would suggest procuring another which would strew roses no doubt along the thorny path. Capital idea. Of course they must then wait ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... the extreme fertility of the soil; though unfortunately there is not a single well among them. Almonds and apricots are the chief productions, and the raised ground enclosing them is often covered with small branches of the thorny "Sidr." Near the village we saw several "Sidr" trees, as well as tamarisks (Atel) and sycamores. The most numerous class are the thorny Opuntias, which grow round some of the ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... back, determining to seek his boat once more. So hurried was he that he was less cautious than before, and catching his foot in a long tendril of some creeper, he fell. In falling, he struck his hand against some cactus or other thorny plant, and the spine pierced his flesh, causing severe pain. In spite of himself a cry burst from him. The cry was instantly repressed, and David, raising himself, prepared to continue his retreat. But first he looked fearfully around to see whether ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... the nuns, for sending such a love of a plaything; and, finally, from papa, for sending such substantial board and well-bolted lodgings, 'from which,' said the malicious old fellow, 'my pussy will never find her way out to a thorny and dangerous world.' Won't she? I suspect, son of somebody, that the next time you see 'pussy,' which may happen to be also the last, will not be in a convent of any kind. At present, whilst this general rendering ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... makanoe. The lehua trees that grow on the top of Wai-aleale, the mountain mass of Kauai, are of peculiar form, low, stunted, and so furzy as to be almost thorny, kuku, as ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... southern winds." Liguanea Island, after an estate in Jamaica. Cape Wiles, after the Botanist on the Providence. Williams' Isle. Sleaford Bay, from Sleaford in Lincolnshire. Thistle Island, after the Master of the Investigator. Neptune Isles, "for they seemed inaccessible to men." Thorny Passage, from the dangerous rocks. Cape Catastrophe, where the accident occurred. Taylor's Island, after a midshipman drowned in the accident. Wedge Island, "from its shape." Gambier Isles, after Admiral Lord Gambier. Memory Cove, in memory of the accident. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... come to Canada, and clear the backwoods, they have little time to make nice fruit-gardens for themselves, and they are glad to gather the wild berries that grow in the woods and swamps to make tarts and preserves, so that they do not even despise the thorny gooseberries or the wild black currants. Some swamp-gooseberries, however, are quite smooth, of a dark red colour, but small, and they are very nice when ripe. The blossoms of the wild currants are very beautiful, of a pale yellowish green, and hang down in long, graceful branches; the ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... doleful hour, when, retracing his steps, he thinks of what he has attempted, the difficulties of the task, the unlikeliness that he has overcome them. Misprints taking wrong numbers by the hand, black and thorny creatures, dance their wild dance round him. He is awe-stricken, and shudders; he wonders at the boldness of his undertaking; "Qu'allait-il faire dans cette galere?" The immensity of the task, the insufficience ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... entering his library was to telephone to a well known detective agency—no surprising thing on his part, for not infrequently he made use of their services to obtain sundry details as to the movements of his opponents, and when, as often happened, cranks threatened the thorny path of wealth and prominence, he had found protection with the plain ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love, Doth work like ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... and followed by the dwarf, I crawled though the sand in which grew some thorny plants that pricked my knees and fingers, towards the person of the Monarch of the World. He had descended from his chariot by help of a footstool, and was engaged in drinking from a golden cup, while his attendants stood around in various attitudes of adoration, ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... procumbens, spread smooth, blue-flowered mats and rugs beneath the pines, and offer fine beds to tired mountaineers. The commonest species, C. cordulatus, is most common in the silver-fir woods. It is white-flowered and thorny, and makes dense thickets of tangled chaparral, difficult to wade through or to walk over. But it is pressed flat every winter by ten or fifteen feet of snow. The western azalea makes glorious beds of bloom along the river bank and meadows. In ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... set out at intervals, every way, of from seven to twelve feet, according to the degree of fertility of the soil, so that there are from 800 to 1,000 vines in one orlong of land; to each vine is allotted a prop of from ten to thirteen feet high, cut from the thorny tree called dadap, or where that is scarce, from the less durable boonglai; these props take root, thus affording both shade and support to the plant. The plant may be raised from seed pepper, but the plan is not ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... the speed of the wind as he rushed after the deer. And proceeding, guided by those marks, to a spot filled with dry winds and abounding in leafless vegetables, brackish and devoid of water, covered with thorny plants and scattered over with gravel, stumps and shrubs and difficult of access and uneven and dangerous, he saw in a mountain cavern his younger brother motionless, caught in the folds of that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... forth to feed about 4 P.M., and they invariably, retire to the thickest and most thorny jungle in the neighbourhood of their feeding-place by 7 A.M. In these impenetrable haunts they consider ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... and midnight murder fed, Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame, And spare the meek usurper's holy head. Above, below, the rose of snow, Twin'd with her blushing foe, we spread: The bristled boar in infant-gore Wallows beneath the thorny shade. Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom, Stamp we our vengeance deep, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... I., page 406. Mr. Rivers had a new French rose with a delicate smooth stem, pale glaucous leaves and striped flesh-coloured flowers; on branches thus characterised there appeared "the famous old rose called 'Baronne Prevost,'" with its stout thorny stem and uniform rich-coloured double flowers.), with its different shoots, foliage, spines, and flowers, will be grand to quote. I am extremely glad to hear about the seedling moss-roses. That case of a seedling like a Scotch rose, unless you are sure that no Scotch ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... approaching some sacred caves in Burmah. Lighting our torches, and each man taking one, we mounted the steep, tortuous, and slippery foot-path of damp, green stones, through the thorny shrubs that beset it, to the low entrance to the outer cavern. Stooping uncomfortably, we passed into a small, vacant antechamber, having a low, dripping roof, perpendicular walls, clammy and green, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... coming. At the same time he sent one of his escort into Enramada to discover if Lieutenant Navarro had by any chance reached that place, and to arrange for fresh mounts. Then he threw himself down in the scant shadow of a thorny bush ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... reverence, Above a fold where wrapped in swaddling clothes A new-born infant in a manger lay; In humble contrast to the throne of light, He left to tread the thorny paths of earth; In undefiled and stainless innocence, Which earth with all her foul iniquities Might never tarnish nor pollute ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... government, and even condescended so far as to unite herself with him in marriage. But the aspect of affairs became gradually more alarming, and Chegger Edour, yielding to the prevailing discontent, abdicated in favour of her husband. Turcoman, however, found that his crown was somewhat thorny; and at a critical period he aroused the jealousy of his wife by aspiring to wed an ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... of the marl-pit was so irregular, and the thorny underbrush so thick, that when pedestrians wished to reach the nearest highway they, were compelled either to make a long detour or to cross the deepest part of the excavation by means of the trunks of two great trees, which had been cut in half, lashed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... were smoking idly in the shade of overhanging rocks. Immediately they scrambled to their feet and scattered along the hillside. The stroke of axes echoed from the crags above, and soon men came staggering down to the river, dragging the thorny limbs of palo verdes behind them. With these they quickly constructed a brush fence in the form of a wing, running parallel to the cliff and making a chute which opened into ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... shore, composed of rocks and pebbles, is that of a little sea, not that of a pond, like the shores of Lake Huleh. It is clean, neat, free from mud, and always beaten in the same place by the light movement of the waves. Small promontories, covered with rose laurels, tamarisks, and thorny caper bushes, are seen there; at two places, especially at the mouth of the Jordan, near Tarichea, and at the boundary of the plain of Gennesareth, there are enchanting parterres, where the waves ebb and ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... Constantinople she fired off three letters in a day demanding war; and when she learnt that the Cabinet had only decided to send the Fleet to Gallipoli she declared that "her first impulse" was "to lay down the thorny crown, which she feels little satisfaction in retaining if the position of this country is to remain as it is now." It is easy to imagine the agitating effect of such a correspondence upon Beaconsfield. This was no longer the Faery; it was a genie whom he had rashly called ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... thorny rod of the cotton tree used for torturing the wicked in hell. The tree gives its name, Salmali, to one of the seven Dwipas, or great divisions of the known continent: and also to a hell where the wicked are tormented with ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... say, thou cost for Vice prepare, And joys the good shall know; Thou canst the crooked heart unmask and bare; Thou canst the riddle of our fate declare, And keep account with Woe. With thee a home smiles for the exiled one— There ends the thorny strife. Unto my side a godlike vision won, Called TRUTH, (few know her, and the many shun,) And check'd the reins of life. "I will repay thee in a holier land— Give thou to me thy youth; All I can grant thee lies in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... at first on polemical points of divinity, and diverged from this thorny path, into the neighbouring and twilight walk of mysticism. He talked of secret warnings—of the predictions of sad-eyed prophets—of the visits of monitory spirits, and the Rosicrucian secrets of the Cabala; all ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... solitary animal, living in trees, and being good food, is never allowed to escape. He inhabits remote and gloomy forests, where snakes take up their abode, and where cruelly stinging ants and scorpions, and swamps, and innumerable thorny shrubs and bushes obstruct the steps of civilized man. We are now in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... do, I am afraid. If you knew the discomforts that must assail one unaccustomed—I cannot tell—but I doubt if you would go. All the doors to bliss have their defences of swamps and thorny thickets through which alone they can be gained. You would need to be a fisherman's sister—or wife—I fear, my lady, to get ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... a coward's slave, Endless contests bore Alcides brave, Through the thorny path of suffering led; Slew the Hydra, crushed the lion's might, Threw himself, to bring his friend to light, Living, in the skiff that bears the dead. All the torments, every toil of earth Juno's hatred on him could impose, Well he bore them, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... millionairess by the working woman, and the fashionable society woman by the business one. Two women on horseback, and one blowin' a bugle, led the way for the carriage of Madam Antoinette Blackwell. I wonder if she ever dreamed when she wuz tryin' to climb the hill of knowledge through the thorny path of sex persecution, that she would ever have a bugle blowed in front of her, to honor her for her efforts, and form a part of such a glorious Parade of the sect she give her youth ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... across just such land as southern Texas, endless flat sand scattered with chaparral, mesquite, and cactus; nowhere a sign of life, but for fences of one or two barb-wires on crooked sticks—not even bird life. The wind, strong and incessant as at sea, sounded as mournful through the thorny mesquite bushes as in our Northern winters, even though here it brought relief rather than suffering. The sunshine was ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... chronicle, to the effect that during the Diocletian persecution, in which St. Alban, a centurion, was martyred, the Romans demolished a church standing on the site of St. Paul's, and raised a temple to Diana on its ruins, while in Thorny Island, Westminster, St. Peter, in the like manner, gave way to Apollo. These myths are, however, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... and a trial. The mere trappings of power and state, the gemmed coronal, the ermined robe, she would have regarded as the outward emblems of her earthly profession; and would have worn them with as much simplicity as her novice's hood and scapular; still, under whatever guise she might tread this thorny world—the same ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... lie alligators, electric eels, and stinging rays. Far as the eye can reach are swamps, swamps, and more swamps, a sea of waving pampa-grass. After the swamps thickets of tacuaras (canes), forests of thorny trees, chanares, nandubay, jacarandas, urundey, talas, and quebrachos, each one hard enough to split an axe, some, like the black canela, almost like iron; the inhabitants ferocious and intractable as when the Governor himself first saw them; the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... from the course which it was my right and my duty to pursue; and yet I found that, whatever route I took, before long I came to a tall and formidable looking fence. Confident as I might be in the existence of an ancient and indefeasible right of way, before me stood the thorny barrier with its comminatory notice-board—'NO THOROUGHFARE. By order. MOSES.' There seemed no way over; nor did the prospect of creeping round, as I saw some do attract me.... The only alternatives were either to give up my journey—which I was not ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... Virtue must be reached by toil, Arduous and long, and on a rugged soil, Thorny the gate, but when the top you gain, Fair is the future and the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Clementina," she said. She added, in careless acknowledgement of her own failure to direct her choice, "I see you didn't need my help after all," and the thorny point which Clementina felt in her praise was rankling, when Lord Lioncourt began ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... comes the thorny-ground hearer. He may be a man of talent, perhaps a genius. Naturally thoughtful and ambitious, he covets both wealth and honors. He is not entirely forgetful of the claims of religion upon him. He goes to church with his family; behaves genteelly; invites the ministers ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... animals perform many little services for each other: horses nibble, and cows lick each other, on any spot which itches: monkeys search each other for external parasites; and Brehm states that after a troop of the Cercopithecus griseo-viridis has rushed through a thorny brake, each monkey stretches itself on a branch, and another monkey sitting by, "conscientiously" examines its fur, and extracts every thorn ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the night that was all pale and glowing around, with shadows and glimmerings and presences. Distinctly, she saw the flowers in the hedge-bottoms, she saw the thin, raked sheaves flung white upon the thorny hedge. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... life that had bloomed so fully and freshly in her hand, a scepter and a fairy wand of beneficence, had withered to a thorny scourge for her own shoulders. She looked about her, before her. She realized with a new, a cutting keenness, that Jack was very rich and she very poor. The chill of poverty had hardly reached her as yet, the warm certainty of its cessation had wrapped ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... under-wood. Along the left-hand fence ran a thick belt of underwood, sumac and birch, with a few young oak trees interspersed; but in the middle of the swampy level, covering at most some five or six acres, was a dense circular thicket composed of every sort of thorny bush and shrub, matted with cat-briers and wild vines, and overshadowed by a clump of tall and leafy ashes, which had not as yet lost one atom of their foliage, although the underwood beneath them was quite ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... wooded hills east of Rio Paraguay; Gran Chaco region west of Rio Paraguay mostly low, marshy plain near the river, and dry forest and thorny scrub elsewhere ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... that long has tost On the thorny bed of pain, At length repair his vigour lost And breathe and walk again: The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common sun, the air, the skies, To ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... and across the tops of mountains, it was no longer necessary as it had been in the hot lands. Never did I see anything more dreary than these immense lengths of desolate plains covered with aloes and other thorny and succulent shrubs of fantastic aspect, which alone could live on the sandy and waterless soil. This is a strange land, that can boast three separate climates within its borders, and is able to show ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... said Nicholas softly. It was the epitaph over the unmarked grave of that other member of his race who had blazed the thorny path before him. A strange, pathetic figure rose suddenly in his vision—a man with a great brow and a twisted back, with brawny, knotted hands—an unlearned student driving the plough, an ignorant philosopher dragging ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... is generally placed in single trees of no great size, standing in fields or open jungle. The thorny Acacias are often selected, but I have seen them ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... came a day when the army was in line of battle against the Saracen; when the Knights of the Temple vied with the knights of other orders each striving to carry their flag farthest into that thorny jungle of flashing scimitars, and the huge arm of King Richard the Lion-hearted hewed a red road for them all which none could equal; for was he not the strongest man in the two entire armies—this King who could sever an iron bar with a swordstroke? But ever ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... her whip, and broke into a barbarous laugh whenever she saw me resume my race through the bushes, blowing, panting, desperate, absurd. I ran thus during a space of time of which I am unable to form any estimate, accomplishing unprecedented feats of gymnastics, tearing through the thorny brambles, sinking into the miry spots, leaping over the ditches, bounding upon my feet with the elasticity of a panther, galloping to the devil, without reason, without object, and without any other hope but that of seeing the earth open beneath ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... ichthyolite bed occurs exactly one hundred and fourteen feet over the great Conglomerate; and three hundred and eighteen feet higher up I found a second ichthyolite bed, as rich in fossils as the first, with its thorny Acanthodians twisted half round, as if still in the agony of dissolution, and its Pterichthyes still extending their spear-like arms in the attitude of defence. The discovery enabled me to assign to their true places the various ichthyolite beds of the district. Those ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... all, lifting their thorny whips, fell to scourging him so savagely that Fra Mino's body was soon one wound from head to toe. Now and again they would stop to cough and spit, only to begin afresh, plying their whips more vigorously ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... Bushes, thorny twigs, and the roots of trees hindered their progress. The child followed the vision of his mother, made clear now and then by the moon's rays across the heavy foliage. They were in the mysterious wood of the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... omitted to mention the provocation which gave rise to many of them. Eusden, Colley Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, Blackmore, Smyth, and Lord Hervey are among the prominent criminals placed in Pope's pillory, and the student of the age may find an idle entertainment in tracking the poet's thorny course, while he gives an unenviable notoriety to names of which the larger number were 'born ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blind-worms do no wrong; Come not ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... again in silence till the moon declined before the coming day, the cruel day, which brought the heat and the following crows again. Dawn brought them to a patch of "dead finish," as the settlers call a dense and thorny scrub with pretty green leaves, through which it is well nigh impossible to force a way even under the most favourable circumstances; and which presented an utterly impassable barrier to men in their condition. They turned aside once more, and Anderson ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... when at last I emerged upon it, that it was a distance of some six or seven miles from the settlement, though, owing to my ignorance of the way, it had taken me a whole morning to cover it. Did she have to thread these thorny thickets every time she came to the little town? No; doubtless she was acquainted with some easier ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... without a Penny; but as I begin to recover, and have a little time to Think, I can't help considering myself, as one whisk'd up behind a Witch upon a Broomstick, and hurried over Mountains and Dales through confus'd Woods and thorny Thickets, and when the Charm is ended, and the poor Wretch dropp'd in a Desart, he can give no other Account of his enchanted Travels, but that he is much fatigued in Body and Mind, his Cloaths torn, and worse in all other Circumstances, without ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... sold, and my price was set at seaven pence more then Philebus gave for me. There fortuned to passe by a Baker of the next village, who after that he had bought a great deale of corne, bought me likewise to carry it home, and when he had well laded me therewith, be drave me through a thorny and dangerous way to his bake house; there I saw a great company of horses that went in the mill day and night grinding of corne, but lest I should be discouraged at the first, my master entertained me well, for ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... in his heart a strange wish for exploring The thorny and briery place, And, lo, a path through the deepest thicket ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... how early in the morning, before the flush of dawn has left the sky, a man makes his way along the steep deserted bank like a tiny speck: the ancient, mast-like pines rise up in terraces on both sides of the torrent, gaze sternly at the free man and murmur menacingly; rocks, huge stones, and thorny bushes bar his way, but he is strong in body and bold in spirit, and has no fear of the pine-trees, nor stones, nor of his solitude, nor of the reverberating echo which repeats the sound of every footstep ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... knew not where; Up windy downs far-stretching, bleak and bare; Through swamps that soddened under stagnant air; In blackest woods and brambled mesh, Thorny bushes tore my flesh: ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... a red-hot stone," groaned Rainiharo, "somewhere in my inwards! Thorny shrubs are revolving in my stomach! ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... which has been given to us by the "noble company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs," who, refusing to take the easy road of popularity, have deliberately chosen the thorny path of insult, ignominy, destruction, for the faith that glowed within their souls. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Socrates, St. Paul, Wycliff, Huss, Savanarola, Martin Luther, John Knox, George Fox, John Wesley, Joseph Priestly, Theodore Parker—how the names multiply, all as sweet as honey to our lips, of ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... The thorny place is one who hears, And does the truth receive; But finds that cares of life and wealth, His ...
— The Parables Of The Saviour - The Good Child's Library, Tenth Book • Anonymous
... that offered to my thoughts at that time was, to get up into a thick bushy tree like a fir, but thorny, which grew near me, and where I resolved to sit all night, and consider the next day what death I should die, for as yet I saw no prospect of life. I walked about a furlong from the shore, to see if I could find any fresh water to drink, which I did, ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... in "El Jaridiah's" characteristics when he heard the Arab's unfeigned pleasure at the statement that it was not the lady actually rescued, but a friend of hers, whom the thievish dogs aforesaid meant to carry off. Abdullah then saw a path out of the thorny labyrinth which beset him. It was evident that in serving Miss Fenshawe he had displayed his fidelity to Mrs. Haxton! The notion was so gratifying that he made a suggestion which assuredly would not otherwise have occurred to him. When they reached the camp-fire ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... 2) By sorrow schooled. Heavy the hand of God, Thorny and rough the paths my feet have trod, Humbled my pride, my pleasure turned to pain; Poor mortals, how we labor all in vain! ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... Saviour dear, in glory dight, dressed. Adored of all the powers of heavens bright! Lo, where that head that bled with thorny wound, Shines ever with celestial honour crowned! That hand that held the scornful reed Makes ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... utterance, he seeks advice from some one who has attained success in the profession of literature. In most instances he receives no satisfactory criticism, and is compelled to act on innate conviction of his right to enter the "thorny path" and fight his way up to the top, where, we are ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... way. There were no cabins at which he could retrieve his error, and, after many vain endeavors to find the track, he let his horse take his own course; and, carrying his master under low-branched trees and through thorny thickets, across a swamp, he brought him out at last by a much shorter route than he had taken in going, on the farther bank of the river, near ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... if by "won" you just mean "sold," That's quite another compact. Well, this scamp, Continuing descent from bad to worse, Must leave his fine and fashionable prey (Who—fathered, brothered, husbanded,—are hedged About with thorny danger) and apply His arts to this poor country ignorance Who sees forthwith in the first rag of man Her model hero! Why continue waste On such a woman treasures of a heart Would yet find solace,—yes, my ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... violence of the winde they shall swarue any way. Vpon the ascent or rising from one leuell to another, you may plant the Barberry-trees, Feberries, and Raspberries, of all sorts, which being spreading, thorny and sharpe trees, take great delight to grow thicke and close together, by which meanes often times they make a kinde of wall, hedge, or ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... plucked the thorny rose, 10 And when May pulled the brier, Half the birds would swoop to see, Half the beasts draw nigher; Half the fishes of the streams Would dart up to admire: But when Margaret plucked a flag-flower, Or poppy hot aflame, All the beasts ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... of things with foreigners," he said, and he looked down at his plate. That poor devil of a Tristram was going to have a thorny time in the future, he thought, and he was to be best man at the wedding; it would be like giving the old chap over to a tigress! But, by Jove!—such a beautiful one would be worth being eaten by—he added ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... morning eglantine, Making the far old English ways divine! Though from thy stock our mateless rose was bred, Staining the world's skies with its red, Our garden gives no scent so fresh as thine, Sweet, thorny-seeming eglantine. ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... importance upon my hands, to give the reader the least reason to believe that I am driven to such paltry shifts, in order to eke out the volume. Suffice it then to say, our adventurer passed a very uneasy night, not only from the thorny suggestions of his mind, but likewise from the anguish of his body, which suffered from the hardness of his couch, as well as from the natural inhabitants thereof, that did not tamely suffer his intrusion. In the morning he was waked by Pipes, who brought upon his shoulder ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... few there are left, old, tottering, and gray, Apart and forgotten, as those who are dead; Yet sometimes they meet on life's thorny way, And talk, and live over the days that have fled. Oh! how I remember those faces so bright, Which beamed in their boyhood with honesty's ray! And oft, when alone, in the stillness of night, We're all at the school-house again, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... So I am queen. I have accepted my lot, and henceforth my existence will be a ceaseless struggle and wrestling with death. I will at least sell my life as dearly as possible; and the maxim which Cranmer has given me shall hereafter be my guide on the thorny ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... and work a pattern of dappled light and shadow on the grass, for our delectation. Most of the way had been made familiar in pursuit of some wild boar that would not stand and fight but hurried into the wildest and most difficult part of the forest, charging through every bush, however thick and thorny, in vain endeavour to shake off the pitiless pack. For my companion no corner of the forest lacked memories, some recent, some remote, but all concerned with the familiar trial of skill in which the boar had at last yielded ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... path my father's foot Had trod me out (which suddenly broke off What time he dropped the wallet of the flesh And passed) alone I carried on, and set My child-heart 'gainst the thorny underwood, To reach the grassy shelter of the trees, Ah, babe i' the wood, without a brother-babe! My own self-pity, like the redbreast bird, Flies back to cover all that past ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... I called Lucien's attention to a small thorny shrub, a kind of mimosa, called huizachi by the Indians, who use its pods for dyeing black cloth, and for making a tolerably useful ink. The plain assumed by degrees a less monotonous aspect. Butterflies began to hover round us, and our young ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... an eye on the technicians. They were working on a bush of some kind that had little thorny-looking nuts on it, clipping bits off here and there. He wasn't at all sure what they did with all those little pieces and bits, but that was none of his business, anyway. Let the brains take care of that stuff; ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the Russian authorities, with a view to his acceptance of the Bulgarian crown. By the vote of the Bulgarian Chamber, it was offered to him on April 29, 1879. He accepted it, knowing full well that it would be a thorny honour for a youth of twenty-two years of age. His tall commanding frame, handsome features, ability and prowess as a soldier, and, above all, his winsome address, seemed to mark him out as a natural leader of men; and he received a warm welcome from the Bulgarians ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... She had hoped for a chat with Graydon that evening, which might lead to a better understanding, and end their tendency to rather thorny badinage. But she heard him chatting gayly with Miss Wildmere and Mr. Arnault in the distance; therefore she said, quietly, "It is time for me to get even with you first. To refuse would not be nice after the lovely drive you took us the ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... down on the forest, and although the road was rough and thorny Savitri stumbled on and on, following the sound of Yama's footsteps although she could no longer see him. Finally he turned into a gloomy cavern, but she plodded on, until she so excited his compassion that he promised her one more ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... forest extended its gloomy arms athwart the horizon; but did not arrest my aerial journey. The thick boughs groaned and crashed beneath me, as I was dragged through their matted foliage; my limbs lacerated and torn, and my hair tangled amid the thorny branches. Vainly I endeavoured to cling to the twigs which impeded my passage, but they eluded my frenzied grasp, or snapped in my hands, while my cries for help were drowned in the thundering sweep of the mighty gale. Onward—onward. I was still ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... protect the plants which bear them from the ravages of grazing cattle is, of course, an additional motive for their presence. Under cultivation, in well-watered garden soil—and how many charming varieties of barberries are cultivated—the thorny shrub loses much of its armor, putting forth many more leaves, in rosettes, along more numerous twigs, instead. Even the prickly pear cactus might become mild as a lamb were it to forswear sandy deserts and live in marshes instead. Country ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... confidence of the community as a whole in the wisdom with which this delicate task would be executed, to find that it was entrusted to a family party, one of which was a mere boy; and the mistrust must have been increased when, somewhat later in the course of the year, the thorny questions which immediately encompassed the task of distribution led to the introduction by Tiberius of another law, which gave judicial power to the triumvirs, for the purpose of determining what was public land and what was private.[376] The fortunes ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... struggling days, and Mr. Bradlaugh was very kind to me. I remember the Sunday evening when I told him I thought of taking to the Freethought platform. He pointed out the hard and thorny path I should have to tread, but when he saw I was resolved on the attempt, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, "There is no young man in the movement I ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... of grain, and even cotton and silk, were chiefly clothed with fruit-trees—orange and lemon, and the fig, the olive, and the vine. Sometimes the land was uncultivated, and was principally covered with myrtles, of large size, and oleanders, and arbutus, and thorny brooms. Here game abounded, while from the mountain-forests the wolf sometimes descended, and spoiled and ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... even in the Sierra have I ever made the acquaintance of mountains more rigidly inaccessible. The slopes are exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot of the explorer, however great his strength or skill may be, but thorny chaparral constitutes their chief defense. With the exception of little park and garden spots not visible in comprehensive views, the entire surface is covered with it, from the highest peaks to the ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... having made off with them while the drivers were in a roadhouse obtaining refreshments. For this trick, Pepper and some of the others got after the Pornellites and made them prisoners in a cave, from which they could escape only by going out a back way, through some water and mud, and thorny bushes. ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... simple love of the things That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck; Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck; Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball; Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook; The good physician Melampus, loving them all, Among them walked, as a scholar ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the matter, child?" I said, but she would not speak. I tried to draw her from her lair, but she tangled herself stubbornly still farther among the thorny vines, and I could not move her. I touched her neck: it was cold. Frightened, I ran back to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... which shows a very plebeian and pachydermatous temper; and they laugh all over in the face of an April day, shaking their little golden clusters of blossom in such a merry way that the Rose Tree, who was herself very reserved and thorny, had really scruples about speaking ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... that which the Holy Evangelists imposed. These relics were fragments of bones set in caskets and frames, and portions of blood—relics, as the monks alleged, of apostles or of the Savior—and small pieces of wood, similarly preserved, which had been portions of the cross of Christ or of his thorny crown. These things were treasured up with great solemnity in the monastic establishments and in the churches of these early times, and were regarded with a veneration and awe, of which it is almost beyond our power even to conceive. ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... without pausing to relight the pine splinters, they rushed pell-mell towards the sound of barking, bumping into trees, stumbling over logs, scratching their faces and tearing their clothes on thorny vines. But no one minded. Bim had treed a 'coon in the shortest time on record, and now if they could only get it, the triumph would be ample reward for ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... young friend who had been consigned to his care by a dying mother; he feared to renew the intercourse, until her character was developed; while poor Mabel had little thought how closely she was watched along the humble and thorny paths she had ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Blackberry. There is not much to be said for a plant that is the proverbial type of a barren country or untidy cultivation, yet the Bramble and the Blackberry have their charms, and we could ill afford to lose them from our hedgerows. The name Bramble originally meant anything thorny, and Chaucer applied ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... the bighorn, the wapiti, and the wolf, nesting place of buzzards, land of cloud-nourished trees and wild things that live without drink. Above all, it is the land of the creosote and the mesquite. The mesquite is God's best thought in all this desertness. It grows in the open, is thorny, stocky, close grown, and iron-rooted. Long winds move in the draughty valleys, blown sand fills and fills about the lower branches, piling pyramidal dunes, from the top of which the mesquite twigs flourish greenly. Fifteen or twenty feet under the drift, where ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... plantation development, but as affording good harbourage and coaling stations on the sea-road to China, Japan, and Central America. By the agreement with England and America, which in this year also put an end to the thorny question of Samoan administration, Germany acquired the Samoan islands of Upolu and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... the reader the least reason to believe that I am driven to such paltry shifts, in order to eke out the volume. Suffice it then to say, our adventurer passed a very uneasy night, not only from the thorny suggestions of his mind, but likewise from the anguish of his body, which suffered from the hardness of his couch, as well as from the natural inhabitants thereof, that did not tamely suffer his intrusion. In the morning he was waked by Pipes, who brought upon his shoulder ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... are left, old, tottering, and gray, Apart and forgotten, as those who are dead; Yet sometimes they meet on life's thorny way, And talk, and live over the days that have fled. Oh! how I remember those faces so bright, Which beamed in their boyhood with honesty's ray! And oft, when alone, in the stillness of night, We're all at the school-house ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... end of a week my old neighbor came to see me with a tolerably thorny bit of business, an expropriation, and he continued to ask for my advice with as much freedom as ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... accurate account of this forlorn tract, its general aridity and the necessity of obtaining water by digging in the beds of torrents; describes the food of the inhabitants as dates and fish; and adverts to the occasional occurrence of fertile spots, the abundance of aromatic and thorny shrubs and fragrant plants, and the violence of the monsoon in the western part of Makran. He notices also the impossibility of supporting a large army, and the consequent destruction of the greater part of the men and beasts ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... hedge, formed by a wide belt of thorny shrubs, interlaced and fastened together by cords, extended from the bank of the river, about a thousand yards above Seringapatam; and, making a wide sweep, came down to it again opposite the other end of ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... the dirty half-drowned Hollander would not remove into the pleasant plains of Italy, the rude Thracian would not change his boggy soil for the best seat in Athens, nor the brutish Scythian quit his thorny deserts to become an inhabitant of the Fortunate Islands. And oh the incomparable contrivance of nature, who has ordered all things in so even a method that wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a larger dose of self-love, which supplies ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... surrounding slopes; the latter sweeping down to join the plains. A dust, light, dry, and feathery lay thickly on the adobe boxes on the surrounding ledge on the slopes, like a gray ash sprinkled from a giant sifter. Cactus and yucca dotted the slopes, thorny, lancelike, repellent; lava, dull, hinting of volcanic fire, filled crevices and depressions, and huge blocks of stone, detached in the progress ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... spotted snakes, with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blind-worms do no wrong; Come ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... said, his eyes fixed on the darkened sky, "is the way to Thy holy hill through this thorny path? Wheresoever Thou shalt guide, I go with Thee. But 'these are in the world!' Keep them through Thy name, and let us meet in the Garden of God, if we may not go together. O blessed Jesu Christ! the forget-me-nots which ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... roots, but it had bent down with it the bough of another stubb, a stout, tough-looking bough, belonging evidently to a hazel growing farther from the edge of the shaft. Could he reach that he might better his position, but the long, tough, thorny brambles that hung down swaying about were in his way, unless he could make use ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... the Panther answered: "Brave among the brave is Panther Son of Waub-Ojeeg, the warrior, And the brave are ever silent; But a whining dog is woman, Whining ever like a coward." Forth into the tangled forest, Threading through the thorny thickets, Treading trails on marsh and meadow, Sullen strode the moody hunter. Saw he not the bear or beaver, Saw he not the elk or roebuck; From his path the red-fawn scampered, But no arrow followed after; From his den the sly ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... for ever I drede That ye could not sustain The thorny ways, the deep valleys, The snow, the frost, the rain, The cold, the heat: for dry, or wet, We must lodge on the plain; And, us above, none other roof But a brake bush, or twain; Which soon should grieve you, I believe, And ye would gladly ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... she hesitated, trembling. The thought of the prowling beasts out there in the darkness was appalling. Then, with a sudden brave toss of her head, she attacked the thorny boma wall with her delicate hands. Torn and bleeding though they were, she worked on breathlessly until she had made an opening through which she could worm her body, and at last she ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the vague twilight loomed some high and tangled wall of green foliage, stretching seemingly across the very world. Most sickening sight! a matted, thorny jungle, one of those primeval woods again, but closer, thicker, darker than the park-like one before; rank and prickly herbage in a rotting swamp, crowding up about the stately trees. Must he battle his way through? ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... escorted lovingly for a little way by the Church, and, journeying by land, gladdened the groups of believers in 'Phenicia and Samaria' with the news that the Gentiles were turning to God. We note that they are not said to have spoken of the thorny question in these countries, and that it is not said that there was joy in Judaea. Perhaps the Christians in it were in sympathy with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... nothing of it to be seen, not even the flag upon the roof. But the story of the beautiful sleeping "Briar-rose," for so the princess was named, went about the country, so that from time to time kings' sons came and tried to get through the thorny ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... Works,—I suppose]; Hebraics with Dr. Danz; Homiletics with Dr. Weissenborn; PASTORALE [not Pastoral Poetry, but the Art of Pastorship] and MORALE with Dr. Buddaeus.' [There, your Majesty!—what a glimpse, as into infinite extinct Continents, filled with ponderous thorny inanities, invincible nasal drawling of didactic Titans, and the awful attempt to spin, on all manner of wheels, road-harness out of split cobwebs: Hoom! Hoom-m-m! Harness not to be had on those terms. Let the dreary Limbus close again, till the general Day of Judgment ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... prolific exemplar. His numerous novels have been very generally read; and, if not placing him in the highest ranks of writers of fiction, at least vindicate the claims of his section to force and originality. He had been followed up the thorny path by many who stopped half-way, turned back, or sunk forgotten even ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... slept that night. Something told him he was not there now.... Vaguely, in the darkness, he put up his hand to feel if the plaster Christ were above his head. His groping old fingers found it, and he stayed, half-reared up against his pillows for an instant, while he touched the drooping head with its thorny crown, and on that familiar touch he let his hand fall, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... the way, suddenly turned into the very thicket itself; no apparent opening; but the boughs parted and closed, and his head appeared above them; still the little pony was trotting bravely along. Baba snorted with displeasure as he plunged into the same bristling pathway. The thick-set, thorny branches smote Ramona's cheeks. What was worse, they caught the nets swung on Baba's sides; presently these were held fast, and Baba began to rear and kick. Here was a real difficulty. Alessandro dismounted, cut the strings, and put both the packages securely on the back of his ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... is because all woods are enchanted that the path seemed more than many miles long. Often too we loitered, or stood, head by head, to listen, or to watch what might be after all only wings, mere sunbeams. Shall I say, then, that it began to be thorny, and, where the thorns were, pale with roses, when at length the knitted boughs gradually drew asunder, and I looked down between twitching, hairy ears upon a glade so green and tranquil, I deemed it must be the Garden of ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... clothes save for a wild-cat-skin about his loins. With a wicked gleaming eye, he watched the little black-haired baby he held in his strong arm. In a laughing voice he hummed an Indian mother's lullaby, "A-boo! Aboo!" and at the same time he switched the naked baby with a thorny wild-rose bush. ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... he pointed to the thorny Crown, 'I seem to get ashamed of thinking this hardness. Only think, Dr. May, from the very first moment the policeman took me in charge, nobody has said a rough word to me. I have never felt otherwise than that they meant justice to have its way as far as ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... geographical races of Plaice and Flounder the facts seem to suggest that differences of habitat may have something to do with the development of the scales. In the Baltic the Flounders are as large as those on our own coasts, but the thorny tubercles are much more developed, nearly the whole of the upper surface being covered with them. The Plaice, on the other hand, are smaller than those of the North Sea, and the males have the scales ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... amusement of an enlightened public, and the benefit of an affectionate parent, a few circumstances connected with Briggs' family, with such observations and reflections of her own as would naturally suggest themselves to a refined and intelligent mind. Should this first essay of a timid girl in the thorny path of literature be favourably received by my friends and patrons, it will stimulate her to fresh exertions; and, I fondly hope, may be the means of placing her name in the same rank by those of Lady Morgan, Madame ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... spotted Snakes with double tongue, Thorny Hedgehogges be not seene, Newts and blinde wormes do no wrong, Come not neere our Fairy Queene. Philomele with melodie, Sing in your sweet Lullaby. Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby, Neuer harme, nor spell, nor charme, Come ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... force being under command of Brigadier-General Joseph H. Pendleton. The expeditionary force from Monte Cristi, under Colonel Dunlop, advanced along the highway, which was little more than a muddy trail through a jungle of cactus and thorny brush, and several Americans were shot from ambush. Repeatedly small detachments of rebels made a stand upon some favorable piece of ground, until routed by the marines. The decisive encounter took place on July 1, 1916, at Guayacanes, ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... morning he had travelled ten miles, and by husbanding his food, he succeeded by the night of the fourth day in accomplishing forty more. Footsore and weary, he lay in a thicket of the thorny melaleuca, and felt at last that he was beyond pursuit. The next day he advanced more slowly. The bush was unpropitious. Dense scrub and savage jungle impeded his path; barren and stony mountain ranges arose before him. He was lost in gullies, entangled in thickets, bewildered ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... projectiles on account of the brass. This barricade was furious; it hurled to the clouds an inexpressible clamor; at certain moments, when provoking the army, it was covered with throngs and tempest; a tumultuous crowd of flaming heads crowned it; a swarm filled it; it had a thorny crest of guns, of sabres, of cudgels, of axes, of pikes and of bayonets; a vast red flag flapped in the wind; shouts of command, songs of attack, the roll of drums, the sobs of women and bursts of gloomy laughter ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... their horses' bridles, disarmed about 30 men. This caused an immediate panic, and most of the Hussars fled (closely pursued by our burghers, who shot 10 or 12 of them). The Hussars left behind a Colt-Maxim and a heliograph for our usage. The ground was overgrown here with a prickly, thorny bush, which made it difficult for our foes to escape, and about 20 more were overtaken and caught, several having been dragged from their horses by protruding branches, and with their face and hands badly injured by thorns, ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... theory that the children would not assimilate the dirt? Should we be less careful about mental and moral food materials? The Junior Classics have been selected with this principle in mind, without losing sight of the fact that every developing human being needs to have a vision of the rough and thorny road over which the human race has been slowly advancing during ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... adventures, bored by women of fashion of the kind who are truly bores, and who plant too many thorny hedges around happiness, he had married after a fashion, as we shall see, a certain Madame Schontz, celebrated in the world of Fanny Beaupre, Susanne du Val-Noble, Florine, Mariette, Jenny Cadine, etc. This world,—of which one of our artists ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... at him with her big, wistful eyes, "'cause you look like you could find it, somehow. You see, Prince, you've got grey eyes so brave an' true—an' you're big an' strong an' could carry me an' Hermy over the thorny places when we get ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... however, looked like neither a beggar nor a lady or gentleman. Lurcher did not know what to make of Pen. Some one so small and so untidy could scarcely be a visitor. She was much too short and much too stout, and her little legs were bleeding from the thorny brambles that she had come through during her journey. Accordingly Lurcher, with a low growl and a swift bound, pinned poor little Pen by the skirt of her short frock. He was sufficiently a gentleman ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... more white than snow, If through the thorny brake ye go, My loving heart I'll set below To take the hurt ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... autumn; they form a handsome erect panicle, but comparatively few of them afford mature fruit. The fruit is ripe in or shortly before the first week in October, when it falls to the ground, and the three-valved thorny capsule divides, disclosing the brown and at first beautifully glossy seeds, the so-called nuts, having a resemblance to sweet chestnuts, and commonly three or else two in number. For propagation of the tree, the seeds may be sown ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... terrified by its evil motions, I sicken at its odour. That is the deep mystery and horror of life, that one yields unerringly to blind and imperious instincts, not knowing which may lead us into green and fertile pastures of hope and happy labour, and which may draw us into thorny wildernesses. The old fables are true, that one must not trust the smiling presences, the beguiling words. Yet how is one to know which of the forms that beckon us we may trust. Must we learn the lesson by sad betrayals, by dark catastrophes? I have wandered, it seems, along a flowery path—and ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... have anywhere, is that which has been given to us by the "noble company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs," who, refusing to take the easy road of popularity, have deliberately chosen the thorny path of insult, ignominy, destruction, for the faith that glowed within their souls. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Socrates, St. Paul, Wycliff, Huss, Savanarola, Martin Luther, John Knox, George Fox, John Wesley, Joseph Priestly, Theodore Parker—how the names multiply, all as sweet ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... of chopped-out pathways, and, with the fixed idea of getting out of sight of the busy river, he would land and follow the narrow and winding path, only to find that it led nowhere, ending abruptly in the discouragement of thorny thickets. He would go back slowly, with a bitter sense of unreasonable disappointment and sadness; oppressed by the hot smell of earth, dampness, and decay in that forest which seemed to push him mercilessly back ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... Platt at the entrance, he staggered towards him, but the dacoits made a rush at Ensign Platt with their spears at the same time. He saved himself by springing over a thick and thorny hedge on one side of the quadrangle, and ran round behind to the small door leading into the bathing-room, which he reached in time to assist Mrs. Ravenscroft to escape, as the dacoits were forcing their ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... a thorny waste; Hot noontide lies on all the way, And with its scorching breath makes haste Each freshening dawn to burn and slay, Yet patiently I bide and stay: Knowing the secret of my fate, The hour of bloom, dear Lord, I wait, Come when it ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... and plunged into the briars. Helen heard the rotten fence-rails smash and he vanished behind the thorny branches that closed across the gap. She was glad he had gone so quickly; partly because it was her wish, and partly because she saw the cry of pain had moved him. She liked to ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... favoured being who hath held That course unchecked, unerring, and untired, In one perpetual progress smooth and bright?—135 A humbler destiny have we retraced, And told of lapse and hesitating choice, And backward wanderings along thorny ways: Yet—compassed round by mountain solitudes, Within whose solemn temple I received 140 My earliest visitations, careless then Of what was given me; and which now I range, A meditative, oft a suffering man— Do I declare—in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... they were sent to him to be reprimanded, his children never beheld him in the flesh. Mamma, poor lady, careful of many other things, superintended her children unremittingly, to keep them in the thorny way they should go. Hers the burden and heat of every day, hers to double the roles of Martha and Cornelia, that her husband might be left ever calmly aloof in that darkened room, the Study. There, in a high armchair, with one stout calf crossed over the other, immobile throughout ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... up, and without pausing to relight the pine splinters, they rushed pell-mell towards the sound of barking, bumping into trees, stumbling over logs, scratching their faces and tearing their clothes on thorny vines. But no one minded. Bim had treed a 'coon in the shortest time on record, and now if they could only get it, the triumph would be ample reward for all ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... should escape his notice he would traverse, accompanied by a single priest, the wildest parts of his diocese, crossing, in winter, the flooded rivers, climbing mountains, and plunging into the thick forests. One day, having ridden since dawn upon his mule, in company with the Deacon Modernus, thorny thickets through which his mount with difficulty forced a winding path. The Deacon Modernus followed him with much difficulty on his mule, which ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... have a meeting at twelve and of twelve on the affairs of Ireland. It is a thorny point, and vexes me more than the Corn Laws. Lord Bessborough and Lansdowne are too much inclined to coercion, and I fear we shall not agree. But on the other hand, if we show ourselves for strong ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... plants lose their thorns by cultivation, as wild animals lose their ferocity; and some of them their horns. A curious circumstance attends the large hollies in Needwood-forest, they are armed with thorny leaves about eight feet high, and have smooth leaves above; as if they were conscious that horses and cattle could not reach their upper branches. See note on Meadia, and on Mancinella. The numerous clumps of hollies in Needwood-forest ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... length, must the Editor give utterance to a painful suspicion, which, through late Chapters, has begun to haunt him; paralyzing any little enthusiasm that might still have rendered his thorny Biographical task a labor of love. It is a suspicion grounded perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed almost into certainty by the more and more discernible humoristico-satirical tendency of Teufelsdrockh, in whom underground humors and intricate sardonic rogueries, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... of hardships that have made your sweet eyes too patient. Instead of growing older you shall grow younger. We will travel back together to pick up the many little joys and pleasures you had to pass by when you trod that thorny ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... novelty of the task so absorbed was she in her sudden Quixotic project. Yet, as she groped among the brown leaves at the foot of her tree, her fingers came in contact with something wholly different from chestnuts or their thorny burrs. It was hard as a stone, yet it wasn't a stone. It was half-buried in the leaf-mold and moss, though the rain of the previous night had washed it ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... from my brow The thorny crown of lost delight, The solemn grandeur of the night Flashed on me from ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... and insignificant beginning to its present promising proportions—holds the solution of at least one equation of the problem. To have made cooking and industrial training the fashion is to have cleared away at a leap the thorny underbrush and tangled growth on that Debatable Ground, the best education for the poor, and to find one's feet firmly set in a way leading to a Promised Land to which every believer in the new ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... the whole with easy sang-froid; with a certain snugness of composure, indeed, scarcely in my habits, and pleasantly novel to my feelings. It seemed as if the presence of a nature so restless, chafing, thorny as that of M. Paul absorbed all feverish and unsettling influences like a magnet, and left me none but such as ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... said enough farewells already? Wasn't my whole life one thorny path of farewells? At post offices, steamer-quays, railway stations—with the waving of ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... of being entangled in a thorny hedge, you will be hampered in your business by unruly partners or persons working under you. To lovers, this dream is ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... and gone: many who read these lines will, I trow, know what it is to tramp a long distance with a purse, as Carlyle said, "so flabby that it could scarcely be thrown against the wind." My trudge from Hull to Bradford seemed beset with thorny places. ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... should be wrong to complain. Passion, a passive sentiment! This word has a contradictory meaning for me. I am a lover as Napoleon was an emperor: nobody forced the crown upon him, he took it and crowned himself with his own hand. If my crown happens to be a thorny one, whom can I accuse? Did not my brow ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... extended its gloomy arms athwart the horizon; but did not arrest my aerial journey. The thick boughs groaned and crashed beneath me, as I was dragged through their matted foliage; my limbs lacerated and torn, and my hair tangled amid the thorny branches. Vainly I endeavoured to cling to the twigs which impeded my passage, but they eluded my frenzied grasp, or snapped in my hands, while my cries for help were drowned in the thundering sweep of the mighty gale. Onward—onward. ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... the boy in desperation, but the madwoman did not heed him, so he followed panting. They had now passed the cultivated fields and were near the wood; Basilio saw his mother enter it and he also went in. The bushes and shrubs, the thorny vines and projecting roots of trees, hindered the movements of both. The son followed his mother's shadowy form as it was revealed from time to time by the moonlight that penetrated through the foliage and into the open spaces. They ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... existence on board ship is a calm, easy, indolent, well-fed, and cheerful interlude of repose, amid the storms and worries of the great battle of life. If existence has been to him hitherto rather hard and thorny than otherwise, he finds the voyage out a pleasant interval of rest and refreshment; and, in any case, it recruits and prepares him to better commence the new life in the colony, with good spirits and high hopes, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... left. And six hours' march through waterless country before one comes up with the elephant resting with his herd is not the best preparation for a shot. If one misses, one may as well go home another eight hours back to water. But if you hit and follow the bull through the thorny bush, you do not even then know whether you will find the victim. If, however, you find traces three times in the first hour, or see the blood pouring from the trunk—not merely blown in spray upon the bushes—then the certain conviction comes that within an hour you will find your kill. ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... which side are you? Have you fallen into the soft feather-bed of agnosticism, or the thorny ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... dearest young lady, that worldly joy claims no kindred with the joys we are bid to aspire after. These latter we must be fitted for by affliction and disappointment. You are therefore in the direct road to glory, however thorny the path you are in. And I had almost said, that it depends upon yourself, by your patience, and by your resignedness to the dispensation, (God enabling you, who never fails the true penitent, and sincere invoker,) to be an heir of a ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... independence, of stern self-reliance, and sincere upright searching into religious truth,—were only traceable in the features which were the distinctive creations of the Gothic schools, in the varied foliage and thorny fretwork, and shadowy niche, and buttressed pier, and fearless height of subtle pinnacle and crested tower, sent 'like an unperplexed ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... sunburnt plain overgrown with huge thorny cactus twelve or fifteen feet high. Without shade or water or verdure it stretched before us to distant table-lands, upholding mountains whose peaks were veiled in cloud. The solitude of the plain was rendered more impressive ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Trunk somewhat thorny, the branches horizontal, arranged in stars of 3-4. Leaves compound with 7 leaflets, lanceolate, entire, glabrous. Flowers in umbels of 8 or more flowerets. No common peduncle, the individual ones long. Calyx, 5 obtuse sepals, ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... things shall finally work together for good to them that love thee; and therefore, if thou so ordainest it, welcome disappointment and poverty, welcome sickness and pain, welcome even shame, and contempt, and calumny. If this be a rough and thorny path, it is one in which thou hast gone before us. Where we see thy footsteps we cannot repine. Meanwhile, thou wilt support us with the consolations of thy grace; and even here thou canst more than ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... to be kept by a few, so the whole band is gathered to enjoy it. How they would troop to the place! They get hold of some robe or cloth of the imperial colour, and of some flexible shoots of some thorny plant, and out of these they fashion a burlesque of royal trappings. Then they shout, as they would have done to Caesar, 'Hail, King of the Jews!' repeating again with clumsy iteration the stale jest which seems to them so exquisite. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... tinge of pink flushed up as far as the cloudless zenith, and the long strip of sea lay like a rosy ribbon across the horizon. From the coast inland stretched dreary sand-plains, dotted over with thick clumps at mimosa scrub and mottled patches of thorny bush. No tree broke the monotony of that vast desert. The dull, dusty hue of the thickets, and the yellow glare of the sand, were the only colours, save at one point, where, from a distance, it seemed that ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gloomy surroundings caused by the death-like stillness, the darkness of the night, the water dripping from the overhanging vegetation and completely saturating my clothes, my occasionally colliding with a thorny shrub, or tripping over a low-hanging vine, I was in excellent spirits. I groped along the cave-like way, humming in a low tone "The Girl I Left Behind Me," and had reached a point about midway between the pickets. Then, although I could see ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... they dress up the bride with a chaplet of asparagus, for as the asparagus gives most excellent fruit from a thorny stalk, so the bride, by not being too reluctant and coy in the first approaches, will make the married state more agreeable and pleasant. But those husbands who cannot put up with the early peevishness of their brides, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... of J. H. E. Bernstorff, who aimed at steering clear of all foreign complications and preserving inviolable the neutrality of Denmark. This he succeeded in doing, in spite of the Seven Years' War and of the difficulties attending the thorny Gottorp question in which Sweden and Russia were equally interested. The same policy was victoriously pursued by his nephew and pupil Andreas Bernstorff, an even greater man than the elder Bernstorff, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... cloud of mystery, as thick and impenetrable as the hedge of thorns, lay over the old castle. Many brave and gallant Princes tried to force their way through the magic hedge, in order to solve the mystery and to see for themselves the beautiful maiden who lay in an enchanted sleep behind that thorny barrier. But the thorns caught them, and held them from going forward or back, and the gallant youths perished miserably in ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... way is cut off by huge thorny hedges and fences of barbed wire—man's devilish improvement on the bramble—brought down to the water's edge. The river-follower must force his way through these obstacles, in most cases greatly to the detriment of his clothes and temper; or, should they ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... did not think this association of ideas very complimentary to myself, I thanked her for her good advice. I nevertheless took away as a souvenir a flower and one of the thorny apples, seeing which the peasant trudged on her way, saying no doubt that it was wasting time and words to give advice to lunatics. Again the cliffs drew very close together, and the valley was nothing more than ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... contingency. Its dark, weatherbeaten roof and sides were hoisted up above the jungly plain in a distracted way, like a gigantic ammunition-wagon stuck in the mud and abandoned by some retreating army. Around it was a dense growth of low water willows, with half a hundred sorts of thorny or fetid bushes, savage strangers alike to the "language of flowers" and to the botanist's Greek. They were hung with countless strands of discolored and prickly smilax, and the impassable mud below bristled with chevaux ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... the inconvenience experienced by us the day before, we began our march as early as half-past four. At first the country was quite open; but in a couple of hours we reached the Duruma country, where our advance-guard had had hot work. For more than half a mile the path lay through thorny hush of the most horrible kind, which would have been absolutely impassable by our sumpter beasts but for the hatchets and billhooks of our brave eclaireurs. Thanks, however, to the ample clearance ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... Patches of thorny bush began to appear, and after a time a small herd of gazelle were flushed and high tailed their way over ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... ploughed my thorny ground full sore, And from it gathered many stones and sherds? Plough, plough and harrow till it needs no more— Then sow thy mustard-seed, and ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... the river called Shigogo and Shipanga are bordered by a low level expanse of marshy country, with occasional clumps of palm-trees and a few thorny acacias. The river itself spreads out to a width of from three to four miles, with many islands, among which it is difficult to navigate, except when the river is in flood. In front, a range of high hills from the north-east crosses and compresses it into a deep ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... Nevertheless, save in cases where the civil power refused its endorsement, it was universally adhered to. What was bad law was notoriously good policy, for a disaffected mayor, or an unfriendly Justice of the Peace, had it in his power to make the path of the impress officer a thorny one indeed. "Make unto yourselves friends," was therefore one of the first injunctions laid upon officers whose duties unavoidably made them ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... form'd, and ripen'd ev'ry grace, Again I'll press thee to my anxious breast, And ev'ry sorrow shall be hush'd to rest. Thy presence only can each comfort give. Come then, my Lycidas, and let me live; Life without thee is but a wretched load, Thy love alone can smooth its thorny road; But blest with thee, how light were every woe; How would my soul with joy and rapture glow! Kind Heav'n! thou hast my happiness in store, Restore him innocent—I ask no more! Isle of Man, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... grassy mead I, glancing, fare, I mark it white and yellow and vermeil dight With flowers, the thorny rose, the lily white: And all alike to his face I compare, Who, loving, hath me ta'en, and me shall e'er Hold bounden to his will, sith I am she That in his ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... perceive the truth! You try to disbelieve it, you think yourself deceived; but no: Caroline lacks intellect, she is dull, she can neither joke nor reason, sometimes she has little tact. You are frightened. You find yourself forever obliged to lead this darling through the thorny paths, where you must perforce leave your self-esteem ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... must-like work, I know no more than he who is most ignorant, nor, since he himself would conceal his name, do I think fit to enquire so far, lest I get his displeasure." Again—"To pick out the roses from the most thorny bushes of writings, and to make the elixir of philosophers by his own industry, without any tutor, and at twenty-three years of age, this perchance hath been granted to none, or to most few hitherto." Langius, moreover, laments explicitly the fact that he did not print ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... stock-dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen, Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den, Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear, I charge you disturb ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... forest yields Its thorny maze to fertile fields; This goodly breadth of well-till'd land, Well-purchased by his own right hand, With conscience clear, he can bequeath His children, when he sleeps ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... astir at last; the servants were up; the shutters were opened below. Caroline, as she quitted the couch, which had been but a thorny one to her, felt that revival of spirits which the return of day, of action, gives to all but the wholly despairing or actually dying. She dressed herself, as usual, carefully, trying so to arrange her hair ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... leads steeply up and down, over loose coral blocks, between ferns and mosses; lianas serve as ropes to help us climb over coral rocks, and with our knives we hew a passage through thorny creepers and thick bush. The road runs in zigzags, sometimes turning back to go round fallen trunks and swampy places, so that we really walk three or four times the distance to Hog Harbour. Our guide uses his bush-knife steadily and to good purpose: he sees where the creepers interlace and ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... Jonathan tried to go over against the Philistines there was a steep rock on one side, and a steep rock on the other; one was named The Shining, and the other The Thorny. One rock rose up north of Michmash, and the ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... so far as to unite herself with him in marriage. But the aspect of affairs became gradually more alarming, and Chegger Edour, yielding to the prevailing discontent, abdicated in favour of her husband. Turcoman, however, found that his crown was somewhat thorny; and at a critical period he aroused the jealousy of his wife by aspiring to ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... and was bent on mischief. But the girl paid no heed to his talk, and Gaites could not help laughing. He liked the fellow; he even liked Miss Desmond, who was so much softened by the occasion that she had all the thorny allure of a ripened barberry in his fancy. They both hung about the seat, where he stood ready to take his place beside Millicent, till the conductor shouted, "All aboard!" Then they ran out, and waved to the lovers through the ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... along there; and with his heart sinking he slowly climbed down part of the way, then reached a mossy stone which gave way beneath his feet and fell, while he followed, slipping down twenty feet, rolling another twenty; dropping sometimes into a thorny tangle of brambles, and dragging himself out, tattered, bleeding, and terribly out of temper, to walk slowly back to the spot from whence he ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... I conceive the kingdom of the Muses mildlier mannered; and in particular that county which you administer and which I seem to see as a half-suburban land; a land of holly-hocks and country houses; a land where at night, in thorny and sequestered bypaths, you will meet masqueraders going to a ball in their sedans, and the rector steering homeward by the light of his lantern; a land of the windmill, and the west wind, and the flowering ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Prince kept on over the stony road. When the sky grew gray, he took a short nap under a thorny hedge, and by sunrise he was once more on his way. On his right, in a beautiful green field, he saw to his great delight three silver birches, their branches rustling lightly in the ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... livelihood was for some time rendered considerably more difficult by this kind of ungenerous and underhand antagonism. A woman's road to the earning of her own living, especially when she is weighted with the care of a young child, is always fairly thorny at the outset, and does not need to be rendered yet more difficult by secret attempts to injure, on the part of those who trust that suffering and poverty may avail ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... not the place to plunge into the thorny questions which surround the thought of the tempted Christ. However these may be solved, the great fact remains, that His temptations were most real and unceasing. It was no sham fight which He fought. The story of the wilderness is the story of a most real conflict; and that conflict ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... which bear witness to the extreme fertility of the soil; though unfortunately there is not a single well among them. Almonds and apricots are the chief productions, and the raised ground enclosing them is often covered with small branches of the thorny "Sidr." Near the village we saw several "Sidr" trees, as well as tamarisks (Atel) and sycamores. The most numerous class are the thorny Opuntias, which grow round some of the gardens in ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... feel anxious about me. Some higher Power leads me through strange, dark, thorny paths, broken at times by glades opening down into prospects of sunny beauty, into which I am not permitted to enter. If God disposes for us, it is not for nothing. This I can say: my heart is in some respects better, it is kinder, and ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... decided to deploy. To hasten this, he himself led the Black Watch in single file through the bush, and desired Lieutenant-Colonel Ewart to guide the remainder of the brigade round the obstruction. The three battalions in rear, easily avoiding the small patch of thorny shrubs, rejoined more quickly than had been expected, and soon fell into their proper places. When the brigade-major reported their arrival, Major-General Wauchope issued instructions for deployment on the Black Watch, but not in the same order of battalions as he had laid down ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... pastors do Show me the steep and thorny way to Heaven, Whilst like a puff'd and reckless libertine Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... rude and prickly bower, That crimson rose, how sweet and fair; But love is far a sweeter flower, Amid life's thorny path o' care. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... finished, there is always for the author a most doleful hour, when, retracing his steps, he thinks of what he has attempted, the difficulties of the task, the unlikeliness that he has overcome them. Misprints taking wrong numbers by the hand, black and thorny creatures, dance their wild dance round him. He is awe-stricken, and shudders; he wonders at the boldness of his undertaking; "Qu'allait-il faire dans cette galere?" The immensity of the task, the insufficience of the means stand in striking contrast. He had started singing ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... had of anything wrong was a cry from the girl, and he saw a strip of water widen between the canoe and the bank. He ran his hardest, but made little headway, for thorny bushes and fern formed thickets along the bank, while when he reached the boulders he felt that he had come too late, because no swimmer could then overtake the canoe, even if he escaped destruction in the first rapid immediately below. Nevertheless, ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... said Ajax didactically, "if nothing we can say or do will divert your mind from courtship and matrimony—if, my dear Jasperson, you are prepared to exchange the pleasant places, the sunny slopes, and breezy freedom of bachelor life for the thorny path that leads to the altar, and thence to—er—the cradle, if, in short, you are determined to own a best girl, why, then the first and obvious thing to do is to let her know discreetly that you're ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... streets flow in gleaming light Through my dull head. And hurt me. I clearly feel that I shall soon slip away— Thorny roses of my skin, don't prick like that. The night grows moldy. The poison light of the lampposts Has smeared it with green muck. My heart is like a bag. My blood freezes. The world is ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... consign them to a separate division of society; that it is able to give them back the self-respect without which mankind is lower than the beast, and to place them, regenerated, upon a path that, if it be steep and thorny, still leads to those heights of peace and honour which they never thought ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... ponder much on future wrath; Of all those loves of mine, some six or seven, Surely ere this have climbed that thorny path That leads at ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... field, till there was a quarry between them a quarter of a mile deep, and the bottom filled with black water; and before the giants could get round it, the prince and princesses were inside the kingdom of the great magician, where the high thorny hedge opened of itself to everyone that he chose to let in. There was joy enough between the three sisters, till the two eldest saw their lovers turned into stone. But while they were shedding tears for them, Seven Inches came in, and touched them with ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... that is not a snake-story, Mrs. Hill. I had a boy once in my school who came from Illinois, and who said that his mother had seen a snake, which had stiffened itself into a hoop, and taken its thorny tail in its mouth, trundling along over the prairie after a man. The man got behind a tree just in the nick of time, for the hoop unbent, and sent the thorny tail into the tree instead of into the man. Then the man came out and killed it. That was a ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... contradiction? No, no; he knew full well that with his scanty stock of English ammunition scattered over the sterile floor of his literary magazine, he could not have the effrontery, impudence, or presumption to enter the list of philosophical and scientific disputation with one who has traversed the thorny paths of literature, explored its mazy windings, and who is thoroughly and radically fortified, as being encompassed with the impenetrable shield of genuine science. This red, hot, fiery, unguarded locust, in the inanity of his mind's incomprehensibleness, has not only incurred my displeasure ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... food for mirth, for interest, and even for grief. But I have grown to feel that the ambitions which we preach and the successes for which we prepare are very often nothing but a missing of the simple road, a troubled wandering among thorny by-paths and dark mountains. I have grown to believe that the one thing worth aiming at is simplicity of heart and life; that one's relations with others should be direct and not diplomatic; that power leaves a bitter taste in the mouth; that meanness, and hardness, and coldness are the ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... down into the moat well stocked with crocodiles, great fish his mercenaries, paid with flesh, and he looked at the tunal which ringed the moat as the moat ringed the squat white fortress. A deadly girdle was the tunal, of cactus and other thorny things, thick, wide, dark, and impenetrable, a forest of stilettoes, and for its kings the rattlesnake and viper. Nor naked Indian nor mailed white man might traverse that thicket, where wall on wall was met a spiked and iron growth. ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... caves in Burmah. Lighting our torches, and each man taking one, we mounted the steep, tortuous, and slippery foot-path of damp, green stones, through the thorny shrubs that beset it, to the low entrance to the outer cavern. Stooping uncomfortably, we passed into a small, vacant antechamber, having a low, dripping roof, perpendicular walls, clammy and green, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... exists too much refractory evidence against assigning this Greek Gospel to an Aramaic-speaking Galilean. That an untutored fisherman could have written so elaborate and so highly philosophical an account of Jesus has always presented a thorny problem. And so to most scholars John's authorship of the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... "seventeen flag stones were stuck in the ground in commemoration of their death," and by the margin of the lake in the island of Inish-Eogan there stands this remarkable monument to this hour. The line of the Fir-Bolg camp can still be traced with wonderful accuracy. Caher-Speenan, the thorny fort, was a part of this camp, and still exists. More to the south-east, on the hill of Tongegee, are the remains of Caher-na-gree, the pleasant fort, and still further to the east are Lisheen, or little earthen fort, and Caher-Phaetre, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... you rather The thorny brambles from the market-place, With crimson-spots, the stain of civic blood, That flowed ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... closed his eyes, and prepared for death; the blow did not fall, and on opening his eyes he found himself alone, with no Indian in sight. Finding it impossible to reach the Spaniards in their refuge in the thorny thicket, the Indians withdrew and the Christians, covered with blood from their many wounds, managed, though in a truly pitiable plight, to reach some boats which were loading salt not far off. It was then noticed for the ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... at its best. But what in "the seventies" represented about L100,000 of valuable property, gradually became more and more unprofitable, till at last the estates were abandoned, and the land has now become covered with masses of Lentana (a crawling, climbing, thorny plant which has become a perfect plague in Coorg), amidst which may occasionally be seen the white walls of unroofed bungalows, and dismantled pulping houses, which testify to the melancholy ending of the work of the planters whom I found so busily engaged ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... girls, accompanied by a trusty guide, started on an exploring tour through the wilderness of stenography. We had been told by those who had visited this region, that the way was dark, the road thorny, and the pleasures but few; but nothing daunted, we set out, anxious to prove these ...
— Silver Links • Various
... learning the early purpose, the terror at the cruel world, the longing for peace and shelter; the desire to smooth his sister's way, which had led him to devote himself in heart to the cloister, though never permitted openly to pledge himself. Then the discovery that the world was less thorny than he had expected; the allurement of royal favour and greatness; the charm of amusement, and activity in recovered health; the cowardly dread of scorn, leading him not merely into the secular life, but into the gradual dropping of piety and devotion; the actual share he had ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when describing the "fertility" of Ceylon, be aware that newly-cleared forest-land will only produce one crop of the miserable grain called korrakan? Can he understand why the greater portion of Ceylon is covered by dense thorny jungles? It is simply this—that the land is so desperately poor that it will only produce one crop, and thus an immense acreage is required for the support of a few inhabitants; thus, from ages past up to the present time, the natives have been continually ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... my happiness." Then, tempted and scheming, she sat motionless for hours. Alas! for the soul which of its own free will, unmoors itself from the Rock of Ages, to drift away on dark and uncertain seas; who, lured away by the sun-gilt mirage, throws down the cross, scorns the thorny crown, and despises Calvary, to perish at last miserably in the arid desert! Although Helen had never been a pious Catholic, she had always declared herself one, and resisted every open attack on her faith; but now, insidious ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... said he, to Monseigneur, "there is one thing which much embarrasses the feet, the furze that grows upon the ground, where M. le Marechal de Villeroy is encamped. The furze, it is true, is not mixed with any other plant, either hard or thorny; but it is a high furze, as high, as high, let me see, what shall I say?"—and he looked all around to find some object of comparison—"as high, I assure ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... light enough within the enclosure formed by the perpendicular patch of granite rock, the two waggons, and the dense mass of thorny faggots which had been gathered and built up so as ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
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