"Desert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what is strong. The lion is strong. When he raiseth himself up from his lair, when he shaketh his mane, when the voice of his roaring is heard, the cattle of the field fly, and the wild beasts of the desert hide themselves; for ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... quarter with their wives and daughters-seemed highly enthusiastic: especially the women. He represented so perfectly the ideal of the shopkeeper imagination, that magnificent shepherd of the desert, who addressed lions with such an air of authority and tended his flocks in full evening dress. And so, despite their bourgeois bearing, their modest costumes and their expressionless shop-girl smiles, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... island." The extent of surface, probably covered by wood at a former period, is estimated at no less than two thousand acres; at the present day scarcely a single tree can be found there. It is also said that in 1709 there were quantities of dead trees in Sandy Bay; this place is now so utterly desert, that nothing but so well attested an account could have made me believe that they could ever have grown there. The fact, that the goats and hogs destroyed all the young trees as they sprang up, and that in the course of time the old ones, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... think I got them out of poets and chapters about lovemaking, or I felt it very much. And that's what I miss in William; he can't talk soft nice nonsense. I believe him, he would if he could, but he 's like a lion of the desert—it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to talk of Pipiri Ma. The other Tahitians were already under the roof on their backs, upon the soft bed of dried leaves gathered by them for all of us, but the long, lean physician listened with unabated interest. He had run away for a change from the desert-like interior of his vast island, where he treated the ills of a large territory of sheep-herders, and to be on this mountain under such a benignant canopy, and to hear the folk-lore of the most fascinating race on earth, was to him worth ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... word, you tempt me; but I do not think that this is just the moment for an American to desert his own country, and settle in England. I should not be here now, had I not this autumn done all I could for America in America, and so crossed the sea to serve her, if possible, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... three letters he wrote on his way—the last of them, full of high spirits, received a full three weeks after the telegram which announced his death. There was a passage in this last letter describing a wonderful ride he had taken alone and by moonlight on the desert; a ride (he protested) which wanted nothing of perfect happiness but me, his friend, riding beside him to share his wonder. There was a sentence which I could not recall precisely, and I left my chair and was crossing ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... points of the coast until he came within range of recognition; what ambushes those clumps of gorse and juniper, those plantations of alders and young firs on the bluffs yonder, might conceal? The eye could reach far and wide upon the immense stretch of sand, along the desert coast; and his solitary figure, moving upon the yellow strand was a mark for miles around. Steadily, nevertheless did he advance; the very daring, the unpardonable foolhardiness of the deed his safety. And yet the strain was high. Were they watching the island? Among the eager crew, to each of whom ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... within 4,500 yards. To escape possible attack from torpedoes the German ships spread out their line, but perceiving that such a danger was not present, they again closed in to finish the crippled British ships. All of the German ships now went for the Glasgow, and she had to desert the Monmouth, which first sailed northward, in bad condition, and later made an attempt to run ashore at Santa Maria, but was ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... gets possession of two thousand pounds, what remains for all the rest of the nation?' iv. 101; 'Oats. A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people,' i. 294, n. 8; 'Seeing Scotland, Madam, is only seeing a worse England,' iii. 248; 'Sir, you have desert enough in Scotland,' ii. 75; 'Things which grow wild here must be cultivated with great care in Scotland. Pray, now, are you ever able to bring the sloe to perfection?' ii. 77; 'Why so is Scotland your native ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... there entered into him a desperate determination to play the traitor—to desert his post and strike out boldly and alone into the world. And with the next breath he saw himself living to old age as he had lived from boyhood—within reach of Maria's hand, meeting her fervent eyes, and yet separated from her by a distance greater ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... spare; Toting lists where the electors' names are inscribed; ballot-urns-no, ballot-boxes this time-to receive the lists; these are all to be found, but voters to put the lists into the ballot-boxes, to elect the candidates, we seek them in vain. The voting localities may be compared to the desert of Sahara viewed at the moment when not a caravan is to be seen on the whole extent of the horizon, so complete is the solitude wherever the eager crowd of voters was expected to hasten to the poll. Are we then so far from the day when the Commune of Paris, in spite of the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... been for many years in my aunt's service and did not at that time suspect that she would one day be transferred entirely to ours, was a little inclined to desert my aunt during the months which we spent in her house. There had been in my infancy, before we first went to Combray, and when my aunt Leonie used still to spend the winter in Paris with her mother, a time when I knew Francoise ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... before him faded, and he saw himself standing in a desert by a lump of black rock, at which a brown man clad only in a waist cloth and a kind of peaked straw hat, was striking with an instrument that seemed to be half chisel and half hammer, fashioned apparently from bronze, or perhaps of greenish-coloured ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... replied the city swallow, 'except an owl, who lives a hermit's life in that desert, and he knows only one word of man's speech, and that is "cross." So that even if the prince did succeed in getting there, he could never understand what the owl said. But, look, the sun is sinking to his nest ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... still nursing her injured feelings. When I heard of her passionate protests I realised to what a pass things had come, and immediately gave up all hope of putting a peaceful end to the discordant situation. Those were days of terrible anxiety. I wished myself in the most distant desert, and yet was in the awkward position of having to keep my house open to a succession of visitors. At last Tichatschek took his departure, and I could at least devote the remainder of my stay to the pleasant duty of entertaining favourite guests. The Bulows really ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Austria might as well have done her own dirty work and saved French hands from the disgrace of it. It makes us two very angry. Robert especially is furious. We are not within reach of the book you speak of, 'Portraits des Orateurs Francais' oh, we might nearly as well live on a desert island as far as modern books go. And here, at Lucca, even Robert can't catch sight of even the 'Athenaeum.' We have a two-day old 'Galignani,' and think ourselves royally off; and then this little shop with French books in it, just a few, and the 'Gentilhomme Campagnard' the latest ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... lay a desert of sand. To the north it touched the horizon, and was only broken by the blue dot of Neuerk Island and its lighthouse. To the east it seemed also to stretch to infinity, but the smoke of a steamer showed where it was pierced by the stream of the Elbe. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... breastplate officiating again at the altar of our Holy Temple? Now at last the vision begins to take shape, the hope of Israel begins to shine again. Like a rosy cloud, like a crescent moon, like a star in the desert, like a ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... plentifully enough in Spain, in Malta, in Egypt, in Jamaica, and other places, but within five miles of Jaffa nothing else is grown—if we except the hedges of prickly pear which divide the gardens. Orange garden succeeds to orange garden till one finds oneself on the broad open desert that ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... grandson, too, Davy darling?" said old Mrs. Prichard. And, if you can conceive it, there was pain in her voice—real pain—as well as the treble of old age. She was jealous, you see; jealous of this old Mrs. Marrowbone, who seemed to come between her and her little new-found waterspring in the desert. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... breathing time, nor suffer their thoughts to revert to the Terentillian law, ordered them to quit Rome and march against the Volscians; declaring them bound to follow him by virtue of the oath they had sworn not to desert the consul. And though the tribunes withstood him, contending that the oath had been sworn to the dead consul and not to Quintius, yet the people under the influence of religious awe, chose rather to obey the consul than believe the tribunes. And Titus Livius commends their behaviour ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... said Mr. Fairfield, "perhaps the mother did mean to desert the child, but if so, she was probably peeping from some hiding-place, to make sure that she approved of ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... said, 'Let a bovine bull or boar or deer or buffalo be dressed today for thy sake. Do thou appease thy hunger on such food today. Never to desert one that has sought my protection in my firm vow. Behold, O bird, this bird ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... body! He says he thinks that he lived a long time ago, and then a shorter time ago, and then now. He says that some days he sees it all come up in a kind of dark desert." ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... the vast desert, I was sad and discouraged; I invoked you, and your sweet face gave me fresh hope and energy. I said to myself, 'She is waiting for me. A day will come when I shall win the prize of all my trouble.' ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a certain document placed in his hands, that Greaves was to be trusted, he at once decided as to the course that he himself ought to pursue, and the reader has already seen the result. Strange as it may appear for the present, it was Greaves' object to induce Barry to desert, and thereby shut himself out from ever revisiting the British dominions again. He felt that it would be better, too, that he should not be taken while in the act of deserting; as his punishment could be but light, owing to the circumstance, that he had endeavored, though in ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... conjurer taking a rabbit out of a hat. (A hat which, if it resembled a void, wasn't there.) And after creating enormous suns and spheres, and filling the farthest heavens with vaster stars, one god will turn back and long for the smell of roast flesh, another will call desert tribes to "holy" wars, and a third will grieve about divorce ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... without which, in some shape or another, the world would be a desert and a sty; which included within itself many of the noblest virtues which can adorn mankind—generosity, self-denial, chastity, frugality, patience, protection to the feeble, the downtrodden, and the oppressed; the love of daring adventure, devotion ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had that one deserted as well as the rest, what would have been his position then? Utter helplessness! And now what had they to expect? Their greatest hopes were to gain some island, and, if they succeeded, perhaps a desert island, perhaps an island inhabited by savages - to be murdered, or to perish miserably of hunger and thirst. It was not until some time after these reflections had passed through his mind, that Mr. Seagrave could recall himself to a sense of thankfulness to the Almighty for having hitherto ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... him as I read, I was struck with the intensity of his look as he drank in every word. A traveler dying of thirst in the desert could not clutch a cup of cold water more eagerly than he grasped these tender words of the pitying ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... police had broken up. Sergeant Jack had heard of my need, and gave him to me for old acquaintance' sake, warranting him to keep anybody away from the house. Upon this point there was never the least doubt. We might just as well have lived on a desert island while we had him. People went around the next block to avoid our house. It was not because Mac was unsociable; quite the contrary. He took to the town from the first, especially to the other dogs. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... additional articles which show a national difference. Whoever shall steal from the company, or game up to the value of a piece of eight, (piastre, translated cu by the French,—rated by the English of that day at not quite five shillings sterling,—about a dollar,) shall be landed on a desert place, with a bottle of water, gun, powder, and lead. Whoever shall maltreat or assault another, while the articles subsist, shall receive the Law of Moses: this was the infliction of forty consecutive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... pass that my visits to the Cove were far less frequent than they had been at any previous time. But though old George growled and grumbled at seeing so little of me, he always encouraged me not to desert my cousin. ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... wilderness afar—where the little maiden, sent from the shieling on errands to town or village in the country below, seemed, as we met her in the sunshine, to rise up before us for our delight, like a fairy from the desert bloom—Thou loch, remote in thy treeless solitude, and with nought reflected in thy many-springed waters but those low pastoral hills of excessive green, and the white-barred blue of heaven—no creature on its shores but our own selves, keenly angling in the breezes, or lying in the shaded sunshine, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... you are, Masson!... At last!... An event of the first importance occurs, an amazing scandal breaks out and you desert your post.... It's always the way if I'm not here to look after things. I shall have to report you, you know. ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... fraternized cheerfully in the discussion of their strange adventures and shared the last drop of hot tea in a Thermos flask with the generous instincts of shipwrecked people dividing their rations on a desert isle. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... I always looked as a person of doubtful parentage, and a leader who, had he lived in recent centuries, would have been sacrificed by his own men within a month at most. His only title to fame is that he kept the Jews for forty years from appropriating anything but a desert which nobody else wanted and was a blistering hindrance to them. The story of Moses certainly has weak spots. Too much is known of the localities which he frequented. The crossing of the Red Sea ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... one day as I was sitting weeping, the black man, whom I had never seen since the day he brought me to my ro, again stood before me, and he said, 'Come with me, little sister, come with me, the ro is at hand'; and I went with him, and beyond the gate in the desert was the same party of black men and women which I had seen before. 'Where is my ro?' said I. 'Here he is, little sister,' said the black man, 'here he is; from this day I am the ro and you the romi; come, let us go, for there is ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... to succeed, for it is well planned," said Petronius. "It was impossible to plan better. Thou must feign suffering, and wear a dark toga. Do not desert the amphitheatre. Let people see thee. All is so fixed that there cannot be failure. But—art thou perfectly sure ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... landlord, dropping a pinch of soda into the glass and stirring it in with a spoon. The schoolmaster tried to drink the mixture, but in vain; it did not quench the thirst, but produced a sickening effect. He felt like a man in a strange land, like a wanderer in the desert, a shipwrecked mariner. Oh, to be on the Susan Thomas, with miles of pure water all round! Or even at home, where the turning of a tap brought all Lake Ontario to ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... is the duty of a young and old man to act at the same time with a spirit of independence and generosity; we may always have reason to hope that the young man will ardently perform, and to fear that the old man will desert, his duty.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... trusting in your kindness that I venture to look for a welcome here. There cannot be many who would so kindly receive one who even against his will has been indirectly connected with your troubles. Besides, I have been abusing your generosity further by trying to persuade Grace to desert you, and, strangest of all, I ask you to ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... gas lamps which could not be seen. For a time there was not a sound or sign of movement, but at last two persons crossed the expanse of the piazza, and then came a third who in his turn disappeared, nothing remaining but a rhythmical far-away echo of steps. The spot was indeed a perfect desert, there were neither promenaders nor passers-by, nor was there even the shadow of a prowler in the pillared forest of the colonnade, which was as empty as the wild primeval forests of the world's infancy. And what a solemn desert it was, full of the silence of haughty desolation. Never had ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... started, he thought he had made a pretty sure thing of it, and that it would not be long before he would be a free man, and could go where he pleased and do what he pleased in the wide United States. But the case was very different now. I suppose it was wrong, of course, for him to desert, and probably he was a mean sort of a fellow to do it; but we were all very sorry to see him taken away. Corny thought that he was very likely a good man, who had been imposed upon, and that, therefore, it was right to run away. It was ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... then"—his voice dropped a little—"there came a greater thing—the greatest of all. And I knew that I had climbed above ambition. I knew success and fame as a procession that passes—that passes—the mirage in the desert—the dream in the midst of our great Reality. I knew all this before my ruin came. It was as if a light had suddenly been held up, and I saw the work of my life as pictures in the sand. Then the great tide rushed up, and all was washed away. But yet"—his voice vibrated, ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... that the comfortings of a faithful friend were as nothing to a gentle mind in distress, that I could be prevailed upon to forbear visiting you so much as once in all this time! I, as well as every body else, to desert and abandon my dear creature to strangers! What will become of you, if you be as bad as my apprehensions ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... night the sky and atmosphere were singularly brilliant. Landed this morning at eight, to get sight for my chronometers, this being the first time that I ever set foot on the Continent of Africa. Saldanha is a gloomy, desert-looking place, the shore comprised of sand and rock, without trees, but with green patches here and there. There are three or four farm-houses in sight, scattered over the hills. The farmers here are mostly graziers. The cattle are fine and good; a great number of goats ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... fancy, and made you feel as though you wished to desert your old father?" demanded ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... "Desert you? Never! On the honor of a gentleman!" cried Dudleigh; and as he bowed his head there came over his face a very singular smile, which Edith, however, ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... Swancourt with feeling, bringing down his hand upon the table, and making three pawns and a knight dance over their borders by the shaking. 'I was musing on those words as applicable to a strange course I am steering—but enough of that. I am delighted with you, Mr. Smith, for it is so seldom in this desert that I meet with a man who is gentleman and scholar enough to continue a quotation, however trite it ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... horses on the edge of the forest," said Denviers, "but we did not expect to be so long absent from them. How wilt thou depart from these Dhahs? Surely they will avenge themselves upon us, for they will assuredly think that we have influenced you to desert them." The queen paused for ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... clasping her hands together; "then thou wilt not desert us if any means are presented, by which, placing our Royal Mistress at freedom, this case may be honestly tried betwixt her and her ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... about to see if I could find anything eatable. To my grief I found nothing but a few eggs, that I was obliged to eat raw, and this almost made me wish that the sea had engulfed me rather than thrown me on this desert island, which seemed to me inhabited only by rats and several ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... delighted to see him; she said it was like the sight of a cable-car in a desert. He protested at such a stupendous comparison, and insisted that she make clear that the dummy was not included. The short afternoon glided into evening, and Dr. Kemp went over to the hotel and dined at ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... Euph{e}mus, passing from Caria to the extreme parts of the ocean, discovered many desert islands, and being forced by tempestuous weather to land upon one of them, called Satyr{)i}da, he found inhabitants covered with yellow hair, having tails not much less than horses. We are likewise told, that in the expedition which Hanno the Carthaginian ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... fortnight, and to obtain guides from him direct to the lake. My Latooka, to whom I have been very kind, has absconded: there is no difference in any of these savages; if hungry, they will fawn upon you, and when filled, they will desert. I believe that ten years' residence in the Soudan and this country would spoil an Angel, and would turn the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... similitude with those of the poet, who longed for "a lodge in some vast wilderness—some boundless contiguity of shade;" or perhaps, more akin to those of that other poet of less solitary inclinings, who only desired the "desert as a dwelling-place, with one fair spirit for his minister!" In truth, I felt a strong inclination for the latter description of life; and, in all likelihood, would have made a trial of it, but for the interference of ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... business is fighting. The chief export, a desert grass used in the manufacture of a fine paper. Business is stagnant, as the war between the Italians and the Arabs shifted barter by caravan with the interior to the British colony on the east and ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... city 'gainst the world's gray Prime, Lost in some desert, far from Time, Where noiseless Ages, gliding through, Have only sifted sands and dew, Were not more lone to one who first Upon its giant silence burst, Than this strange quiet, where the tide Of life, upheaved on either side, Hangs trembling, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... to the bottom of it yet, Mrs. O'Halloran. My head is just stored with knowledge, only it isn't always that I have a chance of making it useful. I would be just the fellow to be cast on a desert island. There is no saying what I wouldn't do ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... pay ourselves!" was the unanimous verdict, I being about the only one who did not voice it. I claim no credit. I saw no loot, so what was the use of talking? We were crossing a desert where a crow could have found small plunder. But being by common consent official go-between I rode to Ranjoor Singh's side and told him ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... heart to you, dear mother," she continued, "but when I sit and think, my sad thoughts fly back over the dreary desert of the past; and I know what I am, and what ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... the older countries cannot at once cure those evils, that is no reason for Russia to inoculate herself with them. She is still at the commencement of her career, and it would be folly for her to wander voluntarily for ages in the Desert, when a direct route to the Promised Land ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... me. It was still deep night. The moon sailed overhead, the stars shone unwavering like candles, and a chill breeze wandered in from the open spaces of the desert. I raised myself on my elbow, throwing aside the blankets and the canvas tarpaulin. Forty other indistinct, formless bundles on the ground all about me were sluggishly astir. Four figures passed and repassed between me and a red fire. I knew them for the ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... there is yet time to draw back; that I ask if you have reflected—if you repent having mixed yourself with all these—" the duke hesitated—"these audacious enterprises. Fear nothing from me—I will protect you, even if you desert us; I have seen you but once, but I think I judge of you as you deserve—men of worth are so rare that the regrets will be ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... soft, a tone so tender and so full of love, it would charm even frenzy, calm rude distraction, and wildness would become a silent listener; there's such a sweet serenity in thy face, such innocence and softness in thy eyes, should desert savages but gaze on thee, sure they would forget their native forest wildness, and be inspired with easy gentleness: most certainly this god-like power thou hast. Why then? Oh tell me in the agony of ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... sea lanes between Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (Strait of Magellan, Beagle Channel, Drake Passage); Atacama Desert is one of world's ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... offers little more than four per cent. and avarice hastens to bring forth tens of millions of rupees from its most secret repositories. A hostile monarch may promise mountains of gold to our sepoys on condition that they will desert the standard of the Company The Company promises only a moderate pension after a long service. But every sepoy knows that the promise of the Company will be kept; he knows that if he lives a hundred years his rice and salt are as secure as the salary of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had nothing to do with the matter, he was our visitor and ought not to have been permitted to depart dry; living as we do in this desert, we ought always to be prepared to administer to the wants of our visitors. Belle, do you know where to procure ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the western shore is in many parts very arid; and about latitude 20 degrees south the burning desert commences, extending 540 leagues—almost to the Gulf of Guayaquil—and varying in width from three to twenty leagues. Over this region of death, heaps of stone or mounds of sand are alone seen, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... they fell on their backs when he came to the line where the desert beauty calls her Royal husband a "fatted ass." In truth, they needed something to cheer them, for the sky was burnished brass, and their goats died like flies. Simoon and sand-pillar threw down the camels, and loathsome ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... for neither Charley nor I was inclined to desert our brave friend. The rest of the party had dashed by, scarcely observing what had taken place, the Indians taking the lead. It was impossible to calculate how many miles we had gone. Night was coming on, making the glare to the eastward appear brighter and more terrific. ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... to act upon the contract, and to apply other remedies if it be broken. Thus far the remedies are furnished by the laws of society. But suppose the same parties to go together to a savage wilderness, or a desert island, beyond the reach of the laws of any society. The obligation of the contract still subsists, and is as perfect as ever, and is now to be enforced by another law, that is, the law of nature; ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... far off they are from them. Very hard! Is it? Then why in the name of God, will you not go up to them and enter? You do not like the conditions? But the conditions are the only natural possibilities of entrance. Enter as you are and you would but see the desert you think to leave behind you, not a glimpse of a promised land. The false cannot inherit the true ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... he said, "to disgrace mysel' in the face o' my townsmen? Doesna our guid king intend to leave his fair Margaret, and risk the royal bluid o' the Bruce for the interests o' auld Scotland? and doesna our honoured provost mean to desert, for a day o' glory, his braw wife, that he may deck her wimple wi' the roses o' England, and her name wi' a Scotch title? Wharfore, then, should I, a puir tradesman, fear to put in jeopardy for the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... case as one where the advantage was obvious. The dark back renders the fish less conspicuous to an eye looking down into the water; while the white under-surface makes them less visible from below. The animals of the desert are sand-coloured; those of the Arctic regions are white like snow, especially in winter; ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... and, standing with his back to the fire, his burning eyes never leaving the President's face, he told the story of Minetta Lane. He ceased only at the moment when he dropped off the train into the desert. He did not spare himself. And yet when the quiet, eloquent voice stopped, there were tears in the President's eyes. He made no comment until Enoch turned to the fire, then he said, with ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... those artistic utilizations of chance accessories—which were the more effective precisely because they were accidental, and the more appreciated because their use so obviously was an inspiration—was the final exit of Oedipus: a departure "into desert regions" that Mounet-Sully was able to make ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... justify these effusions. I will, I do, endeavour to resist them.—Indeed I am ashamed of myself, for I find I am very feeble. Yet let not thy fears be too violent for thy friend: he will not lightly desert his duty. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Martin he was wandering in a vast and thirsty desert. To the very core of his being he was dry. Drink! Drink! With his whole life he lusted drink. He waded through that parched world, burning ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... however, was in no hurry to share his happiness. Since his youth he had made few friends, and in all his life had never known comradeship with a woman. Suddenly, and as a well-spring in the desert, Vashti had come into the dull round of his duty—his purposeless, monotonous duty—to refresh it; nor perhaps were the waters less sweet for the feeling that they were stolen. So he lived in the day, and put off thinking of the ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... we were present at during our homeward journey. When at the close of it we parted from our hosts they lighted up the way by which we rowed forward over the tranquil waves of the Bay of Aden with blue lights, and the desert mountain sides of the Arabian coast resounded with the hurrahs which were exchanged in the clear, calm night between the representatives of the south ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... concerning all the countries of the West which have not been visited by Europeans, consult the account of two expeditions undertaken at the expense of Congress by Major Long. This traveller particularly mentions, on the subject of the great American desert, that a line may be drawn nearly parallel to the 20th degree of longitude *a (meridian of Washington), beginning from the Red River and ending at the River Platte. From this imaginary line to the Rocky Mountains, which bound the valley of the Mississippi ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... one vast desert. From every cottage went forth the wail of hunger. The stalls were empty of cattle, the barns of corn. The ploughs lay empty on the ground, for there was neither grain to sow nor oxen to drive. There were neither men nor women ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... here all the time, but no matter; she dearly loved to make these English-hearted Frenchmen squirm, and whenever they gave her an opening she was prompt to jab her sting into it. She got great refreshment out of these little episodes. Her days were a desert; these were the oases ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... that embarrasses you by a door which opens into a field of honour and liberty. Paris, whose archbishop you are, groans under a heavy load. The Parliament there is but a mere phantom, and the Hotel de Ville a desert. The Duc d'Orleans and the Prince have no more authority than what the rascally mob is pleased to allow them. The Spaniards, Germans, and Lorrainers are in the suburbs laying waste the very gardens. You that have rescued them more ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... if he were a prophet, would not let this woman come near him, for she is a town-sinner; so ignorant are all self-righteous men of the way of Christ with sinners. But, lest Mary should be discouraged with some clownish carriage of this Pharisee, and so desert her good beginnings, and her new steps which she now had begun to take towards eternal life, Jesus began thus with Simon: 'Simon,' saith he, 'I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith, Master, say on. There was,' said Jesus, 'a certain creditor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... long seen the country in the hands of a few shrewd, crafty, covetous men, under whose management one of the most lovely, desirable sections of America remained a comparative desert. The most obvious public improvements were stayed; dissension was created among classes; citizens were banished and imprisoned [Gourley, Beardsley, etc.] in defiance of all law; the people had been forbidden, under severe pains and penalties, from meeting anywhere to petition for justice; large estates ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... are far off with Bethmoora in her loneliness, whose gates swing to and fro. To and fro they swing, and creak and creak in the wind, but no one hears them. They are of green copper, very lovely, but no one sees them now. The desert wind pours sand into their hinges, no watchman comes to ease them. No guard goes round Bethmoora's battlements, no enemy assails them. There are no lights in her houses, no footfall on her streets, she stands there dead and lonely beyond the Hills of Hap, ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... rise upon them, while they were traveling through the wide extent of deep sands, as it is said to have done when Cambyses led his army that way, blowing the sand together in heaps, and raising, as it were, the whole desert like a sea upon them, till fifty thousand were swallowed up and destroyed by it. All these difficulties were weighed and represented to him; but Alexander was not easily to be diverted from anything he was bent upon. For fortune having hitherto seconded him in his designs, made him resolute ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... seeking to quench the unquenchable, the flame of fire which is life itself. These "athletes of the Lord" were under the best possible conditions for the conquest of lust; they had been driven into the solitude of the desert by a genuine deeply-felt impulse, they could regulate their lives as they would, and they possessed an almost inconceivable energy of resolution. They were prepared to live on herbs, even to eat grass, and to undertake any labour of self-denial. They ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... gray-tinted plumage, is not deformed by "horns;" it is only two little tufts of feathers, which give a certain piquant, wide-awake expression to his head, that have fastened upon him a title so incongruous. The nest of the desert-lover is a slight depression in the barren earth, nothing more; and the eggs harmonize with their surroundings in color. The whole is concealed by its very openness, and as hard to find, as the bobolink's cradle in the trackless ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... despairs of none; to look on every one we meet with love, almost with pity, because they too may have been down into the deep of horror, or may go down into it any day; to see our own sins in the sins of others, to feel that we might do what they do, and feel as they feel at any moment, did God desert us; to give and forgive, live and let live, even as Christ gives to us and forgives us, and lives for us and lets us live in spite of all ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... yellow, brown or black, it looks in winter a lordly beast. Its fleece is never shorn, but is shed in summer. At that season the poor naked animal is the most pitiable of creatures. In the absence of railways and carriage roads, it fills the place of the ship of the desert and performs the heaviest tasks, such as the transporting of coals and salt. Most docile of slaves, at a word from its master it kneels down and quietly accepts ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... their exercise of which virtues, I consider these as the greatest proofs; that, in war, punishment was oftener inflicted on those who attacked an enemy contrary to orders, and who, when commanded to retreat, retired too slowly from the contest, than on those who had dared to desert their standards, or, when pressed by the enemy,[62] to abandon their posts; and that, in peace, they governed more by conferring benefits than by exciting terror, and, when they received an injury, chose rather to pardon than to ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... rocks from his path, digs out lakes, and drives his plough where once the sail was seen. By canals he separates quarters of the globe and provinces from one another; leads one stream to another and discharges them upon a sandy desert, changed thereby into smiling meadow; three quarters of the globe he plunders and transplants them into a fourth. Even climate, air, and weather acknowledge his sway. While he roots out forests and drains the swamp, the heaven grows clear above his head, moisture ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... richly carpeted with multitudes of delicate wild flowers. The beauty of these patches of gleaming color is enhanced by contrast with the forbidding and rugged character of the surroundings; but in a very short time these blossoms disappear from the arid and parched desert that they have temporarily beautified. These beds of bloom are not seen in the immediate vicinity of the present villages, but are unexpectedly met with in portions of the neighboring mesas ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... the Indies, by sympathetic conveyances, may be as usual to future times, as to us in a literary correspondence. The restoration of grey hairs to juvenility, and renewing the exhausted marrow, may at length be effected without a miracle; and the turning the now comparative desert world into a paradise, may not improbably be expected from late agriculture.' Again, when Sir William Temple, some thirty years later, cast contempt upon the Moderns in his Essay of Ancient and Modern Learning, it was the speculations of Wilkins that provoked his ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... some provisions which they offered me, and asked them what they did in such a desert place; to which they answered that they were grooms belonging to the sovereign of the island, and that every year they brought thither the king's horses for pasturage. They were to return home on the morrow, and had I been one day later I must have ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... by nodding towers you tread, Or haunt the desert's trackless gloom, Or hover o'er the yawning tomb, Or climb the Andes' clifted side, Or by the Nile's coy source abide, Or starting from your half-year's sleep From Hecla view the thawing deep, Or, at the purple dawn of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... was, the instinct that had led them unerringly to the remotest point of each continent. In North America it was the great Arizona desert, in South America the pampas of Argentina, in Europe the steppes of Russia, in Asia the Desert of Gobi, in Africa the Sahara, in Australia the Victoria; while in the British Isles, Philippines, New Zealand, Madagascar, Iceland, ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich
... head. His chest was bare. As he passed beneath the window he sang a loud song that sounded Eastern, such a song as the Spanish wagoners sing in Algeria, as they set out by night on their long journeys towards the desert. Upon a tiny platform of wood, fastened to slanting stakes which met together beneath it in a tripod, a stout man in shirt and trousers, with black whiskers, was sitting on a chair fishing with a rod ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... four great pyres that were placed there to light the encampment, High on platforms raised above the people, were kindled. Flaming aloof, as it were the pillar by night in the Desert Fell their crimson light on the lifted orbs of the preachers, Fell on the withered brows of the old men, and Israel's mothers, Fell on the bloom of youth, and the earnest devotion of manhood, Fell on the anguish and hope in the tearful eyes of the mourners. ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... tarried behind the rest, and kissed the hermit's hands. Yaghmus asked it of Takni, the Castle of Jewels, and it answered, saying 'O Monk, when I and my brothers were small chicks we abode behind the Mountain Kaf on a hill of crystal, in the midst of a great desert; and our father and mother used to set out for it every morning and in the evening come back with our food. They went out early one day, and were absent from us a sennight and hunger was sore upon us; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... traveler tells us that one day he found the bodies of two men laid upon the desert sand beside the carcass of a camel. They had evidently died from thirst, and yet around the waist of each was a large store of jewels of different kinds, which they had doubtless been crossing the desert to sell ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... keep in awe; but old women, notably two aunts who had never paid her any attention during her childhood, now persecuted her with slavish fondness, and tempted her by mingled entreaties and bribes to desert her father and live with them for the remainder of their lives. Her reserve fanned their longing to have her for a pet; and, to escape them, she returned to the Continent with her father, and ceased to hold any correspondence with London. Her aunts declared themselves deeply ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... do William justice, he would not allow his men to enter the city while they were blood-hot; and so prevented, as far as he could, the excesses which Gyda had feared.] How they had wandered up through Devon, found fishers' boats at Watchet in Somersetshire, and gone off to the little desert island of the Flat-Holme, in hopes of there meeting with the Irish fleet, which her sons, Edmund and Godwin, were bringing against the West of England. How the fleet had never come, and they had starved for many days; and how she had bribed a ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... wished I had heard nothing about it. We are to go on as if nothing had happened, and I know they think we shall forget all about it! As if we could! Not that I wish it to be different. I know it would be wicked to desert papa and mamma while she is so unwell. The truth is, Humfrey,' and her voice sank, 'that it ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... evidence of this inclination to desert the positive, to bring the ideal even into historic annals, I believe that with greater reason we should be completely indifferent to historical reality in judging the dramatic works, whether poems, romances, or tragedies, which borrow from history celebrated characters. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Most people to-day read these "Memoirs" in little "collections"; but I think it is worth while taking the trouble to learn French in order to become an understanding companion of this malicious but very graphic author. To me the Palace of Versailles would be an empty desert without the "Memoirs" of Saint Simon. Else, how could anybody realize a picture of Mademoiselle de la Valli['e]re looking hopelessly out of the window of her little room just before the birth of her child? ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... looked behind her. Back there, somewhere, were her hot little room and her still hotter bed; but between her and them lay a horrid desert of blackness across which one must feel one's way with outstretched, shrinking arms; while before her, out on the sun-parlor roof, were the moonlight and the cool, sweet ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... refrain, under pain of excommunication, from interfering in the affairs of Faenza. Bentivogli made a feeble attempt to mask his disobedience. The troops with which he intended to assist his grandson were sent ostensibly to Castel Bolognese, but with instructions to desert thence and make for Faenza. This they did, and thus was Astorre strengthened by a thousand men, whilst the work of preparing his city for resistance went ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... the Juno. He took care of himself by getting under way, and standing over towards Castine, where he dined that day. Then he continued his voyage down the bay, through Edgemoggin Reach to Mount Desert, where he staid several days, living upon "the fat of the land" and the fish of the sea, which go well together. When he was confident that Captain Shivernock had returned, he sailed for Belfast, and arrived after a two days' voyage. The strange man had not come back, and ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... ultra-Baconian process of unphilosophical induction. On the devoted head of Shakespeare—who is also called Shakspere and Chaxpur—he would have piled a load of rubbish, among which the crude and vigorous old tragedy under discussion shines out like a veritable diamond of the desert. His "School of Shakspere," though not an academy to be often of necessity perambulated by the most peripatetic student of Shakespeare, will remain as a monument of critical or uncritical industry, a storehouse of curious if not of precious relics, and a warning for other than fair women—or ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... they still pursue. Not all of womankind I mean. But more than all this wicked queen. O worthless, cruel, selfish dame, I brought thee home, my plague and woe. What fault in me hast thou to blame, Or in my son who loves thee so? Fond wives may from their husbands flee, And fathers may their sons desert, But all the world would rave to see My Rama touched with deadly hurt. I joy his very step to hear, As though his godlike form I viewed; And when I see my Rama near I feel my youth again renewed. There might be life ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... But little. The acceptance of substitutes who desert, and the exemption of thousands who should be fighting for the country, employ hundreds of pens daily in this city. Alas, that so many dishonest men have obtained easy places! The President has ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... to bid me forswear England again, and bury myself in a desert, where a sigh from your sex could ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... that the desertion had been voluntary; perhaps in compliance with an order of our commander-in-chief, who frequently desired any intended line of march of the enemy to be left thus a desert. As we sauntered slowly on from street to street, half hoping that some one human being yet remained behind, and casting our eyes from side to side in search of quarters for the night, Mike ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... influenced by what she had heard of his life, and death, I do not know. But she was a dreary creature with never a smile or a hopeful look upon her dark face. Nothing to her was right or good; this world was a desert, her friends had all left her, strangers looked coldly upon her. As for the future, there was nothing to look forward to in this world or the next. As Dave Moony, the village cynic, said, "Mary Ann wa'n't proud or set up about nothin' but bein' the darter ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... of thought or of the social order. Those nobler and more earnestly inquiring souls whose energy and spiritual longing might have been used for the benefit of the masses, were shunted off on a side track that led only into the desert of atomistic individualism, abandonment of society, ecstatic contemplation, and absolute pessimism. The Buddhist theory of the universe and method of thought denied all intelligible reality, and necessitated the conclusion that ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... sighed Jack, "why do the thirsty camels of the desert desire to lap the waters of the fountain and roll in the green grass of the oasis? Are we not but just from the ocean Sahara? and is not this Rio a verdant spot, noble Captain? Surely you will not keep us always tethered at ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... She is chattering downstairs with the concierge, for sure. So that is the way you observe your old master's birthday? You desert me even on the eve of Saint-Sylvestre! Alas! if I am to hear any kind wishes to-day, they must come up from the ground; for all who love me have long been buried. I really don't know what I am still living for. There is the bell again!... I get up slowly from my seat at the fire, with my ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... balance of things, travel agents and other far-seeing folks have contrived to inflict upon most countries within the tourist's reach all the modern conveniences by which he lives and thrives. So soon as civilising missions and missionaries have pegged out their claims, even the desert is deemed incomplete without a modern hotel or two, fitted with electric light, monstrous tariff, and served by a crowd of debased guides. In the wake of these improvements the tourist follows, finds all the essentials ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... through, like an apparatus out of order, to simulate breath, and doing it badly. How could he sleep when now and then it jerked him so? He could, and she left him and lay down, and went suddenly to sleep. After a time that was a journey through a desert, without landmarks, she was ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... of the first street-corner breakfast- sellers. And so by faster and faster degrees, until the last degrees were very fast, the day came, and I was tired and could sleep. And it is not, as I used to think, going home at such times, the least wonderful thing in London, that in the real desert region of the night, the houseless wanderer is alone there. I knew well enough where to find Vice and Misfortune of all kinds, if I had chosen; but they were put out of sight, and my houselessness had many ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... comes, they the true-hearted, came; Not with the roll of stirring drums, and the trumpet that sings of fame; Not as the flying come, in silence and in fear; They shook the depths of the desert gloom with their hymns ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... there in the hushed lobby as remote from the world as though shipwrecked on a desert island. It was Mary Louise who now looked at the floor. She could feel Claybrook's eyes upon her. He was waiting for her to speak, but she could not collect her thoughts. It had come upon her baldly, without preparation. She scarcely realized ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... dread of Deity, or hope of futurity, I know not how far the modern reader may willingly withdraw himself for a little time, to hear of men who, in their darkest and most foolish day, sought by their labour to make the desert as the garden of the Lord, and by their love to become worthy of permission to live with Him for ever. It has nevertheless been only by such toil, and in such hope, that, hitherto, the happiness, skill, or virtue ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... with blasphemy upon his lips, after turning all the sanctities of human nature into ridicule. Through these myths, as through a mist, we may discern the bitterness of that great, disenchanted, disappointed soul. The desert in which spirits of the stamp of Machiavelli wander is too arid and too aerial for the gross substantial bugbears of the vulgar conscience to inhabit. Moreover, as Varchi says, 'In his conversation Machiavelli ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... over the southwestern plateaus which from time to time have been invested by travelers and writers with a halo of romance and regarded as the wondrous achievements in civilization of a vanished but once powerful race. These abandoned stone houses found in the midst of desert solitudes excited the imaginations of early explorers to connect the remains with "Aztecs" and other mysterious peoples. From this early implanted bias arose many ingenious theories concerning the origin and disappearance of the builders of the ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... made his bid for liberty; but he was no coward to desert his companions. He uttered a choking cry of mingled fear and defiance, and rushed in between his friends to swing a heavy blow with his fist fair upon the giant's unprotected temple. Now Milo gave sign of interest. He laughed: a deep, rumbling, pleasant laugh of appreciation for the courage ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... those stars which you see glittering so restlessly on a keen, frosty night in a high latitude, and which seem to have been sown broadcast with as much carelessness as grain lies on a threshing-floor, here showing vast zaarahs of desert blue sky, there again lying close, and ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... solitude of country places Were once his friends. But as a man born blind, Opening his eyes from lovely dreams, might find The world a desert and men's larval faces So hateful, he would wish to seek again The darkness and his old chimeric sight Of beauties inward—so, that fresh delight, Vision of bright fields and angelic men, That love which made him all the world, is gone. Hating and hated now, he stands ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... tent-door wide, has buckled the girth, has clipped The headstall away from the wrist he leaves thrice bound as 80 before, He springs on the Pearl, is launched on the desert like bolt from bow. Up starts our plundered man; from his breast though the heart be ripped, Yet his mind has the mastery. Behold, in a minute more, He is out and off and away on Buheyseh, whose worth ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... attend them," said Dr Stutterheim; "although I should have preferred accompanying you, my friends, into your mountain-retreat. But I look upon these poor fellows as my patients, and I never desert my ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... fro above his bed—till presently all was silent. Silence—except for the measured plash of the sea, which he heard distinctly echoing up through the coombe from the shore. A great loneliness environed him—touched by a great awe. He felt himself to be a solitary soul in the midst of some vast desert, yet not without the consciousness that a mystic joy, an undreamed-of glory, was drawing near that should make that desert "blossom like the rose." He moved slowly and feebly to the window—against ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... immense valley is dotted with some mountains, that give to these submarine places a picturesque aspect. I speak, moreover, from the manuscript charts that were in the library of the Nautilus—charts evidently due to Captain Nemo's hand, and made after his personal observations. For two days the desert and deep waters were visited by means of the inclined planes. The Nautilus was furnished with long diagonal broadsides which carried it to all elevations. But on the 11th of April it rose suddenly, and land appeared ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... "I will never desert you. It's of no use asking me, for I will never do it. Mr Micawber has his faults, but I will ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... among other things, that Man is all alone on earth; that most animals don't know he is here, and that the rest of them have no use for him. That even flowers and crops will desert him and run again to wildness, if Man turns his back on them for a minute. So will his horse, his cow and his sheep. They graft on him for a living, and they ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... the country on each side of the falls is similar to that of the country south of Assuan—a sandy desert studded with rocky hills and mountains, The only appearance of vegetation observable was in some of the islands and on the immediate banks of the river, where we met at every mile or two with small spots of fertile ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... Nisibis by a plague of gnats, which attacked his elephants and beasts of burden, and so caused the rout of his army; nor that the inhabitants of various cities should, by an extraordinary multiplication of this plague, have been compelled to desert them; nor that, by their power of doing mischief, like other conquerors who have been the torment of the human race, they should have attained to fame, and have given their name to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... display in all its mighty strength; which, immovable as the pillars of heaven, stedfast in the midst of opposition, as the summit of the mountain on which the thunderbolts are expended in vain, would sustain undismayed the assault of every foe; which though pressed to the utmost would not desert the field; but which, though like the warrior, black and weary through the toil of conflict, it might be misrepresented or not recognised, would at some era, more or less remote, shine forth in the glory of victory, to be celebrated ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... a Ferry Company from the Desert of Sahara to the top of Mount Ararat," I observed, as ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... and makes that to be his medicine which otherwise would be his death: and, concerning this exercise, I shall only add what the patriarch of Alexandria told an old religious person in his hermitage. Having asked him what he found in that desert, he was answered, "Only this, to judge and condemn myself perpetually; that is the employment of my solitude." The patriarch answered, "There is no other way." By accusing ourselves we shall make the devil's malice useless, and our own consciences ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... the first greeted that second in dead silence, and vice versa. I had great obligations towards Madame Binetti, but my duty also drew me towards the Catai, who numbered in her party all the Czartoryskis and their following, Prince Lubomirski, and other powerful nobles. It was plain that I could not desert to Madame Binetti without earning the contempt ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... me lies a desert vast, No habitation near; And dark and pathless is the waste, And fills the mind ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... deities, all eyes, heads and limbs, wreathed with fire, drinking blood from skulls and trampling prostrate creatures to death beneath their feet. Probably the wild and fantastic landscapes of Tibet, the awful suggestions of the spectral mists, the real terrors of precipice, desert and storm have wrought for ages upon the minds of ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... deliverance wrought by angels is too long to tell. One need only think of the angels' taking slow-moving Lot by the arms and setting him out of Sodom (Genesis 19); of the angel finding Elijah under a bush in the desert, and first baking a cake for the hungry man before speaking the word to his discouraged heart (1 Kings 19); of Elisha praying that the young man's eyes might be opened to see that there were more angels with them round about than all the Syrians ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... He led them through the deserts; He caused the waters to flow out of the rocks for them; He clave the rocks, and the waters gushed out." These words merely mean that the Jews, like other people, found springs in the desert, at which they quenched their thirst; for when the Jews returned to Jerusalem with the consent of Cyrus, it is admitted that no ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... me your wives, your children, your subjects, would have been slaughtered in Caracas and this dog would have been free to go further afield for prey. He coveted your daughter—would fain make her his slave in some desert ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady |
