"Oblivion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... steps and wide hallways and iron fences, with glimpses now and then of ancient doorplates or more ancient knockers, tell of generations lost in the maze of oblivion. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... save him; and he was executed on the sentence which had been pronounced against him for treason fifteen years before. To such meanness and cowardice did his enemies resort to rid the world of a universal genius, whose crime—if crime he ever committed—had long been consigned to oblivion. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... quickly. Language in England, in all classes, is a much more elaborate and finished science than with us. Every one, from the cad to the cabinet minister, speaks his sentences with what seems to us at first a stilted effort. There is none of the easy drawl, the oblivion of consonants, which mark our daily talk, It is very beautiful in the speech of women in England, this clear enunciation and the proper use of words. Even the maid who lights your fire asks your permission to do so in a studied manner, giving each letter its place. The slang ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... to think so," answered Armitage—and I confess that I gave vent to a sigh of relief as I realised that he was now started on a discussion—"but as long as injustice prevails we must continue the struggle. I often long for rest, silence, oblivion; but the mood passes and I awake more keenly alive than ever to the greatness of our Cause, and our duty toward the propaganda. Nothing must be allowed to interfere with our devotion to it, and, what is more, Isabel, we must strive to ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... one marvellous tale which is hardly likely to be forgotten so long as men can look down from Notre Dame de la Garde on the sunny beauty of Marseilles. Even if the rest of Dumas' works sink into oblivion, the sight of Chateau d'If as it rises glowing from the blue waters of the Mediterranean will serve to recall the wonders of 'Monte Christo.' But the true claim of the book to remembrance lies not in ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... thou hast dazed, act again. There is more than Fate's caprice in Challoner's interest in a man he never saw. Ghosts of old memories rise and demand a hearing. Facts, trivial and commonplace enough to have been lost in oblivion with the day which gave them birth, throng again from the past, proving that nought dies without a possibility of resurrection. Their power over this brooding man is shown by the force with which his fingers crush against his bowed forehead. ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... observations astronomical, meteorological, magnetic, and social, accumulating in constantly increasing volume, the mass of which is so unmanageable with our present organizations that the question might well arise whether almost the whole of it will not have to be consigned to oblivion. Such a conclusion should not be entertained until we have made a vigorous effort to find what pure metal of value can be extracted from the mass of ore. To do this requires the co-operation of ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... their lands (not fairly, I think) in a way they could not help; many of the former, by their misdirected pride and folly, were driven into towns, to slide away into nothingness, and to sink into oblivion, while their 'ha' houses' (halls), that ought to have remained in their families from generation to generation, have moldered away. I have always felt extremely grieved to see the ancient mansions of many ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... her face. Then, with a sharp jolt, a break, Calico plunged to the sand. Carley felt herself propelled forward out of the saddle into the air, and down to strike with a sliding, stunning force that ended in sudden dark oblivion. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... what hope had he that his labour was not lost? His manuscript would pass at his death into other hands and might easily be overlooked and even perish. Like a child's castle built upon the sand, his work would be overwhelmed by the rising tide of oblivion. Such ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... terrible misfortunes in a word, only pray to be placed beside those who lie thus. For starvation shews to those upon whom it comes that all other evils can be endured, and wherever it appears it is attended by oblivion of all other sufferings, and causes all other forms of death, except that which proceeds from itself, to seem pleasant to men. Now, therefore, before the evil has yet mastered us, grant us leave on our own behalf ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... ink by hand on the characters, and the movable table on which the form of type was placed in readiness for the sheet of paper, being made of marble, literally deserved its name of "impression-stone." Modern machinery has swept all this old-world mechanism into oblivion; the wooden press which, with all its imperfections, turned out such beautiful work for the Elzevirs, Plantin, Aldus, and Didot is so completely forgotten, that something must be said as to the obsolete gear on which Jerome-Nicolas Sechard ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... think, had been more welcome. For indeed our British periodical critics, and especially the public of Fraser's Magazine (which I believe I have now done with), exceed all speech; require not even contempt, only oblivion. Poor Teufelsdrockh!—Creature of mischance, miscalculation, and thousand-fold obstruction! Here nevertheless he is, as you see; has struggled across the Stygian marshes, and now, as a stitched pamphlet "for Friends," cannot be burnt or lost before his time. ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... away, in just that same proportion do they grow and gather there upon the further shore; and secondly that, after Nature's eternal fashion, the youth and vigour of a new generation is waiting to replace the worn-out decrepitude of that which sinks into oblivion. My life is done, it cannot be long before the churchyard claims its own, but I live again in my son; and take such cold comfort as I may from that idea of family, and of long-continued and assured succession, that has so largely helped to make ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... laying the foundation of a race that may never die? There is no one to whom he has done good and no one owes him a tear when his barren carcass is being given over as food to the worms. He is a rotten link on the chain of life and the curse of oblivion will vindicate the claims of his unborn generations. Young man, marry, marry now, and be something in the world besides an eyesore of unproductiveness and worthlessness; do something that will make somebody happy besides yourself; show that you passed, and leave something behind that will remember ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... some incident startles him to recollection, proves to him that he has forgotten it, and he turns upon himself with surprise and indignation: Why is it this thing remains to do? Am I a coward! Do I lack gall? Is it "bestial oblivion?" or is it ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... There was not yet sufficient evidence of fraud in the hearings before the Commission to warrant aggressive action. It would be a pity to fire too soon, or to resign and lose an opportunity later. It would mean not only political oblivion, but also put him in a ridiculous light in the press, and suggest cowardice, etc. So he had gone away to attend to some matters at his office, and take an afternoon train back to Albany, with the conviction that "he must do nothing hurriedly, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... as would hinder the minority from deceiving and exploiting the majority? To disseminate knowledge? All this has been tried, and is being done with great fervor. All these imaginary methods of improvement represent the chief methods of self-oblivion and of diverting one's attention from the consciousness of inevitable perdition. The boundaries of States are changed, institutions are altered, knowledge is disseminated; but within other boundaries, with other organizations, ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitude: Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'd As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done: perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... seen the valley, or feeling the deadly chill of the ghostly fog. Nothing would shake his determined ignorance, and in spite of myself I was forced to admit that his denials came from no policy of concealment, but from blank oblivion. ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... with a sound of triumph, as in such a poem as The Charge of the Light Brigade or in such a glorious ballad as The Revenge. Neither of these poems is likely to perish until the glory of the nation perishes, and her deeds of a splendid chivalrous past sink into oblivion, which only shameful cowardice can bring upon her. But as a rule Tennyson's patriotism is not a contagious and inspiring patriotism. It is meditative, philosophic, self-complacent. It rejoices in the infallibility of the English judgment, ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... had in vain endeavoured to obtain a sick certificate for her daughter, that would have authorised her consigning her to the oblivion of her own apartment. The physicians whom she consulted all agreed, for once, in recommending a totally different system to be pursued; and her displeasure, in consequence, was violently excited against the medical tribe in general, and Dr. Redgill ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... not much believe it; but still the possibility of it lured her, like some dark gulf that promised her oblivion from this pain—pain which tortured one so impatient of distress, so ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the ground, and Howat stared, fascinated, at the man he had attempted to kill. The charcoal burners were stationary before the momentary abandon of Howat Penny's temper. "Right at me," the man articulated who had been so nearly shot into oblivion. "—saw the hammer fall." A tremendous desire to escape possessed Howat; a violent chill overtook him; his knees threatened the loss of all power to hold him up. He stepped backward, his gun stock trailing over the inequalities of the ground; ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... before he left, touch glasses in a health, promise to come again, whenever he wished—the house was open to him. Rouletabille knew it was open to anybody—anybody who had a tale to tell, something that would send some other person to prison or to death and oblivion. No guard at the entrance to check a visitor—men entered Gounsovski's house as the house of a friend, and he was always ready to ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... to go away it was my habit to mix in the demi-mondaine society of Bruges, to try and live a few hours in which I could forget—oh! don't think the worst! That sort of thing had no attraction for me. I didn't seek oblivion in that direction! I had never even kissed anyone in Bruges until I kissed you that first night we met at dinner—I was attracted to you from the very first; the Colonel was due back in a few days, and I suddenly felt mad, and kissed you. I suppose ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... left us? The old romance which had warmed his days for him, the thoughts of Katharine which had painted every hour, were now made to appear foolish and enfeebled. He rose, and looked into the river, whose swift race of dun-colored waters seemed the very spirit of futility and oblivion. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... certain clubs in the city where a man may purchase nightly oblivion for the modest sum of two or three annas; and hither come regularly, like homing pigeons at nightfall, the human flotsam and jetsam, which the tide of urban life now tosses into sight for a brief moment ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... him. While it followed its hypothesis to prove the criminality of the one it held, it would not look elsewhere; when it had condemned him, all would be finished; the Caffie affair would be buried, as Caffie himself was buried; silence and oblivion would give him security. The crime punished, the conscience of the public satisfied, it would ask for no more, not even to know if the debt was paid by the one who really owed it; it was paid, and that was sufficient. But he was not "any one else," and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... fire, as being often and unavoidably in her company revives my former passion for your Lowland Beauty; whereas, were I to live more retired from young ladies, I might in some measure alleviate my sorrow, by burying that chaste and troublesome passion in oblivion; and I am very well assured that this will be the only antidote ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... hired eavesdropper. Not long since there appeared in a Sunday paper a full list, with portraits and biographies, of all the ladies in New York who are habitual drunkards. From which it is clear that the law of libel has sunk into oblivion, and that the cowhide is no longer ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... circles, we go down to the bottom of society, what shall we say of that great multitude of men and women, crushed into poverty, helplessness and ignorance, groping as the blind grope in darkness; and who find in the dram-shop a momentary oblivion to their miseries? ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... on! My God! he's fainted! I must tie him on!' He heard a tearing sound, and something was wound round his wrists. Then his nerveless fingers relaxed their hold; and all passed into oblivion. ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... have never tramped under knapsack, blankets, and tent-cloth would say, 'That's nothing!' and our poor voyager, who really had made a record, would be consigned to oblivion. In all art, even that of writing facts, one must exaggerate a little in order to make the effect ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... her. That would be his revenge. Real forgetfulness, of course, was out of the question. How could he assume such an attitude? As he pondered the question he remembered that there were artificial aids to oblivion. Ruined men invariably took to drink. Why shouldn't he attempt to drown his sorrows? After all, might there not be real and actual relief in liquor? After consideration he decided ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... his protegee, who outlived her friend and critic but a few months. With the great and good about him, Landor sleeps well. His genius needs no eulogy: good wine needs no bush. Time, that hides the many in oblivion, can but add to the warmth and mellowness of his fame; and in the days to come no modern writer will be more faithfully studied or more largely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of January Selwyn had tried to sleep, but the furies of desire called to him in the dark. He got up and dressed. He did not know where he was going, but he knew that his steps would be guided to adventure, to oblivion. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... this Rope receive. The last, most welcome Present I can give. I'll never vex thee more. I'll cease to woe. And whether you condemned, freely go; Where dismal Shades and dark Oblivion dwell. ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... few great leaders whose lives and actions have so completely fallen into oblivion as those of the Earl of Peterborough. His career as a general was a brief one, extending only over little more than a year, and yet in that time he showed a genius for warfare which has never been surpassed, and ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... scholars indeed enjoy a posthumous fame,— their names are still honoured; their works are still read and studied by the learned,—but what countless multitudes are those who have sacrificed their all, and yet slumber in nameless graves, the ocean of oblivion having long since washed out the footprints they hoped to leave upon the shifting sands of Time! Of these we have no record; let us enumerate a few of the scholars of an elder age whose books proved fatal to them, and whose sorrows and early deaths were brought on by their ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... "what is more imperative than the duty of saving a great name from oblivion, of endowing the indigent aristocracy with a man of talent? Lucien, you enjoy the esteem of the press of which you were a distinguished ornament, and we will give you our support.—Finot, a paragraph in the 'latest ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... never-fading foliage nearly a hundred feet above the humbler growth of beeches, cast its shade to the side of the eminence of the block. Here the pointed extremity of the shadow was seen, stealing slowly towards the open grave,—an emblem of that oblivion in which its humble tenants were so ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... confessed that there was little in these compositions to set the world afire. They would only be counted remarkable as the work of a school-boy in his early teens, and were practice work—nothing more. They served their purpose, then sank into the oblivion which was their meet destiny. But to Jack Preston, Dick Ambler, Rob Stanard and Rob Sully, and one or two ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... this no. A war was on between this man and his counsel, and the wonder it occasioned was visible in every eye. Perhaps Mr. Moffat realised this; this was what he had dreaded, perhaps. At all events, he proceeded with his strange task, in apparent oblivion of everything but ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... was only rarely, at very distant intervals, that Chopin played in public; but what would have been for anyone else an almost certain cause of oblivion and obscurity was precisely what assured to him a fame above the caprices of fashion, and kept him from rivalries, jealousies, and injustice. Chopin, who has taken no part in the extreme movement which for several years has thrust one on ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... will tell you that in the world Monsieur Nicolas once bore the name of the Marquis de Montauran, and Monsieur Joseph that of Lecamus, Baron de Tresnes; but for us, as for the world, those names no longer exist. These gentlemen are without heirs; they only advance by a little the oblivion which awaits their names; they are simply Monsieur Nicolas and Monsieur Joseph, as you will be ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... her. The latter greeted her with quite a show of cordiality; but the orphan shrank back from the offered kiss, and merely touched the extended hand. She had not forgotten the taunts and unkindness of other days; and, though not vindictive, she could not feign oblivion of the past, nor assume a friendly manner foreign to her. She took her seat in the carriage, and found it rather difficult to withdraw her fascinated eyes from Pauline's lovely face. She knew what was expected of her, however; and said, as ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... more than Louis XIV. could have done: it has left in oblivion Agesilas, Attila, Titus, and Pulcherie; it preserved the memory of the triumphs only. The poet was accustomed to say with a smile, when he was reproached with his slowness and emptiness in conversation, "I am Peter Corneille all the same." The world has passed ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... destroy those that are most addicted to it; or the hangman, that breaks the necks of those whom he gets his living by, and whips those that find him employment, and brands his masters that set him on work. He pleads the Act of Oblivion for all the good deeds that are done him, and pardons himself for the evil returns he makes. He never looks backward (like a right statesman), and things that are past are all one with him as if they had never been; and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... age and hung there covered with dust and cobwebs. The broad white, yellow, and red ribbons streamed down the walls like separate colors of the rainbow with their gold-stamped letters proclaiming glories that had long since passed into oblivion. Those inscriptions and withered wreaths gave the room the appearance of ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... science, Owen, Huxley,—and at least in its application to man, Wallace himself,—are either opposed to it in great measure, or else give it but a qualified assent. Thus, it has been the fate of all theories of the development of living things to lapse into oblivion. Evolution itself, however, will stand the same."[9] We find in the "Transactions of the Victoria Institute," a still more decided repudiation of Darwinism on the part of Mr. Henslow. He there says: "I do not believe in Darwin's theory; and have ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... which is the sacred lily of the East must not be confounded with the mysterious plant mentioned by Ulysses, and of which Tennyson has sung—the plant of oblivion and sensuousness. That there is an element of enchantment about the lily we have seen is still believed in our own country, but the association of misfortune with it is not universal. On the contrary, in some parts the leaf of the ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... whom Godefroy and Jack Battle and I wandered in nomadic life over the northern wastes? Buried in oblivion black as night, but for the lurid memories flashed down to you of later generations. Where are the Puritan folk, with their cast-iron, narrow creeds damning all creation but themselves, with their foibles of snivelling to attest sanctity, ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... Discipline was rigidly maintained. From early morning, when the bell rang out at 5 o'clock, the hours of the day were mapped out for different kinds of work. The girls' schools were well cared for by Mrs. Williams—a lady whose literary gift has rescued from oblivion much of the life of those far-off days. A part of each day was devoted by the missionaries to their own acquisition of the Maori language, and to the translation of the Bible and Prayer Book. At this work William Williams ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... nature have, in all ages, been detected and exploded in their infancy? How many more have been celebrated for a time, and have afterwards sunk into neglect and oblivion? Where such reports, therefore, fly about, the solution of the phenomenon is obvious; and we judge in conformity to regular experience and observation, when we account for it by the known and natural principles of credulity and delusion. And shall we, rather than have a recourse ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... interruptions prevented the completion of my work at that time. More recently, after despairing of the hope that some more capable member of my old command, the Rockbridge Artillery, would not allow its history to pass into oblivion, I resumed the task, and now present this volume as the only published record of that company, celebrated as it was even in that matchless body of men, the Army ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... startled inquiry, and replied to it with a brief resume of his interview of the previous evening with Rockamore. When he added his suggestion that the matter of the way in which her father came to his death be buried in oblivion, and the public left to believe the first report, she was ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... worn-out body could no longer feel, her worn-out mind think, and kind sleep came to bring her oblivion, Psyche faced the horror for the sake of her father and of his people, that she knew she could not avoid. When morning came, her handmaids, white-faced and red-eyed, came to deck her in all the bridal magnificence ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... youth, running up to me and clutching my arm, "I cannot go into any Hole alone with myself. I should die—I should kill myself. I thought somebody was on board, and I hoped you were he, who would steer us to the fountain of oblivion." ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... in quick gasps as they fell, lifting a prayer in her heart for help. Then came the crash and the sharp pain, and with a quick conviction that all was over she dropped back unconscious on the sand, a blessed oblivion ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... past, which seemed almost to deny any recollection of it. She could do justice to the superiority of Lady Russell's motives in this, over those of her father and Elizabeth; she could honour all the better feelings of her calmness; but the general air of oblivion among them was highly important from whatever it sprung; and in the event of Admiral Croft's really taking Kellynch Hall, she rejoiced anew over the conviction which had always been most grateful to her, of the past being known to those three only among her connexions, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... collapsed into a chair and at his feet, forgotten now, fell the envelope which he had flaunted vainly before the eyes of the transgressors. They had escaped, not scourged or harrowed according to their deserts, but smiling like sleepy children, through the door of unconsciousness and oblivion. Gropingly his fingers went again into his pocket and came out holding the envelope out of which he had taken the death tablets. They, too, had betrayed him. Instead of torture they had brought the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Leo's remote ancestor Kallikrates, gazed upon its devilish face—and there I have no doubt it will still stand when as many centuries as are numbered between her day and our own are added to the year that bore us to oblivion. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... descended on Nigel's spirit, and he lay for some time in peaceful oblivion, when a rattling crash awoke him. Sitting up he listened, and came to the conclusion that the professor had upset some piece of furniture, for he could hear him distinctly moving about in a stealthy manner, as if on tip-toe, giving vent to a grumble of dissatisfaction ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... all the poetry was ours, and made By some who climbed the mountain from our midst. We loved it then, we sang it in our streets. O, it grows obsolete! Be you as they: Our heroes die and drop away from us; Oblivion folds them 'neath her dusky wing, Fair copies wasted to the hungering world. Save them. We fall so low for lack of them, That many of us think scorn of honest trade, And take no pride in our own shops; who care Only to quit a calling, will not make The ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... side of the family,—mother, daughter, granddaughter, that was the fixed stem continuing with certainty. Father, son, grandson, were only the leaves, which existed only until the autumnal wind of death tore them away, to hurl them into the abyss of oblivion. In that epoch no one said, 'I am the son of such a father and the grandson of such a grandfather,' but 'I am the son of such a mother and the grandson of such a grandmother.' The inheritance went not ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... sigh of relief so heartfelt and unanimous that it could be heard across the street—the committee leaped at the suggestion. The proper person was induced without difficulty to put his signature to the required paper, and Cunningham found himself transferred to irregular oblivion. Incidentally he found himself commanding few less than a hundred men, so many of whose first names were Mahommed or Mohammed that the muster-roll looked like a list ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... he would hear them talking; talking; maddened, sweating, seeking oblivion in drink, he would lie there and hear the voices going on and on. And day after day Leonora would come to him and would announce the results ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... was then possible to leave behind us something more explicit than these severe, monotonous and lying epitaphs; and the thing left, the memory of a painted picture and what we call the immortality of a name, was hardly more desirable than mere oblivion. Even David Hume, as he lay composed beneath that "circular idea," was fainter than a dream; and when the housemaid, broom in hand, smiled and beckoned from the open window, the fame of that bewigged philosopher melted like a raindrop in ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only as a tiny green flake afloat in the liquid eternity of day. Then slowly, caressingly, irresistibly, the witchery of the Infinite grows upon you: out of Time and Space you begin to dream with open eyes,—to drift into delicious oblivion of facts,—to forget the past, the present, the substantial,—to comprehend nothing but the existence of that infinite Blue Ghost as something into which you would wish to melt utterly ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... a young lady's presence at a very mediocre performance were prevented from dropping into the oblivion which their intrinsic insignificance would naturally have involved—why they were remembered and individualized by herself and others through after years—was simply that she unknowingly stood, as it were, upon the extreme posterior edge of a tract in her life, in which the ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... fierce pursuing Matabele; again heard their cruel shouts and the answering crack of the rifles; again, amidst the din and the gathering darkness, distinguished the gentle, foreign voice of Meyer speaking his words of sarcastic greeting. Next oblivion fell upon her, and after it a dim memory of being helped up the hill with the sun pouring on her back and assisted to climb the steep steps of the wall by means of a rope placed around her. Then ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... decline of might and dignity into decrepitude and oblivion described in that luminous passage is less pathetic than the conversion of the glorious Bellerophon, with her untarnished traditions of historic victories, into a hulk for the punishment of rascals, and the changing of her unsullied name ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... civil life had been such as could have been approved of, former transactions might have been buried in oblivion. But when I see a man endeavouring to injure the reputation of those, whose principles and conduct, from the beginning of the contest, have been uniformly exerted to obtain those ends intended by the revolution; and when he ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... Could not all Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall! Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart An hour's importance to the poor man's heart; 240 Thither no more the peasant shall repair To sweet oblivion of his daily care; No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale, No more the wood-man's ballad shall prevail; No more the smith his dusky brown shall clear, 245 Relax his pond'rous strength, and lean to hear; The host himself no longer shall be found Careful to see the mantling bliss go round; Nor ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the tragedy of his wild love and frail intellect, in the folly that stretched the corners of his 'peculiar grin' and shone in his diamonds and was emblazoned upon his tumbril, is more suggestive than some sages. He was so fantastic an animal that Oblivion were indeed amiss. If no more, he was a great Fool. In any case, it would be fun to ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... most of me never shall perish; I shall be free from Oblivion's curse; Mine is a name that the future will cherish— I shall be known by ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... normal temperature—say about noon. He admires the President greatly—sincerely. Force meets force, you see. With the President behind me I could really enjoy Cowdray centuries after X had danced himself into oblivion. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... family face; Flesh perishes, I live on, Projecting trait and trace Through time to times anon, And leaping from place to place Over oblivion. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... as love from the depth of a spirit that sees and lives, From the soul of a seer and a singer, wherein as a scroll unfurled Lies open the scripture of light and of darkness, the word of the world, So, shapeless and measureless, lurid as anguish and haggard as crime, Pale as the front of oblivion and dark as the heart of time, The wild wan heaven at its height was assailed and subdued and made More fair than the skies that know not of storm and endure not shade. The grim sea-swell, grey, sleepless, and ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... a shameless prodigality that would scandalize even a French lyric. This cheap display of school-boy erudition, however it may have appalled their own age, has been a principal cause of their comparative oblivion with posterity. How far superior is one touch of nature, as the "Finojosa" or "Querella de Amor," for example, of the marquis of Santillana, to all this ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... massacres of September, are alone secluded from the eye. The vault in which they repose is closed with a screen of freestone, as if relating to crimes unfit to be thought of even in the proper abode of death; and which France would willingly hide in oblivion. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... pride, some pleasure. There is only one thing which causes infinite bliss and oblivion of time, and this one thing, unless bound with chains, ...
— The Damsel and the Sage - A Woman's Whimsies • Elinor Glyn
... acquitted him expressly of cowardice and treachery, he was, without all doubt, a proper object for royal clemency; and so impartial posterity will judge him, after all those dishonourable motives of faction and of fear, by which his fate was influenced, shall be lost in oblivion, or remembered with disdain. The people of Great Britain, naturally fierce, impatient, and clamorous, have been too much indulged, upon every petty miscarriage, with trials, courts-martial, and dismissions, which tend ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... pouch on side; His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes, And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness, and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... they successively presented the purple: by each senator the deadly garment was repulsed: the contest lasted three days; and we may learn from the historian Nicetas, one of the members of the assembly, that fear and weaknesses were the guardians of their loyalty. A phantom, who vanished in oblivion, was forcibly proclaimed by the crowd: [75] but the author of the tumult, and the leader of the war, was a prince of the house of Ducas; and his common appellation of Alexius must be discriminated by the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... save only themselves seemed to have been frozen into oblivion. There was no sound, save the monotonous swish, swish of their own snowshoes, to disturb the silence—a silence otherwise as absolute and vast as the ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... old people should be better cared for, simply because of their age. Great age is a sufficient argument of itself, I think, for throwing a veil of oblivion over the past, and extending charity with a liberal, pitying hand, because of present distress, and irremediable infirmities. Whatever may be the truth with regard to paupers and workhouses in general, there ought to be a distinct refuge for the aged, which should be attractive—not repulsive, ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... good taste, and appeared, from the very first introduction, perfectly at his ease. In his company one would feel astonished at all that he had suffered, for he supported his fate with a courage approaching to oblivion; and there was in his conversation a facility truly admirable when he spoke of his own reverses; but less admirable, it must be confessed, when it extended ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... putrid cabbage when it's hot? Or, with the game all square and one to play, To be defeated by a stymie? Nay, I know of something worse—I'll tell you what. It is to have your rotten childish rhymes (Rotten as these) dragged from oblivion's shroud Where, with the silly act that gave them birth, They lay as lie the dead in sacred earth, And see them, twice in one week, boomed aloud To tickle penny readers ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... of colouring of those delicate pavements and tesserae with which these wonderful people loved to adorn their habitations. Since this strange discovery the diligent research of one man has rescued from oblivion, and the liberality of another now protects from further injury, one of the best specimens of a Roman country house to be found in England. Far away from the haunts of men, in the depths of the Chedworth woods, where no sound save the ripple of the Coln ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... quite nicely. With telephones and money and London at our backs, you will be astonished at what a nice little dejeuner we shall have ready for you." Hadassah laughed. "Money has its uses, my dear, in spite of all your Mike's oblivion of the fact." ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... her brothers and was engaged in deadly combat with the third (named Triamond), she appeared in the lists in her chariot drawn by two lions, and brought with her a cup of nepenthe, which had the power of converting hate to love, of producing oblivion of sorrow, and of inspiring the mind with celestial joy. Cambina touched the combatants with her wand and paralyzed them, then giving them the cup to drink, dissolved their animosity, assuaged their pains, and filled them with gladness. The end was that Camballo made ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... informed of it by certain parties, I sufficiently shewed my displeasure that such paradoxes should be published; but as the remedy was too late, I thought that the evil, which could not now be corrected, should rather be buried in oblivion than made a ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... he said: O beauty, who remembers his former birth? For like every other man, and like my ancestor the sun, I have risen up into light out of the sea of dark oblivion, into which I must sink again at last. And then she looked at him with a deep sigh. And she said: Alas! This is a punishment indeed, and worse by far than all the rest, if after having endured so long the state of a stone upon a wall, I am again become a woman, ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... God's dominion; 'Twas His beloved child, His own first-born; And He was aged ere the thought of morn Shook the sheer steeps of black Oblivion. Then all the works of darkness being done Through countless aeons hopelessly forlorn, Out to the very utmost verge and bourn, God at the last, reluctant, made the sun. He loved His darkness still, for it was old: He grieved to see His eldest child take ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... his passion filled him, welled up to his very lips so violent, so strong, that it burst its feeble limits and broke out in one resistless word, "Honor" the very sound of his own voice startled Guy, he could have rushed from the spot into oblivion forever, had not the still reclining figure grown suddenly animate, like a spark of electric fluid the word vibrated through her whole frame, she started suddenly up with an expression of blank dismay on ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... that death. A man so important in his position as to have been called the favorite of two kings,—sent by one and received by the other as a gift of surpassing value, and the donation thought worthy of a special record, would hardly have passed into oblivion, when his labor was finished, without the memento of a single line, unless his death had taken place in such a way as to render a public account of it improper. And this is supposed to have been the fact. It had become the legend of the new Mysteries, and, like those of ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... the utter blankness of oblivion he first dreamed that he was alternately swimming through a rough sea and rocking in a wave-tossed boat—— A gush of water dashed into his face—then the sea appeared to solidify into dry sand. He became conscious that Carmena was violently rolling him from side to side ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... contests and glorious triumphs, which must be passed by, for it will be the Lord's will to have them published some day by him who may write the general history of these islands, so that so heroic exploits may not remain buried in the abyss of oblivion. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... fine and lively Descriptions of the Nar, Clitumnus, Mincio, and Albula, but the worst of it is, he winds us so long, in and out, between these Rivers, that he loses himself in their Maeanders, and brings us, at last, to a strange Stream indeed, which is 'immortaliz'd in Song,' and yet 'lost In Oblivion.' ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... my mouth to speak, but Mull went on in oblivion of me, speaking out of the cavern of his hands. "I don't mind telling you, Father, because it's really more defending the poor Duke than giving him away. Didn't you ever hear of the time when he very nearly ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... flash that ends thy pain Respite and oblivion blest Come to greet thee. I in vain Fall: I rise to fall again: Thou hast fallen to thy rest— And thy fall ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... expression saddened his eyes again. To these children, brought up animal-like in the midst of misery and hate, their world revolved round their stomachs, too often empty. But this new trouble—the terror of Flea's going with Lem—had made a man of Flukey, and bread and molasses sank into oblivion. He was ready to shield her from the thief with ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... Louis no wickeder than this or the other private Donothing and Eatall; such as we often enough see, under the name of Man, and even Man of Pleasure, cumbering God's diligent Creation, for a time? Say, wretcheder! His Life-solecism was seen and felt of a whole scandalised world; him endless Oblivion cannot engulf, and swallow to endless depths,—not yet for a ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... hollows of old England the pulse beats faster than of yore, and we shall only just be in time to rescue from oblivion and the house-breaker some of our heritage. Old city walls that have defied the attacks of time and of Cromwell's Ironsides are often in danger from the wiseacres who preside on borough corporations. Town halls picturesque and beautiful in their old age have to make way for the creations of ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield |
