"Solitary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and English commerce. To the great body of the Benedictines and the Cluniacs were added in the middle of the twelfth century the Cistercians, who founded their houses among the desolate moorlands of Yorkshire in solitary places which had known no inhabitants since the Conqueror's ravages, or among the swamps of Lincolnshire. A hundred and fifteen monasteries were built during the nineteen years of Stephen's reign, more than had been founded in the whole previous century; a hundred and thirteen were added to these ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... for the fact that the room thus enclosed between four immensely thick walls should have been devoted, when the Conciergerie was reconstituted, to this terrible and funereal service. Escape is impossible. The passage, leading to the cells for solitary confinement and to the women's quarters, faces the stove where gendarmes and warders are always collected together. The air-hole, the only outlet to the open air, is nine feet above the floor, and looks out on the first ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... off the Cape! we are off the Cape!" he exclaimed; "it is a sight worth seeing." I hurried on deck, and thence I beheld rising not a mile from us, in all its solitary grandeur, that far-famed promontory Cape Horn,—a lofty pyramid frowning bold defiance towards the storm-tossed confines of those two mighty oceans which circle the earth. Dark clouds rested on its summit, foam-crested waves with ceaseless roar ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... success, were now, for the first time, appreciated. The responsibility of a ruler under so appalling a destiny now descended with a weight that could never become greater upon the shoulders of that lonely man in the White House. A solitary man, indeed, he was, in a solitude impressive and painful to contemplate. Having none of those unofficial counselors, those favorites, those privy confidants and friends, from whom men in chief authority ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... he was finished with, Courtier stood back against a wall and watched. Thus isolated, he was like a solitary cuckoo contemplating the gyrations of a flock of rooks. Their motions seemed a little meaningless to one so far removed from all the fetishes and shibboleths of Westminster. He heard them discussing Miltoun's speech, the real significance of which apparently ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... are!" he chirruped. He reached up to his adviser's blue and crimson neck-scarf, and laid his finger and thumb upon a large, solitary pear-shaped pearl. "You're like me; you believe in ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... persuaded for once, and they went into the house, seating themselves at the piano in the solitary music-room, enjoying the hour after their own fashion, with no apparent perception of the shadows which lay upon the hearts of the husband and wife in that ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... thought I could study natural history, which brought me here; and that, some time or other, some vessel would call and take me away. Had you, Walter and Emily, not come, however, I rather think my heart would have failed me even at the last moment, and I could scarcely have made up my mind to quit my solitary home and the style of life to which I have ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... on a closely fitting black jersey, trousers held up by a belt, and rubber-soled tennis sneakers. This costume was not accidental. It had been donned that morning with an eye to possibilities and in accordance with previous solitary rehearsals. Thus far, events could not have suited him better if he had ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... solitary campaigns when her sixth child was but a few weeks old, and God most wonderfully owned her labours. At one place she saw one hundred grown-up people and two hundred children come to her penitent-form in six days. But it was a ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... you to mean that the whole of modern society is based upon cooperative effort. If only more people would realise that, Miss Vinrace, there would be fewer of your old widows in solitary lodgings!" ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... because they wish your assistance to confer on them power, but will they regard you when your exertions can neither aid nor defeat their designs?—surely not—such has been the conduct of all factions.—It will be theirs should they prevail—The world has not furnished one solitary exception, nor can you expect one in this case. They seek their own good, and not the good of others, if inspiration is to ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... me to dwell upon my solitary voyage. I steered as well as I could for the Canaries, but was picked up upon the fifth day by the British and African Steam Navigation Company's boat Monrovia. Let me take this opportunity of tendering my sincerest thanks to Captain Stornoway and ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... new thing in Egypt, and flourished there only during the short period of Asiatic influence. The Egyptian cared comparatively little for history, and made use of papyrus when he wished to record it. Unfortunately for us the annals of Thothmes III. remain the solitary monument of ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... found in complete conjunction. The trader sought to exploit the Indian for his own advantage, selling him whisky, trinkets, and firearms in return for rich furs and costly peltries; yet he was often a hunter himself and collected great stores of peltries as the result of his solitary and protracted hunting-expeditions. The rancher and the herder sought to exploit the natural vegetation of marsh and upland, the cane-brakes and pea-vines; yet the constantly recurring need for fresh pasturage made him a pioneer also, drove him ever nearer to ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... under the guidance of an English buccaneer, who had been a prisoner at Porto Bello but a little while before. When they were within a mile or two of the town, they sent this Englishmen with three or four companions to take a solitary sentry posted at the city outskirts. If they could not take him, they were to kill him, but without giving the alarm to the inhabitants. By creeping quietly behind him, the party took the sentry, "with such cunning that he had no time ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... to the extent of not revealing anything to the other passengers, for the privilege of being kept in the prison hold rather than in solitary confinement. Here he would be under the vigilant eye of a guard, with possibly less chance of effecting an escape in some way, but he felt a great desire to be near the girl Lenore, and to know that she was ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... proud, and whose memory will ever be dear to me, was more distressed by the arrest of his nephew and Moreau than by his own. His nephew was, however, liberated after a few hours. M. Carbonnet's papers were sealed up, and he was placed in solitary confinement ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Bones, the solitary night-watchman of the town. One of the duties of Mr. Bones is to light the street-lamps. It is an operation which does not require any very extraordinary effort of the intellect; but during a part of the summer the ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... his former involuntary, half-melancholy expression. "I am an only child. In my house it is solitary and silent. My grandfather alone is left alive. He is an active, strong man, but very grave. He instructed me in mathematics, which he thoroughly understands. The preacher taught me Latin, Greek, and history: two persons, ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... needless for us to say that this woman and girl who lived so solitary, were victims of the cupidity of the notary? We will conduct the reader into ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... approaching the island of Zea, he expressed a wish to be put on shore. Accordingly, having taken leave of his companions, he was landed upon this small island, with two Albanians, a Tartar, and one English servant; and in one of his manuscripts he has himself described the proud, solitary feeling with which he stood to see the ship sail swiftly away—leaving him there, in a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... "Above his chambers, on the upper floor, Nearest the roof, there was an ancient hall: Thither, in solitary mood, (for sore Pastime and company, the stripling gall,) He aye betakes himself; while evermore Sad thoughts some newer cause of grief recall. He here (who would believe the story?) found A remedy ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... expression of her sympathy, when I assure them that the general clamor of violent grief was gradually diminished, from admiration, until it became ultimately hushed, and no voice was heard but her own—wailing in sorrowful but solitary beauty. This pause, it is true, was never long, for however great the admiration might be which she excited, the hearts of those who heard her soon melted, and even strangers were often forced to confess her influence by the tears which she caused ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... a solitary habit like eagles, but are of a social nature, like men, a characteristic they share with daws, but not for the same reason, for bees live in colonies, the better to work and build, while daws congregate for gossip. Thus the life of a bee is one of intelligence and art, for ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... oak-tree in the grounds of Saint Germain. The Marquis de Wringhen, seeing them in the moonlight, said to the King, who was walking with him, "Let us turn aside, Sire, in this direction; yonder there are three solitary nymphs, who seem waiting for fairies or lovers." Then they noiselessly approached the tree that I have mentioned, and lost not a word of all the talk in which ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... office of the Snake, courteously inquiring for Mr. Snawley-Grubbs. Apparently he had come on horseback, for he held a riding-whip in his hand,—the very whip Errington had left with him the previous day. The inky, dirty, towzle-headed boy who presided in solitary grandeur over the Snake's dingy premises, stared at him inquiringly,—visitors of his distinguished appearance and manner being rather uncommon. Those who usually had business with the great Grubbs were of a different type altogether,—some of them ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... hearth, which ought to have made the room cheerful. Cousin Holman and Phillis were sitting at the little round table before the fire, working away in silence. The minister had his books out on the dresser, seemingly deep in study, by the light of his solitary candle; perhaps the fear of disturbing him made the unusual stillness of the room. But a welcome was ready for me from all; not noisy, not demonstrative—that it never was; my damp wrappers were taken off; the next ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... very silent and solitary. It is true they could hear the moaning of the wind upon the tops of the trees, but there was no sound of life, and no motion but that of the fine flakes descending through the air in a gentle shower. The whole ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... the gloom of the large kitchen; and every evening after tea the same picture might have been seen—the old man dozing in the chimney-corner, and the two young creatures at the little table with books and slates, the unsteady light of the solitary candle flickering on their earnest faces. Teacher and taught! Very often in the full after years they looked back upon it, and talked of it with smiles which were not far off from tears. It is not too much to say that the companionship of Walter ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... enough, and he gets drunkards to band together in clubs; and worldly people band together in clubs, and back one another up and concentrate their forces. All who see the curse and misery of the drink should sign, and not stand apart as solitary abstainers; they won't do the same good; it is by uniting together that the great work is done by God's blessing. A body of Christian abstainers united in the same work, and bound by the same pledge, attract others, ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... There was an absolute sense of rest about her which was refreshing to those who really knew her well. But Maggie hated it. She wanted to leave her; she wanted to go and talk to Merry, who was playing a solitary game of patience in a distant part of the drawing-room; she wanted to do anything rather than ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... folded arms, his eyes fixed on the back wall of mountains across the valley. He is thinking not of the future of the little home in Surrey that awaits him, but of the twenty black years behind him, as blank and empty as the years of a prisoner spent in solitary confinement. Sometimes, with a curious, startled gaze, he turns his eyes toward his daughter, seated in the circle with the ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... Monk, in his unbounded rage, was for saying that a marriage celebrated at ten o'clock at night by the light of a solitary tallow candle, borrowed from the vestry, could not hold good. Re-assured upon this point, he strove to devise other means to part them. Foiled again, he laid the case before the Bishop of Worcester, and begged his lordship ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... he ended, 'is suicide. The egoist withers like a solitary barren tree; but pride, ambition, as the active effort after perfection, is the source of all that is great.... Yes! a man must prune away the stubborn egoism of his personality to give it the ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... possessed of unusual brain vigor; nor did he know that the persons who were given to probing the depths and to thinking ultimate thoughts were not to be found in the drawing rooms of the world's Morses; nor did he dream that such persons were as lonely eagles sailing solitary in the azure sky far above the earth and its ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... hopes on a solitary drive with his father back in the pony carriage, but he found himself told off to take that home, and had to content himself with May as a companion. Nor was his sister's mode of receiving the umbrella plan reassuring. She had smiled too often with her stepmother over ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... history of the Great Britain is a history of present king of Great Britain repeated injuries and is a history of unremitting usurpations, all having injuries and usurpations in direct object among which appears no the establishment of an solitary fact to contradict the absolute tyranny over these uniform tenor of the rest, but states. To prove this let facts all have in direct object the be submitted to a candid establishment of an absolute world. tyranny over these states. To prove this let facts be submitted ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... its hatch for the passage of food, was closed and silent; and Ralph felt a curious quickening of his heart as he thought of the human life passed in the little houses, each with its tiny garden, its workshop, its two rooms, and its paved ambulatory, in which each solitary lived. How strangely apart this place was from the buzz of business from which he had come! And yet he knew very well that the whole was as good ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... younger generation spend the whole of Sunday lying in the street tossing coins or fighting dogs, go regularly to the gin palace, where they sit with their sweethearts until late at night, when they take walks in solitary couples. In an ale-house which the commissioner visited, there sat forty to fifty young people of both sexes, nearly all under seventeen years of age, and each lad beside his lass. Here and there cards were played, at other places dancing was going on, and everywhere drinking. Among ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... Demonax is 'the best of all philosophers'; but then he admired him just because he was so little of a philosopher and so much a man of ordinary common sense. And Epicurus is 'the thinker who had grasped the nature of things and been in solitary possession of truth'; but then that is in the Alexander, and any stick was good enough to beat that dog with. The fact is, Lucian was much too well satisfied with his own judgement to think that he could possibly require guidance, and the commonplace test of results was enough to assure ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... superannuated and solitary Cossack: twenty years ago his wife had gone over to the Orthodox Church and run away from him and married a Russian sergeant-major, and he had no children. He was not bragging when he spoke of himself as having been the boldest dare-devil in the village when he was young. ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... felling timber; for even if they had saved any tools, these would soon have been worn out, and they could get no more until the art of metallurgy had been again revived. Faction and war would be extinguished among them, for being solitary they would incline to be friendly; and having abundance of pasture and plenty of milk and flesh, they would have nothing to quarrel about. We may assume that they had also dwellings, clothes, pottery, for the weaving and plastic arts do not require the use of metals. ...
— Laws • Plato
... the motive of this antipathy, from whence came this solitary enmity, why it was personal and of ancient date; lastly, in what rivalry it ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... shields!—Haply they think me old; but they shall find, alone and childless as I am, the blood of Hereward is in the veins of Cedric.—Ah, Wilfred, Wilfred!" he exclaimed in a lower tone, "couldst thou have ruled thine unreasonable passion, thy father had not been left in his age like the solitary oak that throws out its shattered and unprotected branches against the full sweep of the tempest!" The reflection seemed to conjure into sadness his irritated feelings. Replacing his javelin, he resumed his seat, bent his looks ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... always. She sighed as she remembered how lonely she had been all her life. Except Alden, there had never been anyone to whom she could talk freely. Even at school, the other children had, by common consent, avoided the solitary, silent child who sat apart, always, in brown gingham or brown alpaca, and taking refuge in the fierce pride that often shields an ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... kind of pressure—that represented by authority—is not even to be thought of; because the superior represents a clan, a class, an exceedingly multiple power of some description; and no solitary individual, in the present order of things, can strive against a combination. To resist injustice he must find ample support, in [392] which case his resistance does ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... chattering's sake, and also that he had not a very highly cultivated mind of his own to converse with, even if the most highly cultivated intellect is ever a reliable resource against the terrors of solitary confinement. ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... whom he possessed reported of Mr. Rayburn (not unkindly) that he was a reserved and solitary man. He might have been more accurately described as a widower devoted to his only surviving child. Although he was not more than forty years of age, the one pleasure which made life enjoyable to Lucy's father was offered ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... not the shining spring nor the purple moss, nor the ghastly white bones—all that the buzzards had left of the dead—nor anything, save a solitary Indian standing erect in ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... the hounds on his own trail, while the feller Harker carries on the good work of squeezing the Swedes. That's how I see it. And I guess I'm right. Remember I had a year of hell up there to think in, and when I finally got clear away I had two months' solitary chasing of those woods to think in, and then, when I made the coast, I had the trip down with the folks on the boat to listen to. He's scared for his life, and of anything you hope to hand him. But he's more scared for the purpose that made him set ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the base of this talus, with the nearest opposite land—bold, bare and undulating atop—some six or eight miles distant; and he will have no very inadequate idea of the peculiar and striking scenery through which, this evening, our homeward route lay. I have scarce ever walked over a more solitary tract. The sea shuts it in on the one hand, and the rampart of rocks on the other; there occurs along its entire length no other human dwelling than a lonely summer shieling; for full one-half the way we saw no trace of man; and the wildness of the few cattle which we occasionally ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... lamps; in front rose the hill clothed with forests; and frowning down upon the rider, the huge shadow of the dismal dungeon crouched like a stealthy beast ready to spring upon him. Dark as the deeds of its inmates, the mass of stone blotted the sky, save in one corner, where a solitary light shone through iron lattice work. Was it a beacon of hope, or did the rays fall on features cold under the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... be a more miserable torture than to be solitary forever," said he. "Think of having a single companion in eternity, and instead of finding any consolation, or at all events variety of torture, to see your own weary, weary sin repeated in ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him and his miraculous powers of similarly pacifying such wild animals as bears and wolves, while inexpressibly marvellous, is no more wonderful, if, in fact, as wondrous as his power to attract to him, even from a great distance, creatures naturally solitary, or timorous." ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... and ladders. The hen-house had to be inspected, for Eleanor was fumigating against the pip, brought into the Santa Lucia by an importation of fancy Eastern chickens. To-morrow's menu of the housekeeper was to be looked after. The things kept her busy until her solitary Sunday evening supper. ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... flattening our noses against the icy panes; but in spite of our efforts we could only discern dimly the shape of the umbrella rising like a miniature black mountain out of the white blur of the fog. The long empty street with the wind-drifts of dead leaves, the pale glimmer of the solitary light at the far corner, the steady splash! splash! of the rain as it fell on the brick pavement, the bitter draught that blew in over the shivering geranium upon the sill—all these brought a lump to my throat, and I turned back ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... solitary thing about the work on the Mississippi except that it is being carried on under the annual appropriation system. If we had that system to hamper us, the Panama Canal would not be completed on ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... should be found out, Turner puts a dim third between; then below, two fat colliers, leaning away from each other, and two thinner colliers, leaning towards each other; and now at last, having doubled everything all round the beach, he gives one strong single stroke to gather all together, places his solitary central white figure, and ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... interesting to witness the effect of this provision on the convicts, stimulating as it did their hope, and leading them to do the best they could to obtain this much coveted boon. The case of one will illustrate this feeling. He had been in the solitary, but did not seem to mind his sufferings there in the least. His great anxiety was whether he should lose his commutation. He suffered no little in mind in this respect. Indeed, every day gave us a clear exhibition of the influence this system had over ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... every belonging. I was denied paper, pencil and reading material. Solitary confinement in Germany is carried out in strict accordance with the interpretation of the term. One is left alone with one's thoughts. At intervals of ten minutes the gaoler opens the peep-hole and peers ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... sufficient to take them with a net, to wash them well in warm water, to put them in alcohol with the precautions that we shall point out, and to prepare a note which indicates the latitude of the place where they are taken, if they live solitary or in society, if they are phosphorescent, if they inhabit a certain depth or the surface of the sea. The colors of gelatinous animals not keeping well in liquor, it is very important to ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... having thus stirred her feelings in the St. Erme direction, and he left them to take their chance for the rest of the day. She took a solitary walk; on her return saw a hat in the hall, and asking whether Mr. Harding was there, was told no, but that Mr. Gardner was with Captain Martindale. And after long waiting till Arthur should come to dinner, he only put in his head, saying, 'Oh, Theodora, are you waiting? ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the New Testament ideal, there are no unattached Christians. The apostles never conceive of religion as merely a private matter between the soul and God. All true religion, as John Wesley used to say, is not solitary but social. Its starting-point is the individual, but its goal is a kingdom. Christ came to save men and women in order that through them He might build up a redeemed society in which the will of God should ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... Charles retired to his castle of La Riviere, between Pontarlier and Joux, and shut himself up there for more than six weeks, without, however, giving up the attempt to collect soldiers. "Howbeit," says Commynes, "he made but little of it; he kept himself quite solitary, and he seemed to do it from sheer obstinacy more than anything else. His natural heat was so great that he used to drink no wine, generally took barley-water in the morning and ate preserved rose-leaves to keep himself cool; but sorrow changed his complexion ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the soft clay! In that prosaic task where is the glow Of genius, as in great Lorenzo's day, When, solitary in his studio, Buonarotti, in his "terrible way," Smote swift and hard ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... foreign village, I can at least summon sufficient of my ancient regality of spirit not to sink beneath the reverse. If I am inclined to be melancholy, why, I extinguish my fire, and imagine I have demolished a duchess. I steal up to my solitary chamber, to renew again, in my sleep, the phantoms of my youth; to carouse with princes; to legislate for nobles; and to wake in the morning (here Russelton's countenance and manner suddenly changed to an affectation of methodistical gravity,) and thank Heaven that ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... did not like his solitary life. How happy he would have been if they could all have remained here; if the guano could have been brought without the crew of the schooner knowing that there were people in the caves; if the negroes could have carried the bags of gold; if every night, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... whom he had gratefully come to know in after days, Carlyle did not forgive the publication of "Man's Place in Nature." Years after, near the end of his life, my father saw him walking slowly and alone down the opposite side of the street, and touched by his solitary appearance, crossed over and spoke to him. The old man looked at him, and merely remarking, "You're Huxley, aren't you? the man that says we are all descended from ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... imagine what's said about me in town escapes me ... I just have to notice the way the women look at me the few times I go in there. And I know also what happened to you before you left for Madrid. We find out everything here, Rafaelito. The gossip of these people carries—it reaches even this solitary spot. I know perfectly well how your mother hates me, and I've even heard about the squabbles you've had at home over coming here. Well, we must put a stop to all that! I am going to ask you not to visit me ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... it takes thought its sympathies are more generous than those of age, because the sorrows it sees are so much greater than any it has known, ever realized in itself or even conceived. So was it now with La Mothe. The pathetic, solitary figure, feeble almost to helplessness, diseased, shrunken, dying, Commines had said, yet with a heart warm in friendliness and a thought for France alone, thrilled him to the very depths. And the dull eyes, watching him from under the heavy lids with an ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... know who this man is who fares through the desert in solitary thought, and to whom horror has shown the way to peace. He looks past me! How could ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... not in itself a circumstance as strikingly characteristic as any which the most minute chronicler, O'Meara, Mrs. Thrale, or Boswell himself, ever recorded concerning their heroes. The celebrated Puritan leader is an almost solitary instance of a great man who neither sought nor shunned greatness, who found glory only because glory lay in the plain path of duty. During more than forty years he was known to his country neighbours as a gentleman of cultivated mind, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gentlefolks; not young; solitary, sensitive, and although they did not know it, proud. They both belonged to what is called the Middle Class, and there was this further resemblance between them that they each descended from families which had been more than ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... these two men the Anti-Corn Law League commenced its great agitation, its object being 'to convince the manufacturer that the Corn Laws were interfering with the growth of trade, to persuade the people that they were raising the price of food, to teach the agriculturist that they had not even the solitary merit of securing a fixed price for corn'. The country was deluged with pamphlets, backed up by constant public meetings; and these efforts, aided by unfavourable seasons, convinced many of the errors of protection. In 1840 the League spent L5,700 in distributing ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... somewhat affected, and, had she been of a softer moral and intellectual fibre, would have been still more so, by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking to and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hester,—if altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to be resisted,—she felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... slept the larger part of the day, and amused himself at solitary billiards until dinner, came out on the terrace to smoke his after-dinner cigar. He watched the sun as, like a ball of rusted brass, it slid down behind the hills, leaving the glowing embers of a smoldering day on the hilltops. The vermilion deepened into charred umber, and soon ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... away quickly, the boys amusing themselves by exploring their little island, fishing from the bank, and loafing in the shade of the solitary palm, at whose base was supposed to lie the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... his preceptor the boon that he would never swerve or fall away from righteousness. Dismissed by his preceptor he left his abode and practised the most severe austerities. Devasarman also, of severe penances, with his spouse, began from that day to live in those solitary woods, perfectly fearless of him who had ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of blunders: it is, from beginning to end, a piece of deliberate cruelty, and crafty injustice. If the rich composed the whole population of this country, not a single comfort of one single man would be affected by it. It is directed exclusively, and without the exception of a solitary instance, against the amusements and recreations of the poor. This was the bait held out by the Hon. Baronet to a body of men, who cannot be supposed to have any very strong sympathies in common with the poor, because they cannot understand their sufferings or their struggles. This is the bait, ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... hair continually, a yellow dwarf of a woman, who stands on tiptoe to arrange the hatchet knives, and takes a flying leap to look into the water-jug. The beds in the adjoining rooms are of the liveliest kind. There is not a solitary scrap of looking-glass in the house, and the washing apparatus is identical with the cooking utensils. But the yellow dwarf sets on the table a good flask of excellent wine, holding a quart at least; and produces, among half- a-dozen other ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... them for us to whip in the tired condition of ourselves and horses," said our hero. Then he posted his men along the top of the ridge, with instructions to show themselves at a signal from him, and descended at once, solitary and alone, to the encampment of hostiles. Gliding rapidly up to the chief, Will addressed him in his own dialect ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... chorus—foolish enough; but if I go out of the door to the hills again, refreshed for them and lifted up to them, with the strength of the ages in my limbs, great voices all around me, flocking my solitary walk—who shall gainsay me? ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... ago, I chanced to be riding through a wood somewhere betwixt Worcester and Warwick. A band of lawless fellows coming by, I and my steed drew off the path, taking cover in a thicket. But a solitary horseman, riding from Worcester, failed to avoid them. Within sight of my hiding-place he was set upon, made to dismount, stripped and bidden to return on foot to the place from whence he came. I could do naught to help him. We were two, to ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... his ideas a revolutionary. It is not difficult to picture the result. Thrown into the midst of a slow-moving machinery, alone in his estimate of the potential greatness of the School, supremely conscious of his mission, he found himself a solitary. There are two methods of progress. One to oil the old cog-wheels and pray for progression. Another to point out the clogging nature of the machinery and propose a new device. He chose the latter method. It was bold and dangerous. ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... be very little known in America. Out of our whole ship's company there was not a solitary individual who knew anything whatever about them. Some of the party, well read concerning most other lands, had no other information about the Azores than that they were a group of nine or ten small islands far ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... jackal are confounded by the Arabic dialects not by the Persian, whose "Rubah" can never be mistaken for "Shaghal." "Sa'lab" among the Semites is locally applied to either beast and we can distinguish the two only by the fox being solitary and rapacious, and the jackal gregarious and a carrion-eater. In all Hindu tales the jackal seems to be an awkward substitute for the Grecian and classical fox, the Giddar or Kola (Cants aureus) being by ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Greece, however, Sparta stands a solitary instance of this austerity; for the drama, poetry, and music were enthusiastically cultivated in Athens, and even in every country into which the Grecians penetrated. Players became in many instances the confidential friends, counsellors, and ministers of kings ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... her solitary dinner in the vast hall, whose panelling of old leather was gilt by the setting sun, her wild pacing to and fro began again. Now it was on the gallery overhanging the river, quaintly restored by Paul Astier, with open arcades like lace-work and two pretty corbel-turrets. Below on the Loire, outspread ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... largely in this jargon, but not lyrically; and one of the earliest and best specimens of a canting-song occurs in Brome's 'Jovial Crew;' and in the 'Adventures of Bamfylde Moore Carew' there is a solitary ode addressed by the mendicant fraternity to their newly-elected monarch; but it has little humour, and can scarcely be called a genuine canting-song. This ode brings us down to our own time; to the effusions of the illustrious Pierce Egan; to Tom Moore's Flights of 'Fancy;' ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... forms; the birds which flashed past them or sang in the wild gladness of springtime; lizards, slipping about in the sands or pouring from cracks in the rocks—all the curious things which his eyes had seen and his mind taken note of in the long days of solitary riding, and which his poet's soul now interpreted into a higher meaning for the woman who could understand. So intent were they upon the wonders of that great display that Lucy hardly noticed where they were, until ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... a solitary animal, working exclusively for himself, consuming the fruit of his own personal labor; if, in a word, he did not exchange his produce, the theory of scarcity could never have introduced itself into the world. It would be too strikingly evident, that abundance, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... head in at the dining-room door, where Merrill had just commenced his solitary dinner. The young man signaled to him instantly that he had a communication to make. Bates had vanished to the upper floor with his bag, and when Creighton had assured himself that there was no one in the pantry, he stepped quickly ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... of indescribable chaos preceding the performance, the vague sense of obscurity and confusion; tragedians, hatted and coated, skipping about, chatting and joking; the only very grave person being Liston himself. Ballet-girls walking through their quadrilles to the sound of a solitary fiddle, striking up as if of its own accord, from amid the tall stools and music-desks of the orchestra, and piercing, one hardly knew how, through the din that was going on incessantly. Oh, that din! Voices from every part; above, below, around, and in ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... she passed up the flight of shallow steps on to the edge of the wide black-and-white chequer-board platform. It was sun-bathed, suspended, as it seemed, between that glorious prospect of city, mountain, sea, and the unsullied purity of the southern heavens. It was vacant, save for the solitary figure and the sharp-edged, yet amorphous, shadow cast by that same figure. For the young man had moved as she came up from the garden below. He stood clear of the balustrade, only the fingers of his left hand resting upon the handrail of it. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Miss Everett again, but, if she was not admitted to the sick room, her mother was a frequent and welcome visitor, and took entire charge of the invalid while the nurse fulfilled her ordinary duties. There was little actual nursing to be done, but the doctors were anxious to prevent solitary repinings, and to do what was possible to raise the spirits of their patient. Evie's own mother had come down for a few days to satisfy herself concerning her daughter's condition, but had been obliged to hurry back to the Vicarage, where the invalid sister was growing worse rather than ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... County by remittances from Abilene, and early in the fall I made up an outfit to go down and gather the remnant of "Lazy L" cattle. Taking along the entire new remuda, we dropped down in advance of the branding season, visited among the neighboring ranches, and offered a dollar a head for solitary animals that had drifted any great distance from the range of the brand. A camp was established at some corrals on the original range, extra men were employed with the opening of the branding season, and after twenty ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... threw up his head. Was it a newly married man leaving his bride and laughing? The bride was a dear lady, fit for better than to be driven to look on at a prize-fight—a terrible scene to a lady. She was left solitary: and this her wedding day? The earl had said it, he had said she bore his name, spoke of coming from the altar, and the lady had blushed to hear herself called Miss. The pressure of her hand was warm ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sneer of contempt, or the glance of compassion, which is depicted in the various countenances of my own sex: they are both equally humiliating. Ah! my dear parents, could you now see the child of your affections, the daughter whom you so dearly loved, a poor solitary being, without society, here wearing out her heavy hours in deep regret and anguish of heart, no kind friend of her own sex to whom she can unbosom her griefs, no beloved mother, no woman of character will appear in my company, and low ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... French Marquesas. His trading stations were in strings in all the groups, and his vessels that operated them were many. He owned atolls so remote and tiny that his smallest schooners and ketches visited the solitary ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... hast, with thy own eyes, O Sanjaya, seen the whole earth, with even her Mlecchas and nomad tribes, depend upon his grace! Rebuked thus at that spot by the sons of Pandu in particular, while lying concealed in such a solitary place after having been deprived of his followers and attendants, alas, what answer did he make unto the Pandavas upon hearing such bitter and repeated taunts from his victorious enemies? Tell me everything, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... think, sir, I recall most frequently and most willingly in my dreams? Not the pleasures of my youth: they were too rare, too much mingled with bitterness, and are now too distant. I recall the period of my seclusion, of my solitary walks, of the fleeting but delicious days that I have passed entirely by myself, with my good and simple housekeeper, with my beloved dog, my old cat, with the birds of the field, the hinds of the forest, with all ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... in the kitchen, the only light coming from a solitary candle on a high shelf, which threw long shadows everywhere. The fire in the fireplace was out and there was ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... Missouri. As it was, he spent most of his villainous instincts for his own private amusement,—occasionally slaughtering one of his warriors who had given him displeasure, or butchering a couple of his wives whose society had grown irksome; and between times he leered with his solitary evil eye upon the traders, contriving ways for getting whiskey with which to bait his passions. The British traders of the Hudson Bay and Northwest companies had long before secured a strong foothold in this territory, and had sought by every means to monopolize ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... As a matter of fact, Paraguayan liberty was not threatened for an instant, and Lopez declared war against both Brazil and the Argentine Republic out of mere ambition to be a second Napoleon. His solitary qualifications for the character were that, like his prototype, he was fat and loved women. The war commenced in 1865 and finished in 1870, and left the country almost a desert. So lonely was it, that I have often ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... and its porticoes already covered with snow, the light glowing in the one exposed window of the east parlor. As he quieted down within, he felt pleasantly towards the house, to which his week's half-solitary residence in it, with the comfort he had enjoyed there and the books he had read, had given him an attachment. He cast on it a last affectionate look, then breasted the weather onward, wondering what things the future might ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... came to the ale-house where he intended to get his pennyworth of tobacco. For the first time a thought of self-denial entered his mind, as he stood by the door, with his hand in his pocket, feeling for his solitary copper. ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... been isolated. This statement might lead the untechnical reader to suppose that these substances, once isolated, have been carefully stored away and jealously guarded, each in its imprisoning test-tubes. Jealously guarded they have been, to be sure, but there has not been, by any means, the solitary confinement that the words might seem to imply. On the contrary, each little whiff of gas has been subjected to a variety of experiments—made to pass through torturing-tubes under varying conditions of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... course was once more to be directed. From the time of our leaving the main body of ice we met with none of any kind, and the entrance to the Sound was, as usual, entirely free from it, except here and there a berg, floating about in that solitary grandeur of which these enormous masses, when occurring in the midst of an extensive sea, are calculated to convey ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... ashamed of himself and tried to grow quiet, and after a sleepless night he passed to the opposite extreme and sat all day long on the solitary stool in his grim abode, his head resting on his hands, and his mind a prey to the most ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... is described in magnificent language Calendau's exploit on the Mont Ventoux. This is a remarkable mountain, visible all over the southern portion of the Rhone valley, standing in solitary grandeur, like a great pyramid dominating the plain. Its summit is exceedingly difficult of access. It appears to be the first mountain that literature records as having been ascended for pleasure. This ascent is the subject of ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... military command. The half-castes, the Liby-Phoenicians, seem to have been sometimes sent out as colonists; but it may be inferred, from what Diodorus says of their residence, that they had not the right of the citizenship of Carthage; and only a single solitary case occurs of one of this race being intrusted with authority, and that, too, not emanating from the home government. This is the instance of the officer sent by Hannibal to Sicily after the fall of Syracuse, whom Polybius calls Myttinus the Libyan, but whom, from the fuller account ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... haughtily as he would the interference of any insolent member of the insolent whole. It was this mixture of deep love and profound respect for the eternal PEOPLE, and of calm, passionless disdain for that capricious charlatan, the momentary PUBLIC, which made Ernest Maltravers an original and solitary thinker; and an actor, in reality modest and benevolent, in appearance arrogant and unsocial. "Pauperism, in contradistinction to poverty," he was wont to say, "is the dependence upon other people for existence, not on our ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the balcony abruptly, abandoning the Countess to solitary fury, the greater because triumph had seemed so near. Alone, she went red and white, bit her lips, behaved according to all the time-honored traditions. And even swore—in a polite, lady-in-waiting fashion, to be sure—to ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... deep breath of relief as she turned away from the window, putting the letter into her pocket. The tea-tray, with its solitary cup and saucer, was waiting on the table, and Elsie poured out tea, congratulating herself that she was alone. She was not an unsociable woman; but the boarding-school, with all its noisy, merry occupants, had set her longing for solitude. She had felt far too weary and dispirited to ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... charitable heart, my child, Discover thee!" The prince essayed to dry Her tears. "Now come away, my dearest love. Soon day will dawn." The prince in grief set out, But ever turned and wanted to go back. They walked along together, man and wife All solitary, with no friends at hand, Care-worn and troubled, and the ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... rumbled and rolled as slow as fate. Cottage lamps were already lighted for the evening meal. No laborer abroad at this hour! And Felix thought of Tryst, the tragic fellow—the moving, lonely figure; emanation of these solitary fields, shade of the departing land! One might well see him as that boy saw him, silent, dogged, in a gray light such as this now clinging above ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had served in her was always afterward called—was now and then shown as an example of sailorlike smartness and activity, very few knew how dearly that one success had been purchased, nor by what terrible examples of agony and woe that solitary conversion was obtained. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... really now—?" said Lichfield. Then there was a tentative invitation or two, and I cut the knot by accepting all of them, and talking to every woman as though she were the solitary specimen of feminity extant. It was presently agreed that gossip often embroidered the actual occurrence and that wild oats were, after all, a not unheard-of phenomenon, and that though genius very often, in a phrase, forgot ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... Fairview put him through precisely the same paces, except upon a somewhat larger scale. There was the selfsame questioning, the same yielding up of personal effects, the same inevitable bath. And almost the same solitary room, except that this one peered out upon the free world through a heavily barred window instead of through a skylight, and boasted a kitchen chair. He was to be alone then!... He thanked God for this solitude ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... to fly, and would at once commit himself into the hands of a young incensed monarch, who had travelled forty miles for his blood. These were fearful, incontrovertible facts, and they were contemplated by a solitary female in the dark hour of night, in the midst of one of the fiercest storms that had ever visited that part of the country, and under the blue lights of a fancy that, in spite of the appeals of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... the bell of the hermit, and hastened to quit the hall. Taking a solitary light, which stood on the supper-table, I descended the winding stair-case; but before I had reached the vaulted passage leading to the statue of the blessed Jeanne of France, a blast of wind extinguished my taper. I hastily remounted the stairs, to light it again at the chimney; but ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... assumptions of ungiven powers have been in the detail. The bank-law, the treaty-doctrine, the sedition-act, alien-act, the undertaking to change the State laws of evidence in the State courts by certain parts of the stamp-act, &c. &c. have been solitary, inconsequential, timid things, in comparison with the audacious, barefaced, and sweeping pretension to a system of law for the United States, without the adoption of their legislature, and so infinitely beyond their power to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... are difficult matters to handle. It is well known that large numbers of men in boyhood, either through untutored ignorance of the physiology of their own bodies, or as a result of the corrupt example and teaching of others, become addicted to habits of solitary vice, in which the seed of life within them is deliberately excited, stirred up and wasted, to the sapping of their physical well-being and the defilement of their minds. Habits of self-abuse, when once they are established, are apt to be extremely ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... Snow lay deep upon the ice. No babbling of hurrying waters over pebbly creek beds was heard, but instead, the axe of the solitary miner at wood chopping on the banks ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... generally, and there were few papers which described her in as unprejudiced a manner as the one quoted. A letter from her father during this trip said: "Would it not be wise to preserve the many and amusing observations by the different papers, that years hence, in your more solitary moments, you and maybe your children can look over the views of both the friends and opponents of the cause?" This was the beginning of the scrap books carefully kept up for nearly half ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... kind remarkable in the church; all the other tombs of countesses, dukes, and princes, having long since disappeared. However, Berangere, perhaps, appears to the greater advantage, reigning, as she does, in solitary grandeur in this ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... that Religious, who said to me, Turn back with what remaineth to thee of troops and confront thy foes, for, if their intents be changed and turned away from Allah, thou wilt overcome them, e'en wert thou alone.' When I heard the Solitary's words, I put my trust in Allah of All-Might; and, gathering together those who remained with me, fell upon mine enemies at unawares in the night. They deemed us many and fled with the shamefullest ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... was the last thing they reckoned on, nine more Kurds came galloping down the track pell-mell toward the place where they had heard the solitary rifle-shot, doubtless supposing their own man had come upon the quarry. We fired too fast, for the Armenians were not drilled men, but we dropped two horses and five Kurds, and the remaining four fled, with the riderless animals stampeding ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... countenance. The mass of raven black hair was only adorned by a crimson ribbon, beneath which it had been thrust into a net, with a long thing that had once been a curl on the shoulder of the white tumbled bodice worn over a gray skirt which looked as if it had done solitary duty for the five weeks since the marriage, and was but slightly ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... slight swell, scarcely perceptible to those who for long weeks have been tossed by the tempestuous waves of the stormy Atlantic. The sails of a distant ship were seen, far away to the north, making the lovely scene less solitary; the only sounds heard were the rippling at the bows, the low sough of the zephyr through the rigging, the cheeping of blocks, as the sleepy helmsman allowed the ship to vary in her course, the occasional splash of a dolphin, and the flutter of a flying-fish in the air, as he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... night I sympathized fully with him. The next morning I was shown another side of the question. And I felt decidedly different about Mr. Farrington when he talked to me for a little while, alone before dinner the next day, and after Judge Vandyne had also had me in solitary conversation. ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... are called Cock-schnapper (q.v.); at a year old they are called Red-Bream; at two years old, Squire; at three, School-Schnapper; when they cease to "school" and swim solitary they are called Natives and Rock-Natives. Being the standard by which the "catch" is measured, the full-grown Schnappers are also called Count-fish (q.v.). In New Zealand, the Tamure (q.v.) is also called Schnapper, and the name Red-Schnapper is given to Anthias ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... although a few are known to be very good. There is a large number of species—about 75 being known, 42 of which have been found in this country—a few being quite common in this state. All the Amanita are terrestrial plants, mostly solitary in their habits, and chiefly found in the woods, or ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... The battle was between pitchers, and to the surprise of every one the Green House came up to the last inning with the score of 2 to 1 in their favor, the solitary run of the Cleve being due to a fly that Beekstein had failed ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... tired mowers sleeping on their grass heaps in the sun, in a stillness faintly broken by the timid lapping of the water in the sedge, or the rustling of swift lizards across the heated sand, while the Bernese snow giants line a distant horizon with mysterious solitary shapes, it is easy to know what solace life in such a scene might bring to a man distracted by pain of body and pain and weariness of soul. Rousseau has commemorated his too short sojourn here in the most perfect of all ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... western sky; upright it stands, The solitary pole, Sombre and terrible, Splitting the dying sun Into two semi-circular halves. I do not think I have seen, not even in Vorticist pictures, Anything so solitary, So absolutely nude; Yet this was an item once in the uninteresting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... fatiguing day, but scarcely admitted to himself how much more restful a solitary dinner would have been, with a cigar and some keen-edged article or luminous pamphlet in his own comfortable library afterward, than making conversation at Colonel Ormonde's table. However, to slight the lady who had promised to be his wife was impossible, ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... extended also to the remote-lying solitary Heimdal. The pastor of the mother parish, the friendly and hospitable pastor, Middelberg, had sent an invitation to friends and acquaintances in the whole neighbourhood, which included also the inhabitants of Semb, to a feast at the parsonage, on the second day ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... to very early times, when persecution drove many Christians to a life of loneliness and privation in desert places. The mode of life thus begun from necessity was afterwards continued from choice, and in the hope of more complete self-devotion to God's service; and the solitary hermits and anchorites of primitive ages became the forerunners of an elaborate system of religious communities of ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... a bath-chair, who certainly did start at the sight of us, and afterwards regarded us at intervals with a darkly suspicious eye, and, finally, I believe, said something to his nurse about us, I doubt if a solitary person remarked our sudden appearance among them. Plop! We must have appeared abruptly. We ceased to smoulder almost at once, though the turf beneath me was uncomfortably hot. The attention of every one— including ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells |
