"Desultory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to meet them, and soon a sharp irregular fire of musketry, and the cloud of smoke which spread over the middle ground between the armies, announced that the fight, or at least the prelude to it, had begun. This desultory sort of contest was of short duration. Several Carlist battalions moved forward, a gallant attack was made on the Christino position, and as gallantly repelled: commanded by a brave and skilful officer, and favoured by a judicious choice of ground, the Queen's ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... staring at him, he thought, with greenish, flickering faces—accusingly, as if he were responsible. Each knew the French guns had searched out and were crumbling up the German defenses, but none had previously suspected that an artillery bombardment could reach such fury. The desultory firing of yesterday might well be understood as ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... republished as they were written, with, here and there, correction of a phrase, and omission of one or two passages of merely personal or temporary interest; the headings only are added, in order to give the reader some clue to the general aim of necessarily desultory discussion; and the portions of Mr. Dixon's letters in reply, referred to in the text, are added in the Appendix, and will be found ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... He appears to have then gone to London in 1750 to "keep terms," as it was called, at the Middle Temple, with the view of being admitted to the bar, in obedience to his father's desire and ambition. But the desultory habit of mind, the preference for literature and philosophical speculation to connected study, which had marked his career in college, followed him and prevented any serious application to the law. His father's patience was after a while exhausted, and he withdrew Burke's ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the window. And all the clay between the logs low down was shot away. This fusillade lasted for more than an hour, then gradually the fire diminished on one side and then on the other until it became desultory ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... more at all about her health, nor did he touch upon any other intimate subject, but she had a very distinct impression that he did not cease to observe her closely throughout their desultory conversation. She even tried to divert his attention, but she knew ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the other two points. If Austria has made her peace (which, though certainly not improbable, I do not however consider as the most likely event), and if the royalists are crushed, our force can then only be used in desultory expeditions to annoy the enemy, and weaken his means of acting against us; for to make a serious impression on France with sixty, or even eighty thousand men, unsupported by any diversion, is impossible, and the attempt can only lead to disaster, and to the loss of the only army we ever ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... would agree to officiate in the double capacity. He jumped at my offer, and in the event my rashness—for I had really known nothing about him—wasn't brought home to me. He proved a sympathetic though a desultory ministrant, and had in a wonderful degree the sentiment de la pose. It was uncultivated, instinctive, a part of the happy instinct that had guided him to my door and helped him to spell out my name on the card nailed to it. He had had ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... Making his desultory pacings from end to end of the gallery, Cromwell considered that in that speech he had done a good morning's work, for assuredly these men put him in peril. More than one of these dangerous proclaimings of loyalty to him rather than to the King had come to his ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... and answer the bishop in his own cathedral. Her father rose, and then I saw her sway with faintness. I know not what might have occurred, for the bishop stood with hand upraised and a great indignation in his face, about to speak, when out of the desultory firing from our batteries there came a shell, which burst even at the cathedral entrance, tore away a portion of the wall, and killed and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... catch-as-catch-can, on the Turk's bed and under it and nearly out of the window, to prove the value of Professor Frazer and culture. Next morning Carl and the Turk enrolled in Frazer's optional course in modern poetry, a desultory series of lectures which did not attempt Tennyson and Browning. So Carl discovered Shelley and Keats and Walt Whitman, Swinburne and Rossetti and Morris. He had to read by crawling from word to word as though they were ice-cakes in a cataract of emotion. The allusiveness was agonizing. But he ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... witness—he who takes the orphan's bread, And robs the widow—he who spreads abroad Polluted hands in mockery of prayer, Are left to cumber earth. Shuddering I look On what is written, yet I blot not out The desultory numbers; let them stand, The record of ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... but such as most unnaturally arose from the opposition of those very powers from which I primarily derived my authority, and which were required for the support of it. My exertions, though applied to an unvaried and consistent line of action, have been occasional and desultory; yet I please myself with the hope, that, in the annals of your dominion, which shall be written after the extinction of recent prejudices, this term of its administration will appear not the least conducive to the interests of the Company, nor the least reflective of the honor of the British ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... announced a name which might or might not bear some relation to the visitor's. The lady entered. Her name might perhaps be Mrs. Baker. Maude had no means of knowing who Mrs. Baker might be. The visitor seldom descended to an explanation. Ten minutes of desultory and forced conversation about pinewoods and golf and cremation. A cup of tea and a departure. Then Maude would rush to the card-tray to try to find out whom it was that she had been talking to, and ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... After some desultory wanderings for a year or two along the shores of Lake Erie, among the prosperous towns then springing up, the family, with its Canadian home forfeited, and in quest of another resting-place, came to Milan, Ohio, in 1842. That pretty little village offered at the moment ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... agreeable singer, a talented artist, a judge of china, buhl, and other objects of 'virtu', a collector of snuff-boxes, a connoisseur in canes, he had gifts which might have raised him above the Bond Street 'flaneur', or the idler at Watier's Club. Well-read in a desultory fashion, he wrote verses which were not without merit in their class. The following are the first and last stanzas of 'The Butterfly's Funeral', a poem which was suggested by Mrs. Dorset's 'Peacock at Home' ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... to all but them, While some essayed to frame the words of prayer, Or to articulate the stern command, And one, in most supreme authority, Declaimed a ponderous regal ordinance, But heard a sea of unfamiliar sounds, Confused and desultory turbulence, and dissonance of harsh, discordant tones, Instead of due attention and applause; Nor were his words and usual forms of speech Respected by the idle, wondering craft, Which ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... professor's skilful treatment, was rapidly advancing toward complete recovery; and as for the scientist himself, he was jubilant in the highest degree over the fact that he had been thoroughly successful in his preparation of that gigantic "specimen," the mammoth. A great deal of desultory conversation of course took place within the first hour of the wanderers' return; but at last the party settled down, and then followed a recital by Sir Reginald of the particulars of the journey. Both the professor and Mildmay were of course intensely ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... green, grassy slopes are dark, rugged rocks, and higher still the grim white region of—winter. Somewhere behind these emerald foot-hills, near Gadamgah, are the famous turquoise mines alluded to in the "Veiled Prophet of Khorassan." The mines are worked at the present time, but only in a desultory ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... are matters for serious thought," he told them more than once. "In some ways I think you are further advanced than most girls and boys of your age, but in other branches you will have to work hard to make up, Bob especially, for rather desultory training. I'll have a long talk with you both just as soon as I get some business matters ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... rupture of my home ties, I began some desultory globe trotting. I knocked about in out-of-the-way corners, where I observed and absorbed all sorts of things which became very useful in my subsequent career. A native, and by that I mean an inhabitant, of non-European countries always fascinated me, and I soon learned the way of disarming ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... family gathered in the wide hall, through the open doors of which was a slight draught of air. All had donned their coolest costumes, and their talk was quite as languid as the occasional notes and chirpings of the birds without. Amy was reading a magazine in a very desultory way, her eyelids drooping over every page before it was finished, Webb and Burt furtively admiring the exquisite hues that the heat brought into her face, and the soft lustre of her eyes. Old Mr. Clifford nodded over his newspaper until his spectacles clattered to the ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... showed gaunt against the sky; the stars came out in twinkling myriads and the dash and roar of the river was an accompaniment to their desultory chat. ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... vociferous, and only discontinued when a box of Havanas stood open on the table. During the momentary lull thus occasioned, I caught the Major's twinkling eyes glancing evasively toward me, as he leant whispering some further instructions to Tommy, who again took up his desultory ballad, while I turned and fled for the street, catching, however, as I went, and high above the laughter of the crowd, the satire of this quatrain to its ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... his big limbs and lounged in hammocks and advised or domineered over his sisters, as the case might be, and read in a desultory way, and fished and shot, and ate with an appetite which threatened to bring famine to the family. Your lakeside small town is a fair place in July. He would loaf, he said, for a week or two. The loafing was destined to have character, perhaps to ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... be found in the membra which compose the sentence. He quotes a passage from one of his own speeches in which any change in the order would destroy the rhythm. Cicero gives various clausulae which his ears told him to be good or bad, but his remarks are desultory, as also are those of Quintilian, whose examples were largely drawn from Cicero's writings. It was left for modern research to discover rules of harmony which the Romans obeyed unconsciously. Other investigators had shown that Cicero's clausulae are generally variations of some three or four ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... their short absence a change had come upon the ball. About the circular buffet numbers of men called for drink, and talked loudly of horse-racing. Many were away at supper, and those that remained were amusing themselves in a desultory fashion. A tall, lean woman, dressed like Sarah in white muslin, wearing amber beads round her neck, was dancing the lancers with the Demon, and everyone shook with laughter when she whirled the little fellow round or took him in her arms and carried him across. William wanted to dance, but Esther ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... derived from Hebrew chaver via Yiddish. General opinion now seems to be that it entered the language too early for that—and an English etymology is preferred. fiver: a five pound (sterling) note (or "bill") fossick: pick out gold, in a fairly desultory fashion. In old "mullock" heaps or crvices in rocks. jackaroo: (Jack kangaroo; sometimes jackeroo)—someone, in early days a new immigrant from England, learning to work on a sheep/cattle station (U.S. "ranch".) ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... follow do not pretend to be a history of piracy, but are simply an attempt to gather together, from various sources, particulars of those redoubtable pirates and buccaneers whose names have been handed down to us in a desultory way. ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... the Pilgrim's Progress. That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it. Dr. Johnson, all whose studies were desultory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an exception in favour of the Pilgrim's Progress. That work was one of the two or three works which he wished longer. It was by no common merit that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from the most pedantic of critics and the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... did not cease. Clarke and the reporter left the mills; the others, comfortably seated near the furnace, lingered, smoking and talking in a desultory way. Greek would not have been more unintelligible to the furnace-tenders, whose presence they soon forgot entirely. Kirby drew out a newspaper from his pocket and read aloud some article, which they discussed eagerly. At every sentence, Wolfe listened more and more like a dumb, hopeless animal, ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... had studied various subjects by myself in a more or less desultory manner. I read the histories of Greece, Rome and the United States. I had a French grammar in raised print, and as I already knew some French, I often amused myself by composing in my head short exercises, using the new words as I came ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... show the connexion which subsists between oriental mythology, allegory, and legendary lore, with that of the Scandinavian nations? This Sir Walter Scott has omitted to do;—but this might afford, even formed of the materials to be gleaned from various desultory sources, another volume ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... that bordered the canal. The leaves flickered in and out of the light in tumultuous masses. It seemed sailing weather to eye and ear; but down between the banks, the wind reached us only in faint and desultory puffs. There was hardly enough to steer by. Progress was intermittent and unsatisfactory. A jocular person, of marine antecedents, hailed us from the tow-path with a "C'est vite, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... present occasion. And here I must premise, that in so doing I shall not follow the formal and orderly method of Bishop Latimer, in his sermons before King Edward the Sixth; but, on the contrary, shall adopt the easy, desultory style of one whom at present I shall not venture to name, but leave that to some future ingenious commentator on the epistolary correspondence of the Hon. Andrew Erskine ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... essay published some time subsequently in the "Bee," Goldsmith adverts, in his own humorous way, to his impatience at the tardiness with which his desultory and unacknowledged essays crept into notice. "I was once induced," says he, "to show my indignation against the public by discontinuing my efforts to please; and was bravely resolved, like Raleigh, to vex them by burning my manuscripts in a passion. Upon reflection, however, I considered ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... measures were none the less referred to a commission of thirty. Consideration in committee was sluggish, and the Assembly itself was not readily roused to action. During the twelvemonth that followed several projets were brought forward, and there was desultory discussion, but no progress. In the summer of (p. 305) 1874 a new commission of thirty was elected and to it was intrusted the task of studying and reporting upon all of the numerous constitutional laws that had been suggested. The majority of this commission, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... pleasure-loving and effeminate, but cultured and refined, character of the class of Japanese who produced it. It has no serious masculine qualities and may be described in one word as belles-lettres—poetry, fiction, diaries, and essays of a desultory kind. The lower classes of the people had no share in the literary activity of the time. Culture had not as yet penetrated beyond a very narrow circle. Both writers and readers belonged exclusively to the official caste. It is remarkable that a very large ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... to the caprice of fortune; for the History was more than once on the eve of publication, and is even now understood to be prepared for the press. Yet it has serious defects, which may have contributed to keep it in its present form. In its desultory and episodical style of composition, it resembles rather notes for a great history, than history itself. It may be regarded in the light of commentaries, or as illustrations of the times. In that view his pages are of high worth, and have been frequently resorted to by writers who have not ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... higher, greater, or better than themselves. Now, culture, in the only correct and safe sense of the term, is the result of a process of discipline, both mental and moral. It is not a thing that can be picked up, or that can be got by doing what one pleases. It cannot be acquired by desultory reading, for instance, or travelling in Europe. It comes of the protracted exercise of the faculties for given ends, under restraints of some kind, whether imposed by one's self or other people. In fact, it might not improperly be called the art of doing easily what you ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... taking way with him. His eyes were sky-blue and his hair old gold. He was a terrific sportsman and when not making love was singing. From his Teutonic ancestry he had inherited a taste for music which desultory study in a German university town, combined with a musical ear, had improved. He had been told by managers that if he would work hard he could make a sensation, but Henry was lazy and Henry was rich, so he sang, shot big game and flirted ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... we finish our evenings, the little serving-maids now bow to us, on our arrival, with an air of respectful recognition, as belonging to the fast set of Nagasaki. There we carry on desultory conversations, full of misunderstandings and endless 'quid pro quo' of uncouth words, in little gardens lighted up with lanterns, near ponds full of goldfish, with little bridges, little islets, and little ruined towers. They hand us tea and white and pink-colored ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... out through the quiet shallows to the swift channel in midstream, the wind had nearly subsided and the rain was falling in a desultory fashion which promised only a brief continuance. In fact stars were visible here and there through rifts in the black clouds. The storm seemed to have gone ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... taking it with the greatest attention and answering at length. Mother was to be shunted imperceptibly from cafard. And when they had finished and returned again to the library fire, Nan, after perhaps half an hour of desultory talk, yawned rudely and asked if she might go to her bed. Raven suspected her. He noted how she half closed the library door behind her; so he took the chair she had lately left, commanding the crack of it. In about the time he expected, he heard her in the hall. She had come ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... to the second floor and waited. The elevator came down, stopped, and the guard repeated his desultory search, not stopping to ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... dog sitting near snuffed at the performance suspiciously; there a couple of shaggy-headed boys leaning to watch a small pale cripple who was cutting a face on a cherry-stone; and above them on the wide platform men were making changing knots in laughing desultory chat, or else were standing ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the Great Cartoon, or Cut, as they called it, is discussed—as, for instance, when the design for the one representing Disraeli on the side of the Angels is decided upon, after his famous speech at Oxford in 1864. The desultory conversation reported in the diary on each occasion after settlement of the cartoon throws a light upon things uppermost in the public mind at the time. It is noted when the Queen comes out of retirement into the world again. And a vivid reflection is to be found of the ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... might have been, considering that at that time I was a very pretty woman. We returned to the camp at Mzez Ammar; a few days afterwards we were attacked by the Arabs, who showed great spirit and determination in their desultory mode of warfare, which, however, can make no impression on such troops as the French. The attack was continued for three days, when they decamped as suddenly as they had come. But this cannot be very interesting ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... avail myself of your kindness.' She took his proffered arm, and they began slowly to promenade the principal avenue of the conservatory, engaged at first in that polite and desultory discourse which might be supposed to arise between a lady and gentleman who ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Pernambuco, the first donatory, Duarte Coelho Pereira, was opposed not only by the natives, but by numbers of French, who having carried on a desultory though profitable trade on the coast, now joined the Indians in retarding those regular settlements which were likely to put an end to their commerce. The colony, however, had been planted at Olinda,[8] a situation as strong as it is beautiful, and Pereira contrived to engage some of the ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... for the trade with the mountain tribes and the trapping of the head-waters of the Columbia and the other great tributaries of the Pacific. Beside the regular operations of these formidable rivals, there have been from time to time desultory enterprises, or rather experiments, of minor associations, or of adventurous individuals beside roving bands of independent trappers, who either hunt for themselves, or engage for a single season, in the service of one or other ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... paraphernalia of a painter's studio: an easel with a half-finished picture on it; a chair with a palette and brushes, and crushed and twisted tubes of colors; a lay figure in one corner; on the walls scraps of stamped leather, rags of tapestry, desultory sketches ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... with John, to whom she was always kind, though she thought him "cracked," and after a little desultory hovering about the shells, for which she did not really care, except when they were made up with glass beads, she was apt to sit down on the after-deck, with John beside her (unless the Skipper appeared, in which case the boy flew to join his new friend), and with Franci, or Rento, ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... hundred pounds in 1754. In settling the land Hartwick required each tenant to agree to a condition in the lease by which the tenant became Hartwick's parishioner, and acknowledged the authority of Hartwick, or his substitute, as "pastor, teacher, and spiritual counsellor." Owing to his desultory business methods and the weight of advancing years, Hartwick after a time found himself unequal to the management of this estate, and in 1791 William Cooper, the founder of Cooperstown, became his agent, with authority to dispose of the property to tenants. By this arrangement Hartwick ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... knowledge of character, intermixed with a few touches of pathos, and a nice perception of the finest affections: now, with these various characteristics, the legends must prove attractive and amusing. We have only space to quote briefly from one of the most desultory of the papers—an ingenious one, on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... occurred to either of them to attach any especial significance to what unfortunately had proved to be an exceptional case. A great deal more was said upon the matter before it was dropped; but the remarks were mostly of a desultory character, and as they have no particular bearing upon the thread of this story it is unnecessary ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... without regard to any systematic order, taking up, exactly as chance or preponderant interest may offer them, any urgent questions of the hour, before the progress of events may antiquate them, or time may exhale their flavour. This desultory and moody want of order has its attractions for many a state of nervous distraction. Every tenth reader may happen to share in the distraction, so far as it has an Indian origin. The same deadly anxiety on behalf of female relatives, separated from ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... a rambling, unconnected, desultory manner, is commonly objected; as Hume styles it, "extreme carelessness of method;" and this is so often observed, as to be justly an object of dread. But this is occasioned by that indolence and want of discipline to which we have just ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... be learnt from the memoirs of the chief actor, or from his intimate friends; and in such things of this kind are often treated of in a very desultory manner, or purposely misrepresented. Criticism must, therefore, always forego much which was present in the minds of those ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... called his young second officer over to him. This was not done in displeasure. The glance he fastened on Mr. Powell conveyed a sort of approving wonder. He engaged him in desultory conversation as if for the only purpose of keeping a man who could provoke such a sound, near his person. Mr. Powell felt himself liked. He felt it. Liked by that haggard, restless man who threw at him disconnected phrases to which ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... passed up the stream. The little party at The Sanctuary sat over their coffee and liqueurs long after the fall of the first twilight, till the points of their cigarettes glowed like little specks of fire through the enveloping darkness. Conversation had been from the first curiously desultory, edited, in a way, Francis felt, for his benefit. There was an atmosphere about his host and Lady Cynthia, shared in a negative way by Margaret Hilditch, which baffled Francis. It seemed to establish more than a lack of sympathy—to suggest, even, a life lived upon a ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of a teak-wood chair, Anthony let his eyes ramble luxuriously over the prospect. In a chaise longue by his side Valerie was engaged in the desultory composition of a letter to her uncle in Rome. Stretched blinking upon the warm flags, Patch watched the two vigilantly for any ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... songs fashioned out of their own brains; now they danced, now they would do nothing but laugh and weep, or were dogged and sullen both in look and speech. All they did, all they sung, was alike unconnected; indicative of the desultory and rambling wits of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... left-behindish feeling that they all experienced as they watched that distant pear-shaped object floating in the sky. As they walked along the road it was impossible to keep their eyes and thoughts from following the balloon, so that conversation was desultory, until Mollie thought she saw a bad wobble and ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... entailed many long hours of wearisome confinement to the house and sofa. During these hours of enforced idleness, she indulged in frequent "brown studies," for her firm and decided character was curiously tinged with romance. She had received but a desultory education; her uncle, though providing her amply with all the means of learning, yet chafed continually against the application which was necessary for her profiting ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... a desultory pretense of business. Horsemen led their mounts away from the more public racks, and tethered them to back fences and willow branches in the shelter of the river banks, where stray ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... anything had been seen of them, I gave some account of this scheme, and of the material on which he had worked, with a statement of the reasons which made all existing versions unsatisfactory to the student, and incomplete. Captain Burton saw fit to reprint these desultory paragraphs as a kind of circular or advertisement on his forthcoming book. He did not think it necessary to ask leave to do this, nor did I know to what use my letter had been put till it was too late to object. In any ordinary case it would have been ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the whole of Belgium as a German province and to administer it as such, at least during the continuance of the war. The Belgian army retired to the north within the fortifications of Antwerp, where they were joined by French troops, but desultory fighting against the German invader continued at many points and the Franco-British allies soon came into contact ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... outposts during the latter part of January, the main attack was not developed until Feb. 2, when the enemy began to move toward the Ismailia Ferry. They met a reconnoitring party of Indian troops of all arms, and a desultory engagement ensued, to which a violent sand storm put a sudden end about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The main attacking force pushed forward toward its destination after nightfall. From twenty-five to thirty galvanized ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... ruin so large, to remove the soil covering any considerable number of rooms. The excavations at different points over such a considerable area as that covered by the mounds would have been more or less desultory and unsatisfactory, but a limited section carefully opened would be much more instructive and typical. While, therefore, the majority of the Indian workmen were kept employed at the cemeteries, Kopeli, the Snake chief, a man ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... The desultory duties connected with the removal of the Indians, in which the Army has been constantly engaged on the northern and western frontiers and in Florida, have rendered it impracticable to carry into full effect the plan recommended by the Secretary for ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... not many possess that acquaintance with his whole work which it is part of the business of the introducer to acquire, and adjust for the better understanding of the particular book. Of course, if an Introduction is imperfectly furnished with fact and thought and reading—if it is desultory, in bad taste, and so forth—it had better not be there. But this is only saying that a bad Introduction is a bad thing, which does not get us much beyond the intellectual edification of the niece of Gorboduc. Unless the introducer is a boggler, the Introduction ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... any other will?" I inquired. It was quite an accidental question, as one would put in a desultory sort of conversation ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... silence, the noises of the night grew in number and distinctness. A slight wind had risen and the boughs of the pines rocked restlessly, making mournful complaint; and at their feet the needles dropping in a gentle desultory shower had the sound of rain in springtime. From every side they were startled by noises they could not place. Strange movements and rustlings caused them to peer sharply into the shadows; footsteps, that seemed ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... with crashing joy; but the effect of the whole is lost in repetitions that choke it and make it heavy. Through all the work runs a mixture of pedantic stiffness and incoherence; it moves along in a desultory way, and suffers from abrupt checks in the course of its development and from superfluous ideas that break in for no reason at all, with the result that the whole ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... tract which leads through the eastern wilds of Cumberland into Scotland, had been a desire to view the remains of the celebrated Roman Wall, which are more visible in that direction than in any other part of its extent. His education had been imperfect and desultory; but neither the busy scenes in which he had been engaged, nor the pleasures of youth, nor the precarious state of his own circumstances, had diverted him from the task of mental improvement.—"And this then is the Roman Wall," ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... by which Butler attracted some readers and revolted others throw no shadow over his writings. He is a placid enlightened professor, whose real good feeling and frequent shrewdness should not be overlooked in consequence of the rather desultory and often superficial mode of reasoning. This, however, suggests a final remark upon ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... and dispersed the Bonnaxes, as they were on their way to join the Flat-heads; and the former tribe not being able to effect the intended junction, threw itself among the Cayuses and Nez-perces. These three combined nations, after a desultory warfare, gave way before the second war-party; and the Bonnaxes, being now rendered desperate by their losses and the certainty that they would be exterminated if the Shoshones should conquer, joined the Callapoos and ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... the justice of my request, and, after some desultory conversation, we parted. I hastened to communicate to my wife the various intelligence which I had lately received. Mrs. Althorpe's portrait of the Mervyns contained lineaments which the summary detail of Arthur did not ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... bunch of loose horses lost its early-morning good spirits and settled down to a steady plodding, that needed no supervision. Tom Rich led them, now, in silence, his time fully occupied in rolling Mexican cigarettes with one hand. The other three dropped back together and exchanged desultory remarks. Occasionally Jim Lester sang. It was always the same song of uncounted verses, but Jim had a strange fashion of singing a single verse at a time. After a long interval he would ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... for it to be good for a young clergyman to have much to say to her. They have not been so cordial to them of late, but that is partly owing to poor Mrs. White's foolish talk, and in part to young Alexis having been desultory and mopy of late—-not taking the interest in his music he did. Mr. Lee says he is sure some young woman is ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and simple-looking an instrument. Its expressiveness, power, and the extraordinary combinations which its stringing admits of, truly constitute it the king of musical instruments. These somewhat desultory remarks may suffice to trace the origin of the value set upon the Violin both as a work of art ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... explosive broke in the German trench and all up and down the line as far as we could see this desultory shell fire was proceeding, giving no sign of where the next attack was coming, which was ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... knowledge which is unimparted, is necessarily a barren talent, and is lost to society, like the miser's concealed hoard, by the death of the proprietor. His studies were also under the additional disadvantage, that, being pursued for the gratification of a desultory longing after knowledge, and directed to no determined object, they turned on points rather curious than useful, and while they served for the amusement of the student himself, promised little utility to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... expected from the writer than he means to perform, I deem it necessary to premise that the future numbers, like the present, are intended to consist of such anecdotes respecting the drama and dramatic writers, as I have heretofore, or hereafter may meet with in the course of a very desultory course of reading—of such information of that description, as I have collected in my progress through life—and of such remarks and reflections as they may excite in ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... opinion, but derived from a legitimate source. And, lastly, it must not have been received casually, but for the very purpose of being used for masonic purposes. For one to say to another in the course of a desultory conversation: "A.B. is a Mason," is not sufficient. He may not be speaking with due caution, under the expectation that his words will be considered of weight. He must say something to this effect: "I know this man to be a Master Mason," for such or such reasons, and you may safely recognize ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... was more desultory, but it was kept up for several hours, during which not a rifle flash came from the Fort. Then there arose the sharp yelp of a wolf through the night, and instantly the firing ceased. Not a sound could be heard ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... was begun in a weekly paper in 1881, and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906. In that year a large part of it was published in covers with the title The Cynic's Word Book, a name which the author had not the power to reject or happiness to approve. To quote the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... The form of the detached essay, which he was the first to use, precisely suited his habit of thought. In that loose shape—admitting of the most indefinite structure, and of any variety of length, from three pages to three hundred—he could say all that he wished to say, in his own desultory, inconsecutive, and unelaborate manner. His book flows on like a prattling brook, winding through pleasant meadows. Everywhere the fruits of wide reading are manifest, and numberless Latin quotations strew his pages. He touches on every side of life—from ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... the afternoon of the day after our encounter with Bothwell—to be more accurate, just after four bells. Miss Wallace and I were sitting under the deck awning, she working in a desultory fashion upon a piece of embroidery ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... were also enjoined on Mortier and Grouchy on the left wing, until Ney and Victor should decide the fortunes of the second fight. The Russians, as if bent on favouring Napoleon's design, continued to deploy in front of Friedland, keeping up the while a desultory fight; and Bennigsen, anxious now about his communications with Koenigsberg, detached 6,000 men down the right bank of the river towards Wehlau. Only 46,000 men were thus left to defend Friedland against a force ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the greatest ease. It is true that he asks this pain, this humiliation, only from youths who intend to follow the profession of artists. But if you wish yourselves to know anything of the practice of art, you must not suppose that because your study will be more desultory than that of Academy students, it may therefore be less accurate. The shorter the time you have to give, the more careful you should be to spend it profitably; and I would not wish you to devote one hour to the practice of drawing, unless you are resolved ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... herself equally upon her adherence to religious principle and the Acts of Congress. For the law, merely as law, she had the profoundest veneration, viewing the heterogeneous statutes passed from time to time by desultory legislators much as if they had in some mysterious way been handed down from Mount Sinai along ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... recipient, and she was prepared to correspond with anyone but moral young ladies or stiff old women. She wrote also a kind of poetry, generally in Italian, and short romances, generally in French. She read much of a desultory sort of literature, and as a modern linguist had really made great proficiency. Such was the lady who had now come to wound the hearts of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... female, who, I hope, nagged him as he us, preferred to take his meals at home. Smallweed, who had somehow got made quartermaster, couldn't go old Heavysterne, he said, and so kept as long as he could to his desultory habits of living as a citizen and a bachelor. So our mess consisted of the major, who exercised a paternal care over the rest of us, superintending, indeed often joining in, our amusements and discussions, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I owe an apology to the Senate for having occupied their attention so long, and a still greater apology for having discussed the question in such an incoherent and desultory manner. But I could not forbear to claim the right of closing this debate. I thought gentlemen would recognize its propriety when they saw the manner in which I was assailed and misrepresented in the course of this ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... flanking party redoubled, and were accompanied by a desultory firing, which the four men opposing them answered in the same way. Then I saw the sparkling water of the pool cut off from my sight, and knew that a body of men stood on the slope between us ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... patiently. A few desultory shots, fired by some of our more adventurous partisans, who, climbing to the top of the barricade, aimed where they saw the torches moving, broke the ominous silence, but in distant parts of the city we could hear the rapid firing of musketry, with now and then a loud ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... provided amusement on rainy days. At first she found it difficult to fix the attention of the boisterous Herbert and the capricious Favoretta. Before they had half examined one print, they wanted to turn over the leaf to see another; but this desultory, impatient curiosity she endeavoured to cure by steadily showing only one or two prints for each day's amusement. Herbert, who could but just spell words of one syllable, could not read what was written at the bottom of the prints, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... then nodded and the horse and the rider were gone. It was late—nearly midnight. The firing on both sides had nearly ceased,—only a desultory rattling—the boom of a gun now and then. But O, the agony, the death, the wild confusion! This was something like the babel that greeted the old soldier's ears ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... And as for myself I did not want one so very exceedingly much. I tried to keep from letting the hounds excite me, which effort utterly failed. We kept even with the hounds until their baying fell off, and finally grew desultory, and then ceased. "Guess they had the wrong end of his trail," said George. With this exasperating feature of bear and lion chases I was familiar. Most hounds, when they struck a trail, could not tell in which direction the bear was traveling. A really fine hound, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... difference between clever and ordinary men is often mainly {58} a difference in the power of directing and controlling the mind through the attention. Some minds go wool gathering or day dreaming, and flit from one thing to another in a desultory manner. Others go straight ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... foliage over him, and the sun struck fiercely down beyond the border of shade; but then, again, beyond there were more trees and more shade. The nameless little crickets and flies and all manner of humming things panted musically in the warm air; the small birds chirped lazily now and then in desultory conversation, too hot to hop or fly; and a small lizard lay along the wall dazed and stupid in the noontide heat. The genius loci was doubtless cooling himself in the retirement of some luxurious hole among the ruins, and the dwarf Perkeo, famous in song and ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... night through narrow channels, in shoal water, and with silence and celerity, over a naval armament of the usual kind, though of far superior force. You would then perceive with what efficacy the counsel of Demosthenes to your countrymen might be carried into effect by desultory attacks on the enemy; and, in fact, you would perceive that steam-vessels, whenever they shall be brought into war for hostile purposes, will prove the most formidable means that ever has been employed in naval warfare. Indeed, it is my opinion that twenty-four ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... author, though I find it difficult to reconcile them with either the tone or the substance of the preceding reply. I trust that I have already relieved him from the apprehension that I should confine myself to 'desultory efforts.' I had hoped that some of the topics in my first article might have been laid aside for ever, but his reply has compelled me to revert to them. He does me no more than justice when he credits me with earnestness. I am indeed in earnest, as I believe him to be. But it seems ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... bright and pleasant that Arthur felt at ease with him at once. After some desultory conversation, the Director inquired how long he ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... of Dougherty, The Desultory Hints and Maxims for Anglers Distinguished Visitor, A Dorgs, On Dogs Tale, A Down the Bay Drainage under Difficulties Dreadful State of Things out West, The Dubious English ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... five young people ate without the presence of their elders, as even Mrs. Temple was absent, having been picked up in a friend's motor car during the afternoon and whisked away to a country home near Southampton, all adjourned to the gallery. A desultory conversation was maintained, but presently at a whisper from Frank, Della slipped indoors with him. Then from the long french windows of the music room came two voices mingling harmoniously in the strains of an old Southern melody to an accompaniment played by Della ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... came in plenty. I tried staff duty with General Polk, who was making an expedition into Western Kentucky. In a few weeks illness drove me into Nashville, where I passed the next winter in desultory newspaper work. Then Nashville fell, and, as I was making my way out of town afoot and trudging the Murfreesboro pike, Forrest, with his squadron just escaped from Fort Donelson, came thundering by, and I leaped into an empty saddle. A few days later Forrest, promoted ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... indispensable, she took the place of eldest of the three in all but precedence; was the head of the fallen family, and bore, in her own heart, its anxieties and shames. She had been, by snatches of a few weeks at a time, to an evening school outside, and got her sister and brother sent to day schools by desultory starts, during three or four years. There was no instruction for any of them at home; but she knew well—no one better—that a man so broken as to be the Father of the Marshalsea could be no ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Libochabo. Their manner of walking is truly theatrical; but this strut is probably the effect of the capote, or cloak, depending from one shoulder. Their long hair reminds you of the Spartans, and their courage in desultory warfare is unquestionable. Though they have some cavalry amongst the Gegdes, I never saw a good Arnaout horseman; my own preferred the English saddles, which, however, they could never keep. But on foot they are not ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... soldiers followed him, but in a very irregular and tumultuary manner. The flight of Claverhouse was the signal for all the stragglers, who yet offered desultory resistance, to fly as fast as they could, and yield up the field of battle to ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Bristol and Lion got out their boats and were towed by them to her support. The two other French ships of the line got up during the forenoon of the 21st, so that the action that afternoon, though desultory, might be ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... Pittsburgh letters, taken from the mail, shows his purpose to inflame the people to vindictive violence. He was accused by contemporary authorities of imitation of the methods of the French Jacobins, which were fresh examples of revolutionary vigor. But the mass was not persuaded. After desultory conversation and discussion, the angry turn of which was at times threatening to the moderate leaders, the meeting broke up on August 2; about one third dispersed for their homes, and the remainder, marching to Pittsburgh, paraded through the streets, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... the poem, neglecting the unities of an epic, is like that of a general history, rambling and desultory, or like the transformations of a fairy tale, as it is: his descriptions are gorgeous, his verse exceedingly melodious, and his management of it very graceful. The Gerusalemme Liberata of Tasso appeared while he was writing the Faery Queene, and he imitated portions ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... time Sally was occupied in the garden digging in a desultory fashion. As soon as there was no further danger of the ground freezing the Camp Fire girls were planning to ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... when the criticizing stage among the dancers has passed, and they have grown full of excitement and animal spirits, does not require much concentration of thought in the producers thereof; and desultory conversation accordingly went on between Faith and her brother from ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... which had been created in Pernambuco, by the show of bombardment, and its anticipated repetition in earnest on my return, General Lima pushed forward towards the capital with no more formidable opposition than a few desultory skirmishes; and on the 11th of September, with the co-operation of the naval officers and seamen there left, took possession of the city, Carvalho retreating into the suburbs, where, breaking down the bridge ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... a breeze lisped never so faintly in the tree-tops; here and there bird-notes fell, liquid, desultory, like drops of rain after a shower; and constantly one heard the cool music of the river. The sun, filtering through worlds and worlds of leaves, shed upon everything a green-gold penumbra. The air, warm and still, was sweet with garden-scents. The ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... conceive of the desultory and uncertain way in which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot put the thoughts of a common letter into sane prose.... Ten thousand times I have confessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... discuss the welfare of the Empire in a disinterested spirit. We dined monthly at the Mermaid in Westminster, and for a couple of years we kept up an average attendance of ten out of fourteen. The dinner-time was given up to desultory conversation, and it is odd how warm and good the social atmosphere of that little gathering became as time went on; then over the dessert, so soon as the waiters had swept away the crumbs and ceased to fret us, one of us would ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... daughter were in the room, but left it soon. Next arrived Miss Knight, who remained all the time I was there. Princess Charlotte was very gracious—showed me all her bonny dyes, as B—-would have called them—pictures, and cases, and jewels, &c. She talked in a very desultory way, and it would be difficult to say of what. She observed her mother was in very low spirits. I asked her how she supposed she could be otherwise? This QUESTIONING answer saves a great deal of ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dug a system of rifle pits all along the barricades on the outside, and manned them with three or four men each, but the firing was desultory through the night, and nothing much was ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... on, but in a confused, desultory way; and for the moment it seemed as if we had made good our escape, and had nothing to do but mount and ride quietly away. That was how it struck me, and I ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... only myself to please, and my work is slighted as soon as it has lost its first attraction. It is to be hoped, if one should cross the sea, that the terror of your English culture would scare the most desultory of Yankees into precision and fidelity; and perhaps I am not yet too old to be animated by what would have seemed to my youth a proud privilege. If you shall fright me into labor and concentration, I shall win my game; for I can well afford to pay any price to get my ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... slagged it over with impenetrable, flint-hard deposits. Pompeii, though, lay farther away, and was entombed in dust and ashes only; so that it has been comparatively easy to unearth it and make it whole again. Even so, after one hundred and sixty-odd years of more or less desultory explorations, nearly a third of its supposed area ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... state with certainty. His chances of education were evidently very scanty, for he must have left school while yet a boy, in order to learn his trade,—that of a machinist. He had thenceforth little time and less opportunity for literary culture. His reading was desultory, and the poetic faculty, expending itself on whatever subjects came to hand, produced great quantities of manuscripts, which were destroyed almost as soon as written. The idea of publishing them does not seem to have presented itself to his mind. Either his life must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... were in my power to collect information, equally acceptable with the foregoing, respecting the above-named JOHN MURRAY; but Hearne, who was his intimate friend, has been very sparing in his anecdotes of him, having left us but a few desultory notices, written chiefly in the Latin language. The earliest mention of him that I find is the following: "Verum illud praecipue mentionem meretur, quod mutuo accepi, schedula una et altera jam excusa, a JOANNE MURARIO ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... you may instantly have recourse to any one. Lay down a method also for your reading, for which you allot a certain share of your mornings; let it be in a consistent and consecutive course, and not in that desultory and unmethodical manner, in which many people read scraps of different authors, upon different subjects. Keep a useful and short commonplace book of what you read, to help your memory only, and not for pedantic quotations. Never read history without having maps and a chronological ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... a man more angry than for his wife to aspire to it. No such ideas had ever troubled me; I had more important things to think of, or, at any rate, something to be better carried out. And of all these desultory thoughts it came that I packed up that odious but very lovely locket, without further attempt to unriddle it, and persuaded my very good and clever Mrs. Busk to let me start right early. By so doing I could have three hours with a good gentleman always in a hurry, and yet return for ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore |
