"Drop away" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great lightness of heart. She recalled her last awakening at Givre, three days before, when it had seemed as though all her life had gone down in darkness. Now Darrow was once more under the same roof with her, and once more his nearness sufficed to make the looming horror drop away. She could almost have smiled at her scruples of the night before: as she looked back on them they seemed to belong to the old ignorant timorous time when she had feared to look life in the face, and had been blind to the mysteries and contradictions of the human heart because her own had not ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... number of forty. But that was not his greatest achievement; for, although he had left but few men in each place, he had by that means rid himself on the march of that portion of his army which had already shown itself ready to drop away.[506] ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... may not be conscious two days longer. A council of physicians was called this afternoon, and three out of the four gave it as their opinion that he could not survive, at the longest, beyond three days; and I believe him liable to drop away within twenty-four hours, although it is barely possible he ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... follow, When friendships decay, And from Love's shining circle The gems drop away. When true hearts lie withered, And fond ones are flown, Oh! who would ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... deux; after which Mueller sang a comic song with a chorus, in which everybody joined; and then the orchestra was bribed with hot brandy-and-water, and dancing commenced again. By this time the visitors began to drop away in twos and threes, and even the fair Josephine, to whom I had never ceased paying the most devoted attention, declared she could not stir another step. As for Dalrymple, he had disappeared during supper, without a word of leave-taking to ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... appears—that the penitent's experience of forgiving and restoring love makes 'the tongue of the dumb sing,' and it will bind men's hearts more closely to God than anything besides can do, so that their old inclinations to false reliances and idolatries drop away from them. The old fable tells us that the storm made the traveller wrap his cloak closer round him, but the sunshine made him throw it off. Judgments often make men cling more closely to their sins, but forgiving mercy makes them 'cast off the works of darkness.' The men who had ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a free age do some little hurt, and cause some annoyance at present, they cannot continue long; our country is fated to a grand, independent existence, and, as its laws develop, these parasites of a bygone period must wither and drop away. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Impending desolation hangs around, 90 And ruin hovers o'er the trembling ground: The blooming spring droops her enamell'd head, Her glories wither, and her flowers all fade: The sprouting leaves already drop away; Languish the living herbs with pale decay: The bowing trees, see! o'er the blasted heath, Depending, bend beneath the weight of death: Wrapp'd in the expansive gloom, the lightnings play, Hoarse thunder mutters through the aerial way: All Nature feels the pangs, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... what to do in all the ordinary emergencies of life. The human species, in its development, has lost a large portion of its instincts, and has gained, instead, the power of intelligent choice and the ability to learn by imitation. When these drop away, man without his instincts or his intelligence is more helpless than the brute. Students of sociology are making clear to us that a large portion of the criminality of the world, much of the looseness of life, and a large ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... the room, the door locked, the sense of loneliness had dropped away from her as the mists used to drop away from the mountain in the morning. Even then she had understood vaguely that she had touched upon some philosophy of life: that one was never lonely when alone, only in the ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... colossus built up of a thousand blocks; but among them a hundred and more be but loosely in their places, and are ready to drop away from the body of the foul monster—sooner rather than later. Our shout alone will shake them down, and they will fall on our side, we may choose the best for our own use. Ere long—a few months only—the hosts will gather in the champaign country at the foot ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... off, a little at a loss as to how she was to supply this deficiency. It would scarcely be possible for her to break into the enclosures of Dungemarsh Court—especially since she had allowed herself to drop away from North Farthing House ... she had been a fool to do that—Sir Harry might have helped her now. But then ... her lips tightened.... Anyhow, he would not be at home for Christmas—since Martin's death he had sub-let the farm and was a good deal away; people said he had "come ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... marriage, this symbolism and these customs grow purer and more in accord with the ideals. Just as it is always taken for granted that a marriage ceremony is uniting loving hearts, so little by little all that is at variance with that thought will drop away, as have already several minor details, and new forms and customs more in harmony with the new ideals take the place of the old. These changes, however, come very gradually, and should not be hastened, but should only keep pace with the new conceptions. Nevertheless, ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... not resent these comments. He merely flung back an occasional comment of his own and hurried on until he reached the rear. Then in the dusk of the road he found four or five men limping along, and ready when convenient to drop away in the darkness. Harry wasted no time. The fire in his blood that had come from Jackson was still burning. He snatched a pistol from his belt and, riding directly at ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts, or slow decline, Our social comforts drop away. ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... Forest to tell you so. The things that do not count drop away. We do not have to push them from ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... which all outward inequalities fade away. It bases a demand for mutual help and love, upon the fact that we are all on a pilgrimage—high, low, honored, degraded, master, slave, we go forth together, and these earthly distinctions all drop away. Rich man with rows of real-estate, with money safe in bank, with solid securities walled around you—you will carry no more away than Lazarus yonder—in God's eyes you are no richer than he. Because here we have no continuing city. The destinies of our common humanity ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... chiefly meditating on the purging and subliming of what he has already done: and repents that he has published at all yet. It is fine to see how in each succeeding poem the smaller ornaments and fancies drop away, and leave the grand ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... been in no hesitancy about drawing out the bad things he did as well as the good in their efforts to get a "Mark Twain" story, all incidents being viewed in the light of his present fame, until the volume of "Twainiana" is already considerable and growing in proportion as the "old timers" drop away and the stories are retold second and third hand by their descendants. With some seventy-three years and living in a villa instead of a house, he is a fair target, and let him incorporate, copyright, or patent himself as he will, there are some of his "works" that will ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... drop away in front of them so sharply that Tod had no work to do. A little further, and the slow trot, which gentle use of the foot-break had made possible, was reduced to a reluctant, pastern-racking walk, with slack traces and strained ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... state of society. You called yourself a feminist, but you, and women like you, are feminists only when it's convenient. There are no real feminists except ugly women like me or old ones like Meuriot. You others come about us in a swarm and then drop away one after another to go off to some man. As soon as a lover condescends to throw the handkerchief you're up and off to him. You want to be slaves. Go, my dear, and take your lover. That's your ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... such speeches as these to draw any two nearer and nearer to each other as they walked side by side—to fill the morning air with an intensity of life, to seem to cause the world to drop away and become as nothing? As they had been isolated during their waltz in the crowded ballroom at Dunholm Castle, so they were isolated now. When they stood in the narrow green groves of the hop garden, talking simply of the placing ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "He may drop away most any time, mother," said she, "and she hasn't seen trouble enough yet to be good for much to help him or herself either, at ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... load the sloop back with rice and provisions; but I seemed backward to going, when the old surgeon stood up and persuaded me to go, and with many arguments pressed me to it; as, particularly, if I did not go, there would be no order, and several of the men might drop away, and perhaps betray all the rest; and that they should not think it safe for the sloop to go again if I did not go; and to urge me to it, he offered ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... they had taken their hats and sticks and were on the point of going out: "Lord, man, how can you be so impenetrably dense? Don't you see that she's really of the softest finest material that breathes, that she's a perfect flower of plasticity, that everything you may have an apprehension about will drop away from her like the dead leaves from a rose and that you may make of her any perfect and enchanting thing you yourself have the ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... insisted on by early balloonists is that the earth, on quitting it, appears to drop away into an abyss, leaving the voyagers motionless, and this illusion must, indeed, be probably universal. It is the same illusion as the apparent gliding backwards of objects to a traveller in a railway carriage; only in this latter case the rattling and ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... core of the electromagnet. On reversing the direction of the current through the spiral we reverse the poles of the core, for the poker being of soft or wrought iron, does not retain its magnetism like steel. If we stop the current altogether it ceases to be a magnet, and the nails will drop away ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... fundamental differences from ours in their attitude towards life, and a squashiness that leaves one with one's mouth open. They can't bear to let a single thing that has happened to them ever, however many years ago, drop away into oblivion and die decently in its own dust. They hold on to it, and dig it out that day year and that day every year, for years apparently,—I expect for all their lives. When they leave off really feeling about ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... to drop away beneath the dozen aircars which carried the Radiant People, while the aircars of Luar and of Dalis fell ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... south-west wind and the blue sky. Only a carolling of larks and a tinkling from distant flocks break the brooding noonday stillness; above, the wind-hover hangs motionless, a black dot on the blue. Prone on his back on the springy turf, gazing up into the sky, his fleshy integument seems to drop away, and the spirit ranges at will among the tranquil clouds. This way Nirvana nearest lies. Earth no longer obtrudes herself; possibly somewhere a thousand miles or so below him the thing still "spins like a fretful midge.'' ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... ranks of the Roman people. And then the subject states of Carthage were mostly of another race, language, and religion from their Phoenician conquerors, and were ready, upon the first disaster to the ruling city, to drop away from their allegiance; while the Latin allies and Italian dependencies of Rome were close kindred to her in race and religion, and so, through natural impulse, for the most part remained loyal to her during even the darkest periods of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... in readiness, and the earth began to drop away beneath them, the dogs put their noses in the air and chorused a canine Arctic dirge. But their howls were lost in ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... Mr. Linden was getting along. The hours of the afternoon waned away; but people came as people went; and it was not till long shadows and slant sunbeams began to give note of supper time, that the influx lessened and the friends gathered in Mrs. Derrick's parlour began to drop away without others stepping in to ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... rescued from the piercing it had been so devoutly promised. The dread, by which he was now companioned—of Malkiel, of that portentous and unseen lady who dwelt beside the secret waters of the Mouse, of those imagined offshoots of the prophetic tree, Corona and Capricornus—this would drop away. He would be free once more, light-hearted, a happy and mildly intellectual man of the town, emerged from the thrall of bogies, and from beneath the yoke which he already felt laid upon his shoulders by those august creatures who were the centre ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... comprehension of thought, and that of Virgil is grace and splendour of diction. The beauties of Homer are, therefore, difficult to be lost, and those of Virgil difficult to be retained. The massy trunk of sentiment is safe by its solidity, but the blossoms of elocution easily drop away. The author, having the choice of his own images, selects those which he can best adorn; the translator must, at all hazards, follow his original, and express thoughts which, perhaps, he would not have chosen. When to this primary difficulty is added the inconvenience of a language so much ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... thoughts, unused to saddle-crupper, Ambling no farther than thy supper— Thou, by the light of heaven-lit taper, Mendest thy prospective paper! Then, jolly pauper, stitch till day; Let not thy roses drop away, Lest, begrimed with muddy matter, Thy body peep from every tatter, And men—a charitable dose— Should physic thee with food and clothes! Nursling of adversity! 'Tis thy glory thus to be Sinking fund of raggery! Thus to scrape a nation's dishes, And ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... this state, outer things drop away,[24] and he seems to become lost, and absorbed into the being of the universe. He partakes, momentarily, of a larger, fuller life, he drinks in vitality through nature. The least blade of grass, he says, or the greatest oak, "seemed like exterior nerves and veins for the conveyance of feeling to ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... must come to an end at last, and so the end of this evening came. People began to drop away one by one, bidding their hostess good-night with the air of individuals who had performed a duty, and were relieved to find it performed and disposed of for the time being. So Dolly, leaving her companion with a bright ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... searched my face without looking into my eyes, as though I made part of her study. What sat on her face was perplexity, wonder, amazement, and something else, I know not what. Something of her perfect poise and confidence, her quality as woman of the world, seemed to drop away. A strange and childlike quality came into her face, a pathos unlike anything I had seen there before. She took my ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... remembered that sins by which passion and externals overbear my better self are mine in responsibility and in consequences. Thus guarded, we may be wholly right in thinking of all the evils which still cleave to the renewed Christian soul as not being part of it, but destined to drop away. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... a stranger rides up. If the newcomer is a new drummer unfamiliar with the ways of the mountains, if he comes imbued with the belief that the voice with the smile wins, and talkatively radiates his individual idea of fellowship and democracy, one by one his auditors silently drop away. To them, an insincere, a false note of democracy has been struck. Perhaps around the door there will linger some of the mountain boys waiting to satisfy their curiosity over the contents ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... my guide, and not my punishment! Of Leah Cousins next the name appears, With honours crown'd and blest with length of years, Save that she lived to feel, in life's decay, The pleasure die, the honours drop away; A matron she, whom every village-wife View'd as the help and guardian of her life, Fathers and sons, indebted to her aid, Respect to her and her profession paid; Who in the house of plenty largely fed, Yet ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... nobler things than wealth, or worldly honors; than place or power? And is he not serenest and happiest whose life rests on these as a house upon its foundations? You cannot shake such a man. You cannot throw him down. Wealth may go, and friends drop away like withering autumn leaves, but he stands fast, with the light of heaven upon his brow. He has faith in virtue—he has trust in God—he knows that all will come out right in the end, and that he will be a wiser and better man for the trial that tested his ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... air going?" I inquired. "The little clouds of it seem to drop away from us like lead; but that must be because of ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... between capital and labor is not lasting in our present society and it will scarcely last in Milwaukee. Already there are signs of what is likely to happen, and the business-men admirers of Milwaukee Socialism are beginning to drop away. A few more strikes, and Berger and his associates may be forced to abandon completely their claim that it is to the interest of employers, with some exceptions, to elect Socialists ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... matter," said Mick, beginning to descend. This was true enough, if he had minded what he was about; but then he did not. So far from it, he was saying to himself, "One 'ud ha' thought now she might ha' took a sort of pride in it," when the bottom of the world seemed to drop away from under his feet, and his irrelevant meditations ended in a shattering thud down on the rocky pavement a long way below. He never heard the shouts and shrieks which the incident occasioned above his head. Once only he became dimly conscious ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... drank more wine than was good for me. Probably it was doctored, but I don't know. All my life, whenever I have taken a glass too much, one sure result has followed. All the restraints of conduct which I ordinarily feel drop away, and ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... It shall be the last time, if you will only be patient. There is an hour coming, if you persist in your present course, when you will wish you had never been born; an hour when all human aid must fail, and all human interests and splendor drop away from you like rotten rags; when your soul, affrighted and shrinking, will go forth, obeying the inexorable laws, of the Creator, to meet its Almighty Judge. When the shadows will fall darkly around your way, Helen, and phantoms of darkness lie in wait, until the irrevocable ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... water, and sink to the bottom, where little creatures are born,—ugly, brown things, with six legs and no wings. They feed on water-insects, and for a long time swim about in this state. When ready, they climb up the stem of some plant, and sit in the sun till the ugly brown shells drop away, and the lovely winged creatures appear. They grow in an hour to be perfect dragon-flies, and float away to lead happy lives in the sunshine ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... our hearts. Oh, if we lived in the true understanding of what prayer really is—the emptying out of our inmost desire and thoughts before our Brother, who is likewise our Lord—questions as to what it was permissible to pray for, and what it was not permissible to pray for, would be irrelevant, and drop away of themselves. If we had a less formal notion of prayer, and realised more thoroughly what it was—the speech of a confiding heart to a sympathising Lord—then everything that fills our hearts would be seen to be a fitting object of prayer. If anything ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... now. But last night something in the music caused the years to drop away and I was back there again and she rose before me. Really, I felt her very presence. I saw her as plainly as ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... God quenched the fire on my own hearth, that I might learn to make that of others bright My dear, one's life never need be empty of love, even though, after seeing all near kindred drop away, one lingers to be an old maid ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... of the governor valves is stuck shut, short bushing No. 18 in engine cab is worn badly, allowing wheel to drop away from the governor stand so steam passes around wheel to exhaust, or ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... he said. "You're his problem then." He took a small flat piece of metal out of a pocket and reached back of her with it. He didn't seem to do more than touch the cuffs, but she felt the slick coils loosen and drop away. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz |
