"Oblivion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than conform to anything that is disgraceful." North Carolina, now proceeding with vigor (November, 1786), fully reassumed its sovereignty and jurisdiction over the mountain counties, but passed an act of pardon and oblivion, and in many ways adopted moderate ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... existence the complacent mother ignores, his plethoric brothers and sisters repudiate, and for whose emaciated jaws there is never a spare or supplemental teat, till one of the favoured gormandizers, overtaken by momentary oblivion, drops the lacteal fountain, and gives the little squeaking straggler the chance of a momentary mouthful. This miserable little object, which may be seen bringing up the rear of every litter, is called the Tony pig, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... event transpiring in that world belonging to the mind when the objective senses have withdrawn into rest or oblivion. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... says Mr. Hobhouse, "at a moderate pace ride from Livadia to Thebes and back again between breakfast and dinner; and the tour of all Boeotia might certainly be made in two days without baggage." Having visited, within a very short space of time, the fountains of Memory and Oblivion at Livadia, and the haunts of the Ismenian Apollo at Thebes, the travellers at length turned towards Athens, the city of their dreams, and, after crossing Mount Cithaeron, arrived in sight of the ruins of Phyle, on the evening ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... it with the things to be, Keeps it in dread, and wearies it with cares; And even when evil acts are of the past, Still gnaw the old transgressions bitterly. Add, too, that frenzy, peculiar to the mind, And that oblivion of the things that were; Add its submergence in the murky waves Of ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... before misrepresentation, ridicule, and denunciation, ceased to be the most notable constituents of the majority of the multitudinous criticisms of his work which poured from the press. I am loth to rake any of these ancient scandals from their well-deserved oblivion; but I must make good a statement which may seem overcharged to the present generation, and there is no piece justificative more apt for the purpose, or more worthy of such dishonour, than the article in the 'Quarterly Review' for July, 1860. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... night he would hear them talking; talking; maddened, sweating, seeking oblivion in drink, he would lie there and hear the voices going on and on. And day after day Leonora would come to him and would announce the ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... flame with carbuncles. Here, in deep bays and harbors, lies many a spell-bound ship, long given up as lost by the ruined merchant. Here, too, its crew, long bewailed as swallowed up in ocean, lie sleeping in mossy grottoes, from age to age, or wander about enchanted shores and groves, in pleasing oblivion ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... disfranchised. He was also a fisherman and another typical specimen of the class. Mr. N., having the same facial defect, though in a much less noticeable way, became identified with him, and I am again found walking down the hill to oblivion in company with this brother in distress. This is bad for Mr. N., but it ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... genial and jocund cheerfulness, that of all the lesser virtues is the most efficient to the happiness of a household. One daughter only had they, and we could charm our heart even now, by evoking the vanished from oblivion, and imaging her over and over again in the light of words; but although all objects, animate and inanimate, seem always tinged with an air of sadness when they are past—and as at present we are resolved to ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... stooping like some poor travesty of Narcissus, with shaded face pierced down deep—deep into eyes not my own, but violet and unendurable and strange—eyes of the living water-sprite drawing my wits from me, stilling my heart, till I was very near plunging into that crystal oblivion, to be ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... a little dried-up man, whose ceremonious bow put Violet in mind of the Mayor of Wrangerton. Bending low, he politely gave her a chair, and then subsided into oblivion; while Miss Gardner came forward, as usual, the same trim, quiet, easy-mannered person, and began to talk to Violet, while Mrs. Finch ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... maiden speech in Parliament was directed against the proposal of the Liverpool Administration to enforce its views in regard to the union of Norway and Sweden. It escaped the attention of Parliamentary reporters and has passed into oblivion. The pages of 'Hansard,' however, give a brief summary of his next speech, which, like its predecessor, was on the side of liberty. It was delivered on July 14, 1814, in opposition to the second reading of the Alien Acts, which in spite of such a protest quickly became law. His ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... many of them have been handed down from father to son, unchanged, from the prehistoric past to the present day; a past contemporary, perhaps, with the mastodon, but certainly far back in the mists of antiquity. The importance of rescuing them from oblivion is plain enough, and therefore the untimely death of Miss Johnson, who was evidently turning with congenital fitness to the task, is doubly to be regretted. For as Mr. Bernard McEnvoy well says in ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... country, irresistibly fascinated by the magic of old world forests. From yellowing leaves, fluttering earthward, celebrating the glorious agony of the trees, from the clangorous angelus bidding the fields to slumber, rose a sweet persuasive voice, counseling perfect oblivion. The sun was setting solitary. Beasts and men turned peacefully homeward, ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... lower pane in the left half was torn approximately in the manner of the right lower pane, or plate number 13, the find consisted originally of 230 stamps, more or less. This reckoning agrees, we believe, with the recollection of the person who rescued the imperforates from oblivion, in a philatelic sense. The plate numbers on the sheet that gave authority for the chronicling of the stamps by the WEEKLY are 13 and 14, and not 18, as ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... emotion of surprise and astonishment weakened his will momentarily, oblivion came, with what seemed a fleeting instant of memories. His life seemed to flash before his mind in serried rank, a file of events, his childhood, his life, his marriage, his wife, an image of smiling comfort, then the years, images of great and near great men, his knowledge ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... the quivering power of the airship, lulled his fevered spirit. Sleep won upon him, dulled the excitements of the past twenty-four hours, sank him into oblivion. His deep, regular breathing sounded in the gloom of the cabin that contained the Great Pearl Star, the Myzab, the sacred Black Stone of ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Europe, I know, to oblivion may doom the fruits of my talented brain, But they're perfectly sure of creating a boom in the wilds of Kentucky and Maine: They'll appreciate there my illustrious work on the way to make Pindar to scan, And Culture will hum in the State of ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... was glad they were dead. Life after what they had suffered had been unthinkable. He thanked God for that oblivion. He wished that he, too, might die in that violated shrine where he had peacefully ministered for so long a time. They had taken the flock, the shepherd must follow. ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the race began by giving her a long start, and, being well ahead, she can listen in camouflaged amusement to the man's protestations of her "divinity" as he "galollups" madly after her. When you come across lovers in that state of oblivion to staring eyes—as you do come across them so often during these beautiful warm evenings—it is always the man who looks supremely sheepish; the woman doesn't "turn a hair." She simply stares at the intruder ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... man is bound to be also the most accessible, the most attentive, the most courteous and sympathetic. Avoiding carefully, of course, all affectation and unreality, he is to take care that a Christian reality within does show itself in a Christian manner without. "Let your moderation, your oblivion of self, be known unto all men." [Phil. iv. 5.] Let it be seen and felt, in your rooms, in your parish, ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... think that I fear the big fight. I don't. With Dartrey on my side we shall wipe Miller into oblivion. It isn't true to-day to say that he represents the trades unions, for the very reason that the trades unions as solid bodies don't exist any longer. The men have learnt to think for themselves. Many of them are earnest members ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... go away, and in a year there isn't a thing, just desert again and shifting sand and maybe the little original old ranch by the one spring." He swept the table-cloth with his hand, as if sweeping something into oblivion, and his eyes sought again the spoon. "It's queer, that business. Men and women go out to lonely places and build houses, and for a while everything goes on in miniature, just as it does here—daily bread and hating and laughing—and then something happens, the gold gives out or the fields ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... He had the promise from the First Lord of the Admiralty of an appointment speedily to a ship. The half came to an end, the school broke up, and the boys separated with all animosities and quarrels sunk in oblivion; and in the belief that they should meet each other again soon, if not at school, somewhere or other. Jack went home, and was then sent, by the advice of his naval friend, to an academy at Portsmouth, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... commander of Aquitaine, Godfrey de Gonaville, the great visitor of France, Hugues de Peraud, were still pining in the royal dungeons. It was necessary to determine on their fate. The King and the Pope were now equally interested in burying the affair forever in silence and oblivion. So long as these men lived, uncondemned, undoomed, the order was not extinct. A commission was named: the Cardinal-Archbishop of Albi, with two other cardinals, two monks, the Cistercian Arnold Novelli, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... both for me as I have done for you. For you? No, not for you, but for the shadow of you, for the thought of you, for these short weeks of you. And then, an eternity of absence, and of remorse, and of oblivion—ah, if it might be oblivion for you! If I could blot out of your life this short, blighting summer; if I could put you back to where you were that fresh, sweet morning that I walked with you beside the river! I loved you from that day, Pauline, and I drugged my conscience, and refused ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... as though the bounds of life and death were merged, and the sumptuous group of which he formed a part already dusted over with oblivion. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... of slightly glutinous water! Does not swift comfort and ready substitution show first love rather, the passion between man and woman than between a man and a woman? How speedily is even a Romeo consoled to oblivion for the loss of a Rosaline by the gain of a Juliet! And yet I mourn over even such evanishment; mourn although I know that the bubble of paradise, swift revolving to annihilation, is never a wasted ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... had papered just as our nursery had been papered. Even the old kettle was rescued from oblivion, and stood on the hob. It was so old that any jumble sale would have been pleased to have it. The kettle-holder hung on the wall, with its cat on a green ground, which had been lovely in the day of its youth. One ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... example of the corruption of even oral tradition, and still less consistent with the experience of written history: and this improbability, which is very great, is rendered still greater by the reflection, that no such change as the oblivion of one story, and the substitution of another, took place in any future period of the Christian aera. Christianity hath travelled through dark and turbulent ages; nevertheless it came out of the cloud and the storm, such, in substance, as it entered in. Many ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... seek it at the intelligence office, which is in one of those streets chiefly inhabited by the orphaned children and grandchildren of slavery. To tell the truth these orphans do not seem to grieve much for their bereavement, but lead a life of joyous, and rather indolent oblivion in their quarter of the city. They are often to be seen sauntering up and down the street by which the Charlesbridge cars arrive,—the young with a harmless swagger, and the old with the generic limp ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... David Dalrymple, (Lord Hailes,) Nov. 5.-Thanks for his "Memorials and Letters." Folly of burying in oblivion the faults and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... intention in my face, but it was obvious that he anticipated my move, for his car shot forward with such wonderful speed that the fate I intended to force upon him befell myself. I saw his car disappearing ahead, and the next moment I was just conscious of a shock that sent me flying into oblivion. ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... retrospection. Antonyms: oblivion, forgetfulness, Lethe, amnesia, ecmnesia. Associated words: mnemonics, mnemonic, mnemonician, mnemotechny, phrenotypics, Mnemosyne, immortalize, immemorial, memorable, memorabilia, memorize, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... inflection of voice, and the same bridling and smiling. "Very different," continued her ladyship, "very different from what you have been accustomed to see on some ladies' tables, no doubt, Mr. Vivian! Without mentioning names, or alluding to transactions that ought to be buried in eternal oblivion, and that are so very distressing to your friends here to think of, sir, give me leave to ask, Mr. Vivian, whether it be true what I have heard, that the prosecution, and every thing relative to it, is entirely ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... of those amongst whom he lived. Remember, too, that his crowning sorrow had not yet taught him resignation, an opiate which works only with lapse of time. There is a manlier and a truer courage than that which seeks a momentary oblivion of its wrongs in the excitement of personal danger—there is a heroism of defence, far above the easier valour of attack—and those are distinguished as the bravest troops that under severe loss preserve their discipline ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... to descend. The architect certainly deserves great praise for having managed so cleverly to unite all these holy places under one roof; and St. Helena has performed a most meritorious action in thus rescuing from oblivion the sacred sites in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... seen the black last of him, and the very name of Croker already begins to be a memory. But why should one repine?" Lemon's sneer was deepening. "In every age the other great have come and ruled and gone to that oblivion beyond. They arose to fall and be forgot. It is the law. Then why not Mr. Croker? True, even while we consent, there comes that natural sadness which I now observe to sparkle so brightly in every present eye. What then? We console ourselves as did Chief Justice ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... daughter, granddaughter, that was the fixed stem continuing with certainty. Father, son, grandson, were only the leaves, which existed only until the autumnal wind of death tore them away, to hurl them into the abyss of oblivion. In that epoch no one said, 'I am the son of such a father and the grandson of such a grandfather,' but 'I am the son of such a mother and the grandson of such a grandmother.' The inheritance went not to the son and grandson, but to the daughter and to the granddaughter, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... will soon have passed, and our little brains which have forgotten so much will be forgotten. We shall be throttled out of the world and pressed by the clumsy hands of Death into the mould of that same rubbish-hill of oblivion, unless there be a stronger hand to save us. We shall be cast aside, and left behind by the hurrying crowd, unless there be those who will see to it that our soul, like that of John Brown, goes marching along. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... of these peculiarities, either directly or indirectly, the preacher closes with an ordinary form; which, if one were to assert that they were absolutely omitted, would immediately be alledged in contradiction of the assertion, and may just serve to protect them from falling into entire oblivion. But in novels, the writer is not so tied down. In these, people of Religion, and clergymen too, are placed in all possible situations, and the sentiments and language deemed suitable to the occasion are assigned to them. They are introduced instructing, reproving, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... Jacobinical. If we seek for peace, it must be done in the spirit of peace. We are not to make it a question who was the first aggressor, or endeavour to throw the blame that may attach to us on our enemy. Such circumstances should be consigned to oblivion, as tending to no one useful purpose. France, in the beginning of the Revolution, had conceived many romantic notions. She was to put an end to war, and produce, by a pure form of government, a perfectibility ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... that time the society of New Orleans had other things to think about than the fate of the Des Islets. As for la grande demoiselle, she had prepared for her own oblivion in the hearts of her female friends. And the gentlemen,—her preux chevaliers,—they were burning with other passions than those which had driven them to her knees, encountering a little more serious response than "bahs" and shrugs. And, after all, a woman seems the ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... all date, even to eternity: Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart Have faculty by nature to subsist; Till each to razed oblivion yield his part. ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... the West had carried their program. Polk retired to his home to die a few months later. There had been no appreciable public demand for his renomination; and, rather strange to say, both the people and the historians consigned him to comparative oblivion. ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... by night! She knew what that meant. That awful night of darkness, steep riding, howling beasts and black oblivion! She shuddered involuntarily at the remembrance. Not afraid! What confidence the voice had as it rang on, and all at once she knew that this night was free from terror for her because of the man whose confidence was ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... while they invoke the pagan deities with a shameless prodigality that would scandalize even a French lyric. This cheap display of school-boy erudition, however it may have appalled their own age, has been a principal cause of their comparative oblivion with posterity. How far superior is one touch of nature, as the "Finojosa" or "Querella de Amor," for example, of the marquis of Santillana, to all this farrago ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... will be a sort of satisfaction to think that in fighting against her country I may in a way humiliate herself. Ah, Texas! If you find in me a defender, it will not be from any patriotic love of you, but to bury bitter thoughts in oblivion." ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... have turned out to be that no less wonderful personage which my wife has been perpetually boring me about for the last two years—Agatha's Husband," said Mr. Thornycroft, patiently resigning the Corn Laws to their inevitable doom—oblivion. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... printing houses; the pressman dabbed the ink by hand on the characters, and the movable table on which the form of type was placed in readiness for the sheet of paper, being made of marble, literally deserved its name of "impression-stone." Modern machinery has swept all this old-world mechanism into oblivion; the wooden press which, with all its imperfections, turned out such beautiful work for the Elzevirs, Plantin, Aldus, and Didot is so completely forgotten, that something must be said as to the obsolete gear on which Jerome-Nicolas Sechard ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... (whose names shall now be buried in oblivion) struggled furiously. An expression of intense horror and annoyance was seen on his face. But Martha was stronger than he. She lifted him up and carried him into the house. None of the children will ever forget that picture. The neat grey-flannel-suited ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... of prescription, they forbid us alike either to bend to inclination, or stoop to interest, and from generation to generation their injuries will call out for redress, should their noble and long unsullied name be voluntarily consigned to oblivion!" ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... penetrated her heart. And when the moon rose on the fields of olive-trees, seeing the soft lines of plains and of hills pass, Therese, in this landscape wherein everything spoke of peace and oblivion, and nothing spoke of her, regretted the Seine, the Arc de Triomphe with its radiating avenues, and the alleys of the park where, at least, the trees and the stones ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... and tribulation, and they date by a tempest, an earthquake, or burst of civil commotion. When such are the facts most alive, in the memory of the common people, we cannot wonder," he concluded, "that the ferocious warrior is remembered, and the peaceful abbots are abandoned to forgetfulness and oblivion." ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... their earliest affections —who had studied within those embattled walls until the sight of them became almost a part of his existence —what hosts of such have but served to swell the waters of oblivion, and press the associations of a common mortality upon the mind in the reflection on this very truism! The late Sir Egerton Brydges—a writer whose talents, though admitted, were never received as they merited to ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... various modes. JOHNSON. 'Memory will play strange tricks. One sometimes loses a single word. I once lost fugaces in the Ode Posthume, Posthume. I mentioned to him, that a worthy gentleman of my acquaintance actually forgot his own name. JOHNSON. 'Sir. that was a morbid oblivion.' ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... of those venerable men who led the way in the missionary enterprises of the last forty years. They are known and honored throughout the world; and honors will thicken and brighten around their memory long after the mere politician, statesman, and warrior shall have passed into oblivion. ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... reptiles, and fishes. It would be most interesting to see these science primers prepared by Solomon, and compare them with what we see on the same subjects in our own day. But the Bible has not preserved them, and they have long centuries ago passed into oblivion. Solomon's knowledge was not of that shallow sort which is limited to the sphere of earthly material, "seen things;" for he was wise with that deeper knowledge which has for its object God and the human soul, and their natures and movements ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... phrases have dropped from the lips of prominent persons who must bitterly regret them and wish them buried deep in oblivion. But they stand on record, and history will not let them die. "Too proud to fight" is the most unfortunate of all, and when others are forgotten it will remain, because it has a general application. Mr. Raemaekers exposes its foolishness ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... these stones," he said to himself, "but monuments to oblivion? They are not memorials of the dead, but memorials of the forgetfulness of the living. How vain it is to send a poor forsaken name, like the title page of a lost book, down the careless stream of time! Let me serve my generation, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... enclosed within parentheses he insisted that they did not count, and made a very fair plea that he ought not to be punished for words which slipped in by mistake, and which he had officially obliterated by what he called oblivion marks. ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... last remark is that Milton, in his tract, writes wholly from the man's point of view, and in the man's interest, with a strange oblivion of the woman's. The Tract is wholly a plea for the right of a man to give his wife a bill of divorcement and send her home to her father. There is no distinct word about any counterpart right for a woman who has married an unsuitable husband ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Mirrors into the bachelor Carrasco; all the work of the enchanters that persecute me. But tell me now, didst thou ask this Tosilos, as thou callest him, what has become of Altisidora, did she weep over my absence, or has she already consigned to oblivion the love thoughts that used to afflict ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... others are industriously "hitting the pipe." The combined fumes of opium and tobacco are well-nigh unbearable, but thera is no alternative. The next bench to mine is occupied by a peripatetic vender of drugs and medicines. Most of his time is consumed in smoking opium in dreamy oblivion to all else save the sensuous delights embodied in that operation itself. Occasionally, however, when preparing for another smoke, he addresses me at length in about one word of pidgin-English to a dozen of simon-pure Cantonese. In a spirit of friendliness ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... of Napoleon, Barere played the part of royalist, but on the final restoration of the Bourbons in 1815 he was banished for life from France as a regicide, and then withdrew to Brussels and temporary oblivion. After the revolution of July 1830 he reappeared in France, was reduced by a series of lawsuits to extreme indigence, accepted a small pension assigned him by Louis Philippe (on whom he had heaped abuse and railing), and died, the last survivor ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... emerged from its oblivion and the joy that rushed to his heart passed into every vein in his body. At his feet the unhappy girl; at the window the rigid form of the man to whom he knew her love had turned; in the centre of this tableau he stood, his head erect, his lungs ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... expansion, nor be broken by internal strains. She will not suffer that loss of unity which would be for all her members death, and for her history and meaning and self an utter oblivion. She will ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... the only literary chanticleer? My dear friend, have you read 'Esdras'? You will find there that a certain king of Persia wrote to one 'Rathumus, a story-writer.' No doubt he was famous in his day, but,—to travesty hamlet, 'where be his stories now?' Learn, from the deep oblivion into which poor Rathumus's literary efforts have fallen, the utter mockery ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... a story, long since propagated, under circumstances which it was expected would soon consign it to oblivion, (and by which I have been complimented at the expense of Generals Washington and Lafayette,) has of late been revived, and has acquired a degree of importance by being repeated in different publications, as well in Europe as ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... overcome the patience and perseverance of Fathom, who foresaw, that the soothing hand of time would cast a veil of oblivion over those scenes which were remembered to his prejudice; and that, in the meantime, though he was excluded from the private parties of the fair sex, in which his main hope of success was placed, he should be able to insinuate himself into some degree of favour and practice among the ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... instance, when by the 5th act of the 2d session of William and Mary's 1st Parl., the establishment of the church was calculated for the meridian of state-policy, according to act 114, Parl. 12, King James VI. Anno 1592. On purpose to pass over in shameful oblivion the church's choicest attainments in reformation betwixt 1638 and 1649; and particularly, to make void the League and Covenant, with the Assembly's explanatory declaration affixed to the National, the malignants' ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... of the solitary child to the solitary God—flight from the ruined corpse to the throne that could not be ruined!—how rich wert thou in truth for after years! Rapture of grief that, being too mighty for a child to sustain, foundest a happy oblivion in a heaven-born dream, and within that sleep didst conceal a dream; whose meaning, in after years, when slowly I deciphered, suddenly there flashed upon me new light; and even by the grief of a child, as I will show you, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... nonexistence, nonsubsistence; nonentity, nil; negativeness &c. adj.; nullity; nihility[obs3], nihilism; tabula rasa[Lat], blank; abeyance; absence &c. 187; no such thing &c. 4; nonbeing, nothingness, oblivion. annihilation; extinction &c. (destruction) 162; extinguishment, extirpation, Nirvana, obliteration. V. not exist &c. 1; have no existence &c. 1; be null and void; cease to exist &c. 1; pass away, perish; be extinct, become extinct &c. adj.; die out; disappear ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... on-moving of human life that must continue, regardless of race tragedy, as long as humans crave food either for the body or the soul. He might have seen himself as symbolizing one of those races that slip over the horizon into oblivion, unprotesting, only vaguely knowing. And seeing this thing, Big Jim might have paused and looking into the face of the horde that was pressing him over the brim, he ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... it truly in life. My childhood seems as near to me now as it was when I was twenty—nearer, I sometimes think; but the years of my early manhood have rushed by like that ribbon and are half swallowed by oblivion. ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... that I ought to pretend to rescue the class to which William belonged from the same kind of oblivion. But by keeping memories of the little daily things in life a preacher's wife learns some curious facts about the nature of a priest—facts that should enable the reader to make profitable comparisons between those of the old and ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... recollected the whole hideous scene at the stake, and finally recalled the strange white figure in whose arms he had sunk into oblivion. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hard drinking under a reverse; and the question addressed to the chief towns in the sketch counties his head contained was, which one near would be likely to supply the port wine for floating him through garlanding dreams of possession most tastily to blest oblivion. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... little being who had no father, no mother, no bread, no clothes, no refuge. It served to receive the innocent whom society repulsed. It served to diminish public crime. It was a lair open to one against whom all doors were shut. It seemed as though the miserable old mastodon, invaded by vermin and oblivion, covered with warts, with mould, and ulcers, tottering, worm-eaten, abandoned, condemned, a sort of mendicant colossus, asking alms in vain with a benevolent look in the midst of the cross-roads, had taken pity on that ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... for the accomplishment of our projects; nothing more slow to him that expects, nothing more rapid to him that enjoys; in greatness, it extends to infinity; in smallness, it is infinitely divisible; all men neglect it; all regret the loss of it; nothing can be done without it; it consigns to oblivion whatever is unworthy of being transmitted to posterity, and it immortalizes such actions as are truly great." The assembly acknowledged that Zadig ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... occurrence, that the chronicles of those days are divested of much of the interest, which attaches to a detail of Indian hostilities. For several years, scarce an incident occurred worthy of being rescued from oblivion. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... of the Court's pure air was not destined to oblivion. It was revived by the merest accident; the merest, that is, up to that date. There have been many merer ones since, unless the phrase has been incorrectly ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... finished speaking, he felt her slight young body suddenly become a dead weight on his arm. She crumpled up against him, and sank into the blessed oblivion of unconsciousness. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... is impossible that one conqueror shall be sunk to oblivion without his victor claiming for himself the style of his victim. Tukili had defeated his adversary, and Tukili was no exception to the general rule, and from being a fairly well-disposed king, amiable—too amiable as we have shown—and kindly, ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... le Viscomte," he said simply, as he gave the salute with ceremonious grace, and passed onward rapidly, as though he wished to forget and to have forgotten the momentary self-oblivion of which ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... I have rendered an acceptable service to the world in preserving these traditions from the oblivion that surely awaits them in their uncollected state. The North American Indians are a people, who, in the nature of things, and according to that which has happened to all, are doomed to be of the number ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... Patriarch, who offers consolation to a woman to whom he presents the hope of immortality, holding in his hands a scarab, ancient symbol of renewed life. Next come two recumbent figures, a man and a woman, the first, Sorrow, the other typifying Final Slumber. These are about to be drawn into oblivion by ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... the back of the neck. Soft billows of oblivion closed in upon him, and all that remained to him was a tiny spark of awareness, glowing alone and lost in a ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... point to which even the brightest of the occasional gleams of the fire did not extend, they turned, and paused a moment, in contemplation of the busy and lively party they had left, and of the obscurity which, like the gloom of oblivion, seemed to envelop the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... inside, the warmth And a sweet oblivion of turmoil. Why? All for a gentle girlish hand With its warm and ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... heart would you sever, (Harsh fate!) and forever, The friends who to life gave a charm, What oblivion effaces Fond mem'ry retraces, And pictures each ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... extent abandoned its opposition to the Finnish claims, but it still remained as representing the interests of the Swedish population in Finland. When the Russian attacks first commenced, all party divergences were sunk into oblivion, and the country provided the spectacle of a completely united nation. General Bobrikoff was too much of a tactician to be pleased with this state of affairs, and he began to play up to the Old-Finns, not without success. Among other things, he ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... that much to be desired condition, had sacrificed themselves for the common weal; but to the eternal disgrace of the town, all of them were now down and out, and in various retired spots, where they had been deposited by their sympathising friends, were snoring in peaceful oblivion. Even Len Barker, game disciple of the great master, had reached his limit and, no longer formidable, had, without form of law, been deposited for safekeeping, and with a sigh of relief, in the corporate Bastile; but Mr. Sweeney himself, Mr. ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... recollection of it. She could do justice to the superiority of Lady Russell's motives in this, over those of her father and Elizabeth; she could honour all the better feelings of her calmness; but the general air of oblivion among them was highly important from whatever it sprung; and in the event of Admiral Croft's really taking Kellynch Hall, she rejoiced anew over the conviction which had always been most grateful to her, of the past ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... say; but to all of it the boys paid very little attention. In fact, the subject was to all of them so painful a one, that they could not bear to have it brought forward even as the text of a sermon. They only wanted to forget all about it as soon as possible, and let it sink into complete oblivion. ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... truth is not thereby affected. Hugo never had the good fortune to write a bad book, nor even a single bad line, so not having time to read all, the future will read none. What immortality would be gained by the destruction of one half of his magnificent works, what oblivion is secured by the publication ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... his eyes and tried to sleep, but, though he came to the verge of oblivion, the voices from the other room finally waked him. They had been changing subtly during the past hours and now they rose, and there was a ring ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... us, perchance, some day? Shall I ever make moan of my passion to thee, I wonder, and say, 'How oft have I called thee to mind, whilst the night in its trances slept! Thou hast made me waken, whilst all but I in oblivion lay. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... with disgust and weariness. It would last, we knew, for the better part of the night. It was in our honor, and for a while we must stay and testify our pleasure; but after a time, when they had sung and danced themselves into oblivion of our presence, we might retire, and leave the very old men, the women, and the children sole spectators. We waited for that relief with impatience, though we showed it not to those ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... half years, I have hesitated what to do, but after seeing other men's translations, his incomplete work is, in my humble estimation, too good to be consigned to oblivion, so that I will no longer defer to send you a type-written copy, and to ask you to bring it through the press, supplying the Latin text, and adding thereto your own prose, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... Impalpable, and deep, that haunt my soul! Death, who can dash the chalice from the lips Of Pleasure's votary, and hush the lyre While poetry is breathing on its strings; Death, who can quench the spirit which portrays Beauty's resemblance on the marble urn, Will steep my feelings in oblivion's gloom, Ere wintry winds disperse the sunny leaves That cluster round the bosom of the rose. But I have communed with enchanting shapes, And felt the silver gush of many a song Amid the air, until my spirit seem'd Instinct with glorious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... than her husband, whose evil manners live in brass,—less fortunate than her son, whose virtues have been handed down for the admiration of posterity,—Caecilia Metella has left no record of her existence beyond her name. All else has been swallowed up by the oblivion of ages. Whether her husband raised this colossal trophy of the dust to commemorate his own pride of wealth, or his devoted love for her, we know not. He achieved his object; but he has given to his wife only the mockery of immortality. The substance has gone beyond recall, and but the shadow, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... force; others were of opinion that gentler arts were to be used, and that even a victory over such enemies would be worse than a defeat. At length, it was resolved to send a messenger, entreating the people to return home, and declare their grievances; promising, at the same time, an oblivion of all ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... careless references to the dead hurt her more than the silence of complete oblivion. To remember, and to be able to speak so lightly. ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... from ourselves. Nor do we come at us but when we find what we are in quest of. But where is it we look for but within us? Or what is it we look for but ourselves? . . . So unfathomable a difficulty astonishes us!" I distinctly remember I have known what I do not know at present. I remember my very oblivion. I call to mind the pictures or images of every person in every period of life wherein I have seen them formerly, so that the same person passes several times in my head. At first, I see one a child, then a young, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... from Ravan's eye, As thus in wrath he made reply: "Fair time, I ween, for sleep is this, To lull thy soul in tranquil bliss, Unheeding, in oblivion drowned, The dangers that our lives surround. Brave Rama, Dasaratha's son, A passage o'er the sea has won, And, with the Vanar monarch's aid, Round Lanka's walls his hosts arrayed. Though never in the deadly field My Rakshas troops were known ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... years, as if young men had gone out from it to see the world and come back again to rest, as if young girls had fluttered about it, confiding their sports and their loves to its ivy-clad walls. Now there hung about it a silence and sobriety that were like the shadows of coming oblivion. The gas was turned low in the hall. The old-fashioned omnibus that came lumbering from the railway with a box for the new maid seemed to startle the ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... them awoke echoes which had long been silent, and dragged forgotten facts out of oblivion to the light of day—just as one may enter a room which has been closely sealed for years, and see objects once familiar but long since absolutely forgotten, shrouded in dust and dim with disuse, but of which the sight instantly recalls ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... twentieth year Smart adventured on the composition of verses, but being dissatisfied with his efforts, he consigned them to oblivion. He subsequently renewed his invocation of the Muse, and in 1834 published a small duodecimo volume of poems and songs, entitled "Rambling Rhymes." This publication attracted considerable attention, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... reign is worth ambition, though in hell; Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. But wherefore let me then our faithful friends, The associates and co-partners of our loss, Lie thus astonished on the oblivion pool, And call them not to share with us their part In this unhappy mansion; or once more With rallied arms to try what may be yet Regained in heaven, or what more ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... creed. Glorification of "our institution at the South" became the main principle of Southern politicians, and any conception that there may ever have been of a task for constructive statesmanship, in solving the negro problem, passed into oblivion under the influence of his ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... mind if thou castest me into oblivion. Thy atmosphere, thy space, thy valleys I will cross. A vibrating, limpid note I will be in your ear; aroma, color, rumor, song, a sigh, constantly repeating the essence ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... time being, were objects of real, but shallow, affection. But the Indian puts up with anything rather than quarrel with his mother, and her memory remains fresh and green long after other departed relations and friends have been lost in oblivion. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... her window she looked upon the garden, and then again thought she distinguished a figure, gliding between the almond trees she had just left. She immediately withdrew from the casement, and, though much agitated, sought in sleep the refreshment of a short oblivion. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... the origin of nations or the affinities of languages to be further informed of the evolution of a people so ancient and once so illustrious. I hope that you will continue to cultivate this kind of learning which has too long been neglected, and which, if it be suffered to remain in oblivion for another century, may perhaps never ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... hundred and twenty-one at Ferozeshah, painfully attest the severity of the struggle, and the deadly precision of the foe. But the foe! who has numbered his dead? None; nor ever will. The pall of a decent oblivion has been tacitly cast upon the incalculable amount of his loss, which has exceeded the utmost extent of British loss, as much as his hordes of living warriors outnumbered by tens of thousands the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... of the British Army, said of R. E. Lee: "The day will come when the evil passions of the great civil war will sleep in oblivion, and the North and South do justice to each other's motives, and forget each other's wrongs. Then history will speak with clear voice of the deeds done on either side, and the citizens of the whole Union do justice to the memories of the dead, and place above all others ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... seems to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, who always fell back on me, I suppose from old habit, to whomsoever else she might address her discourse at starting, 'that the time is come when the past should be buried in oblivion; when my family should take Mr. Micawber by the hand, and Mr. Micawber should take my family by the hand; when the lion should lie down with the lamb, and my family be on terms ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... a critical moment in life when middle age awakens a man from the illusions that have been crowning the earlier years with inward glory. Some are contemptuously willing to let the vision and the dream pass into easy oblivion, while they hasten to make up for lost time in close pursuit of the main chance. Others can forgive anything sooner than their own exploded ideal, and the ghost of their dead enthusiasm haunts them with an embittering presence. Pattison drops a good many expressions about his Anglo-Catholic ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... disappointment, want of affection, and over-work. The old bitterness gripped the organ of life then; it brought me to my knees. I tried to call out, but it was unavailing. Sharp, fiendish pain, and then oblivion. ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin |
