"Solitary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down to the cove to look after his nets—for he dabbled in pilchard fishing as well as in other matters—and Rose went off to have a quiet, solitary walk. ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... no one was speaking, with a few drops of tears. Sometimes she disappeared—nor, when sought for, was found in the woods about the hut. And one day that mystery was cleared; for a shepherd saw her sitting by herself on a grassy mound in a nook of the small, solitary kirkyard, miles off among the hills, so lost in reading the Bible, that shadow or sound of his feet awoke her not; and, ignorant of his presence, she knelt down and prayed—for awhile weeping bitterly—but soon comforted by a heavenly calm—that her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... had only occupied about ten minutes) our artillery had gradually come into action; first the solitary, abrupt bang of the 12-pound horse gun, then the readier and brisker fusilade of the Canadian quick-firing Vickers-Maxim, then the clamour of our two pom-poms, then the rattle of a Maxim somewhere in the rear. And all the while the area from which ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... followed him so soon, he said mournfully: "If the publication of my works were completed and my Civil Rights Bill passed, no visitor could enter the door that would be more welcome than Death." He was weary of life. He was solitary, without kindred, without domestic ties. He had been subjected at intervals for eighteen years to great suffering, which with the anxieties of public life and the solitude which had become burdensome wore away his energy. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... one the car was halted, apparently much to the surprise of the solitary passenger, who leaned indolently forward and exchanged some ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... or not, it is only on like occasions that she ever has the opportunity of descending from the solitary pinnacle referred to," replied Fa Fai, not only with no outward appearance of alarm at being directly addressed by one of a different sex, but even moving nearer to Wei Chang as she spoke. "A more essential detail in the ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... white napkin gracefully arranged over his left arm, his velvet cap laid aside for the moment, and his best silver flagon in his right hand, mine host walked up to the solitary guest whom he mentioned, and thereby turned upon him the eyes of the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... fleet in one unbroken mass would confront the enemy. The rear of the British line was held by Collingwood in the Excellent; next to him came the Diadem; the third ship was the Captain, under Nelson. We may imagine how Nelson's solitary eye was fixed on the great Spanish three-deckers that formed the Spanish van as they suddenly swung round and came sweeping down to cross his stern. Not Napoleon himself had a vision more swift and ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... with her skirts tucked up and her arms bare and the soles of her shoes soggy from wet floors. Jean kept out of her way, but she owned to herself that, after all, it was not unpleasant to come home tired and not have to cook a solitary supper and eat it in ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... like these, and they were dangerous ones, I made many a solitary rush out into the wild winds and beating snows of the winter, which had set in early and been remarkably severe; walking bareheaded in the most lonely places of the suburbs, stripping my bosom to the blast, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... some little time the girl had been sitting thoughtfully, with her head bent down, her cheek resting on her hand, and a bright smile just parting her lips very prettily. The affliction which separated her from the worlds of hearing and speech—which set her apart among her fellow-creatures, a solitary living being in a sphere of death-silence that others might approach, but might never enter—gave a touching significance to the deep, meditative stillness that often passed over her suddenly, even in the society of her adopted parents, and of friends who were all talking around ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... boy stepped from a day-coach at two o'clock in the morning at Winona. No scene could have been more desolate. Save for the station-master and a solitary brakeman there was only one other person on hand, and that individual was the faithful Gustave, who advanced swiftly through the gloom and ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... an idle halt near Cleopatra's needle, and leaning against the Embankment wall, looked across the river to the warehouses opposite, which, in the evening mist, had the look of stark cliffs guarded by a solitary watchful lion. The smaller of the two young men took off his soft hat and set it beside him so that he could let the wind brush through his thick red hair. He held himself very straight, his slender body taut ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... after Mellen's departure, Elizabeth, who was taking her solitary promenade on the veranda, was surprised by a visit from Mrs. Harrington, who came fluttering across the lawn between two gentlemen, with whom she seemed carrying on a right and left flirtation. She came up the steps with her flounces all in commotion, her face wreathed with insipid ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... cupboard there at your right hand," said he; "keep a bottle of hock and a wine glass there, and help yourself when you feel you want it." "No, thank you," said I; "if I took wine it should not be when alone, nor would I help myself to a glass; I might take a little more and a little more, till my solitary glass might become a regular tippling habit; I shall avoid the temptation altogether." Physicians should consider well before they give such advice to ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... all that solitary, desolate peak to call them; nothing, for that matter, to beckon Garry, except the hot desert days, the cool breath of evening and the glory of nights when the stars hung low over all the miles of sand and sagebrush that reached far out to the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... to be very irksome, until the anniversary of the morning when he had twined the lily in her hair, and looked such fancies in her heart. It was well for her that too many things were claiming her attention to allow of solitary regrets. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... meridian, it is lower in the northern sky. All the old stars have long since gone, and it would seem the sun is following them. The world—the only world I know—has been left behind far there to the north, and the hill of the earth is between it and us. This sad and solitary ocean, gray and cold, is the end of all things, the falling-off place where all things cease. Only it grows colder, and grayer, and penguins cry in the night, and huge amphibians moan and slubber, and great albatrosses, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... dinner. Legal provisions are made respecting food and clothing. The driver in the field is not permitted to carry any more terrible instrument than a tamarind switch of moderate size; and twelve lashes with the rope, and a short period of solitary confinement, (mostly I believe in a light room) are the extent of punishment which even the manager or master is permitted to inflict. This rope however, is a dangerous instrument of torture; and I am told that the reduction of the allowed number of lashes, from thirty to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... since seventeen days in close, solitary confinement, half-starved, deprived of rest, and of that mental and physical activity which had been the very essence of life to him hitherto—might be outwardly but a shadow of his former brilliant self, ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... young in Venice, years ago, I walked the hospice with a Spanish monk, A solitary cloistered in high thoughts, The great Loyola, whom I reckoned then A mere refurbisher of faded creeds, Expert to edge anew the arms of faith, As who should say, a Galenist, resolved To hold the ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... due north, while it had become necessary to snug her down to close-reefed topsails and fore-topmast staysail. The thick weather, moreover, added another element of anxiety, since I had only succeeded in gaining one solitary sight of the sun for nearly a week—and that not when he was on the meridian, hence I was quite unable to determine my exact latitude. But the next morning, shortly after daylight, when by my reckoning I had still ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... seen that Alderman Van Beverout had appointed this solitary oak, as the place of rendezvous with Francois. Thither then he took his way on parting from the valet, and to this spot we must now transfer the scene. A rude seat had been placed around the root of the tree, and here the whole ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... was a solitary hut, which rejoiced in the name of Kort. These great commotions of nature are interesting, but to any one given to sound reflection they are almost too big for the human mind to grasp. They impress one, they almost frighten one, but give no reposeful, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... appearance, if not handsome, came up the side, and presented a card with Mr Henry Paget on it. The steward immediately showed him into his cabin, where for a short time he was engaged in arranging several cases and other articles. He then going on deck, took a few solitary turns, apparently admiring the scenery. Returning below, he produced a book from his greatcoat pocket and began reading, proceedings duly remarked and commented on by his ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... all that could invest him with any alien interest; no display that might dazzle the reader, nor ambition that could carry his eye forward with curiosity to the future, nor successes, fixing his eye on the present; nothing on the stage but a solitary infant, and its solitary combat with grief—a mighty darkness, and a sorrow without a voice. But something of the same interest will be found, perhaps, to rekindle at a maturer age, when the characteristic features of the individual mind have been unfolded. And I contend that ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... and drove Mavis to the barrack-like South-Western Hotel; then, after seeing she had all she wanted, he went to his own hotel to dress for his solitary dinner. He had scarcely finished this meal when he was told that a lady wished to speak to him on the telephone. She proved to be ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... stairs had been built. He was facing a massive door, which occupied one of the sides of the well. Paul tried the lock, but it was so old and rust-eaten that it refused to move. There was no other outlet, and the place was narrow and damp. He looked wistfully at the solitary door, feeling a vague suspicion that it barred the entrance to a mystery, and resolved to return at some future time, when not so harassed with sleepiness and the fatigues of travel, and make another effort to open it. Paul looked above, and as he did so a gust of air swept down the narrow opening ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... of imprisonment is very trying, especially if to the horror of captivity is added the horror of utter solitude. I observe that in our own day a great many persons commit suicide during the first twenty-four hours of the solitary cell. This is doubtless why our Jairi abstain so carefully from the impertinence of watching their little experiment upon the human soul at that ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... of the house "neck and crop;" how he had squared at Tom, and ultimately had been turned out of the house "neck and crop,"—whatever that may mean—by Fanny's father, needs not here to be particularly narrated. With much suffering and many privations—such as foxes in their solitary wanderings so often know—he did find his way to London; and did, moreover, by means of such wiles as foxes have, find out something as to his "guvnor's" whereabouts, and some secrets also as to his "guvnor" which his "guvnor" would fain have kept to himself had it been possible. And ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... reckoned in terms of time," he put in with a short laugh. "If they were I'd be the most solitary person ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... perceives another solitary horseman approaching from the opposite direction, and at the sight lays his hand on the pistols in his belt concealed by the duster, to make sure that they are ready for instant use; but at the same time ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... lasted. Then he confronted the fact that the beloved Master's advice had been largely, though not altogether, futile, because it had not dealt with actuality. And Ian Stewart saw himself to be moving in the plain, ordinary world of men as solitary as a ghost which vainly endeavors to make its presence ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Continental presence, French or German or Italian, pronounced its nationality in dress and bearing; one of the many dark subject races of Great Britain was represented in the swarthy skin and lustrous black hair and eyes of a solitary individual; there were doubtless various colonials among the spectators, and in one's nerves one was aware of some other Americans. But these exceptions only accented the absolutely English dominance of the spectacle. The alien elements were less evident in the observed than ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... that the chances of meeting with any vessel in that solitary part of the ocean were slight, very slight indeed; that even if there were ships—hundreds of them—how could they approach the raft during a calm? Of course the ships would be becalmed as they themselves were, and would have to remain ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... the city and one for the tall timber," Jimmie snickered, as the car moved out of view. "There's the solitary individual watching them from ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... peroration. By this time the voice had sunk in parts to a low whisper, and the deathly hue of the beautiful face had grown deeper. There was something that almost inspired awe as one looked at that strange, curious, solitary figure in the growing darkness. The intense strain on the House had finally exhausted it, and there had come a silence that had in it the solemnity, the strange stillness, the rapt emotion of some sublime service in a great ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... and inquiring for her of every person whom he met that had the appearance of being a friend. His suspense, however, was terminated at last by his suddenly coming upon an apparition of the spirit of Creusa, which rose before him in a solitary part of the city, and arrested his progress. The apparition was of preternatural size, and it stood before him in so ethereal and shadow-like a form, and the features beamed upon him with so calm and placid and benignant an expression, as convinced him that the vision was not of this world. ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... over and between ragged upheavals of rock, twisting into this broken path and that, feeling their way, partly sensing it, and always ascending toward the stars. Roger McKay did not speak again to Peter. Each time he came out where the sky was clear he looked toward the solitary dark pinnacle, far up and ahead, strangely resembling a giant tombstone in the star-glow, that was their guide. And after many minutes of strange climbing, in which it seemed to Jolly Roger the nail-heads in the soles of his boots made weirdly loud noises on the rocks, they came near ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... midsummernight, and the father is directing his tottering steps to the old oak, when he is arrested by a solitary wanderer, whom sorrow and remorse have also aged considerably. With disgust and loathing he recognizes his child's faithless husband, who comes to crave pardon from the wife he so deeply wronged. Alas, he only comes, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... heart. Mother and sister in the past—wife and Nettie now—to think how Fred had secured for himself such perpetual ministrations, by neglecting all the duties of life! No wonder an indignant pang transfixed the lonely bosom of the virtuous doctor, solitary and unconsoled as he was. His laborious days knew no such solace. And as he fretted and pondered, no visions of Bessie Christian perplexed his thoughts. He had forgotten that young woman. All his mind was fully occupied chafing ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... could not look to him for the consolation of which she stood so greatly in need. Her mornings were spent over the account-books, which had been entrusted to her charge; at noon, she partook of a solitary repast, and it was only at dinner that she saw ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... dogs, by which these individuals were accompanied, added to the tumult. During this time we pursued our way silently, more dead than alive. It was two o'clock in the morning. All at once we saw a faint light in a solitary house; it was like a light-house for the mariner in the midst of the tempest, and the only means of safety which remained to us. Arrived at the door of the farm, we knocked and asked for hospitality. The inmates, very little reassured, feared that we were thieves, and did not ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... jovial old gentleman, though he complained of his solitary life. He had got his Indians under tolerable subjection, but he appeared to me to have advanced them very slightly in the scale of civilisation; while their religion consisted chiefly in crossing themselves, and bowing to the crucifix which he held up when he performed mass. However, ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... and stepping out upon the level of the railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark sallow man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side, a dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction terminating ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... the irresponsibility of deepening sleep, to imagine instead what lay beyond the door—to perceive by intuitive vision the character of the house. She got so far as understanding that it was all as unfurnished as this room, that the house stood solitary among trees, and that even these, and the tangled garden that she determined must surround the house, were as listening and as expectant as herself and the waiting figure of the boy. Once more, as if to verify her semi-passive imaginative excursion, she moved ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... men must drink—and sure the vine was given us for use, I do not say for abuse—they had better make it an occasion of friendly intercourse; nothing can be more degraded than the solitary sanctimonious toping in which certain of our northern brethren are known to indulge. They had better give to the quaffing of that rich gift, sent to be a medicine for the mind, to raise us above the perpetual contemplation ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... which had been communicated to the food by contact, he would have been listened to with feelings of contempt for his ignorance and inability to understand plain and direct evidence." This is not a solitary case. A Maori woman having eaten of some fruit, and being afterwards told that the fruit had been taken from a tabooed place, exclaimed that the spirit of the chief, whose sanctity had been thus profaned, would kill her. This was in the afternoon, and next day by twelve ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... think of Michelangelo as a self-withdrawn and solitary worker, living for his art, avoiding the conflict of society, immersed in sublime imaginings. On the whole, this is a correct conception of the man. Many passages of his biography will show how little he actively shared the passions ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... woods. Water was not wanting, at least there seemed to be enough for the present inhabitants, and to an admirer of nature there was all that could be desired. Deeply impressed with its sublime and solitary beauty, I sketched the scene, and descended from that hill, resolved to follow the river upwards, as more favourable, in that direction, to the chief object of my mission. I named the hill overlooking that lonely dale, Mount Lonsdale, in honour of my valuable geological friend. We reached ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... struck with part of a letter from A. B., expressing a wish that Newman should know how warmly he was loved, honoured, and sympathized with by large numbers of Churchmen, so that he might not feel solitary, or, as it were, cast out. What think you of a private address, carefully guarded against the appearance of making him the head of a party, but only assuring him of gratitude, veneration, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... to him that the enemy had concentrated along the line of the frontier, and were about to make their spring. Moltke, in fact, from his headquarters at Mayence, was, by means of solitary horsemen employed in profusion, keeping himself thoroughly well acquainted not only with the movements of the French, but with their vacillation, their irresolution, their want of plan. The sudden appearance from unexpected quarters of these horsemen conveyed a marked feeling ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... comfortless homes—to wander about in parties in the evening, bat-fowling sometimes, but often in an aimless sort of way, doing little bits of mischief, and seeking diversion, which they seldom found, unless there was any solitary figure to be shouted at and startled. His father was not likely to come in till after he was turned out of the public-house; so John strode, all unseen, across the field, and through the gateway into the next. He did think of the possibilities of bringing arrest and ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... flame of hope, that usually burns so brilliantly in the hearts of most young girls. But why this sadness no one could tell. Its cause was a mystery even to her friends. Benjamin Mordecai was an opulent banker, who for many years lived in solitary grandeur in his bachelor home. But in the process of time, he wedded the gentle Sarah David, and brought her to share with him ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... baggage-wagons, attends its movements; in what obscure and sequestered places may the head be meditating which is one day to be crowned with more than imperial authority; for kings and emperors will be among its ministering servants; it will rule not over, but in all heads, and with these, its solitary combinations of ideas, as with magic formulas, bend the world to its will! The time may come, when Napoleon himself will be better known for his laws than for his battles; and the victory of Waterloo prove less momentous than the opening of the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... have to fear. * * * By way of marking the prodigious change which a few years have made among that class of men, compare the late conspiracy with the revolt under Lord Dunmore. In the one case, a few solitary individuals flocked to that standard, under which they were sure to find protection. In the other, they, in a body, of their own accord, combine a plan for asserting their freedom, and rest their safety on success alone. The difference is, that then they sought freedom merely as ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... a young enthusiast in literature. Lady Diana soon appreciated the minstrel of the clan; and, surviving to a remarkable age, she had the satisfaction of seeing him at the height of his eminence—the solitary person who could give the author of Marmion ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... not apparent; how should the public know that the steel of the epigram, tempered in the fire of revenge, has been plunged deftly, to rankle in the very quick of a victim's vanity, and is reeking from wounds innumerable which it has inflicted? It is a hideous joy, that grim, solitary pleasure, relished without witnesses; it is like a duel with an absent enemy, slain at a distance by a quill; a journalist might really possess the magical power of talismans in Eastern tales. Epigram is distilled rancor, the quintessence of a hate derived from all ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... drove off to a burst of singing. A rooster on a farm across the way took up a solitary mournful crow, and behind them, a last negro waiter turned out the porch light, Jim and Clark strolled over toward the Ford, their shoes crunching raucously ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... ordered Oliver to bring in a glass of hot rum for himself, and two mugs of coffee for Lothian and me; and we had not been seated long before Peter Brown inquired of me the particulars of my solitary voyage in the Falcon. At first very few of the men paid much attention to my narrative, but when I came to the discovery of the ship that had been imprisoned in the ice, and told about the man I saw through the porthole, they all drew their chairs nearer to me and listened with rapt attention. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... the road now solitary, till as day closes we reach Fardapur. A cluster of mud-walled compounds and beehive huts lies about a fortified enclosure, where the children sprawl and scream, and a Brahmin intones to silent auditors. Outside they are drawing water from the puddles of ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... within a few yards of him, and he touched his hat to her. She inclined her head gently, but her eyes did not rest an instant on her gardener; and so she passed and repassed, unconsciously sawing this solitary heart with ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... hatred, and desire nothing so much as to destroy him both soul and body, and this they do in the case of those who have so indulged themselves in fantasies as to have separated from themselves the enjoyments proper to the natural man. Some also who lead a solitary life sometimes hear spirits talking with them, and without danger; but that the spirits with them may not know that they are with man they are at intervals removed by the Lord; for most spirits are not ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the United States were disheartened at the retirement of Colonel Young is to put it mildly,—but there was more trouble. The provision that Negroes must be trained separately looked simple and was simple in places where there were large Negro contingents, but in the North with solitary Negroes drafted here and there we had some extraordinary developments. Regiments appeared with one Negro where the Negro had to be separated like a pest and put into a house or even a village by himself while the commander frantically telegraphed to Washington. ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... matter, whatever it was, had been explained to him. The "moutons" were crammed at meetings held nightly for the purpose. There was one singular instance, of a habitant, who, in every instance, voted against the prevailing party. But that was the solitary exception to a general rule. The Canadians voted en masse, as directed—not by the government. The government was entirely without influence. The Assembly was the most independent in the world, for the government could not obtain even that influence which might arise from ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... very wide views between the business organiser on the one hand and the subordinate worker on the other. On the one hand we need some broader handling of business than is possible in the private adventure of the solitary proprietor or the single company, and on the other some more completely organised development of the collective bargain. We have to bring the directive intelligence of a concern into an organic ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... one picture in the audience chamber. It is a portrait of the luckless but noble Dom Pedro, Emperor of the Brazils. Given to Felix Babylon by Dom Pedro himself, it hangs there solitary and sublime as a reminder to Kings and Princes that Empires may pass away and greatness fall. A certain Prince who was occupying the suite during the Jubilee of 1887—when the Grand Babylon had seven persons of Royal blood under its roof—sent a curt message to Felix that ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... solitary pantomime, he encountered more than one opponent at a time, for numbers were apt to come upon him treacherously, especially at a little after his rising hour, when he might be caught at a disadvantage—perhaps standing on one leg to encase the ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... an article of faith with us that Bulldog was never perfectly happy except when he was plying the cane, it was taken for granted that Nestie would be his solitary means of relaxation, from the afternoon of one day to the morning of the next, and when Nestie appeared, on the third morning after his change of residence, the school was ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... went on from this to the southeast for nine yojanas, and came to a small solitary rocky hill, at the head or end of which was an apartment of stone, facing the south—the place where Buddha sat, when Sakra, Ruler of Devas, brought the deva-musician, Panchasikha, to give pleasure to him by playing on his lute. Sakra then asked ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... here and there, in simple Doric form, A pillar like some solitary giant Rose from the mass, and, fearless of the storm, Reared toward ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Barnabas. And, having poured out a stiff quantum of the spirit, he gave it to Mrs. Snummit, who took it, curtsied, and rolling her solitary orb at the bottle on the table, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... patiently waited until the limited wood supply was exhausted, and then closed in for the final struggle. It was then teeth against tomahawks, and the chances were more in favour of the wolves than now. Solitary hunters or single families caught by a pack were frequently overpowered and devoured. Climbing up into the trees afforded a temporary respite, as wolves cannot, like bears, there follow their victims. But the wolves were ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... like the nightingale, she pours Her solitary lays; Nor asks a witness of her song, ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... however, the mercy of God, who had preserved us, and given us a home, with a prospect of subsistence and safety. We had not yet met with any dangerous animals, nor could we perceive any huts of savages. I remarked to my son that God seemed to have destined us to a solitary life in this rich country, unless some vessel should reach these shores. "And His will be done!" added I; "it must be for the best. Now let us retire to that pretty wood to rest ourselves, and eat our dinner, ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... this edifice on the remains of the ancestral house as fresh evidence of the public veneration of the divine poet". The Torre della Castagna, across the way, has an inscription in Italian, which may be translated thus: "This Tower, the so-called Tower of the Chestnut, is the solitary remnant of the head-quarters from which the Priors of the Arts governed Florence, before the power and glory of the Florentine Commune procured the erection of the Palace of ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... all my strength I ate a breakfast before I commenced work. It was with a heavy heart, and but little appetite, that I took this solitary meal; but I felt that its effects were good. When finished, I knelt on the deck, and prayed to God, fervently, asking his divine assistance in my extremity. Why should an old man, whose race is nearly run, hesitate to own, that in the pride of his youth and strength, he was made to feel how insufficient ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... town farewell, Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend; I praise the hermit, but regret the friend; Resolved, at length, from vice and London far, To breathe in distant fields a purer air, And, fix'd on Cambria's solitary shore, Give to St David one ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... priest, as his accent told me he was an Irishman. He had done so, he said, but the priest refused to come without a payment of eighteenpence, which the man did not possess, as the family was starving. Immediately it occurred to my mind that all the money I had in the world was the solitary half-crown, and that it was in one coin; moreover, that while the basin of water gruel I usually took for supper was awaiting me, and there was sufficient in the house for breakfast in the morning, I certainly had nothing for dinner on the ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... quickly, the boys amusing themselves by exploring their little island, fishing from the bank, and loafing in the shade of the solitary palm, at whose base was supposed to lie ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... usually solitary, but sometimes there are two or more; when there are several, they are individually smaller ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... children's music!" said I to myself; "how much better this is than the solitary tick, tick, of old ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... himself, and we others sat in silence listening to his solitary song, which, under the heavy vaulted roof of the cellar, died gradually away, and became extinguished, like a little fire in the steppes, on a wet autumn night, when the gray heaven hangs like a heavy mass over ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... at his back swept a big scarlet touring-car driven by a solitary man. It was coming at tremendous speed and no horn had given warning of its noiseless approach. Van had but an instant to step out of its path when on it shot, bearing down on the unconscious boy ahead. The little chap was walking in the middle of the road and whistling so loudly ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... have, he felt himself fatally vulnerable) that he had fought so many years? Why, at his age, should he be going into exile, away from everything that could make his days bright and sweet? Why could not he come back there, where he was now more solitary than he could be anywhere else on earth, and reanimate the dead body of his home with his old life? He knew why, in an immediate sort, but his quest was for the cause behind the cause. What had he done, or left undone? He had tried to be a just ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... themselves, because they shone forth with great virtues and grace. But the boldness of wicked men springeth from pride and presumption, and at the last turneth to their own confusion. Never promise thyself security in this life, howsoever good a monk or devout a solitary thou seemest. ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... was a difficult question to answer. The room was on the third floor, with a solitary window looking out into a small, dirty court. It was too high up to jump with safety, and there was nothing in the room by ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... a moonless night, that shut down on the world of waters and blotted out even the clouds and the waves that been company for the solitary vessel. The little ship became a speck of light in a gulf of darkness, an atom of life floating in empty space. Under the tent roofs, by the light of flaring torches, the crew drank and sang and amused themselves with games; but beyond that circle, there ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the privilege of seeing her dear daughter while she dresses, and again at dinner, if dear Moina happens to dine with her mother. Not a week ago, sir," continued the elderly person, laying his hand on the arm of the shy tutor, a new arrival in the house, "not a week ago, I saw the poor mother, solitary and sad, by her own fireside.—'What is the matter?' I asked. The Marquise looked up smiling, but I am quite sure that she had been crying.—'I was thinking that it is a strange thing that I should be left alone when I ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... life love to hear how gratitude and unexpected benefits operate upon honest minds, who have little more than plain artless nature for their guide; and we flatter ourselves with the hopes of many a delightful hour, by your means, in this our solitary situation, if obliged to pass the next winter in it, as my lord and the earl threaten me, and the countess, and Lady Betty, that we shall. Then let us hear of every thing that gives you joy or trouble: and if my brother carries you to town, for the winter, while he attends parliament, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... brothers to the fire. A solitary Phoenix, I survive, and at cost of a hundred gold ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... calling to his mate in a tone of affected sweetness, "salute-her, salute-her," but when you come in sight he flies away with a harsh cry of "thief, thief, thief!" The kingfisher, ruffling his crest in solitary pride on the end of a dead branch, darts down the stream at your approach, winding up his red angrily as if he despised you for interrupting his fishing. And the cat-bird, that sang so charmingly while she thought herself unobserved, now tries to ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... which his shabby garret room was equipped. It was a single room, unhappily. Even there, all contact was denied him. Saint Simon, sitting alone upon his pillar and gazing down upon his fellow men, was no more solitary than was Scott Brenton. Moreover, Saint Simon had the final consolation of being quite aware that he was looking down, a consolation which, to Scott Brenton, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... rove round Regent's Park, where the plaster is patching off the house walls; where Methodist preachers are holding forth to three little children in the green inclosures, and puffy valetudinarians are cantering in the solitary mud:—I thread the doubtful ZIG-ZAGS of May Fair, where Mrs. Kitty Lorimer's Brougham may be seen drawn up next door to old Lady Lollipop's belozenged family coach;—I roam through Belgravia, that pale and polite district, where all the inhabitants look prim and correct, and ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... although a Temeraire—as a man who had served in her was always afterward called—was now and then shown as an example of sailorlike smartness and activity, very few knew how dearly that one success had been purchased, nor by what terrible examples of agony and woe that solitary conversion ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... low, The sportive kind reply: Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly! Thy joys no glittering female meets, No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, No painted plumage to display; On hasty wings thy youth is flown; Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone— We frolic, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... million for five determined years. He was titled if not noble, a clever operator of a small brain, and a high-priest of teas. He knew the personnel of Washington Society so thoroughly that he never had been known to waste a solitary moment on a portion-less girl, and he had successfully cultivated every art that could commend him to the imperious favourites of fortune. Betty Madison had disposed of him in short order, but Miss ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... known to have existed, a creature of such vast antiquity that it deserves all the respect which the parvenu man can summon and offer to it, was—a cockroach. This, the father of all black-beetles, probably walked the earth in solitary magnificence when not only kitchens, but even kitchen-middens were undreamt of, possibly millions of years before Neolithic man had even a back cave to offer with the remains of last night's supper for the cockroach of the period to ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... their usual practice, for hitherto they have made themselves perfectly clear to us when we have been offering them hecatombs. They come and sit at our feasts just like one of our selves, and if any solitary wayfarer happens to stumble upon some one or other of them, they affect no concealment, for we are as near of kin to the gods as the Cyclopes and the ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... humming the refrain over and over. She had sung it with abandon, tenderness, lightness. For one glimpse of her face! He took the rise and dip which followed. Perhaps a hundred yards ahead a solitary woman cantered easily along. Hillard had not seen her before. He spurred forward, only faintly curious. She proved to be a total stranger. There was nothing familiar to his eye in her figure, which was charming. She ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... Railway; and Washington, within easy distance of Winchester by rail, was full of troops.* (* Twenty regiments of infantry and two regiments of cavalry. O.R. volume 12 part 3 page 313.) A few hours' delay, and instead of Banks' solitary division, a large army might bar the way to the Potomac. So, with the remnant of Ashby's cavalry in advance, and the Stonewall Brigade in close support, the column toiled onward through the darkness. But the Federal rear-guard was exceedingly well handled. The 2nd Massachusetts regiment held the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... significant events in his history. In it he says: "The notice you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligation when no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... believers, when a sister said that she had often thought about the care and burden I must have on my mind, as it regards obtaining the necessary supplies for so many persons. As this may not be a solitary instance, I would state, that, by the grace of God, this is no cause of anxiety to me. The children I have years ago cast upon the Lord. The whole work is His, and it becomes me to be without carefulness. In whatever points I am lacking, in this point I ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... and I continued my solitary meal, listening to the song of the skylarks, and thinking how complex was human existence, compared with any other form of life ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... cheers the solitary American. He raises his eyes to see the thoughtful face of a young priest at the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... is probably because so very little is known about Shakespeare that so many bulky biographies have been written of him. Not a solitary letter of his is known to exist; not a play comes down to us as he wrote it. A few documents written by other men, and sometimes ending in a sprawling signature by Shakespeare, which looks as if made by a hand accustomed to almost any labor except that of ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... and the shy, who cannot depend upon themselves for inspirations of agreeability. Emerson says that "fashion is good- sense entertaining company; it hates corners and sharp points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary, and gloomy people, hates whatever can interfere with total blending of parties, while it values all particularities as in the highest degree refreshing ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... never once sat down in the chair I have mentioned without sooner or later rising hurriedly, and going out on one of his solitary rambles. ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... other matters, in trials and perplexities and difficulties, by their sympathy and experience, they are useless here. A man has here to act as if there were no other beings in the universe but a solitary God and himself, and unless we have ourselves done that act in the depths of our own personality, we have not done it at all. If you young people are good, just because you have pious parents who make you go to church or chapel on a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Atlantic rolls to the verge of the "tideless, dolorous inland sea." In the little bay lying between Morocco's solitary lighthouse and the famous Caves of Spartel, the waters shine in colours that recall in turn the emerald, the sapphire, and the opal. There is just enough breeze to raise a fine spray as the baby waves reach the rocks, and to fill the sails of one or two tiny vessels ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... dangerous than would be supposed, for all the South American countries on that side of the continent were dominated by Great Britain, and in entering the vast expanse the American knew he would meet plenty of enemies and not a solitary friend. Like an army when it invades a country, however, he determined to live off the enemy. He knew that scores of English vessels were in the Pacific, and all Porter had to do was to capture them. He had had sufficient experience ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... extremity of terror and of awe. In the next a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... days ago I received a letter from my cousin at Heidelberg, describing his solitary walk from Genoa over the Alps, and through the western part of Switzerland. The news of his safe arrival dissipated the anxiety we were beginning to feel, on account of his long silence, while it proved that our fears concerning the danger of such a journey were not altogether ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... and clear. The sweet southern breeze stirred a few solitary pines which waved on the capitol hill, and the scene from the windows of the legislative hall was pleasant, tranquil, and suggestive of calm ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... being musical recitations of imaginary love adventures, accompanied by swayings of the body and occasional choral interruptions, all becoming more and more excited as the story or song approached its natural climax. Sometimes this was varied by a solitary dancer starting from the circle, and performing the wildest bacchanalian antics, to the vocal incitement of the rest. This only ended with physical exhaustion, or ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Henry Wadsworth Longfellow To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Robert Herrick To Mistress Margaret Hussey John Skelton On Her Coming To London Edmund Waller "O, Saw Ye Bonny Lesley" Robert Burns To a Young Lady William Cowper Ruth Thomas Hood The Solitary Reaper William Wordsworth The Three Cottage Girls William Wordsworth Blackmwore Maidens William Barnes A Portrait Elizabeth Barrett Browning To a Child of Fancy Lewis Morris Daisy Francis Thompson To Petronilla, Who Has Put Up Her Hair Henry Howarth Bashford The Gipsy Girl Henry ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... solitary of her. She will not be of the world. You deal with one lovingly. It will become more and more a part of your work. Your work is of a kind to show you the way. She is following rapidly. I believe you have established the point that one can learn best from within, but one who ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... be an unwilling witness to the sad scene which was enacted between these two loving creatures on the disappointment of their fondest hopes, I will draw the curtain, and leave them, solitary and alone—alone with themselves, and with no aching eye to witness their grief, to give vent ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... seamen at the main now take up the cry, and in a few seconds all hands are swiftly yet silently preparing to leave the ship. She is put about, making a course which shortly brings her a mile or two to windward of the slowly-moving cachalot. Now it is evident that no solitary whale is in sight, but a great school, gambolling in the bright spray. One occasionally, in pure exuberance of its tremendous vitality, springs twenty feet into the clear air, and falls, a hundred tons of massive flesh, with earthquake-like ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... I can see," sighed Susan profoundly. "Oh, he plays that solitary some, an' putters a little with some of his raised books; but mostly he jest sits still an' thinks. An' I don't like it. If only his father was here. But with him gone peddlin' molasses, an' no one 'lowed ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... be set against this evidence? One solitary passage.[35] Quite late, after Hamlet has narrated to Horatio the events of his voyage, he ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... This is one of the secrets of his extraordinary success and universal popularity in Egypt. Lord Cromer was a great Egyptian ruler, and his services are imperishable and gigantic; but Lord Cromer was the stern, solitary, and inaccessible bureaucrat who worked innumerable hours every day at his desk, never learned the Arabic language, and possibly never quite grasped the Arab nature. Lord Kitchener is the cadi under the tree. ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... valley, under the FESTUNG or Hill Castle,— where Martin Luther sat solitary during the Diet of Augsburg (Diet known to us, our old friend Margraf George of Anspach hypothetically "laying his head on the block? there, and the great Kaiser, Karl V., practically burning daylight, with pitiable spilling of wax, in the ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... dramatic enough, and if the man were to come back to life again, fresh and vigorous, things might happen, provided, of course, that Lovell was right in his suppositions. But ten or twelve years' solitary confinement, although it mayn't sound much on paper, is enough to crush all the life and energy out of ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The night was tempestuous; the rain now pattered loud, then ceased as if it had fed the wind, which renewed its violence, and forced its way through every crevice. The carpet of his little room occasionally rose from the floor, swelled up by the insidious entrance of the searching blast; the solitary candle, which from neglect had not only elongated its wick to an unusual extent, but had formed a sort of mushroom top, was every moment in danger of extinction, while the chintz curtains of the window waved ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... could not have much indulged in this solitary, idle brooding, for she had work to do, and must be up and doing. First, she had to summon a Privy Council, which met at Buckingham Palace;—more than eighty Peers, mostly solemn old fellows, who had outlived their days of romantic sentiment, if they ever ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... could never quite determine what prompted him to follow Sophie Carr when he saw her go down toward the creek bank. He was on his way to Carr's house, driven thither by pure pressure of loneliness, born of three days' solitary communion within the limits of his own shack. He wanted to hear a human voice again. And it was a vagrant, unaccountable impulse that sent him after Sophie instead of directing him straight to Carr's living room, where her father would probably be sitting, pipe in mouth, ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... but at first it was consciousness in an utter dark. Everywhere was blackness, and in it she was quite alone. The whole universe seemed to centre in her solitary soul. Still she felt no fear, only a kind of wonder at this infinite blank through which she was being borne for millions ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... behind, and placed his foot in each print that the prisoner made, so as to destroy the impression of the boy's European shoe. The other Indians did the same; as exactly did they tread in one another's steps, that, when all had passed, it seemed as if only one solitary traveler had left his track on ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb |
