Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Withers   /wˈɪðərz/   Listen
Withers

noun
1.
The highest part of the back at the base of the neck of various animals especially draft animals.



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Withers" Quotes from Famous Books



... mind, then, is that one has this power of spiritual assimilation and, consequently, a power of growth. The sceptic is afflicted with spiritual indigestion; he is an invalid who is quite certain that any food that is offered him is indigestible. His soul withers away through its incapacity to believe. The open-minded saint has a healthy spiritual digestion. This does not mean that, in vulgar parlance, he can, "swallow anything"; it does mean a power of discrimination between food offered him,—that he assimilates what ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... if we were to judge from the vigour and perfection of the inhabitants, is, notwithstanding its humidity, one of the best in the world. The American vaunts his above all others, and even thinks it necessary to apologise for a bad day, although the climate, from its sudden extremes, withers up beauty, and destroys the nervous system. In everything connected with, and relating to, America, the American has the same feeling. Calculating, wholly matter-of-fact and utilitarian in his ideas, without a ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... views and regulating affections. For this there can be no substitute. This deep and steady current of truth and thought, is to the mind in connection with the Spirit's operations, what showers are to the earth. If there are none, it soon becomes parched, and verdure withers; if they descend frequently and copiously, the ground is filled with moisture, vegetation blooms, and fruits ripen; springs burst forth, the streams dash along the valleys, sweep through the meadows, and pouring ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark

... his uncle's firm of Withers, Ltd., importers. He had been associated with his uncle for some years, as a minor partner, and how he could manage to take over the prosperous Withers, Ltd. without capital, is one of the mysteries ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... nay, all the believing heads of the tribes, see no salvation for us among the Egyptians," she answered, panting for breath. "What they promise the Hebrews will be their ruin. The grass sowed by us withers where their feet touch it! And you, whose honest heart they deceive, are the whistler whom the bird-catcher uses to decoy his feathered victims into the snare. They put the hammer into your hand to rivet more firmly than before the chains which, with God's aid, we have sundered. Before ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... busy with. No one speaks. At intervals Mr Bellamy coughs extensively and loudly, just to show his dignity and independence, and to assure the company that his conscience is very tranquil on the occasion—that his firm "withers are unwrung;" and Mr Brammel struggles like an ill-taught bullfinch, to produce a whistle, and fails in the attempt. With these exceptions, we have a silent room. A quarter of an hour passes. Michael ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... South Sea bubbles, were here repeated on a greater scale and in more aggravated form. To most, the loss of wealth was loss of ancestry, repute, respectability, decency, recognition of their fellows—all. Small wonder that their withers were fearfully wrung, and their wails piteous. Enterprise and prosperity were frozen as in a sea of everlasting ice, and guardians of trusts, like Ugolino, plunged their robber fangs into the scalps and entrails of ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... which our version is transcribed. The discovery however, by Mr. Collier, of the First Part in a MS. temp. Jac. I., with the initials G. W. affixed to it, has disposed of Erskine's claim to the honour of the entire authorship. G. W. is supposed to be George Withers; but this is purely conjectural; and it is not at all improbable that G. W. really stands for W. G., as it was a common practice amongst anonymous writers to reverse their initials. The history, then, of the poem, seems to be this: that the First Part, as it is ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... of a people is reflected in their poetry, so their living voice is heard in their oratory. Oratory is the child of freedom. Under the despotisms of the East it could have no existence; under every despotism it withers. The more truly free a nation is, the greater will its oratory be. In no country was there a grander field for the growth of oratorical genius than in Rome. The two countries that approach nearest to it in this respect are beyond doubt Athens and England. In both eloquence ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... Connecticut, whence all the packet-men are derived, and whither they repair for a shelter when their careers are run, as regularly as the fruit decays where it falleth, or the grass that has not been harvested or cropped withers on its native stalk. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... whenever we were in company together; and though I always said at such times, "Christian cannot love her," - when I was at home and alone, the shadow of doubt and jealousy came over me again. Everything withers in that shadow. A woman must either put it out of her heart, somehow, or grow a diseased and sickly thing, mentally and morally. I found that I was coming to this in my own mind and character; and that brought me ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... thou the magic flower By whose bright rays the soul's dark deeps are lit; Which, hiding in its quiet, sacred bower, Waits for the Fairy Prince to gather it; But which, if he find not its shy recess, Withers and dies in forlorn loneliness? Within the bosom of its petals furled Lies with Life's sense the Riddle of the World; And he that first its chalice openeth Glows with the wine of Life, ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller

... this school was George Huxley, a tall, dark, rather full-faced man, quick tempered, and distinguished, in his son's words, by "that glorious firmness which one's enemies called obstinacy." In the year 1810 he had married Rachel Withers; she bore five sons and three daughters, of whom one son and one daughter died in infancy; the seventh and youngest ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... to be discouraged, at least Euphemia was. Her discouragement is like water-cresses, it generally comes up in a very short time after she sows her wishes. But then it withers away rapidly, which is a comfort. One evening we were sitting, rather disconsolately, in our room, and I was reading out the advertisements of country board in a newspaper, when in rushed Dr. Heare—one of our old friends. ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... In war, especially, one cannot help admiring the stoicism of horses, as compared with other animals. One sees examples of it on all sides. Tread, for instance, on a dog's foot, and he runs away, squealing. A horse is struck by a large lump of shrapnel just under its withers, and the poor brute trembles, but makes no sound. Almost the only time that horses scream—and the sound is horrible—is when they are dying. Then they shriek from sheer pain and fear. Strange as it may seem, one is often more affected by seeing ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh

... self is all that man can know Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power, All the unearthly colour, all the glow, Here in the self which withers like a flower; Here in the self which fades as hours pass, And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass In which it sees its glory still unrotten. Here in the flesh, within the flesh, behind, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... glory, thanks! They conquer! Freedom's banner waves Above Oppression's broken ranks, And withers o'er her children's graves; And loud and long the pealing song Of ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson

... God,' for it makes our own union feel sacred and precious as well as bringing us close to all others. The inside inscription is an exceedingly fine one, 'The fire of spirituality burns by continual devotion.' Because without devotion the spiritual life droops and withers as a flower without water." Continuing, she said: "There are two kinds of devotion, one consisting of heartfelt prayer and singing from the soul, sacred hymns; and the other kind consists in rendering service to others. They are both essential ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge

... spiritual Ego. Only from the Ego can we receive life eternal and make immortality a fact. Obeying this spiritual life-force, the human monad is but an attribute, a reflection, of the Divine Ego, and if it fails to awake to a consciousness of this union, it withers and dies like a flower plucked from the parent tree ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... prescriptions, a point will be reached by the patient where the restoration of his millions of small rootlets, or organic feeders, will be impossible, and like a decaying plant in unfavorable soil he gradually decays or withers, here and there, until finally he topples over before he knows it, probably long before maturity ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... is beyond them, like sights that need a telescope, or sounds out of reach of the ear. Pride like this has two possibilities. It is a Saint Christopher that will serve only the highest. That unfound, it grows bitter, and shrinks more and more into itself, and withers into hopelessness. But if it find the Highest and draw upon that love too great for change or failure, then all things have a new proportion, for grown up to the shelter of the eternities, human judgments dwindle, and human slights, however ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various

... Once more the gleams Of your lost Eden haunt our dreams, Where Evil, at the touch of Good, Withers in the Enchanted Wood: Fairies, come back! Drive gaunt Despair And Famine to their ghoulish lair! Tap at each heart's bright window-pane Thro' merry England ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... very interesting group of people associated with the "Round Table," and including in it many of our most able financiers and economists—such men as the future chairman of the National War Savings Committee, Sir Robert M. Kindersley, K.B.E.; C.J. Stewart, the Public Trustee; Hartley Withers, Lord Sumner, T.L. Gilmour, Theodore Chambers (now Controller of the National War Savings Committee), Evan Hughes (now Organizer-in-Chief), Lieut. J.H. Curle, Countess Ferrers, Basil Blackett, C.B.; William Schooling and Mrs. Minty, ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser

... himself. The present supercargo of the Walrus is a young man who will be pleased to fall in with anything I propose to him. I mean, therefore, to put him in another ship and appoint young Brooke to the Walrus. Fortunately the firm of Withers and Company does not reveal my name—I having been Company originally, though I'm the firm now, so that he won't suspect anything, and what I want is, that you should do the engaging of him— being authorised ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... serious reference to the War. When I see them going imperturbably along the old pre-war lines, snapping smart people at the races or in the Row, or reproducing the devastating beauty of a revue chorus, I know that they have their withers unwrung and their heart in the right place. I always have one of these papers on my table to be taken as a corrective after the daily ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various

... hells starting up within you like pigweeds and pusley after a warm rain in your garden. And our heavens, too, for that matter—they grow to our own planting: and how sensitive they are too! How soon the hot wind of a passion withers them away! How surely the fires of ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... wings like you, little thrush. Now I can, indeed, outfly you. But whatever I do I'm unhappy, and wherever I go I'm in hell. What is man in his helpless, first spiritual state? He is but a flower, and withers soon. Had I, like the bishop, been less blind, and obeyed my conscience clear, I might have returned to my native earth while Sylvia still sojourns here; and coming thus by virtue of development, I should be able to commune with her. "What is life?" ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... of God to grow in. Take heed, therefore, of a prayerless heart, if you would grow in this grace of the fear of God. Prayer is as the pitcher that fetcheth water from the brook, therewith to water the herbs; break the pitcher, and it will fetch no water, and for want of water the garden withers. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the herd dribbled into the corral through the open gate, and the others crowded on their heels. Three more riders followed Curly into the enclosure. Upon them, too, the desert had sifted its white coat. The stained withers of the animals they rode told of long, steady travel. One of them, a red-haired young fellow of about the same age as Curly, swung ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... wresting at the bit. Now he let the rein play to such a point that he was barely keeping the power of the stallion in touch. He lightened his weight as only a fine horseman can do, shifting a few vital inches forward, and with the burden falling more over his withers, El Sangre fled like a racer down the valley. Not that he was fully extended. His head was not stretched out as a cow-pony's head is stretched when he runs; he held it rather high, as though he carried ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... upon Lilith, and found all it wanted was a little change in the stuffing about the withers, I told Styles to take it and the mare to Minstercombe the next morning, and ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... and brother, didst thou now, Were this not thankless? God—our father's God - Guide thee! [Exit FRANCESCO. He goes, and thanks me not. Our sire, What says the God that lives upon thy lips And withers in thy silence? ...
— The Duke of Gandia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... them. "The eyes of all hope in thee, O Lord: and thou givest them meat in due season. Thou openest thy hand, and fillest with blessing every living creature" (Ps. cxliv, 15-16). Of what little value is a flower which so soon withers? And yet the divine solicitude extends to this humble flower. Indeed, is not the flower of the field clothed more beautifully by the hand of God, than was Solomon in all his glory? What is there about a man of less account than a single ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings

... of Cromwell was the first theme of our poet's muse. Averse as the puritans were to any poetry, save that of Hopkins, of Withers, or of Wisdom, they may be reasonably supposed to have had some sympathy with Dryden's sorrow upon the death of Oliver, even although it vented itself in the profane and unprofitable shape of an elegy. But we have no means of estimating its reception with the public, if, in truth, the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... everybody, and everybody worth knowing is related to them, by marriage or otherwise, in this or some other century; as men of the world, they are ready to talk upon any subject with tolerance, geniality and a pleasingly personal note that withers up the commonplace, smoking, meanwhile, innumerable cigarettes out of mouthpieces which display a complex escutcheon contrived in gold and rubies upon the amber surface. Yes, his choice was good: Poles are gentlemen. But why caricature ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... has the edifice, reared with such exact elaboration, attained completeness, than it begins to crumble. By degrees, the plant withers and disappears from view, leaving behind more or fewer apparently inert and simple bodies, just like the bean from which it sprang; and, like it, endowed with the potentiality of giving rise to a similar cycle of manifestations. Neither the poetic ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... nursed the soul To forms of beauty, and by sensual wants Unsensualised the mind, which in the means 210 Learnt to forget the grossness of the end, Best pleasured with its own activity. And hence Disease that withers manhood's arm, The daggered Envy, spirit-quenching Want, Warriors, and Lords, and Priests—all the sore ills[117:1] 215 That vex and desolate our mortal life. Wide-wasting ills! yet each the immediate source Of mightier good. Their keen necessities To ceaseless action goading human ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... would be to her, it would be best that she should prepare him. So she sat alone till dinner-time planning how she would do this. She had sat alone for hours in the same way planning how she would tell her story to Sir Peregrine; and again as to her second story for Mr. Furnival. Those whose withers are unwrung can hardly guess how absolutely a sore under the collar will embitter every hour for the poor jade who is ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... on the mare, she could see behind her more steadily now than I could from the machine; and her eye was trustworthy. As for the baby, rocked by the heave and fall of the pony's withers, it had fallen asleep placidly in the very midst ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... which does its work of destruction slowly but surely. Year after year it is protracted; few fall in open fight, but stragglers and prisoners are murdered; and while both weak parties, gradually growing weaker, hold their own ground, the country becomes a desert. First, trade stagnates, agriculture withers, food becomes scarce, all are ruined in finances, all half-starved and most miserable—and yet the war drags on, and the worst passions are aroused, effectually preventing the slightest concession, even if concession would ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... from a hole bored in the upper part of the tree, and is received in a vessel, where it thickens to a consistency, and becomes what we call camphire. After the juice is thus drawn out, the tree withers and dies. ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... Bananes, sometimes more, sometimes less. A Banane is a Fruit as thick as one's Arm, about a Foot long, and a little crooked. They gather this Cluster green, and hang it up in the Ceiling; and as the Bananes grow yellow, or mellow, they gather them. When this Cluster is taken away, the Plant withers, or they cut it down at the Root; but for one Trunk lost, the Root sends forth ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus

... little. His own high romantic notion was, no doubt, to fling her there and then upon the withers of his horse, and so ride out into the wide world to carve a kingdom for her with his sword. Her sober words dispelled the dream, revealed to him that it was not quite intended he should hereafter be her custodian. And there for the moment the ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... joys are more than fame; Life withers in the public look: Why mount the pillory of a book, Or barter comfort ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... fade—but we'll pray that the age, in whose flight, Of ourselves and our friends the remembrance shall die May rise o'er the world, with the gladness and light Of the morning that withers the ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... like a monkey, with his thin legs held close to her sides, and his short, humped back doubled over, and his head with its long hair bobbing about as though his neck were loose-coupled somehow, he was eternally caressing her mighty withers, or feeling for the play of each iron tendon under her satin skin. And when we stopped, he glided down ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... unbaptized infant has been flung. He makes the sign of the cross, but it is on the ground and with his left foot. And many other things he does which no good Christian could look upon without being struck blind and deaf and dumb for the rest of his life. But the man for whom the mass is said withers away little by little, and nobody can say what is the matter with him; even the doctors can make nothing of it. They do not know that he is slowly dying of the Mass ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... affair. I had made a bet that Tall Bull would beat the Second Cavalry horse around a one mile track, and, during the time that he was running, I would jump off and on the horse eight times. I rode the horse bareback; seized his mane with my left hand, rested my right on his withers, and while he was going at full speed, I jumped to the ground, and sprang again upon his back, eight times in succession. Such feats I had seen performed in the circus and I had practiced considerably at it with Tall Bull, ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody

... Chili, noticing that one of the horses was very restive, went to see what was the matter; and fancying that he could distinguish something, put his hands on the beast's withers, and discovered a vampire-bat. In the morning, the place where the wound had been inflicted was easily distinguished by ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... Henri bent over Aida's neck, leaning his hands upon her withers in an attitude with which experience had made him familiar, and followed the Amazon, determined ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa

... Nature's Productions, as in that Gaudy Plant not undeservedly call'd the Mervail of Peru, the Flowers do often Fade, the same Day they are Blown; And I have often seen a Virginian Flower, which usually Withers within the compass of a Day; and I am credibly Inform'd, that not far from hence a curious Herborist has a Plant, whose Flowers perish in about an Hour. But if the Whiteness of Water turn'd into Froth must ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle

... thousands of foes to health and life, When there's gold for the mighty, and gold for the meek, And gold for whoever shall dare to seek? Untold Is the gold; And it lies in the reach of the man that's bold: In the hands of the man who dares to face The death in the blast, that blows apace; That withers the leaves on the forest tree; That fetters with ice all the northern sea; That chills all the green on the fair earth's breast, And as certainly kills as the un-stayed pest. It lies in the hands of the man who'd sell His hold on his life for an ice-bound hell. What care we for the fevered ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs

... organization peculiar to every living creature; and so have I, perhaps. We are all perishable, and hence our feelings must be perishable also. Above all, love is a most precious, fragrant, and enchanting rose; but its life lasts but a day, and then it withers. Happy are those, therefore, who have improved this day and enjoyed the beauty of the rose, and passionately inhaled its fragrance. We did so, Marianne; and when we now look back to our day of blissful love, we may say, 'It was delightful and intoxicating, and ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... angel of God, but when Love has entered the soul, the angel unfolds its plumes and takes flight, and the wind of its wings withers as it passes. He whom it has left misses the angel at his ear, but he is alone for ever. Sometimes it will seem to him then that it had been no angel ever, but a fiend that lied, making him waste his years in a barren toil, and his nights in a joyless passion; ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... dismay. It was unbelievable, for no one as a rule was kinder to animals than Radnor; and as for his own Jennie Loo, he couldn't have cared more for her if she had been a human being. There was no mistaking it however. She was crossed and recrossed with thick welts about the withers; it was evident that the poor beast had ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... brightness veils the blushing ground. These forms, these births, these changes, bloom, decay, Appear and vanish in the self-same day. The flower's brief grace, O Nature! moves my sighs, Thy gifts, just shown, are ravished from our eyes. One day the rose's age; and while it blows In dawn of youth, it withers to its close. The rose the glittering sun beheld at morn, Spread to the light its blossoms newly born, When in his round he looks from evening skies Already droops in age, and fades, and dies. Yet blest that, soon to fade, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... are full of flowers, and the whole world breaks out into a hallelujah of warmth, beauty, and blossoming like mid-July in our deliberate climate. This again lasts, as it were, but a day; the sun presently becomes so powerful that the world withers away under the intense heat, the flowers and shrubs fade, and instead of screening and refreshing the earth, are themselves scorched and parched with the glaring fierceness of the sky; the ground cracks, the watercourses dry ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... am no destroyer of homes. But the senora, Mr. Cogan, takes occasion to point the finger at me. "There is your mounted capeador, your brave toreador," she says to Luis, "and they are all alike." But Torellas is not so. My heart withers for him. You must understand, senor'—Juan turned anew to Cogan—'that Torellas is as my own son. He tells me all. I have seen him burn in one day ten letters—yes, his own heart burning for love, you understand. ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... placed, will do much to confound those bumptious sociologists who make haste to rush into print with statistics purporting to show that the Negro Race in America is "fast dying out." The aim of this class of people seems to be to show that the Negro Race withers under the influence of freedom, which is by no means true. It is possibly true that filth and disease does its fatal work in the Negro Race, the same as in other races among the filthy and corrupt, but the filthy and corrupt in the Negro Race, as a class, are growing fewer every ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson

... tips the hay-seed-like anthers, which are attached to the threads by one of their points. The style is a long cylindrical body, e (Fig. 2), which stretches from the ovary to the top of the flower, where it splits into a head of spreading linear rays, 1/2 in. in length. When the flower withers, the seed vessel, f (Fig. 2), remains on the plant and expands into a large succulent fruit, inside which is a mass of pulpy matter, inclosing the numerous, small, black, ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson

... "That's Professor Withers," said the president in a sympathetic voice as one of the shivering figures went past; "poor ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... them in repair; and within them there are no more chants, no prayers to Allah. Night after night they pass in an infinity of silence. Piety contents itself with not destroying them; leaving them there at the mercy of time and the sun and the wind which withers and crumbles them. And all around are the signs of ruin. Tottering cupolas show us irreparable cracks; the halves of broken arches are outlined to-night in shadow against the mother-of-pearl light of the sky, and debris of sculptured stones ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... in shallow soil, underlain by a floor of unbroken stone or hard-pan, may strike root and flourish for a brief season; but as the descending rootlets reach the impenetrable stratum they shrivel, and the plant withers and dies, for the nutritive juices are insufficient where there is no depth of earth.[619] So with the man whose earnestness is but superficial, whose energy ceases when obstacles are encountered or opposition met; though he manifest enthusiasm for a time persecution ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... is still in the future,—still to be remotely hoped for. The rich complexity of modern social achievement is attained at the cost of individual many-sidedness. As Tennyson puts it, "The individual withers and the world is more and more." Yet the individual does not exist for the sake of society, as the positivists would have us believe, but society exists for the sake of the individual. And the test of complete social life is the opportunity which it affords for complete individual ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... somebody a rose. If that man wanted to give the church some land why didn't he give it and done with it? It's no use to have this pokin' around every year to find the best red rose to give to some man or lady that's related to him. The rose withers right away, anyhow. And this Feast of Roses makes some people a lot of bother. I heard one woman say in the store that she has to get ready for a lot of company still for every person she knows, most, comes to visit her that ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... must be their excuse for letting pass the encounter with less eloquence than I, its narrator, might have made a fortune by reporting. For once Gunner Sobey's readiness failed him, under emotion too deep for words. He laid a hand on the mare's withers and heaved himself astride, choosing a seat well back towards the haunches, and so avoiding the more pronounced angles in her framework. Then leaning forward and patting her neck he called ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... is left to itself, at about ten years of age there springs up from the centre of the leaves a tall stem, twelve or fifteen feet in height, which bears upon its apex clusters of rich yellow flowers, and then the whole withers and dies,—it never blooms but once. The maguey plant constituted the real vineyards of the Aztecs, as well as the tribes preceding them, its product being the drink of the people of the country long before the days of the Montezumas. At this writing, over eighty thousand ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... brawny armed woman, who clamored loudly of the children she had left fast locked up in her little place, that she could but just pay the rent for. Here, too, were young girls, children with an aged, worn look, like the fruit that withers to half its size before it ripens. Most heartrending of all, persons of real refinement were mingled up with this rude mass; poor wretches who had indeed seen better days, and their helpless, broken-hearted looks, the remnants of early ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... horse's withers, and with a stern threat and a shake, telling her to stay there, he springs upon the saddle behind her. It would not be their relative positions, then riding double, were they starting out on a long journey. But it will do for the half-mile ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... up at him in a bored way, but he still held. Skag went back to Carlin. Ian Deal had partly risen. The American did not catch his eye, and now Kala Khan stood between them, Carlin still holding the rein. Skag's hand rested upon the wet trembling withers, where the saddle had covered. There was a blue glisten to the moisture. Skag loved the Arab very hard that moment, and no less afterward. Kala Khan needed care at once. His wound was long and deep, from the hock on the inside, up ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... an eminent educationist about the characteristic qualities produced by various Public Schools, and when I asked him what Harrow produced he replied, "A certain shy bumptiousness." It was a judgment which wrung my Harrovian withers, but of which I ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... sending a bullet through the upper part of the neck near the withers, and by this means a quagga can be knocked over and captured. The shot, if properly directed, does not kill the animal. It soon recovers, and may be easily "broken," though its spirit is generally broken at the same ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... Celebes, Sumba, and Philippines. Other breeds are specified by Zollinger in the 'Journal of the Indian Archipelago' volume 5 page 343 etc.) Some of the breeds present great differences in size, shape of ears, length of mane, proportions of the body, form of the withers and hind quarters, and especially in the head. Compare the race- horse, dray-horse, and a Shetland pony in size, configuration, and disposition; and see how much greater the difference is than between the seven or eight other living species of the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... powerfully affected by propagation. Animals become depressed and dejected after it. The flower which shines so brilliantly at the moment of its amours, after the consummation of that act, withers and falls. It is wise, therefore, in imparting life, to have a care not to shorten one's own existence. Nothing is more certain than that animals and plants lessen the duration of their lives by multiplied sexual enjoyments. The abuse of these pleasures ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... knead it into more beautiful and useful forms. Domestic selection it is called. Does he wish horses which are fast, he selects the fastest. He studies the physics of velocity in relation to equine locomotion, and with an eye to withers, loins, hocks, and haunches, he segregates his brood mares and his stallions. And behold, in the course of a few years, he has a thoroughbred stock, swifter of foot than any ever ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... which the fool jeers, is the better, the truer, the fuller childhood, growing strong to cast off altogether, with the husk of its own enveloping age, that of its family, its country, its world as well. Age is not all decay: it is the ripening, the swelling of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... simple, kind person, without pretensions.' And that is enough, according to yesterday's creed. You were never nicer than you were yesterday speaking of her (I remember your words): you said the flesh fades, the intellect withers, only the heart remembers. Do you ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... the horse, and shrugged my shoulders. As far as I could scan it, it appeared the most uncouth animal I had ever beheld. It was of a spectral white, short in the body, but with remarkably long legs. I observed that it was particularly high in the cruz, or withers. "You are looking at the grasti," said Antonio: "it is eighteen years old, but it is the very best in the Chim del Manro; I have long had my eye upon it; I bought it for my own use for the affairs of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... Bible to a pilgrimage, a tale that is told, a flower that soon withers or is cut down by the mower's scythe, a dream, a sleep, a vapor, a shadow, a handbreadth; a thread cut ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley

... high-spirited monarch thanked them for their solicitude, but utterly slighted the prediction: the event occurred, and in the following year the Spanish friar spread his own fame in a new almanac. I have been occasionally struck at the Jeremiads of honest George Withers, the vaticinating poet of our civil wars: some of his works afford many solemn predictions. We may account for many predictions of this class without the intervention of any supernatural agency. Among the busy spirits of a revolutionary age, the heads of a party, such as Knox, have frequently ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... moment came, when it seemed that even the above supposition, in the case of a woman who has been married, is shameful to her, a sin against her lover, and should be obliterated under floods of scarlet. For, if she has pride, she withers to think of pushing the most noble of men upon his generosity. And, further, if he is not delicately scrupulous, is there not something wanting in him? The very cold wave passed, leaving the sentence: better dream of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... brings his load before him on the withers of his horse. They have large masses of red flesh, freshly skinned and smoking. Some carry the sides and quarters; others the hump-ribs, the tongue, the heart, and liver—the petits morceaux—wrapped up in the skins of ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... Indian legislation, in my judgment, operates in every way to blight, to grind, and to oppress; blasts each roseate hope of an ameliorated, a less abject, estate: quenches each swelling aspiration after a higher and more tolerable destiny; withers each ennobling aim, cancels each creditable effort that would assure its eventuation; opposes each soul-stirring resolve to no longer rest under the galling, gangrenous imputation of ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... turned from his pet to me with another wink, "what are yer days like now? They ain't like the grass, are they? I b'lieve they are, jest like the same old grass, or like the morning flower, the blighting wind sweeps o'er. She withers in an'—why don't ye never finish on 'er out, Pharo? Why don't ye never ring the last note ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... liveliest room in the building. The chamber was sombre like the rest for the matter of that, but the presence of youth and beauty would make a prison cheerful (saving alas! that confinement withers them), and lend some charms of their own to the gloomiest scene. Birds, flowers, books, drawing, music, and a hundred such graceful tokens of feminine loves and cares, filled it with more of life and human sympathy than the whole house besides seemed made ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... that moment, just over his horse's withers, she saw the face of Guss Mildmay who was leaning on her father's arm. Guss bowed to her, and she was obliged to return the salute. Jack De Baron turned his face to the path and seeing the lady raised his hat. "Are you two friends?" ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... feat is accomplished by means of a halter of horse-hair, which is passed round under the neck of the horse and both ends braided into the mane, on the withers, thus forming a loop which hangs under the neck and against the breast. This being caught by the hand, makes a sling, into which the elbow falls, taking the weight of the body on the middle of the upper arm. Into this loop the rider drops suddenly and fearlessly, leaving his heel ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... is of larger size as a rule, with enormously developed ears, which quite overlap his withers. The forehead recedes, and the trunk is more coarsely ringed; the tusks are larger, some almost reaching the size of those mentioned above in the fossil head at the museum. An old friend of mine, well known to all the civilised—and ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... death denied, to live would not be life; Were death denied, e'en fools would wish to die. Death wounds to cure: we fall; we rise; we reign; Spring from our fetters; hasten to the skies, Where blooming Eden withers in our sight. Death gives us more than was in Eden lost; The king of terrors is the ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... with reference to the giraffe in Africa is analogous to that, say, of the Catskill conglomerate to the laminated sandstone that lies beneath it. They are kindred; one graduates into the other. Whence the long neck and high withers of the giraffe? The need of high feeding, say the selectionists, but other browsing animals must have felt the same need. Our moose is strictly a browsing animal, and, while his neck and shoulders are high, and ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... sensation of freshness, with which we turn to those plays of Shakspeare which have escaped being performed, and to those passages in the acting plays of the same writer which have happily been left out in the performance. How far the very custom of hearing anything spouted, withers and blows upon a fine passage, may be seen in those speeches from Henry the Fifth, &c., which are current in the mouths of school-boys, from their being to be found in Enfield's Speaker, and such kind of books! I confess myself utterly ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... feet, and lame in fingers, Crooked in back, with every tooth Rattling in my head, yet, 'sooth, I'm content, so life but lingers. Gnaw my withers, rack my bones, Life, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... to have had better sense than to read anything of this kind to Mrs. Cynic. In the presence of such people, that which is fresh, beautiful, and holy withers, as a cluster of dewy wild flowers is parched and killed by the hot, sterile breath of ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... history, that it was the real General Pierce who shed tears when the delegate from Lawrence explained to him the sufferings of the people there,—and only General Pierce's double who had given the orders for the assault on that town, which was invaded the next day. My charming friend, George Withers, has, I am almost sure, a double, who preaches his afternoon sermons for him. This is the reason that the theology often varies so from that of the forenoon. But that double is almost as charming as the original. Some of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... not, far-reaching changes in our economical theories and social conditions are imminent, involving corresponding readjustments in our constitutional arrangements and political machinery. Tennyson foreshadowed it all in his "Locksley Hall" seventy years ago:—"The individual withers, and the world is more and more." The day of individualism as it existed in the American ideal of sixty years since is over; that of collectivism and possibly socialism has opened. The day of social equality is relegated to what may be considered ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams

... Exhibitions and in gratuities to the Scholars at the School by way of encouragement. There is a letter extant addressed in November, 1794, by the Clerk to the Governors to Mr. Clough, who was requested to lay the whole matter before Mr. Withers ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell

... the multitude goes like the flower or the weed That withers away to let others succeed, So the multitude comes, even those we behold, To repeat every tale that ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... his horse's withers, he vaulted upon its back, before the animal had time to kneel, and a moment later ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... who think that, if mere concettism be a part of poetry, Quarles is as great a poet as Cowley or George Herbert, Vaughan or Withers. On this question, and on the real worth of the seventeenth century lyrists, a great deal has to be said hereafter. Meanwhile, there are those, too, who believe John Bunyan, considered simply as an artist, to be the greatest dramatic ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... love you." The daisy: "There is no hope." Lily of the valley: "My heart withers in secret." The lilac: "You are my first love." Violets: "I am faithful." You will ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce

... with a simple halter and a stick, yet sometimes travel, at least in the larger island, at a desperate gallop. As the horses usually have panniers, the rider sits sideways over the withers, and if the panniers are empty they go at full speed in this position ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... are, on the whole, cheerful, she requires great care, and fills us with apprehension. The necessity of providing change for her will probably take us across the water very early in the autumn; and this again unsettles home schemes here, and withers many kinds of fern. If they knew (by "they" I mean my daughter and Miss Hogarth) that I was writing to you, they would charge me with many messages of regard. But as I am shut up in my room in a ferocious and unapproachable condition, owing to the great accumulation of letters I have ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... spared my life, and beheaded the dead body of poor Hugh Withers in my stead: for John Nevile is cunning, and he picks his nuts from the brennen without lesing his own paw. It was not the hour for him to join us, so he beat us civilly, and with discretion. But what hath he done since? ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... words that take hold of the upper world, whilst one eye is prowling in the cellar; so that its gravest discourse has a savor of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, when this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the hope and affection of human nature by teaching that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life has no ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... now that Islam is dying and that nobody cares; others that, if she withers in Europe and Asia, she will renew herself in Africa and will return—terrible—after certain years, at the head of all the nine sons of Ham; others dream that the English understand Islam as no one else does, and, in years to be, Islam will admit this and the world will be ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... silent! Is thy love a plant Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air Of absence withers what was once so fair? Is there no debt to pay, no ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... palace in which Catarina Cornaro spent her girlhood is now a pawnbroker's shop. The last living representative of the haughty house of Lusignan—Kings, in their day, of Cyprus, of Jerusalem, and of Armenia—is said to be a waiter in a French cafe. So royalty withers and power fades. There is no title to nobility save character, and no family pride so unfading as a spotless name. But, though palace and family have both decayed, the beautiful girl who was once the ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... Daily News.—'Mr. Withers knows all the machinery of the money market, and he has a lucid style which makes matters plain normally very mysterious and technical to ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... a stool the better to work on the horse's neck. His practised fingers twisted and knotted the mane and worsted, then cut the ends into hard tassels. The horse's withers were reached and the tassels bobbing rakishly gave a hilarious look ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... uses, the less will his party feel the stings of defeat. Some of them tone down and become conscientious and admirable legislators, but these are the few of natural largeness of mind. Party spirit, a magnificent thing at its best, warps and withers the little brain in the party out of power. But politics are out of place in this wilderness. There should be redskins and bows and arrows on all sides of us. I used to revel in Cooper's yarns, but I suppose you never ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... fame of first orator of the revolution. The passion and vehemence of the man made him at times censorious and satirical. His manner towards his opponents was at times hard to bear. His wit was of that sarcastic kind which, like a hot wind, withers its object. ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... to meet me, and came barking and grinning close around the feet of my horse. Several of them sprang upward at my legs, and would, no doubt, have bitten them, had I not suddenly raised my feet up to the withers, and for some time held them in that position. I have no hesitation in saying that had I been afoot, I should have been badly torn by the curs; nor do I hesitate to say, that of all the dogs in the known world, these Peruvian ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... under a bushel; it is for him and his fellows. In sowing the seed he will not withhold his hand because there are thorns and stony places and waysides. He will think that in some cases even a bird of the air may carry the matter, that the good seed may be too much for the thorns, that that which withers away upon the stony place may yet leave there, by its own decay, a deeper soil for the next seed to root itself in. Besides, they only can receive the doctrine who have ears to hear. If the selfish man could believe it, he would misinterpret it; but he cannot believe it. It is not possible ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... vagabond of noble family, wheeling suddenly in his tracks, had thrown himself into a cause which was all sacrifice, courage, and unselfish patriotism—a holy warfare. The last bitter thrust of the Duke had touched no raw flesh, his withers were unwrung. Gifted to thrust in return, and with warrant to do so, he put aside the temptation, and answered ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of an amorous potion. The chastity of knight and damsel is determined by the magic horn, whose liquor the innocent drink, but the guilty spill; and by the enchanted garland, which blooms on the brow of the chaste, but withers on that of the faithless. Inventions such as these were regarded as facts, or at least as possible occurrences, by the readers of romantic fiction. Men believed what they were told, and to doubt, to inquire were intellectual efforts which they knew not how to make, and which all the influences ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... believe in broken hearts, and the possibility of dying of disappointed love! I do not, however, consider it a malady often fatal to my own sex; but I firmly believe that it withers down many a lovely woman into an early grave. So is it the nature of woman to hide from the world the pangs ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... our stage should ony spier, "Whose aught thae chiels maks a' this bustle here!" My best leg foremost, I'll set up my brow, We have the honour to belong to you! We're your ain bairns, e'en guide us as ye like, But like good withers, shore before ye strike.— And gratefu' still I hope ye'll ever find us, For a' the patronage and meikle kindness We've got frae a' professions, sets, and ranks: God help us! we're but poor—ye'se get ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... the air, intending to fall backward, and crush his rider. But Ted had been there before many times, and as he went up a stinging blow across Bingo's withers brought him down ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... of wonder possessed by children and savages. And nothing in Nature can startle the mind like the sight of a mighty range of mountains. They recall primitive feelings of fear before the great unknown, they tower above the human form with a colossal imperturbability which withers our importance and confuses our standards of value. Victor Hugo never quite freed himself from the mediaeval dread of the mountains or the mediaeval speculation on their meaning. His letters to his wife from the Alps and Pyrenees record his impressions with ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... never reached the ear of the gray-haired pious peasant, but he needs not their powerful aid to establish his sure and certain hope of a blessed immortality. It is no induction of logic that has transfixed the heart of the victim of deep remorse, when he withers beneath an influence unseen by human eye, and shrinks from the anticipation of a reckoning to come. In both, the evidence is within,—a part of the original constitution of every rational mind, planted there by him who framed the wondrous fabric. This is the power of conscience;—with ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie

... famines may be owing to the nature of the products, particularly to that of rice. This grain, the staff of life in China, though it yields abundant returns in favourable seasons, is more liable to fail than most others. A drought in its early stages withers it on the ground; and an inundation, when nearly ripe, is equally destructive. The birds and the locusts, more numerous in this country than an European can well conceive, infest it more than any other kind of grain. In the northern provinces, where wheat, millet and pulse are cultivated, famines ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... apple-blossom, rather than Pretence, is surely a reminder of Eden and the fall of love's devotion into inflated worldliness. The poppy which flaunts its violent colours athwart the bearded corn, and which frets and withers like the Second Mrs. Tanqueray so soon as you bring it to the shelter of a decent home, is made the symbol of Repose. One might almost think Aime Martin and the other great authorities on this subject wrote ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... shall have my camel-drivers round me asking pertinent questions and may be compelled to return with them to Jericho. Come, Jesus, thine ass seems willing to amble down this long incline; and dropping the reins over the animal's withers, and leaning back, holding a puppy under each arm, Jesus allowed the large brown ass he was riding to trot; it was not long before he left far behind the heavy weighted white ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... a race, comes the beginning of the era of unselfishness, and the end of the present era of selfishness, the age of gold worship, where greed for gold blights and withers public and private conscience, dominates and corrupts all forms of society, and makes conditions which breed monopolies, caste, tramps, paupers, armies of idle men, strikes, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... undeserved compliments upon her wisdom in fostering really "practical work in the schools." The other was Jim Irwin, who was becoming famous, and who felt he had done nothing to deserve fame. Professor Withers, an extension lecturer from Ames, took Jim to dinner at the best hotel in the town, for the purpose of talking over with him the needs of the rural schools. Jim was in agony. The colored waiter fussed about trying to keep Jim in the beaten track of hotel manners, restored ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... the Nettleton station, the descending mob caught them on its tide, and they were swept out into a vague dusty square thronged with seedy "hacks" and long curtained omnibuses drawn by horses with tasselled fly-nets over their withers, who stood swinging their depressed heads drearily from ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... battery; Cleburne's brigade was composed of six regiments and two batteries. Major-General Bragg's corps consisted of two divisions, commanded respectively by Brigadier-General Ruggles and Brigadier-General Withers. The brigades of Ruggles' division were commanded by Colonel Gibson, Brigadier-General Patton Anderson, and Colonel Pond. Withers' brigades were commanded by Brigadier-Generals Gladden, Chalmers, and Jackson. ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force

... and Commerce was Hon. George E. Foster. He looked over the Grain Bill, passed his hand along its withers and patted it on the rump. Then he sat down and made a copy of it, idealizing it by injecting a few "betterments," then trotted it out for inspection with tail and mane plaited and bells on its patent-leather surcingle. He did not ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... were induced by what he had that day read and that day written. By virtue of a special conjury residing in these waking dreams of his, the little man peering nearsightedly at the shimmering white beach saw instead of a beach the first heavy fall of snow upon the withers of the Green Mountains; saw not unchanging stretches of sand but a blanket of purest fleece, frilled and flounced and scrolled after the drift wind had billowed it up in low places but otherwise ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... drying up in summer, and often the Pickerel Weed looks as brown as a bullrush where it is stranded in the baked mud in August. When seed falls on such ground, if indeed it germinates at all, the young plant naturally withers away. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... can say or do can ever alter my fondness for you—Ah, Sarah! I am unworthy of your love: I hardly dare ask for your pity; but oh! save me—save me from your scorn: I cannot bear it—it withers me like lightning. ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt

... do it perhaps reluctantly, but certainly in obedience to the imperious commands of a duty paramount to all form and ceremony, which dictates that truth must be investigated, no matter what galled jade may feel its withers wrung ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various

... of his happiest emotions; not only the better part, but almost the whole of his rational character. Send him to the desert alone, he is a plant torn from his roots: the form indeed may remain, but every faculty droops and withers; the human personage and the human character ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... flies calls their followers and eat animal for him. Is allowed to pick fruit, but branches of tree are sharp knives on which he is cut. He puts two of oranges on his spear and it flies away to his home. He dies and lawed vine at his house withers. Giant uses his skin to cover end of drum, puts his hair on roof of house and places his head at gate of town. Wife gives birth to child, which grows one span each time it is bathed. While still very small ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole

... younger man, whose dry, ironic voice, like his smile, seemed defending the fervid spirit in his eyes; "all you say only amounts, you see, to a defence of the so-called Liberal spirit; and, forgive my candour, that spirit, being an importation from the realms of philosophy and art, withers the moment it ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... that it was used for the purpose of removing, by its own strong scent, the bad smell of the spot where the bodies were burnt, and also of the bodies themselves. It was also said to be so used, because, when once its bark is cut, it withers, and is consequently emblematical of the frail tenure ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... comrades, not because the spy system was news to them, but because no public notice had been taken of it until it began to wring the withers of persons who had hitherto supposed themselves to be in the position of promoters instead of victims of the practise. A federal judge had never protested against pursuing with spies men suspected of crimes, or men who, having served time upon conviction, had then gone out into the world ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... with all the world, we have been much delighted with "The Shepherd's Hunting" by Withers—a poem partaking, in a remarkable degree, of the peculiarities of "Il Penseroso." Speaking of Poesy ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... by the turbid river, But Time is crumbling its battered towers; And the slow light withers a despot's powers, And a mad king's curse is ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay

... edges foamed with amethyst and rose, Withers once more the old blue flower of day: There where the ether like a diamond glows Its petals ...
— The Nuts of Knowledge - Lyrical Poems New and Old • George William Russell

... the spirit. The threefold causes of failure are arranged in progressive order. At every stage of growth there are enemies. The first sowing never gets into the ground at all; the second grows a little, but its greenness soon withers; the third has a longer life, and a yet sadder failure, because a nearer approach to fertility. The types of character represented are unreceptive carelessness, emotional facility of acceptance, and earthly-mindedness, scotched, but not killed, by the word. The dangers which assault, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... ever befel one man. With an Accurate Account of the Shape, Nature, and Properties of that most furious, and amazing Animal, the Dog-Bird. Printed from his own Manuscript. With a beautiful Frontispiece. 2 vols. 12mo. London: Printed for E. Withers, at the Seven Stars, in Fleet Street. 1753." On the fly-leaf of the first volume Scott has written as follows: "I read this scarce little Voyage Imaginaire when I was about ten years old, and long after sought for a copy without being able ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... it observed by a profound adept in human physiology, that if a woman waxes fat with the progress of years, her tenure of life is somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old, she lives forever. Such promised to be the case with William the Testy, who grew tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not through the process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his soul, which burnt like ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... published "The Great Assises holden in Parnassus by Apollo and his assessours" a facsimile of the title of which is given on page 57. This work is anonymous but is usually ascribed to George Withers and in it Bacon as Lord Verulan is placed first and designated "Chancellor of Parnassus" ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... out by the roots. "It struggles—and struggles—and blooms for a day—and withers. What's the use?" she demanded, almost savagely. Then, before he could answer, the girl closed the door she had opened for him. "We must be moving. The sun has ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... impulsively receptive life. It is not too hard, or too soft, but it is too thin. It is a superficial soil which has no depth of earth, and so with joy it receives the word; but the seed has no depth of earth and quickly withers away. This sort of soil receives quickly and as quickly lets go. It is like that unstable man of whom St. James writes and who is like the wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. We see the wave come flashing ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... sinning publican, who smote upon his breast, and said, "God be merciful to me a sinner," was the one that God looked upon with favor, not the Pharisee, who thanked God that he was not as the other people were. And, if there is any class in the New Testament that Jesus scathes and withers with the hot lightning of his scorn and his wrath, it is these infallible people, who are perfectly right in their ideas, and who look with contempt upon people who are outside of the pale of their own inherited infallible ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of water.' From fading plantations he carries his thoughts to the paradise of God, where, in immortal youth and beauty, grows the tree of life, whose tree never withers, and which bears its fruit through the unnumbered ages of eternity. Earthly cities and palaces cause him to remember thee, O thou holy city, heavenly Jerusalem, whose walls are salvation, and thy gates praise, and the Lord God Almighty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various

... a few short days the beauty has disappeared. The seeds mature speedily and drop into the sand. A hot wind withers the stems and leaves and blows them away; drifting sands take the place of the rich carpet. How readily these plants have adapted themselves to the brief period ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks

... years George Withers sunk a hole and "dry blew" the wash not very far from Bayley's, yet he discovered no gold. Macpherson, too, poked out beyond Coolgardie, and nearly lost his life in returning, and, indeed, was saved by his black-boy, who held him ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie



Words linked to "Withers" :   cervid, horse, ox, body part, deer, Equus caballus, sheep



Copyright © 2025 Free-Translator.com