"Nocturnal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Continual and intermitting f. Worthy f. Rebasing and roundling f. Precious f. Prototypal and precedenting f. Fanatic f. Prating f. Fantastical f. Catechetic f. Symphatic f. Cacodoxical f. Panic f. Meridional f. Limbecked and distilled f. Nocturnal f. Comportable f. Occidental f. Wretched and heartless f. Trifling f. Fooded f. Astrological and figure-flinging f. Thick and threefold f. Genethliac and horoscopal f. Damasked f. Knavish f. Fearney f. Idiot ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... winter evenings in Greenwich and Peckham. But playing a one-stringed violin at fairs and public-houses could not be more than a relaxation to a man of Peace's active temper, who had once tasted what many of those who have practised it, describe as the fascination of that particular form of nocturnal adventure known by the unsympathetic name of burglary. Among the exponents of the art Peace was at this time known as a "portico-thief," that is to say one who contrived to get himself on to the portico of a house and from that point of vantage make his entrance into the premises. During ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... morality and social law upon their enemies, must unveil vice in all its naked hideousness and bring it before the eyes of mankind in colossal size; he must himself wander temporarily through its nocturnal labyrinths and must be able to force himself into states of feeling that revolt his soul by their unnaturalness. I may properly claim for my work, in view of its remarkable catastrophe, a place among moral ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... disturbed me most was the fearful hubbub which came from the camp below. Many of the tropical African tribes are really semi-nocturnal in their habits, I suppose because there the night is cooler than the day, and on any great ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... were illegal in their principle, and in their consequences might become dangerous; nor were the emperors conscious that they violated the laws of justice, when, for the peace of society, they prohibited those secret and sometimes nocturnal meetings. The pious disobedience of the Christians made their conduct, or perhaps their designs, appear in a much more serious and criminal light; and the Roman princes, who might perhaps have suffered themselves to be disarmed by a ready submission, deeming their honor concerned in the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... by a father intent on siring a Rabbi, he relieved the dreary dialectics of the Talmud—so tedious to a child uninterested in divorce laws or the number of white hairs permissible in a red cow—by surreptitious nocturnal perusal of a precious store of Hebrew scientific and historical works discovered in an old cupboard in his father's study. To this chamber, which had also served as the bedroom in which the child slept with his grandmother, the young man's thoughts returned with wistful ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... on the previous occasion when Brusson brought the casket, there came a knock at De Scuderi's house door at midnight. Baptiste, forewarned of this nocturnal visit, at once opened the door. De Scuderi felt an icy shiver run through her as she gathered from the light footsteps and hollow murmuring voices that the guards who had brought Brusson were taking up their stations about ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... mistaken in supposing that Amelie's brother was in pursuit of the Companions of Jehu. If Roland's nocturnal search at the Chartreuse of Seillon was not convincing, the conversation between the young officer and his colleague was proof positive. In it, it developed that the First Consul was really sending fifty thousand francs as a gift to the monks of Saint-Bernard, by post; but that this money was in ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... with him. He had seen Altamont to bed with great friendliness on the night previous, and taken away his candle for fear of accidents; and finding a spirit-bottle empty, upon which he had counted for his nocturnal refreshment, had drunk a glass of water with perfect contentment over his pipe, before he turned into his own crib and to sleep. That enjoyment never failed him: he had always an easy temper, a faultless digestion, and a rosy cheek; and whether he was going into action the next ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... far into the night when the brethren went home. As they passed along through the streets they bellowed their nocturnal serenades at the windows of the otherwise ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... possess knowledge, but few are willing to pay the price. Buddy was one of the minority. Early he adopted the motto, "Money no object," and it provoked him not at all to learn that there is a scale of night prices considerably higher than the scale of day prices; to find, for instance, that a nocturnal highball costs twice as much as one purchased during daylight hours. That phenomenon, by the way, had nothing to do with the provisions of the Eighteenth Amendment, it merely explained why farmers went to bed early—they couldn't afford to sit up, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... escape from an ignominious death, Frank Sydney resumed his nocturnal wanderings thro' the city, in disguise, in order to do deeds of charity and benevolence to those who needed his aid. One night, dressed in the garb of a sailor, and wearing an immense pair of false ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... half the evils with which you have to contend. You are pestered with nocturnal visitants far more disagreeable than even the mosquitoes, and must put up with annoyances more disgusting than the crowded, close room. And then, to appease the cravings of hunger, fat pork is served to you three times a day. No wonder that the Jews eschewed the vile animal; they were people ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... wiser than the Athenian Senate of Five Hundred, who investigated the affair the day after it happened, that a perusal will be exceedingly edifying. Now, then, for a solution of this classic mystery of the nocturnal iconoclasm; which, in my humble opinion, only the brazen lips of Minerva ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... to the dance hall, closed at this hour to its nocturnal patrons, where she knew she would find Tom Martin in the office back of the main room. He was there as she expected—a keen-eyed, sharp-featured little cockney whose history from the time he disappeared from London in a fog to the day when he emerged in ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the cavern at nightfall, especially when the moon shines. It is almost the only frugivorous nocturnal bird that is yet known; the conformation of its feet sufficiently shows that it does not hunt like our owls. It feeds on very hard fruits, as the Nutcracker and the Pyrrhocorax. The latter nestles also in clefts of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... another, at which the whole convent was supposed to be present, and one service at midnight. [Footnote: Peckham's Register, ii, Preface, p. lxviii, et seq.] The lay brethren among the Cistercians, and the servants engaged in field labour, were excused attendance at the nocturnal service, and those officials of the convent whose business required them to be absent from the precincts were also excused. Indeed, it would have been simply impossible for the whole brotherhood to assemble at all these services; there would have been a dead-lock ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... by us while we were at work, leaving my mother-in-law alone in the cottage. I ought to observe that, as the spring advanced, so did my mother-in-law decrease her nocturnal rambles, and that we never heard the growl of the wolf under the window after I had spoken of it to ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "Federal mercenaries," on the field of possible battle. By letters from Montgomery, Alabama, I learn that unusual precautions have been common during the last winter, many persons locking up their negroes over night in the quarters, and most sleeping with arms at hand, ready for nocturnal conflict. Whoever considers the necessarily horrible nature of a servile insurrection will find in it some palliation for Southern violence toward suspected incendiaries and Southern precipitation in matters of secession, however strongly he may still maintain that lynch-law ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... I informed my family of what it was possible might happen, and this I did, not to alarm them, but to put them upon their guard, that they might not lose presence of mind in case of any nocturnal assault being made upon my house. In my own mind I had firmly settled how to act: if any messenger from the Secretary of State's office came to apprehend me in the day time, I should attend him very quietly and peaceably; but if any nocturnal visit was intended me by the officers of the ministers, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... whole apparition had been a mere trick of imagination. Rising swiftly, he gazed after the vanished riders, and the crunching of the pine cones under the horses' hoofs, dying slowly away as they retreated, warned him that the stealthy, nocturnal visit was no illusion, but a curious ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... sure that is not a necessary consequence," said Bluebell, rather mystified by the meaning tone of his voice, but Alec, believing she had heard his nocturnal serenade and assuming a secret understanding on the strength of it, lingered by her side talking in an undertone—really about nothing in particular, for, like most spoony boys, he trusted more to his eyes than his tongue. Still it had all the effect of a flirtation, and when the girls went upstairs ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... not fail to detect the ruse of the boy, and he countered by moving around to the other side of the fire, so that he regained his former advantage. The nocturnal visitor had evidently set his mind upon making his supper upon the little chap, whose plump, robust appearance must have been a very tempting bait to him. The latter was reluctant to repeat his maneuver, as, by doing so, he would be ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... height of two stories; but this was unrecognizable in the poor light of the guard's lantern. All the rooms on every floor opened each into the other;—but why should I give such a minute description, making my reader expect a ghost story, or at least a nocturnal adventure? I only want him to feel something of what our party felt as they entered this desolate building, which, though some hundred and twenty years old, bore not a single mark upon the smooth floors or spotless walls to indicate that article of furniture ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... sleeping things hung over the Haymarket, and the three long, dingy arcades lay huddled and lifeless in the night, black and threatening against a cloudy sky. Presently, among the odd nocturnal sounds of a great city, the vague yelping of a dog, the scream of a locomotive, the furtive step of a prowler, the shrill cry of a feathered watchman from the roost, the ear caught a continuous rumble in the distance that changed as it grew nearer into ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... slowly through the closed blinds of the palatial Stafford home. Through the dark nocturnal hours its inmates—master, guests and servants, had slumbered peacefully, all but one and to her sleep refused to come. Hysterical, mentally overwrought, physically exhausted from continual weeping, Virginia had tossed feverishly on her pillow until at last ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... usual, announced the intelligence, but their sound conveyed a deep melancholy to the heart; the bells were rung, but their peals inspired no hilarity, and seemed little less than the mournful knells of death; nocturnal illuminations were displayed, but the transparencies which they discovered, amidst the gloom, presented only so many sad memorials of the universal loss, expressed by ingenious devices to the hero's memory, which the spectators beheld with sensations of augmented grief, and ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... Now from nocturnal sweat and sanguine stain They cleanse their bodies in the neighb'ring main: Then in the polished bath, refresh'd from toil, Their joints they supple with dissolving oil, In due repast indulge the genial hour, And first to Pallas ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... opinion among Egyptologists on this point. One thinks that embalming was supposed to keep the soul in the body until after the funeral judgment and interment, but that, when the corpse was laid in its final receptacle, the soul proceeded to accompany the sun in its daily and nocturnal circuit, or to transmigrate through various animals and deities. Another imagines that the process of embalming was believed to secure the repose of the soul in the other world, exempt from transmigrations, so long as the body was kept from decay.11 Perhaps ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... neighbourhood afforded him his opportunity. It was in the neighbourhood of Pella, the Macedonian capital, that the worship of Dionysus, the newest of the gods, prevailed in its most extravagant form—the [56] Thiasus, or wild, nocturnal procession of Bacchic women, retired to the woods and hills for that purpose, with its accompaniments of music, and lights, and dancing. Rational and moderate Athenians, as we may gather from some admissions ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... finished, Deborah sent Ephraim stumbling out of the room to bed, muttering remonstrances, his eyes as wild and restless as a cat's, his ears full of the nocturnal shouts of his play-fellows that ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the night was beautiful, the setting sun, the noise of frogs, the nocturnal insects beginning to pipe—all in some way called her girlhood back to her, though there was little in her girlhood to give her pleasure. Her large gray eyes (her only interesting feature) grew round, deep, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... position, and arising and stepping softly over the sleeping form beside her, seated herself in the center of the lodge. Here she remained until morning, when she made the inmates understand the nature of her nocturnal fright. All treated it lightly, and she began to entertain a suspicion that they knew more of it ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... mystery and excitement of that night. I know nothing in life more fascinating than the nocturnal ascent of an unknown river, leading far into an enemy's country, where one glides in the dim moonlight between dark hills and meadows, each turn of the channel making it seem like an inland lake, and cutting you off as by a barrier from all behind,—with no sign of human life, but an occasional ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... passed over the camp, beneath the somber heavens, a loud, wailing cry. Was it the plaint of some nocturnal bird? Or was it a mysterious voice, reaching them from some far-distant field of carnage, ominous of disaster? The whole camp shuddered, lying there in the shadows, and the strained, tense sensation ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... held them from flying at one another's throats. Meanwhile, saloon doors were opening, the street was filling; dance-hall girls, white-aproned bartenders, bleary-eyed pedestrians, night-owls—all the queerly assorted devotees of Dawson's vivid and roisterous nocturnal life hastened thither; even the second-story windows framed heads, for this clamor put slumber to flight ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... wild moors it is not hard at midnight, through the roaring of the wind, or in the stillness of a calm night broken only by the weird cry of some nocturnal bird or the distant sound of a rushing stream, to imagine, far away, the ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... lights sent up a great blaze of color among the trees, now making the budding leaves blush crimson, now silvering them, as with hoar-frost, or illuminating their delicate tracery with an intense blue which shone out brilliantly against the nocturnal sky. Even the flower-beds were made to participate in the patriotic frenzy; and cunning imitations, in colored glass, of tulips, lilies, and roses, with little gas-jets concealed in their chalices, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... rat is strictly nocturnal. An observer watching patiently by a den in the evening for the animal's first appearance is not rewarded until darkness has fallen completely, and unless the moon is shining the animal can hardly be seen. Were it not for ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... I., cap. 18, Lib. II., cap. 21, etc.) Totec is named as one of the companions of Quetzalcoatl, and an ancient divinity whose temple stood on the Tzatzitepec (see the Codex Vaticanus; Tab. XII., in Kingsborough's Mexico). His high priest was called Youallauan, "the nocturnal tippler" (youalli, night, and tlauana, to drink to slight intoxication), and it was his duty to tear out the hearts of the human victims (Sahagun, u.s.). The epithet Yoatzin, "noble night-god," bears some relation to the celebration of ...
— Rig Veda Americanus - Sacred Songs Of The Ancient Mexicans, With A Gloss In Nahuatl • Various
... all become fairly accustomed to seeing numerous air-ships moving in all directions across the sky in the daytime, but it still seems strange to us to see the lights of the air-ships flitting about the nocturnal sky. ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... creaking of boards, stairs (nearly always stairs), and the tapping of some leaf (of course some leaf) at the windows. Who has not heard such sounds, and who in his heart of hearts has not been only too well aware that they are nocturnal, exclusively nocturnal. The shadows of evening bring with them visitors; prying, curious visitors; grim and ghastly visitors; grey, esoteric visitors; visitors from a world seemingly inconsequent, wholly incomprehensible. Mrs. Gordon did not believe in ghosts. She ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... nocturnal vision, a man named Victoricus[120] coming as if from Ireland, with a large parcel of letters, one of which he handed to me. On reading the beginning of it, I found it contained these words: 'The voice of the Irish;' and while reading it I thought I heard, at the same moment, the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... are going a-fishing in the morning, secure your bait to-night. Worms are nocturnal, and they come out of their holes at night, provided it is not too dry on top. The ideal time for scooping them in is about dusk, after a long warm rain. Get a lantern and with it carry your bait can half filled with wet moss or soft moist earth. ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... Nocturnal though the beetles had been, they no longer feared the light of the sun. In fact, it was ascertained later that they were blind. An opacity had formed over the crystalline lens of the eye. Blind, they were no less ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... loud on the hushed silence of the midnight hour rang the chimes of the village clock, from the tall steeple-tower of the quaint old church of Wimbledon, while several ambitious chickens rose from their neighboring perches, piped a shrill answering salute, and sank to their nocturnal slumbers again. But nor clock nor chanticleer disturbed Wimbledon. Still she slept on beneath the blossoming stars; and by their soft, inspiring light, with your permission, gentle reader, we'll enter ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... where, he tells us, he "could see and was astonished to observe signs of comfort, and even signs of taste—armchairs, sofas, side-boards with cut-glass upon them, engravings and coloured prints upon the walls." As a result of this nocturnal examination, a vol d'oiseau, he has written paragraph upon paragraph about the people's character [49] and prospects in the island of Grenada. To read the patronizing terms in which our historian-traveller has seen fit to comment on Grenada and ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... clubs, bars, and strange houses, or in the heat and fume of Fleet Street offices. But what nights they were! What things have we seen done—not at The Mermaid—but in every tiny street and alley of nocturnal London! ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... pulling off the covering of wet weeds. Another bird rarely seen at any other spot than this was the painted snipe, a prettily-marked species with a green curved bill. It has curiously sluggish habits, rising only when almost trodden upon, and going off in a wild sacred manner like a nocturnal species, then dropping again into hiding at a short distance. The natives call it dormilon—sleepy-head. On one side of the lagoon, where the ground was swampy and wet, there was always a breeding-colony of these quaint birds; at ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... monotony of their walk by singing a hymn, the sound of which is borne very far on the bosom of the silence, and is sweet and soft in its cadence, mellowed as it is by the distance and idealized by the nocturnal hour. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... every great city must have been built by night. At least, it is only at night that every part of a great city is great. All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks. At least, I think many people of those nobler trades that work by night (journalists, policemen, burglars, coffee-stall keepers, and such mistaken enthusiasts as refuse to go home till ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... on his Journey, and is overtaken by a terrible Tempest XXI He falls upon Scylla, seeking to avoid Charybdis. XXII He arrives at Paris, and is pleased with his Reception XXIII Acquits himself with Address in a Nocturnal Riot XXIV He overlooks the Advances of his Friends, and smarts severely for his Neglect XXV He bears his Fate like a Philosopher; and contracts acquaintance with a very remarkable Personage XXVI The History of the Noble Castilian XXVII A flagrant Instance of Fathom's Virtue, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... cursed with the pestilent habit of conjuring up all manner or odd fancies when his head touches the pillow, instead of dismissing the workmen who hammer on the forges of the brain. The majority of the men will rather suffer nocturnal horrors than be laughed at for wearing nightcaps; just as the majority of women will prefer to wear shoes that are instruments of disease and torture rather than have their feet shod comfortably and sensibly. I have a clear idea as to which is the course of wisdom and which the ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... Furies were at his heels, he quitted the scene of his nocturnal romance, leaving half his geological projects incomplete. Had he taken the amiable Don Francesco into his confidence he might have heard something to his advantage. But the scientist could not endure the sight of a Christian priest. Like other ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... will be a still more beautiful woman." He sighed. "Poor little thing! Rich and poor, young and old, how soon the world's poison reaches us!" Then, throwing a tiger-skin over the slender body, he turned out the lights and left the room. Summoning Norgate, he gave instructions that his nocturnal visitor should not be disturbed in the morning by the housekeeper, but should be allowed to sleep on. Then he made his way to his own room, not long before ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... materialistic explanation or a supernatural. THE TENANT OF CROMLECH COTTAGE has a surprise for the reader in that the physical explanation of the noises and movements that have disturbed the novelist owner of the haunted cottage—that these were occasioned by the nocturnal visits of two orphans who believed that a will was hidden there—was followed by the appearance of a dead man to tell the novelist where this missing will might be found. This dualism is typical of Joseph Hocking's Cornish stories where romance ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... were, on both sides, full of tablets and scrolls, the number of which he could not in one moment ascertain. He however discriminated in numerous places the inscriptions: The Board of Lustful Love; the Board of contracted grudges; The Board of Matutinal sobs; the Board of nocturnal tears; the Board of vernal affections; and the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... to find what he sought, and not wishing to arouse suspicion by further hesitation, he turned to the left and stepped briskly along the pavement with the intention of placing himself as quickly as possible beyond the observation of those nocturnal watchers. He knew that the night must be far spent; and so he could not but wonder why people should sit upon their balconies when they should have been asleep among their silks and furs. At first he had thought them the late guests of some convivial host; but the windows behind them ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in their peerings for an opinion, as if it were a cultivated habit in them to scrutinize the tool-marks and be blind to the building, to hearken for the key-creaks and be deaf to the diapason, to judge the landscape by a nocturnal exploration with a flash-lantern. In other words, to carry on the old game of sampling the poem or drama by quoting the worst line or worst passage only, in ignorance or not of Coleridge's proof that a versification of any length neither can be nor ought ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... I purpose to rise at eight, because, though I shall not yet rise early, it will be much earlier than I now rise, for I often lie till two.' Pr. and Med. p. 62. 'Sept. 18, 1771. My nocturnal complaints grow less troublesome towards morning; and I am tempted to repair the deficiencies of the night. I think, however, to try to rise every day by eight, and to combat indolence as I shall obtain strength.' Ib. p. 105. 'April 14, 1775. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... The nocturnal visitors seemed unacquainted with the building, for, after two or three steps had been taken, one lighted a match. It was evident to the detective that these visitors were reading the names on the doors as they progressed along the corridor, and he ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... attenuated atmosphere. Solar light, being electric, is not developed as light until reaching the atmosphere of a planet or satellite, or their more solid substance, which would explain why solar light is not diffused through space, and thus account for nocturnal darkness. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the tin washing-basins against the iron door of the lavatory, and then if any one comes he'll make clang enough to wake the dead; and while he's amusing himself with this, there'll be lots of time to 'extinguish the superfluous abundance of the nocturnal illuminators.' Eh?" ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... their vigilance. Notwithstanding this care it was not an infrequent thing for the watch to be caught napping. On one occasion a collier brig had been windbound for several days in the Yarmouth roads. The mate was accustomed to pay nocturnal visits on deck, and had suspected that a great deal of napping was done before the galley fire, and he had his suspicion confirmed when coming up one night unexpectedly, and, stealthily making his way to the galley, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... of a Lady Constantine. His heaven at present was truly in the skies, and not in that only other place where they say it can be found, in the eyes of some daughter of Eve. Would any Circe or Calypso—and if so, what one?—ever check this pale-haired scientist's nocturnal sailings into the interminable spaces overhead, and hurl all his mighty calculations on cosmic force and stellar fire into Limbo? Oh, the pity of it, if such ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... sexual organs, or a complete impotence, with premature seminal discharge whenever coition is attempted. Many times this condition results from excessive intellectual labor, even with no sexual excesses or abuses. Nocturnal, or nightly emissions, are not always experienced in these cases. When they do occur, the debilitating losses of vital fluid react upon the brain, robbing the victim of courage and manliness and exciting various phases of morbid fear ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... and mink live along the larger streams and on the Lake shore where they feed chiefly on fish. They may sometimes catch a wild fowl asleep. The martin and fisher live in pine trees usually in the deepest forests, and they probably prey on squirrels, mice and birds. They are usually nocturnal in their habits. The martin is the size of a large tree squirrel; the fisher is about twice that size. The foxes are not often seen, but the coyote is everywhere, a scourge to the few bands of sheep. Often at night his long-drawn, doleful howl may be heard, a fitting ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... the authorities are wanting for stating whether the Convention danced or not. In any event, it is present at the dance, and thus consecrates an unique orgy, not Rubens' "Kermesse" in the open air, racy and healthy, but a nocturnal boulevard-jollification, a "Mardi-gras" composed of lean and haggard scapegraces.—In the great nave of the Cathedral, "the dancers, almost naked, with bare necks and breasts, and stockings down at the heel," writhe and stamp, "howling the carmagnole." In the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... would begin. I would spring to attention; he would go on reading. "Hush!" I'd say. (Why "Hush!" I don't know.) "What's all that for?" "Me," he'd say, turning to the personal column. And then I'd know that, seizing the opportunity of being unobserved, he'd been out for nocturnal stroll with a handful of bombs, seeking a little innocent pleasure. The gentlemen opposite, not being cricketers themselves or knowing anything about the slow bowler, had, as usual, mistaken him for a trench mortar and were making a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various
... What strength her weakness covered; what abased Sublimity so illumining, and what raised This wallower in old slime to noblest heights, Up to the union on the midway blue:- Day that the celestial grave Recorder hangs Among dark History's nocturnal lights, With vivid beams indicative to the quick Of all who have felt the vaulted body's pangs Beneath a mind in hopeless soaring sick. She had forgot how, long enslaved, she yearned To the one helping hand above; Forgot her faith in the Great Undiscerned, Whereof she sprang aloft ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which was as a prayer. Leaving the warm glow of his camp-fire, he soared upward into the violet night. The earth fell away beneath him, a blue blur, a shadow, till finally the shadow itself whelmed in nocturnal profundities, and of the earth there remained nothing but the little fire, the little fire gleaming red in the clearing. He rose. The night accepted him with silence and solemnity, in a velvety envelopment. He rose. The stars, at first, were all ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... well be left to themselves, that no one would listen to their ravings, and that the glorious machinery of Justice need no more be used against them than a crusader's glittering battle-axe need be brought forward to exterminate the nocturnal pest of our couches. This indeed has been, I must say unfortunately, the view taken by our rulers till quite recently. But times have changed, gentlemen; for need I tell you, who in your character of ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... in wealth, to realise their projects, rich enough in bold, shrewd, desperate men, whose minds were well adapted to the contrivance and execution of revolutionary projects, they now looked down with contempt upon the good old Doge, who as yet entertained no suspicion of their nocturnal meetings. ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... sometimes eight, because, being much attached to my brother Francois, I gave him a share now and then in our nocturnal orgies. But at last fear put a stop to our criminal jokes, which in those days I used to call only the frolics of young men. This is the amusing ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of St. Dunstan, who regularly strikes the quarters of every hour by clock-work, and who holds in his hand a pair of tongs—the same I suppose as those with which he was wont to pull the devil by the nose, in their nocturnal interviews. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... It would seem that nocturnal pollution is a sin. For the same things are the matter of merit and demerit. Now a man may merit while he sleeps, as was the case with Solomon, who while asleep obtained the gift of wisdom from the Lord (3 Kings 3:2, Par. 1). Therefore a man may ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... concluded that I was going to be robbed, or that something of much more consequence to myself was going to take place. The curtain was slowly and noislessly drawn up—it went higher and higher, until the human head which had at first appeared developed into a human body—a man. My nocturnal visitor wriggled through the opening onto my side of the stage. Fortunately I had by my side my walking-stick. Quickly and quietly I seized that weapon of defence, and before the stranger would have had time—had he even desired—to say "Jack Robinson," I had dealt him a splendid blow ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... logic of English women as it is that of Italian women, of the women of Normandy and Brittany (ah, these last are unsurpassed!), of the women of Paris, in short, that of the women in the moon, if there are women in that nocturnal land, with which the women of the earth have an evident ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... by night for plums, grapes, and pears in the orchards of his neighbors. His own family did not raise fruit; they thought it too much trouble to cultivate the trees. But Alfred openly boasted of having the best fruit that the neighborhood afforded. One of Alfred's cronies in these nocturnal raids was a boy, named Harvey Yeatton, who lived at the village, six or seven miles away; almost every year he came to visit Alfred for a week or ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... father was surprised and indeed annoyed as well as startled to see him: he was in no mood for such a visit. He felt also strangely afraid of the child, he could not have told why. Wretched about one son, he was dismayed at the nocturnal visit of the other. The cause was of course his wrong condition of mind; lack of truth and its harmony in ourselves alone can make us miserable; there is a cure for everything when that is cured. No ill in our neighbours, if we be right in ourselves, will ever seem hopeless ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... structure. Notwithstanding Madrid's wartime growth and prosperity, the city is fast losing ground as the nucleus of the life and thought of Spanish-speaking people. The madrileno, lean, cynical, unscrupulous, nocturnal, explosive with a curious sort of febrile wit is becoming extinct. His theatre is beginning to pander to foreign tastes, to be ashamed of itself, to take on respectability and stodginess. Prices of seats, up to 1918 very low, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... up the horsing, and in the trough all the missing bands will be found. Apologizing for the little interruption, it is satisfactory things are all arranged without damage, and hope all will go agreeably when the rough edge is worn off. Trusting these nocturnal visits will be no longer necessary, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Heirocles fell out of his chariot just opposite the seat of Sardanapalus, losing his helmet in his fall. Being still beardless and adorned with a crown of yellow hair, he attracted the attention of the prince and was at once carried hastily to the palace; and by his nocturnal feats he captivated Sardanapalus more than ever and rose to still greater power. Consequently his influence became even greater than his patron's and it was thought a small thing that his mother, while still a slave, should be brought to Rome ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... Nocturnal Habits, it is particularly attracted to human beings in their Night-shirts. The swallow preys upon it, but it generally eludes the Bat. Although it cannot be called Noctilucous, like the lightning bug, it has no objection to alight in the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... animals exists in Madagascar, and some of the Eastern islands, to which the name of Maki has been given, and which, although differing in the formation of the skull and teeth, must, from having four hands, be placed among the Quadrumana. They are nocturnal in their habits, very gentle and confiding, with apparently one exception, which is called the Vari. M. Frederic Cuvier has told us, that two of these being shut up in a cage together, one killed and eat his companion, leaving nothing but the skin. Two of ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... a great curious eye unclosing to watch this beautiful marvel of their love, expanded so suddenly, like a huge aloe-flower. It lets in a flood of moonlight, and the glimmering vision of the vapourous green-lit nocturnal Spring-world. "Who went out?... Who came in?" cries Sieglinde, starting in alarm. "No one went," Siegmund reassures her, "but some one came: See, the Spring laughing in the room!" And he pours forth poetry ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... of Thebes, seeing his subjects so completely infatuated by the riotous worship of this new divinity, and fearing the demoralizing effects of the unseemly nocturnal orgies held in honour of the wine-god, strictly prohibited his people from taking any part in the wild Bacchanalian revels. Anxious to save him from the consequences of his impiety, Dionysus appeared ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... within the deserted building of the Horeszkos had returned to its wonted calm. The darkness thickened; the remnants of the magnificent feast lay like that nocturnal banquet to which the ghosts of the departed must gather when evoked at the festival of the Forefathers.96 Now the owls had cried thrice from the garret, like conjurers; they seemed to greet the rising of the moon of which the form fell ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... the truth, and shall be made. It is painful to speak of my father as I must now do; but there is no help for it. Of late years he has been subject to strange mental hallucinations, which have bordered close upon madness, if they have not reached that terrible point. Nocturnal vigils, fastings, and prayers have affected his health. He has denied himself sufficient rest, and has only partaken of food barely sufficient to sustain nature, and no more. The consequence has been that strange fancies have troubled his brain; that at dead of night, when alone in his chamber, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... Tertullian and Minucius Felix, ch. xi.); sky and sun worship (ii. and iii.); priest and cross worship (iv, and vi.); and secret sacred rites (ix.). Among the false charges about life and morals (which form class 3), we meet with that of private and nocturnal meetings forbidden by law, and the Agapae (v.); Thyestean banquets (Theoph. and Tertull. ix.); secret insignia (xvi.); treason (vii.); ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... was pleased. Tete-a-tetes with Humfrey were dreadfully embarrassing, and she felt life so flat without her nocturnal romance that she was very glad to have some one who would care to talk to her of the Queen. In point of fact, such conversation was prohibited. In the former days, when there had been much more intercourse between the Earl's household and the neighbourhood, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a good swordsman: 'That he understood the exercise of a gentleman's weapon, may be inferred from the use made of it in that rash encounter which is related in his life.' The dexterity here alluded to was, that Savage, in a nocturnal fit of drunkenness, stabbed a man at a coffee-house, and killed him; for which he was tried at the Old-Bailey, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... for the rest of the day on business so urgent that I had not leisure to think much on the nocturnal adventure to which I had plighted my honor. I dined alone, and very late, and while dining, read, as is my habit. I selected one of the volumes of Macaulay's Essays. I thought to myself that I would take the book with me; there was so much of healthfulness in the style, and practical life ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... nocturnal embroil of conflict Closes with the roar of receding gun-fire. Harness loosened then, and ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the body of John Sutton, citizen, goldsmith, and alderman of London; who died 6th July, 1450. This brave and worthy alderman was killed in the defence of the City, in the bloody nocturnal battle on London Bridge, against the infamous Jack Cade, and his ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... paragraphs, "of nothing like adultery in a persecuted David in the wilderness, when he fled hither and thither like a chased doe upon the mountains; but when the delicacies of his palace softened and ungirt his spirit, then it was that this great hero fell by a glance, and buried his glories in nocturnal shame, giving to his name a lasting stain, and to his conscience a fearful wound." Nor did he come to himself until a child was born, and the prophet Nathan had ingeniously pointed out to him his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... treat of the Birds of the Night under two heads, including, beside the true nocturnal birds that go abroad in the night to seek their subsistence, those diurnal birds that continue their songs during a considerable portion of the night. Some species of birds are partly nocturnal in their habits. Such is the Chimney Swallow. This bird is seldom out at noonday, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... her answering Owlett's standing question on matrimony in the affirmative. This did not soothe Stockdale, its tendency being rather to stimulate in him an effort to make the pair as inappropriate as possible, and win her away from this nocturnal crew to correctness of conduct and a minister's parlour in some ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... on what a combination of accidental circumstances prevented this idea from being realized as I then purposed. The Representatives have done their whole duty. Providence perhaps has not done all on its side. Be it as it may, supposing that we were not at once carried off by some nocturnal and immediate combat, and that at the hour at which I was speaking we had still a "to-morrow," I felt the necessity of fixing every eye upon the course which should be adopted on the day which was about ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... which Mrs. Dods deemed a heresy; and then the very house rang with their disputes. Again, his bed must necessarily be made at a certain angle from the pillow to the footposts; and the slightest deviation from this disturbed, he said, his nocturnal rest, and did certainly ruffle his temper. He was equally whimsical about the brushing of his clothes, the arrangement of the furniture in his apartment, and a thousand minutiae, which, in conversation, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... constitutional timidity, and can be easily frightened away by fire-crackers. Human beings inhabiting countries subject to pests, have usually managed to cope with them by adopting counter-measures. In mosquito-ridden countries people sleep under mosquito-nets, thus baffling those nocturnal blood-suckers; in parts of Ceylon infested with snakes, sharpened zig-zag snake-boards are fastened to the window-sills, which prove extremely painful to intruding reptiles. The Chinese, as a safeguard against their devils, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... tragedy, it did not follow that X must have had a hand in it. And yet, had these coincidences then been observed, they would certainly—now that strong suspicions had been directed to the man from the extraordinary character of his nocturnal precautions—not have passed without investigation. But the remoteness of Bristol, and the rarity of newspapers in those days, caused these indications to pass unnoticed. Bristol knew of no such Knutsford highwayman—Knutsford knew of no such ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... settle, and sitting down upon it, approached his death mask of a face close to the face of the mender of nets, and commenced a whispered conversation. To Landless, awaiting rather listlessly the outcome of this nocturnal adventure, came now and then a broken sentence. "He hath not the look of a criminal, but—" "Of Puritan breeding, sayest thou?" "We need young blood." Then after prolonged ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... catching the contagion, and to this fact I distribute that flame which now flickers with intense conflagration in my bosom. Why, cruel member of the other sex! did you evade the privacy of our innocent and nocturnal retreat, turning the salubrious and maiden emotions of my bosom into agonizing delight and repressible tribulation! Could you not practice upon others the wiles of your intrinsic charms, and spare the weak Sallianna, whose only desire was to ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... in the direction of the south. A fourth one was heard farther off, and both voices united in a plaintive wail. Any one unacquainted with the remarkable perfection with which the Navajos imitate the nocturnal chant of the so-called coyote, would have been deceived, and have taken the sounds for the voices of the animals themselves; but Tyope recognized them as signals through which four Navajo Indians prowling around him informed each other of their positions ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... there is probably some mysterious influence that we do not fully comprehend which makes sleep at night more restful than sleep during the daylight. Those who go to bed at midnight or thereafter use several hours of daylight in the early morning for sleeping. I realize that there are nocturnal animals and that the human race has developed nocturnal habits to a certain extent, but the human race and the animal life of the world generally have followed the habit through the ages of sleeping at night. Without doubt a revolutionary change in this habit has more ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... portrayed, as far as the eye could reach, one of those nocturnal landscapes in bluish lines, studded with slim trees, the shadows of which seemed to have been drawn with a black crayon. The blooming brier and broom perfumed the air with a rather sharp odor, and the frogs of a neighboring swamp sang their oily anthem, interspersed with silences. But all ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... room for doubt seemed left. Instead of the nocturnal shouting and knocking, there began a veritable concert from the room containing the drum. This concert, Mompesson informed his friends, opened with a peculiar "hurling in the air over the house," and ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... silver beams On man's nocturnal state; His lessen'd light, and languid powers, I show, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... Cook's Court to Chancery Lane. And thus jealousy gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and it was always lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in Mrs. Snagsby's breast, prompting her to nocturnal examinations of Mr. Snagsby's pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby's letters; to private researches in the day book and ledger, till, cash-box, and iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, and a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... half-awake, I heard The drowsy chirp of a forest bird, And the wind came up and the grasses stirred And the curtaining woods that cluster round That resonantly-echoing well Shook all their leaves with silver sound Like voices murmuring in a shell. Was it the past that lived again In that nocturnal murmuring, Waking a hidden voice to sing Deep in my heart of other times Whose memory long entombed had lain Covered with all the dust of the years?... Falling in splashing tears The wet notes drop in liquid chimes, And the white ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... get ready," thought Mollie, starting up. "Dear, dear! it's highly romantic and highly sensational, this nocturnal appointment with a masked man, and that man one's mysterious husband. I can't say much for the place; there's precious little romance around the Maison Dore. Does ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Munro at an hour something unusual—prompted too by a presentiment of something wrong, and apprehensive on the score of Ralph's safety—a curiosity not, surely, under these circumstances, discreditable, to know what was going on, determined her to ascertain something more of the character of the nocturnal visitation. She felt secured from the strangeness of the occurrence, that evil was afoot, and solicitous for its prevention, she was persuaded to the measure solely with the view ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... a sovereign; and his tiny kingdom afforded but little compensation, especially when he was forbidden to visit it, and was virtually prisoner on an almost insulated corner thereof. For Carteret and Nicholas had heard of his nocturnal adventure, and had extorted a promise from him not to go on land without their knowledge. They had also taken other precautions in the same behalf, which ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... that they generally fail; they do not succeed in doing so before there has been time to disclose the secret. Jeanne knew that Oliva would not be easy to get rid of, unless she could think of something that would induce her to fly willingly. Oliva, on her part, much as she enjoyed her nocturnal promenades at first, after so much confinement, was already beginning to weary of them, and to sigh once more ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... was falling fine as dust, as a black sifted snow-shower, a snow made of shadow; and the melancholy of the landscape, the grand nocturnal solitude of these lofty, unknown regions, had a charm profound and disquieting. I do not know why I fancied myself no longer in Switzerland, but in some country near the pole, in Sweden or Norway. At the foot of these bare mountains ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... quarrelled, jokingly, about the time of night she told me, and the moon through the rain-clouds occasionally gave us delusive hopes of dawn, and I kept moving my place to get out of the drip from the roof, and so the night passed. I was amused all the time, though I should have preferred sleep to such nocturnal diversions. It was so new, and so odd, to be the only white person among eleven natives in a lonely house, and yet to be as secure from danger and annoyance as ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... so well, From Purgatory he drops into Hell; Where like a branded Sacrifice he comes, And in the Flame the Harlot lit, consumes: Of Buboes, Nodes, and Ulcers he complains, Of Restless Days, and damn'd nocturnal Pains. Nor less than into six Weeks Flux he goes: Comes out a Shadow, pale and Meagre shews, If Heaven spare that Ornament his Nose: Thus all his Youthful Vigor's threwn away, And e're his time ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... and preyed upon his quiet. He thought to break through the spell by inviting a party of living guests. They came, to the number of thirty or forty; but not for their presence did the invisible revellers intermit their nocturnal visit. All heard the approach of the carriage, the steps ascending the staircase, the sounds of revelry in the hall. And all, when the opened door disclosed, as wont, but darkness and silence, turned away with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... and frogs to reside in. The Highlands are like all other wild places within the limits of Europe, very gentle in their wildness compared with the rugged slopes of the Sierra Nevada. The Lady of the Lake must have possessed an uncommonly strong constitution, if she made her nocturnal excursions on Loch Katrine in a thin white robe without suffering any bad consequences, for I found a stout overcoat insufficient to keep the chilling mists of that region from seeking in my bones a ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... of such nocturnal visitors myself, not being much gifted with physical strength or courage, I listened a moment to hear if any one was coming. The sound of approaching footsteps along the passage greatly aided the desperate effort I made to leave my comfortable pillow, and proceed to the scene of action. At the ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Sometime before the boy has reached thirteen, the father will have explained to him the facts and temptations of the pubescent period. The crime of allowing boys in middle and later adolescence to worry themselves sick over normal nocturnal emissions, and often to fall into the hands of the quack, or of the advocate of illicit intercourse, lies at the door of the ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... been tedious; how much more so the interminable windings on the Mississippi, and the long, lonesome nights, made sleepless by the cries of birds that flit in darkness, and by the howls of wild beasts. Evaleen's nocturnal fears, when the barge lay moored, were not so well founded as were the apprehensions which daylight renewed, of disaster on the treacherous flood. The more she learned of the river, the more she realized the risks of ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Wolfert care to disturb his thoughts on that point. His only wish was to secure the old fisherman as a pilot to the spot, and this was readily effected. The long time that had intervened since his nocturnal adventure had effaced all Sam's awe of the place, and the promise of a trifling reward roused him at once from his sleep and ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... passed, one after the other. Perhaps a cloud was passing between earth and moon, for Roland fancied that the shadows deepened. Then, as midnight approached, he seemed to hear a thousand confused, imperceptible sounds, coming no doubt from the nocturnal universe which wakes while the other sleeps. Nature permits no suspension of life, even for repose. She created her nocturnal world, even as she created her daily world, from the gnat which buzzes about the sleeper's pillow to the lion prowling around ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... chickens in the little hen-house resettled themselves comfortably on their perches as if not to be disturbed by such nonsense. The calf resting at the end of his pegged rope arose, looked about him and lay down again as if he would not be a party to poor Peter's absurd nocturnal enterprise. The darkness and the vastness of the wooded country seemed to chill Peter's hopes. Now that the gripping spell was over he hardly knew ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... received this last report of the progress of affairs in Paris, Bernard, upon whom the burden of exile sat none the more lightly as the days went on, turned out of the Strand into one of the theatres. He had been gloomily pushing his way through the various London densities—the November fog, the nocturnal darkness, the jostling crowd. He was too restless to do anything but walk, and he had been saying to himself, for the thousandth time, that if he had been guilty of a misdemeanor in succumbing to the attractions of the admirable girl who showed to such advantage in letters of twelve ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... flirted and therefore had known no kiss excepting her father's matutinal and nocturnal peck. She looked upon her beautiful body as some jewel to be placed in the hands of the man she loved upon her wedding-night, so it was as unsoiled and as untainted as her mind, although she knew that once she loved she would go down before that mighty force as a tree before a storm. ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... to be pulled onward, but remembering Molly's previous encounter upon the same spot, was curious enough to demand an explanation of Rupert's nocturnal rambles when they had reached the haven of Sophia's bedroom. It was very simple, but it struck her as exceedingly pathetic and confirmed her in her opinion of the unreasonableness of her sister's ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... did not put out her candle, and arrayed herself for bed in the costume with which she was wont to make her nocturnal visits. She had perceived that her father had something on his mind which it would be necessary that he should tell. She was soon summoned, and having seated herself on the bed, began the conversation: "I knew ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Friars, and had a full account of their statutes, lost all patience, and cried out aloud: Bounce tail, and God ha' mercy guts; if every fool should wear a bauble, fuel would be dear. A plague rot it, we must know how many farts go to an ounce. Would Priapus were here, as he used to be at the nocturnal festivals in Crete, that I might see him play backwards, and wriggle and shake to the purpose. Ay, ay, this is the world, and t'other is the country; may I never piss if this be not an antichthonian land, and our very antipodes. In Germany they pull down monasteries and unfrockify the monks; here ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... animal found in Ceylon is the little loris[1], which, from its sluggish movements, nocturnal habits, and consequent inaction during the day, has acquired the name of the "Ceylon Sloth." There are two varieties in the island; one of the ordinary fulvous brown, and another larger, whose fur ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... But black, which is the symbolic color of darkness, is also the symbol of death. And hence, again, darkness, like death, is the symbol of initiation. It was for this reason that all the ancient initiations were performed at night. The celebration of the Mysteries was always nocturnal. The same custom prevails in Freemasonry, and the explanation is the same. Death and the resurrection were taught in the Mysteries, as they are in Freemasonry. The initiation was the lesson of death. The full fruition or autopsy, the ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... always leaves things in perfect order. The late Mr. ——, who for some years lived in the librarian's rooms underneath, was a firm believer in this ghost, and said he frequently heard noises which could only be accounted for by the presence of a nocturnal visitor; the present tenant is more sceptical. The story goes that Marsh's niece eloped from the Palace, and was married in a tavern to the curate of Chapelizod. She is reported to have written a note consenting ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... said Sir Henry; "but you must be very hungry. I have only just learned of your being here, and that you had not been attended to. The habits of my friends here are somewhat nocturnal, and hence they are irregular by day. Come, sit down, man, and eat. We campaigners are not so particular ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... not know Sir St Vincent Cotton (the ex-driver of the Brighton coach) from Sir Stapleton Cotton (the Peninsular hero) will go for little in such matters; and as for Copley, Lord Lyndhurst (just then promoted from the Rolls to the Woolsack), why not say at once that he attended the nocturnal sittings ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... last six years. There can well be many more, as, according to the opinion of that excellent authority, the late Rev. "Otter" Davies, as he was always called, there are otters on every river; but, owing to the nocturnal and mysterious habits of the animals, their whereabouts or existence is seldom known, or even suspected. Hunting them is a very beautiful sport, and the question arises as to whether the pure Otterhounds should not be ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... The orb of day Has gone to hit the cosmic hay. Nocturnal voices now we hear. Come, heart's delight, the hour is near When ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... bear it no longer; he uncovered his head and threw himself on her neck. Oh the worthless man! (for what else can I call him? there is no more suitable expression for me to use,) was it for this that you disturbed the city by nocturnal alarms, and Italy with fears of many days' duration, in order that you might show yourself unexpectedly, and that a woman might see you before she hoped to do so? And he had at home a pretence of love; but ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... was alarmed at the prospect. She did not mind in the least what the English might have to say about it afterward; but to have her little house the center of nocturnal feuds, with her husband using his six-shooters, and heaven only knew what bloodshed resulting, was more of a prospect ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... themselves with such weapons as they could obtain, she herself sitting up with a brace of loaded pistols before her. This proceeding had the desired effect. The ghostly visitants, if such they were, ceased from their nocturnal revels. All remained silent till cock-crow. Night after night the brave old dame heroically ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... In his nocturnal interview with Dubois, Tapin had received the famous name of La Jonquiere, and had transmitted it to L'Eveille, who had passed it to all the chiefs of police, who had begun to search for the suspected officer in all the equivocal houses ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the next morning, and gradually recalled all that had so startled and appalled him the previous night, the grateful creature felt, less by the process of reason than by a brute instinct, that in the mysterious resuscitation and nocturnal wanderings of the pretended paralytic, some danger menaced his master; he became anxious to learn whether it was really St. John's room Madame Dalibard stealthily visited. A bright idea struck him; and in the course of the day, at an hour when the family ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I went out to a cafe in spite of the dreadful weather. I thought over Leah and her designs, feeling certain that she would pay me another nocturnal visit and renew the assault in force. I resolved to weaken myself with some common woman, if I could find ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... coast, exchanging shots with small batteries here and there, and keeping the French coastguard in a very lively and active condition, never knowing when they might receive a nine-pound round-shot in the middle of one of their lookout towers, or be otherwise disturbed in their nocturnal slumbers. ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... something was said of Grace being privy to the nocturnal advances of Senor de Mendoza. We are not to suppose that this implies in her anything worse than an aptness to indulge in romantic adventure: the young lady enjoyed the mystery of romance, and knew that ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... at times of congealing mercury, their slumbers were beset with nightmare visions of Iroquois forays, scalpings, butcherings, and burnings. As dreams were their oracles, the camp was wild with fright. They sent out no scouts and placed no guard; but, with each repetition of these nocturnal terrors, they came flocking in a body to beg admission within the fort. The women and children were allowed to enter the yard and remain during the night, while anxious fathers and jealous husbands shivered in ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the nocturnal attack. Bucharest is certainly a fortress, but it should be known that the guns are no longer in the forts. It was stated in the Adeverul that the heroic resistance put up in defence was most successful. That the airship, ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... 8. The nocturnal mischief of damaging or destroying a neighbor's corn. The criminal was suspended as a grateful victim to Ceres. But the sylvan deities were less implacable, and the extirpation of a more valuable tree was compensated by the moderate fine of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... the meanest Otaheitan. It was highly probable that immediately on his return home, instead of indulging in repose those limbs which had been tossed from pole to pole, he would be placed in another ship, where the same fatigues, nocturnal watches, and unwholesome food, would still fall to his share; or though he were allowed to solace himself for a few days, after a long series of hardships, he must expect to be seized in the midst ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Nern, as his eyes took on a worried expression, "are unable to leave their homes after nightfall due to some strange nocturnal beast which attacks them and vampirishly drains all blood from their veins, leaving the dead bodies ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... heavily during the day, as to render the road to the house almost impassable, and when it was time to leave, I inquired with very considerable emotion, whether there was not an easier way to return. The answer was satisfactory, and my last nocturnal visit ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... kitchen fire Uncle Noah, alert and excited, waited until he heard the Colonel and Mrs. Fairfax go up to bed; then, chuckling to himself, he extinguished the kitchen lights, and, carrying one of his Christmas bundles, plodded across the field to Job's nocturnal hermitage. The light of a match revealed the tyrant roosting glumly on the summit of a ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... to a large splendid house; my companion pointed it out to me as the termination of our nocturnal walk. We passed the principal door, and entering a small gate, which the stranger carefully closed after him, ascended, in the dark, a narrow, winding staircase. This brought us to a dimly-lighted corridor, from which we entered an apartment; ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... trained to keep watch at the fences as well as to guard the cattle. This protection was amply sufficient to keep away all the creatures that would have meddled with the seed, except the monkeys, some of which had occasionally to be shot when, in their nocturnal raids, they refused to be frightened away by the furious barking of ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... the dog loose, and don't go to bed; we have work to do together. At eleven o'clock Cornoiller will be at the door with the chariot from Froidfond. Listen for him and prevent his knocking; tell him to come in softly. Police regulations don't allow nocturnal racket. Besides, the whole neighborhood need not know that I am ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... strange nocturnal excursion, Collins's alarm clock set up an ear-splitting din at a most unwonted hour. On retiring the previous night Collins had set the alarm for seven-thirty, an hour at which he usually attained his deepest ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... sacred literature are the Vedas. They describe and glorify the gods then worshipped, to wit, Agni, god of fire, of the domestic hearth, of the celestial fire (the sun), of the atmospheric fire (lightning); Indra, god of atmosphere, analogous to Zeus of the Greeks; Soma, the moon; Varuna, the nocturnal vault, the god who rewards the good and punishes the evil; Rudra, the irascible god, more evil than well disposed, though sometimes helpful; ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... this enthusiastical state, full of confidence, and accessible only to such a portion of fear as served rather to keep up a state of pleasurable emotion than to generate anguish and distress, during the whole of this nocturnal expedition. After a walk of three hours, I arrived, without accident, at the village from which I hoped to have taken my passage for the metropolis. At this early hour every thing was quiet; no sound of any thing human saluted my ear. It was with difficulty that I gained admittance ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... emancipation the nocturnal disorders and quarrels in the negro villages, which were incessant during slavery, had nearly ceased. The people were ready and willing to work. He had frequently given his gang jobs, instead of paying them by the day. This had proved a gear stimulant to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... sleep. Desire tormented her; she did not know what she wanted—was it to go?—to wait? She walked out on the balcony. The nocturnal coolness caressed her naked body. She stood there long; the contact of her naked feet with the warm, moist boards was pleasant. She looked into the pale light of the mist-wrapt garden dreaming there ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... of thought in politics, had agreed in threatening me with many ludicrous misadventures, and with sudden death in many surprising forms. Cold, wolves, robbers, above all the nocturnal practical joker, were daily and eloquently forced on my attention. Yet in these vaticinations, the true, patent danger was left out. Like Christian, it was from my pack I suffered by the way. Before telling my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
