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More "Aridity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who, instead of fulminating wildly and impotently after the manner of his kind, expressed his theories in clear, reasonable and logical form. It is easy, but unprofitable, to sneer at the futility of some of Godwin's conclusions or to complain of the aridity of his style. His Political Justice remains, nevertheless, a lucidly written, well-ordered piece of intellectual reasoning. Shelley spoke of Godwin's Mandeville in the same breath with Plato's Symposium[74] ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... of literature is less sentimental than the teaching at Wellesley, and no teaching is more quickening to the imagination. Now that the method of accumulated detail "about it and about it", is being defeated by its own aridity, Wellesley's firm insistence upon listening to literature as to a living voice is justified of her ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... and boy in all that tremendous multitude spread over many square miles of rocky, sun-blistered aridity, seized whatever came first to hand, for the impending war, as the black shadow of Nissr lagged down toward the city and the Haram. Some snatched rifles, some pistols; others brandished spears and well-greased nebut clubs, six feet long and deadly in stout ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... heat. During the hot season in Hyderabad the thermometer reaches ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, and the temperature of the water in the Indus is the temperature of the blood. As to Upper Sindh, where the dryness of the air, and the extreme aridity of the sandy soil reproduce the Sahara in miniature, the usual shade temperature is one hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit. No wonder the missionaries have no chance there. The most eloquent of ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... while there is, also, quite enough native shrewdness, worldly acuteness, and smattering of shallow superficial reading, to produce a result which is worthless and vulgar to a pitiable degree. Of course there are exceptions to this narrowness and aridity of intellectual culture, but either they are really rare exceptions, or I have been ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... reason that worlds die. They reach a stage in which they are lifeless. They cool down until the waters and gases that are on the surface and above the surface recede more and more into the surface and then into the interior, until they wholly disappear. Cold takes the throne of nature. Universal aridity supervenes, and all forms of vegetable and animate existence go away to return no more. They dwindle and expire. The conditions that have come are virtually conditions ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... demoniacs who, from their safe seats, are never weary of looking on at the mutual slaughter of the nations, of those who kill one another for the pleasure, the pride, the ideas, and the interests of the onlookers. All the rest, all the crimes, we can tolerate; but this aridity of soul is the worst of all, and we feel that Latzko has been overwhelmed by it. Like one of his own characters, who is regarded as a sick man because he cannot forget the sufferings he has witnessed, Latzko cries to the ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... the little girl he saw abruptly the penury of heart, the desert-like aridity of this bourgeois class of which he formed a part. Dry and wornout earth which little by little has imbibed all the juices of life and does not renew them any more, just like those lands in Asia where the fecundating rivers, drop by drop, have disappeared ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... Malaxa, above which loomed the Aspravouna, showing late in summer strips of snow in the ravines that furrowed the bare crystalline peaks, brown and gray and parched with the drought of three months. The Cretan summer runs rainless from June to October; and the only relief to the aridity of the landscape is formed by the olive-orchards, covering nearly the whole expanse between the sea sands and the treeless ridge of Malaxa with so luxuriant a green, that, accustomed to the olive of Italy, I could scarcely believe these to be the same trees. This I at first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... staked her whole soul on it; of that he was convinced. She hadn't changed her allegiance to be near Paris and her base of supplies of millinery; he was sure she had seen her perpetrated mistake in a light of which her present life, with its conveniences for shopping and its moral aridity, was the absolute negation. But by what extraordinary process of the heart—through what mysterious intermission of that moral instinct which may keep pace with the heart even when this organ is ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... in getting food and clothing, in keeping body and soul together, to have any time for the fine arts. Most of the New England divines tried their hands at limping and hob-nail verse, but prior to the Revolution, American literature is remarkable only for its aridity, its lack of inspiration and its portentous dulness. In these respects it may proudly claim never to have been surpassed in the history of mankind. In fact, American literature, as such, may be said to date from 1809, when Washington Irving ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... is the boundless ocean of the divine strength, unfathomable in its depth, full after all draughts, tideless and calm, in all its movement never troubled, in all its repose never stagnating; and on the other side is the empty aridity of our poor weak natures. Faith opens these to the influx of that great sea, and 'according to our faith,' in the exact measure of our receptivity, does it enter our hearts. In itself the gift is boundless. It has no limit except ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Yosemite," toward which they pushed as fast as steam could take them, Sir Robert and Miss Noel being vividly interested in many things en route, Ethel and Mr. Heathcote pleased by a few, Mrs. Sykes grumbling ceaselessly about the length, monotony, bareness, aridity, stupidity, and general hideousness of the journey. The only thing that really amused her was a quarrel that she got up with a lady who sat near her. The acquaintance promised to be friendly enough for a while, for the lady was an amiable soul,—the wife of "a dry-goods ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... determination carried the day, and from that moment after-dinner drunkenness began to go out of fashion. When the company was reassembled in the drawing-room the etiquette was stiff. For a few moments the Queen spoke in turn to each one of her guests; and during these short uneasy colloquies the aridity of royalty was apt to become painfully evident. One night Mr. Greville, the Clerk of the Privy Council, was present; his turn soon came; the middle-aged, hard-faced viveur was addressed by his young hostess. "Have you been riding ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... flow, for Bechuanaland is intensely dry. I travelled four hundred miles through it without once crossing running water, though here and there in traversing the dry bed of a brook one was told that there was water underneath, deep in the sand. Notwithstanding this superficial aridity, eastern Bechuanaland is deemed one of the best ranching tracts in South Africa, for the grass is sweet, and the water can usually be obtained by digging, though it is often brackish. There is also plenty of wood—thin and thorny, ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... possesses the greatest interest of any place in the neighbourhood. Our way thither lay over a sandy plain, into which the coast range of low hills subsides. There is little or no verdure to relieve the eye, which encounters aridity wherever it turns; and the sand being rendered loose by frequent traffic, the foot sinks at every step, so that the journey is disagreeable to both man and beast. These inconveniences, however, were soon forgotten on our arrival at our destination, amidst the feelings ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... happened to him now. Because he felt so keenly the beauty of faith, because the desire for self-sacrifice burned in his heart with such a gem-like glow, his strength seemed inadequate to his ambition. He was tired out by the violence of his passion. His soul was filled on a sudden with a singular aridity. He began to forget the presence of God which had seemed so surrounding; and his religious exercises, still very punctually performed, grew merely formal. At first he blamed himself for this falling away, and the fear of hell-fire urged him to renewed vehemence; but the passion was dead, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... her only distraction was to go for a drive with Mrs. Fargus. But too often Mrs. Fargus could not leave her husband, and these evenings Mildred spent in reading or in writing letters. The dullness of her life and the narrowness and aridity of her acquaintance induced her to write very often to Ralph, and depression of spirits often tempted her to express herself more affectionately than she would have done in wider and pleasanter circumstances. She once spoke of the pleasure it would give her to see him, she ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... throughout the interior, hot and humid, in places unhealthy, along the coast. Cattle-raising was once the principal industry in the interior, but has been almost extinguished by the devastating droughts and increasing aridity caused by the custom of annually burning over the campos to improve the grass. In the agricultural regions sugar, cotton, tobacco, cacao, coffee, mandioca and tropical fruits are produced. The exports also include hides, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... toward which they pushed as fast as steam could take them, Sir Robert and Miss Noel being vividly interested in many things en route, Ethel and Mr. Heathcote pleased by a few, Mrs. Sykes grumbling ceaselessly about the length, monotony, bareness, aridity, stupidity, and general hideousness of the journey. The only thing that really amused her was a quarrel that she got up with a lady who sat near her. The acquaintance promised to be friendly enough for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... the Gulf Coastal Plain in Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon as well as migrants of the eastern flyway occur in northeastern Coahuila. Most of the species that occur in Coahuila seem to be associated with western North America. The aridity of western Coahuila restricts, to a large extent, the diversity of the breeding populations of its avifauna. Xeric conditions surrounding some of the higher mountains are barriers to ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... dry. I travelled four hundred miles through it without once crossing running water, though here and there in traversing the dry bed of a brook one was told that there was water underneath, deep in the sand. Notwithstanding this superficial aridity, eastern Bechuanaland is deemed one of the best ranching tracts in South Africa, for the grass is sweet, and the water can usually be obtained by digging, though it is often brackish. There is also plenty of ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... boat that she had seen pass so often under her windows. She was not afraid of being recognized. Her danger was not great, and, since she was in love, she had lost prudence. They saw shores which little by little grew gay, escaping the dusty aridity of the suburbs; they went by islands with bouquets of trees shading taverns, and innumerable boats tied under willows. They debarked at Bas-Meudon. As she said she was warm and thirsty, he made her enter a wine-shop. It was a building with wooden galleries, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... to the southward of the Lake of Lugano. It is within a very few miles of the Swiss frontier. All this lacustrine region has for many generations been celebrated as a specially privileged one. It is Italy without the enervating heat and aridity which are such serious drawbacks to the enjoyment of its other charms by Northern folk. It is Switzerland without the rigidity of its climate and the comparative poverty of the northern vegetation. You have the oleander and cactus around your ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... the origin and function of literature was so vitalizing in the general aridity of thinking about the middle of the last century, and who did even more for ballad verse in Germany than Bishop Percy did in England, laid emphasis almost exclusively on community authorship. His profound instinct for ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... birds and quadrupeds found themselves beset by climatic conditions of various degrees and kinds of rigor and destructive power. In the torrid zone it took the form of excessive rain and humidity, excessive heat, or excessive dryness and aridity. In the temperate and frigid zones, life was a seasonal battle with bitter cold, torrents of cold rain in early winter or spring, devastating sleet, and deep snow and ice that left no ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... truly rich plant, my servant was obliged to hurry away to a cooler air on the ridge, which we had again nearly reached; and but for this fine plant, and the no less conspicuous blue-flowered Scaevola nitida, Br. The whole scene would have deeply impressed us with all the horrors that such extremes of aridity are naturally ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... who were pushed outward from the Asian deserts during a period of aridity, one group migrated northeastward toward the Kamchatkan corner of Asia. Whether they reached Bering Sea and the Kamchatkan shore before the next epoch of glaciation we do not know. Doubtless they ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... effect of climate. The prevailing energy and initiative of colonists have been explained by the stimulating atmosphere of their new homes. Even Natal has not escaped this soft impeachment. But the enterprise of colonials has cropped out, under almost every condition of heat and cold, aridity and humidity, of a habitat at sea-level and on high plateau. This blanket theory of climate cannot, therefore, cover the case. Careful analysis supersedes it by a whole group of geographic factors working directly and indirectly. The first of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... national church against Roman aggression; in his learned and pious friend, Adam de Marisco; and in Roger Bacon, the pioneer and proto-martyr of physical science. Then, with Paris, she was the great seat of that school philosophy, wonderful in its subtlety as well as in its aridity, which, albeit it bore no fruit itself, trained the mind of Europe for more fruitful studies, and was the original product of mediaeval Christendom, though its forms of thought were taken from the deified Stagyrite, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the compliment by applauding in their turn.[2319]—On all sides, just as this society is vanishing, a mutual deference, a spirit of kindliness arises, like a soft and balmy autumnal breeze, to dissipate whatever harshness remains of its aridity and to mingle with the radiance of its last hours the perfume of dying roses. We now encounter acts and words of infinite grace, unique of their kind, like a lovely, exquisite little figure on old Sevres porcelain. One day, on the Comtesse Amelie de Boufflers speaking ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... fast to a solitary tree, almost completely dried up by the aridity of the region in which it stood, passed the night in perfect quietness; and the travellers were enabled to enjoy a little of the repose which they so greatly needed. The emotions of the day had left ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... The formation of springs demands a certain regularity in the direction and inclination of the strata. On a volcanic soil, porous and splintered rocks absorb the rain waters, and convey them to considerable depths. Hence arises that aridity observed in the greater part of the Canary Islands, notwithstanding the considerable height of their mountains, and the mass of clouds which navigators behold ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... who thought little of these marvels, was in a hurry to hasten onwards; this country, so fertile, displeased him by its very fertility; without being otherwise hydropical, he felt water under his feet, and sought in vain the signs of incontestable aridity. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... advocated might well prove to be disastrous, as it had certainly done in his particular case, there was a warranty for it. If it were true that practically nothing could be obtained without cost, it was clear that the excess of prudence which shrank from incurring the latter could lead only to aridity of life. The thoughtless courage which snatched at what was offered seemed a much more fruitful thing, though one might afterward bear the smart as well as enjoy the sweet. To accomplish or obtain anything one must at least face a risk. He remembered ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... midst of the general barrenness and aridity, the verdant oasis of the ravine appeared to be the most certain place to look for the castaways. Lord James fancied that he could discern a slight haze of smoke rising out of the cleft beneath the baobab. But if there was a camp in the cleft bottom, it was hidden from view by the trees ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... you were not born in Arcadia, you linger in fancy on its margin; your thoughts are busied with the flutes of antiquity, with daffodils, and the classic poplar, and the footsteps of the nymphs, and the elegant and moving aridity of ancient art. Why dedicate to you a tale of a cast so modern:—full of details of our barbaric manners and unstable morals; full of the need and the lust of money, so that there is scarce a page in which the dollars do not jingle; full of the unrest and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ignorance, to the woman who is merely a woman, the instinctive being who acts solely from the impulse of an obscure conscience. The fierce school of controversy, in which the mind of Europe has been involved since the time of Abelard, induces periods of mental drought and aridity. The brain, parched by reasoning, thirsts for simplicity, like the desert for spring water. When reflection has brought us up to the last limit of doubt, the spontaneous affirmation of the good and of the beautiful which is to be found in the female conscience delights ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... themselves in order to serve Him. No one observed this violence in me; they saw nothing but the greatest good will. At that moment, because I was entering on that state, I was filled with a joy so great, that it has never failed me to this day; and God converted the aridity of my soul into the greatest tenderness. Everything in religion was a delight unto me; and it is true that now and then I used to sweep the house during those hours of the day which I had formerly spent on my amusements and my dress; and, ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... who, from their safe seats, are never weary of looking on at the mutual slaughter of the nations, of those who kill one another for the pleasure, the pride, the ideas, and the interests of the onlookers. All the rest, all the crimes, we can tolerate; but this aridity of soul is the worst of all, and we feel that Latzko has been overwhelmed by it. Like one of his own characters, who is regarded as a sick man because he cannot forget the sufferings he has witnessed, Latzko cries to ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... his literary principles. The profound contempt for humanity which characterizes the physiological school, and the intrusion of technology into literature inaugurated by Balzac and Stendhal, explain the underlying aridity of which one is sensible in these pages, and which seems to choke one like the gases from a manufactory of mineral products. The book is instructive in the highest degree, but instead of animating and stirring, it parches, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... direct from heaven without the aid of man. It is coaxed down from the hills in tedious miles of aqueduct or forced up from a great depth by a rustic water-wheel worked by oxen, and is then distributed over the land. Except for its aridity, the climate is kind to the small farmer: there is no long inactivity forced upon him by a cold winter. A constant succession of crops may be raised, and all through the year he works cheerfully and industriously, finding his ten acres enough and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... he gives his life to studying. His shiny black coat; his rounded back, convex with years of stooping over his minute work; his angular movements, made natural to him by his habitual style of manipulation; the aridity of his organism, with which his voice is in perfect keeping;—all these marks of his special sedentary occupation are so nearly what might be expected, and indeed so much, in accordance with the more general fact that a man's aspect is subdued to the look ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the point first touched at by Captain Cook, naturally possesses the greatest interest of any place in the neighbourhood. Our way thither lay over a sandy plain, into which the coast range of low hills subsides. There is little or no verdure to relieve the eye, which encounters aridity wherever it turns; and the sand being rendered loose by frequent traffic, the foot sinks at every step, so that the journey is disagreeable to both man and beast. These inconveniences, however, were soon forgotten on our arrival at our destination, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... impotently after the manner of his kind, expressed his theories in clear, reasonable and logical form. It is easy, but unprofitable, to sneer at the futility of some of Godwin's conclusions or to complain of the aridity of his style. His Political Justice remains, nevertheless, a lucidly written, well-ordered piece of intellectual reasoning. Shelley spoke of Godwin's Mandeville in the same breath with Plato's Symposium[74] and the ideas expressed in Political Justice ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... form and color. Man living so near to Nature imitates her harmony, and finds the types of his garments and his utensils in his surroundings. Mathematics have not yet developed their straight lines, dry angles and painful aridity. Now-a-days, picturesque traditions are lost, the long pantaloon has invaded the universe; frightful fashion-plates circulate everywhere; now, I refuse to believe that man's taste has become perverted ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... amount of rainfall. Most plateaus are arid. As a rule, they are arid because of their altitude; and because of their aridity they are deficient in their power to produce food-stuffs. They are ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... been constructed of concrete and afterward elaborately carved, its entire surface being covered with intricate designs cut deep into the stone-like material of which it was composed. Though wrought ages since, it was but little weather-worn owing to the aridity of the Martian atmosphere, the infrequency of rains, and the rarity of dust storms. To scale it, though, presented difficulties and danger that might have deterred the bravest of men—that would, doubtless, have deterred Gahan, had he not felt that the life of the woman he loved depended ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... each hand-cart was now placed a ninety-eight pound sack of flour, as the wagons could not carry the entire load. At first they travelled about fifteen miles a day, although delays were caused by the breaking of wheels and axles. The heat and aridity of the plains and mountains speedily made many of the cart-wheels rickety and unable to sustain their burdens without frequent repairs. Some shod the axles of their carts with old leather, others with tin from the plates and kettles of their mess outfit; and for grease they used their ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Spencer has made in Justice—(and, let us say between parentheses, this work, together with his "Positive and Negative Beneficence" furnishes sad evidence of the senile mental retrogression that even Herbert Spencer has been unable to escape; moreover its subjective aridity is in strange contrast with the marvelous wealth of scientific evidence poured forth in his earlier works)—is based on these two arguments: I. The present landed proprietors are not the direct descendants of the first conquerors; they have, in general, acquired ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... not only a locality, it is a type. It cannot be defined by merely mentioning parallels of latitude. We think of it and love it as the dreamland of the Spanish Missions, and as a region rescued from aridity, and made a home for the invalid and the winter tourist. Los Angeles is really its metropolis, but San Diego, Pasadena, and Santa Barbara are prosperous and progressive cities whose population increases only less rapidly ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
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