"Empty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and fruitless deed may be briefly told. The senators not in the plot rose in alarm and fled from the house. When Brutus turned to seek to justify his deed only empty benches remained. Then the assassins hurried to the Forum, to tell the people that they had freed Rome from a despot. But the people were hostile, and the words of Brutus ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Ephraim in the second wall, where was a large house, inhabited now but by two or three persons. Here a great number of them could take up their quarters, while the others could find lodging near. The reason why so many houses were empty there was that it was somewhat exposed to the irruptions of Simon's men from the upper town, as they frequently came down and robbed those who entered the city at the Damascus Gate, from which ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed, but some proverb, had we known and attended to its lesson, might have saved us from it." The two comprehensive conditions, "had we known and attended to its lesson," are discharging conductors, that empty the sentence of all proper meaning, and leave only a rank of hollow words behind. He might as well say, "Had we never been tempted, we had never fallen,—had we possessed all wisdom, we had never committed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... orchestra (a music-hall orchestra) summoned to hilarity an audience of the first half-hour; stragglers at various prices, but all alike in their manifest subdual by a cold atmosphere, a dull illumination, empty seats, and inferior singers put on for the early "turns." A striking of matches to kindle pipe or cigar, a thudding of heavy boots, clink of glass or pewter, and a waiter's spiritless refrain—"Any orders, gents?" Things ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... is yet scarce navigable Synce the last tempest: yet wee that only lyv By our owne sweatt and labour, nor cann eate Beffore[79] wee fetch our foode out of the sea, Must ventur thoughe with daunger or bee suer With empty stomakes ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... he raised his arms to the ceiling. "I have no beds," said he. "Every bit of available bedding, excepting at the inns, has been requisitioned for the Prussian ambulances. I might find some straw, and there are outhouses and empty rooms. But there are so many of you, and I do not know how I can accommodate ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... round-shouldered, limp and weak, and drink little but unsizable sighs, and feed on all manner of dark and unhealthy things. It is TODD'S deliberate opinion that if a cent can't be laid up, Hope should. Hope with empty pockets is rich compared to wealth with "nary a" hope. Hope is a good thing to have about the house. It always comes handy, and is acceptable even to company. So believes, and he acts on ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... he cleared out with much empty swagger, and I followed leisurely on behind, feeling—yes, why not publish it?—pleased that this bolt from the blue had not been ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... thing is, as it were, in a space of possible states of affairs. This space I can imagine empty, but I cannot imagine the thing without ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... on the deck beside them, shot lying in the scuppers, overturned wadding-tubs, cutlasses, pistols, boarding-pikes, strewed all over the deck, and— horrible sight—several dark, silent figures lying stark and still in pools of blood, just as they had fallen in the fight. The ship's davits were empty, both her gigs having been lowered to facilitate the transfer of the plunder to the brigantine; her long-boat also was in the water, as already stated, but there were two fine cutters lying bottom up over the quarter-deck, their sterns resting on the break of the poop and their ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... little time after eight o'clock, the breakfast-hour. He rather wondered he was not called to it, and registered a mental vow to discharge Miss Becky. Presently he went indoors, put his head into a small sitting-room on the left, and found the room empty, but the breakfast laid. The kitchen was behind it, and Jabez Gum stalked on down the passage, and went into it. On the other side of the passage was the best sitting-room, and a very small room at the back of it, which Jabez used as an office, and where ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... unfetter'd, undisguised, Soars like the lark into the empty air; Whose arch exploits by subtlety devised, Have stamped renown on Finsbury's New Square, Great "hero" list! Whilst the sly muse repeats Thy nuptial ode, thy prowess ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... those brief time-breathings called years may pass before this consummation of the Sun; but its destruction is going on now, or rather its absorption—and we on our cold small star warm ourselves, and are glad, in the light of an empty ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... around the imperilled Trust Company of the Republic. It was recognised by everyone that if Prentice's institution went down, it would mean defeat. Longer and longer grew the line of waiting depositors; the vaults were nearly empty. The cashiers adopted the expedient of paying very slowly—they would take half an hour or more to investigate a single check; and thus they kept going until more money arrived. The savings banks of the city agreed unanimously to close their doors, availing themselves of their legal ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... with each other in the empty vanity of titles and surnames. They affect to multiply their likenesses in statues of bronze or marble; nor are they satisfied unless these statues are covered with plates of gold. They boast of the rent-rolls of their estates; they measure their rank and consequence by the loftiness ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... to open in Crowndale until Tuesday night, three full days off. He revelled in the thought of sitting "out front" in the empty little theatre, watching the rehearsals. At such times he was confident that his thoughts would not be solely of the jewels. He would at least have surcease during these ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... came from the red lips, and then, with a sudden movement that had in it something of the grace of an alighting bird, Columbine turned, swinging her empty can. ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Banks, but Morganstein shaped a course to a black pinnacle, lifting through the mist beyond, that he believed was the crag at the shoulder. She stumbled repeatedly on the rough surface. Her labored breathing in the great stillness, like the beat of a pendulum in an empty house, tried his strained nerves. He upbraided her for leaving her alpenstock down the slope. But she paid no attention. She looked back constantly; she was like a woman being led away from a locked door, moving reluctantly, listening against hope for a word or sign. So, at last, they came to the ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... knew of, who does not occasion half that ex-pence; for, though the salary is fixed at L5625 he does not accept it, and it is only the incidental expences that are paid out of it.(2) The name by which a man is called is of itself but an empty thing. It is worth and character alone which can render him valuable, for without these, Kings, and Lords, and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... information with indifference, but now they display surprise and incredulity. In the end they all troop out into the vestibule to look at the fur coat, and go on looking at it till the doctor's man Mikeshka carries five empty bottles out on the sly. When the steamed sturgeon is served, Marfutkin remembers that he has left his cigar case in his sledge and goes to the stable. That he may not be lonely on this expedition, he takes with him the deacon, who appropriately feels it necessary ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... agent said. "Don't go anywhere unless it is crowded. The more a place is jammed, the more anxious they are to get there. Newcomers won't go to empty harems. Unhappy with only one or two other cows. Try and find room in a crowded bunch where one sea-catch is looking after ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... religion; for it teaches the perfect doctrine concerning Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and sets forth the incarnation of the Lord to them that faithfully receive it. But forasmuch as persons undertaking to make void the preaching of the truth have through their individual heresies given rise to empty babblings, some of them daring to corrupt the mystery of the Lord's incarnation for us and refusing to use the name Theotokos in reference to the Virgin, while others bringing in a confusion and mixture, and idly conceiving that there is one nature of the flesh and the godhead, maintaining that ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... room was a small table covered with empty champagne bottles and glasses, standing in half dried puddles of wine, with a bronze receiver overflowing with cigar ashes all huddled untidily together, and giving repulsive evidence of ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... also a great invariability in the distribution of relations of density in the interior of the globe. The translatory movements, which occasion the eruptions of our present volcanoes and of ferruginous lava, and the filling up of previously empty fissures and cavities with dense masses of stone, are consequently only to be regarded as slight superficial phenomena affecting merely one portion of the Earth's crust, which, from their smallness when compared to the Earth's radius, become ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... population in the Czar's city. Not only were several hundred homeless men, women, and children sleeping on the cold stone floors of the draughty station, but other hundreds were lying about in odd corners here and there, in empty trucks and freight cars, lying within a few feet of where the crowded refugee train had left them, with no hope or ambition to make them move on. Still other hundreds, more fortunate than these, were sheltered in three sheds, similar to the "Refugees' Restaurant" in their unfinished ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... those articles which the Imperial Government, in a compromising spirit, have formulated in accordance with the statement of the Chinese Representatives thereby making the statements of the Representatives an empty talk; and on seeing them conceding with the one hand and withholding with the other it is very difficult to attribute faithfulness and sincerity to the ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... Tellus, the smith, he trusted his wife; his heart was empty of fear. High on the hill was the gleam of their hearth, a beacon of love and cheer. High on the hill they builded their bower, where the broom and the bracken meet; Under a grave of oaks it was, hushed and drowsily sweet. Here he ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... lie within as cold as a clod! Yea, and ofttimes, it is to be feared, we ask for that with out mouth that we care not whether we have or no. Where is the man that pursues with all his might what but now he seemed to ask for with all his heart? Prayer is become a shell, a piece of formality, a very empty thing, as to the spirit and life of prayer at this day. I speak now of the prayers of the godly. I once met with a poor woman that, in the greatest of her distresses, told me she did use to rise in the night, in cold weather, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... once ushered into the still empty workroom. Mademoiselle Le Mire seated her in front of a great drawer filled with pearls, needles, and bodkins, with instalments of four-sou novels thrown in at random ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... humour had the handling of him. He had not been robbed, for there was a bag of money at his middle. He professed that he could tell nothing of who had trussed him or why he was set upon. He would have nought of law or hue and cry. Egad, empty and shivering as he was, he wanted nothing but to be let go. A perfect Christian, as you remark, Geoffrey. Now, you or I, if we had been tied up in the mud through one of these damned raw nights, would take some pains to catch the fellow who did ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... their yo{n}ges in their armes, & geue them souke of their papis whiche be very grete, ha{n}ginge at their brestis / but {th}e wyse maryners stoppe their eares whan they se her / for whan she playth on the wat{er}, all they be in fear, & than they cast out an empty to{n}ne to let her play w{i}t{h} it tyll they be past her / this is specifyed of the{m} {tha}t haue sene it. Ther be ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... wrung the minister's hand in a warm grip that said many things he could not speak, and then he passed on to his lonely home. But it was not entirely empty. Billy was there, humbly, silently, with dog-true eyes, and a grown up patient look on his tired young face. He had the coffee pot on the stove and hot sausages cooking on the stove, and a lot of Saxy's doughnuts and a pie on the table. Billy stayed all night ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... young minion to gratify with pleasure, a necessitous family to supply with riches, were enterprises too great for the empty exchequer of James. In order to obtain a little money, the cautionary towns must be delivered up to the Dutch; a measure which has been severely blamed by almost all historians; and I may venture to affirm, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... turned from the empty abstraction of the Godwinian vision of perfection. He dissolves empires and faiths, it is true. But his imagination calls for action and movement. The New Philosophy had driven history out of the picture. This lyrical vision restores it, whole, complete, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... girl in, went round to the other side and slid in under the wheel. There was soft music playing somewhere, and a magnificent sunset appeared ahead of them as Malone pushed a button on the dashboard and the red Cadillac started off down the wide, empty, wonderfully paved street into the sunset, ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... nothing in it but wild beasts and Indians. In much of it there were no trees, no houses, no human beings. If you shouted as hard as you could in that solitary land, the only reply you would hear would be the echo of your own voice; it was like shouting in an empty room—it made it seem lonelier ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... with analogies, probabilities, with the empty schemes of arguments for which the data are still lacking; arguments, the rejection of which Coleridge tells us implies 'an evil heart of unbelief', but of which we might as truly say that they derive all their consistency from the peculiar atmosphere ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... "Well, one night as I was sitting there looking down in the water as a man does when his mind is empty and his body well disposed, I found myself gazing down into two glowing pools that weren't the reflections of stars. Above these two flecks of light was perched a battered old leghorn hat after the style affected in ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... (that sounds as if it was like the lock on a door, but it is very otherwise) between one pen of the river and the next; the pen where the anglers were was full right up over the roots of the grass and flowers. But the pen below was nearly empty. ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... your Fury: Let Fortune empty her whole Quiver on me, I have a Soul that like an ample Shield Can take in all, and Verge ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... inquest that Domitian died like a brave man, fighting unarmed against his assailants. The moment he saw Stephanus drawing his dagger he told the boy to hand him quickly the poniard under the pillow of his bed, and to run for help; but he found only the empty scabbard, and all the doors were locked. The emperor ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... tell mother. She'll know how to get him loose. Once he was stuck in the rain water barrel, when it was empty, and my mother got him out. She can do 'most everything. I'll go ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... of my lady, I dreamt of her shroud," Cried a voice from the kinsmen, all wrathful and loud; "And empty that shroud and that coffin did seem. Glenara! Glenara! now read ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... intolerable crape, and her jet-hung mantle. Even these people had been seen by him up to then through a haze of love; he had thought them simple honest folk, creatures of the soil, yet wholesome, natural, and sturdy. And now that the jewel was lost the setting was worse than empty. There in the elm box lay the remnants of the shattered gem.... He had seen her in her bed on the Sunday, her fallen face, her sunken eyes, all framed in the detestable whiteness of linen and waxen flowers, ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... and a weighty one; the weight thereof was a hundred and thirty shekels: one bowl, also of silver, of seventy shekels weight; not the light shekels of commerce, but the weighty shekels of the Sanctuary. Nor were these vessels empty: both of them were full—full of flour, fine flour, and mingled with oil, destined ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... the empty rifles, and now each crouched against the wall, where no chance bullet through a loophole could reach him. An eye unused to the darkness could have seen nothing there. Their figures were blended against the logs, and they did not speak, but each, listening intently, could hear what was ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... majority, multitude, and the like. Big words and expletives should be used only where they are really needed; where they are not really needed, they go wide of the object aimed at. The sportsman that hunts small game with buck-shot comes home empty-handed. ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... aft, now banging his feet down hard and now treading on empty air, Curlie made his ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... better do it at once, soas we shalln't have ony interruptions." We all shaated, "hear, hear!" agean, an' th' lonlady wor i'th' raam befoor we'd time to ring th' bell. When we'd all getten supplied th' cheerman stood up agean, an' knockin th' table wi' a empty ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... word gas, even the idea of it, has gone out of fashion, through its figurative use to designate empty, vapouring talk; therefore, when deipnosophist and gastronomer are spoken, the former is employed to denote learned talkers at supper, such as we were half an hour ago, and the latter, to signify one who enjoys the culinary pleasures of ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... wonder how many villages full of young people could have been provided with them out of my garden, and nothing be missed. It is to-day a garden of wallflowers, and I think I have every colour and sort in cultivation. The borders under the south windows of the house, so empty and melancholy this time last year, are crammed with them, and are finished off in front by a broad strip from end to end of yellow and white pansies. The tea rose beds round the sun-dial facing these borders are sheets ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... these indoor amusements; but studied the Oxford Book of Sports in various out-of-door ways. Besides his Grinds, and cricketing, and boating, and hunting, he would paddle down to Wyatt's for a little pistol practice, or to indulge in the exciting amusement of rifle-shooting at empty bottles, or to practise, on the leaping and swinging poles, the lessons he was learning at MacLaren's, or to play at skittles with Mr. Bouncer (who was very expert in knocking down three out of the four); or to kick ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... out of the passage to reconnoiter, and he called to us sharply to join him. We did so, and were relieved to find that the street was dark and empty. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... although Congress had required the payment of 2,000,000 on the 1st of April not a cent had been received on the 23d of that month, and so late as the 1st of June (1782) not more than $20,000 had reached the treasury. Yet to Robert Morris every eye was turned, to him the empty hand of every public creditor was stretched for, and against him, instead of the State governments, the complaints and imprecations of every unsatisfied claimant were directed. In July (1782), when the second quarter annual ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... river marched the Fourth Ohio Cavalry to go into camp at Lexington; and with it marched Chadwick Buford and Harry Dean who, too, were veterans now—who, too, were going home. Both lads wore a second lieutenant's empty shoulder-straps, which both yet meant to fill with bars, but Chad's promotion had not come as swiftly as Harry had predicted; the Captain, whose displeasure he had incurred, prevented that. It had come, in time, however, and with one leap he had landed, after Shiloh, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... voice, but in quite a different one, more solemn and subdued; 'only not to this room, but kindly go straight up to the floor above, and you'll find a door to your left, and you open that door; and you'll go, your honour, into an empty room, and in that room you'll see a chair. Sit you down on that chair and wait; and whatever you see, don't utter a word and don't do anything; and please don't speak to my son either; for he's but young yet, and he suffers from fits. He's very ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of the various commodities. It was amusing to observe the almost infinite diversity of products which loaded them. There were sweet potatoes, yams, eddoes, Guinea and Indian corn, various fruits and berries, vegetables, nuts, cakes, bottled beer and empty bottles, bundles of sugar cane, bundles of fire wood, &c. &c. Here was one woman (the majority were females, as usual with the marketers in these islands) with a small black pig doubled up under her arm. Another girl had a brood of young chickens, with ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... get lost in that big house?" And Mr. Ault laughed. "It isn't a bit too big or too good for them. At any rate, my dear, in they go, and you must get ready to move. The house will be empty in a week." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... you anything to do with Mr. Methuen's fishing transactions in Shetland?-Not particularly. I occasionally sent stock there when ordered, such as empty barrels and salt to supply ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... light of Ingersoll's remorseless humor most of our superstitions vanished. I do not think my father's essential Christianity was in any degree diminished, he merely lost his respect for certain outworn traditions and empty creeds. ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Fayal. A Portugee fisherman's picked up and brought in a boat with 'Curlew' painted on her stern, and he saw spars and wreckage driftin' near the empty boat. There's been a hurricane out there. It—it looks bad, ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... most terrific rainstorm was in progress it ever was our luck to behold. The water came down in cataracts and blinding sheets of rain. Every one except us had been warned by the darkness and had got themselves home. The streets were empty except for the cabs and carriages which skurried by with fares. Our frantic signals and Jimmie's dashes into the street ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... of the party seemed to thicken at this point, where the cattle were detained, whilst the missing horses were being sought for. Old Eulah had come in late the preceding night empty-handed, he had seen their tracks, but night coming on he was unable to follow them. He was started away this morning in company with Peter to pick up and run the trail. At two o'clock he returned with two, and reported that Peter was on the trail of the others. They had evidently been disturbed ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... Napoleon the Great. The two grand things, one of which alarmed and the other dazzled, are receding. We perceive '93 only through its justification, and Napoleon only through his caricature; the foolish fear of the guillotine vanishes, the empty imperial popularity disappears. Thanks to 1848, the Republic no longer terrifies; thanks to Louis Bonaparte, the Empire no longer fascinates. The future has become possible. These are the secrets of ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... into the house to get their fishing tackle, whilst their mother, telling them to make less clamour, filled an empty box with biscuit, bread, and tinned meats enough for the party of six, and in less than ten minutes they were off again, shouting their goodbyes as they raced through the gate, followed by a native woman carrying the heavy box ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... child to be controlled and directed by authority. Her little girl was a big girl; she had grown up and was eager to undertake the business of life on her own behalf. But the period of Mrs. Makebelieve's motherhood had drawn to a close, and her arms were empty. She was too used now to being a mother to relinquish easily the prerogatives of that status, and her discontent had this justification and assistance that it could be put into definite words, fronted and approved or rejected as reason urged. By knowledge and thought we will look through ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... ball in the Assembly Rooms since the Clavering volunteers gave one to their Colonel, the old Sir Francis Clavering; and the stables which once held a great part of that brilliant, but defunct regiment, are now cheerless and empty, except on Thursdays, when the farmers put up there, and their tilted carts and gigs make a feeble show of liveliness in the place, or on Petty Sessions, when the magistrates attend in what used ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... minister to the dying, Zenas made a comfortable bed of hay in his now empty waggon, on which the wounded captain was placed, with a wheat sheaf for a pillow, and drove carefully to The Holms. He was preceded by a waggon conveying a number of wounded soldiers to the military hospital at Niagara. As this load of injured and anguished humanity was driven down ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... many, that dined at the same Hotel with him, he was at as great a loss as ever. He went to the chapel every hour that mass was said, but could flatter himself with no other satisfaction from that than the empty one of knowing he was under the same roof with her; for the gallery in which the ladies sit, pensioners, as well as those who have taken the veil, are so closely grated, that it is impossible for those below to distinguish ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... communion is of hearts, with or without words; communication is often by writing, and may be uninvited and unreciprocated. Talk may denote the mere utterance of words with little thought; thus, we say idle talk, empty talk, rather than idle or empty conversation. Discourse is now applied chiefly to public addresses. A conference is more formal than a conversation. Dialog denotes ordinarily an artificial or ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... dreams of frowzy charwomen, who, like Anchorites amid the tombs of the Thebaid, fulfil the contemplative life each in her subterranean cell. Beneath St. Peter's spire the cabman sleeps within his cab, the horse without: the waterman, seated on his empty bucket, contemplates the untrodden pavement between his feet, and is at rest. The blue butcher's boy trots by with empty cart, five miles an hour, instead of full fifteen, and stops to chat with the red postman, who, his occupation gone, smokes with the green gatekeeper, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... the room had a soul. And, after he had brought Desire home, the idea had grown until he had seemed to feel an actual presence in its cool seclusion. But if presence there had been, it was gone now. The place was empty. The air hung dull and lifeless. The chairs stood stiff against the wall, the watching books had no greeting. Only Yorick swung and flapped in his cage, ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... my love is like a cry in the night, A long, loud cry to the empty sky, The cry of a man alone in the desert, With hands uplifted, ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... eaten our fill we threw the rest of our food on the snow, and Zab gulped it down in no time and had a contented look, probably thinking of those other dogs with their empty bellies. ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... the Welshman saw that the place was not empty. There were soldiers lying down asleep, thousands of them, as far as ever the eye could see. Each one was clad in bright armour, the steel helmet of each was on his head, the shining shield of each was on his arm, the sword of each was near his hand, each had his spear stuck in the ground ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... exhausted, and the waiter polishing my glass, instead of indicating the cheapest item on the menu. Such changes hurt!" He was much moved. "A fortune is not everything," he sighed, forgetting that his pockets were as empty as his stomach. "Poverty yielded joys which ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... neither help nor hinder, seein' as he's ta'en hissel' off out on our sight, we'd best not think on him. A'll try an' tell thee some news, if a can think on it wi' my mind so full. Thou knows Haytersbank folk ha' flitted, and t' oud place is empty?' ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... understood that the Yarnells and the Bellamys were ready to drop it. Only one of the opposite faction remained on the ground, a twin brother of Duncan. Shep Boone was a drunken ne'er-do-well, but since he now stood alone nothing more than empty threats was expected of him. He spent his time idly with a set of gambling loafers, but he lacked the quality of active malice so pronounced ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... stay away from his wife even for a single month, when he is on shipboard, at the mercy of wind and sea, but it is now nine long years that we have been kept here; I cannot, therefore, blame the Achaeans if they turn restive; still we shall be shamed if we go home empty after so long a stay—therefore, my friends, be patient yet a little longer that we may learn whether the prophesyings of Calchas were false ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... if their own life as a nation was slowly dying away, as if they were mourning their own agony. But still the valiant spirit of the first days prevailed. "They will be beaten for all that. What was Antwerp compared with the Marne? All forts must fall under 'their' artillery. After all, the nest is empty; the King ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... back to heaven. The snakes after performing their ablutions, their daily devotions, and other sacred rites, returned in joy, desirous of drinking the Amrita. They saw that the bed of kusa grass whereon the Amrita had been placed was empty, the Amrita itself having been taken away by a counter-act of deception. And they began to lick with their tongues the kusa grass, as the Amrita had been placed thereon. And the tongues of the snakes by that act became divided in twain. And the kusa grass, too, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... facing fears and trials to which the sailor's heart is preeminently sensible. All sailors, it is notorious, are superstitious; partly, I suppose, from looking out so much upon the wilderness of waves, empty of all human life; for mighty solitudes are generally fear-haunted and fear-peopled; such, for instance, as the solitudes of forests, where, in the absence of human forms and ordinary human sounds, are discerned forms ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... galleries. Suppose you were to fall into the hands of a logical old radical workman, for example, who tore you to pieces, mentally speaking, with a shake or two of his big teeth, and calmly informed you that in his opinion you were nothing more than a very empty-headed, pretentious, ignorant young woman—perhaps even, after the plain-spoken vocabulary of hie kind, a regular downright ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... watched a moment the empty portion of the other room, then walked across to give the door a light push that all but closed it. "It's rather odd," he remarked as he came back—"that's quite what I just said to him. But he won't treat her ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... horror of all, the little table in the centre stood empty—not a single gem, not a fraction of the gold that had lain upon it ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... the general, beaming. "When troops start into the Park, the rocket takes off. It heads for empty space. And we explain that the aliens went away when they found their weapon useless and we started to get rough ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... I got my first glimpse of the life of pleasure in foully drawn pictures of "police raids" on this and that. Interspersed with these sheets were others in which Sloper, the urban John Bull, had his fling with gin bottle and obese umbrella, or the kindly empty faces of the Royal Family appeared and reappeared, visiting this, opening that, getting married, getting offspring, lying in state, doing everything but anything, a ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... practising for at least an hour by the church-clock, and after that she had a variety of pursuits which she preferred to follow alone if Sammy were at school, because then there was no one to interrupt her thoughts. When the larder was empty, she became Loyal Heart the Trapper, and would wander off to Fairholm to set snares or catapult anything she could get near. The gun she had found impracticable, because she was certain to have been seen out with ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... I know, And titles are but empty names; I would, perhaps, be Plenipo,— But only near St. James; I'm very sure I should not care To ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... supposed to live on what they get in their begging-bowls, but, as a matter of fact, in wealthy monasteries they don't; they empty it out for the pariah dogs, which explains why so many dogs always hang ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... Reggie, looking dubiously out at the loggia. It was enticing enough, with its broad, cool, tiled flooring and its vine-hung arches and its vistas of the tree-clad hills across the ravine; but it was empty. "I think I'll return when the rest of them are together.", And Reggie, stumbling against the door-jamb on his way out, wandered away, choosing the right-hand passage because his body had happened to lurch ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... potent poesy. Hear you, how I am beginning to match my words by the initial letter, like a Trovatore? That is one of my bad symptoms: I am sorely afraid that the good wine of my understanding is going to run off at the spigot of authorship, and I shall be left an empty cask with an odour of dregs, like many another incomparable genius of my acquaintance. What is it, my Orpheus?" here Nello stretched out his arms to their full length, and then brought them round till his hands ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Mercurii" Such models may have saved him from a base mediaeval vocabulary; but they were not worthy of him, and they must answer for some of his falsities of style. These are apparent. His accumulation of empty and motley phrase, like a garish bunch of coloured bladders; his joy in platitude and pomposity, his proneness to say a little thing in great words, are only too easy to translate. We shall be well content if our version also gives some inkling of his qualities; not only of what Erasmus called his ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... princes, Luke 1, 51-53: "He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their heart. He hath put down princes from their thrones, and hath exalted them of low degree. The hungry he hath filled with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away"? If we believe this to be true, who would wish to be found among authorities, for whom so certain perdition is prepared and imminent? Who would not prefer to live on a lowly plane and suffer hunger? The second psalm accuses the authorities ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... and I promise you many a merry song was sung, and many a health drunk in flowing bumpers; and as jolly a party was assembled as any London contained that day. The beau-monde had quitted it; the Park was empty as we crossed it; and the leaves of Kensington Gardens had begun to fall, dying after the fatigues of a London season. We sang all the way home through Knightsbridge and by the Park railings, and the Covent Garden carters halting at the Half-way House were astonished at our ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this distressing tumult, Sidonia, on horseback, followed by a groom, came up the avenue from the Champs Elysees. The empty phaeton, reins broken, horses held by strangers, all the appearances of a misadventure, attracted him. He recognised the livery. He instantly dismounted. Moving aside the crowd, he perceived Lady Monmouth senseless and prostrate, and ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... We may like or dislike these thoughts; we may call them gross, barbarous, immoral, and the like, but, at all events, we ought not to deny that they are ingrained in the Mosaic sacrificial system, which becomes unmeaning elaboration of empty and often repulsive ceremonies, if they are not recognised as its very centre. Of course, the meaning of the sacrifices was hidden from many a worshipper. They became opaque instead of transparent, and hid the great truth which they were meant to reveal. All forms labour under ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... peach will contaminate an entire basket, one drop of ink cloud a full glass of clear water. It was so in the case of the strikers at the Rathbawne Mills. Their unwonted idleness, the long succession of empty hours, already, among the more improvident, the preliminary pressure of privation's teeth,—all these made them easy prey for the sophistries of men like McGrath and his associates. At first they ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... country is this in which to spend a holiday! How white are the limestone roads! how fresh and invigorating is the upland air! The old manor house is deserted, its occupants having gone to London. But a couple of bachelors can be happy in an empty house, without servants and modern luxuries, as long as the may-fly lasts. It is pleasant to feel that you can dine at any hour you please, and wear what you please. The good lady who cooks for you is merely the wife of one of the shepherds; but ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... necessary for their vessel or themselves, to the amount of eight or nine thousand pounds. They then deliberated whether to sink or burn the Samuel, but in the mean time they discovered a sail, so they left the empty Samuel, and gave the other chase. At midnight they overtook her, and she proved to be the Snow from Bristol; and, because he was an Englishman, they used the master in a cruel and barbarous manner. Two days after, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... first day that I came through your door my point of view was gradually and strangely altered. I saw for the first time in my life what a home might be. It attracted me; more, it showed me how empty my own life was, that I had thought so full. The sight of your mother, of your brothers, of your sisters, of your brother's little children—each of these had its effect on me. As for yourself—Roberta, I don't know how to tell you that; at least I don't know how to tell you on paper. I can imagine ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... pure, your mind too high, To prize such empty pomp and state; You leave such scenes without a sigh To court the joys that ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... profound and universal stillness. There was not a wrinkle on the sea; it presented a lustrous and glittering level, like the polished facet of a gem. In the cabin we sat down to the meal, not even pretending a desire to eat, exchanging vague phrases, hanging our heads over the empty plates. But the regular footsteps of the boatswain left in charge hesitated, stopped near the skylight. He said in an imperfectly assured voice, "Seems as if there was a steadier draught coming now." At this we rose from the table impetuously, as though ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... down the Strand at a leisurely pace. I passed through a phase of agonised thought. By my side was a helpless, homeless, friendless, penniless young woman, as beautiful as a goddess and as empty-minded as a baby. What in the world could I do with her? I looked at her in despair. She met my glance with a contented smile; just as if we were old acquaintances and I were taking her out to dinner. The unfamiliar roar and bustle of London ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the good wool-worker. 'But your plates are clear and your glasses empty. William, look to it! A good workman is ever a good trencherman. If a 'prentice of mine cannot clean his platter, I know that I shall get little from him with carder and teazel. Thew and sinew need building up. A slice from that round of beef, William! ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle |
