"Oblivion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all sat at table together, happily without breach of the peace.[286] One curious thing about this meeting was that it took place some three weeks after Rousseau and Saint Lambert had interchanged letters on the subject of the quarrel with Diderot, in which each promised the other contemptuous oblivion.[287] Perpetuity of hate is as hard as perpetuity of love for our poor short-spanned characters, and at length the three who were once to have lived together in self-sufficing union, and then in their next mood ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... even if the creeds, from the so-called "Apostles" to the so-called "Athanasian," were swept into oblivion; and even if the human race should arrive at the conclusion that, whether a bishop washes a cup or leaves it unwashed, is not a matter of the least consequence, it will get on very well. The causes which have led to the development of morality in mankind, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... older than Nature and her Time By all the timeless age of Consciousness, And my adult oblivion of the clime Where I was born makes me not countryless. Ay, and dim through my daylight thoughts escape Yearnings for that land where my childhood dreamed, Which I cannot recall in colour or shape But haunts my hours like something that hath ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... preparing? All knew the pass of La Tir well, and if all had not won decisive battles they would have been hung in the outer office or even in the corridors, where a line of half-forgotten or forgotten generals crooked down the stairways into the oblivion of the basement. That unfortunate one whom the first Galland had driven through the pass was quite obscured in darkness. He would soon be crowded out to an antique shop for sale as an example of the portrait art ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... saw, or thought I saw, ere oblivion overcrept me, was Newman's manikin-sized figure stretching out ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... banished! Nor woe nor pain, nor memory of the past nor despair of all before thee, make the characters of thy present state! Thou forestallest the forgetfulness of the grave, and thy heart concentrates all earth's comfort in one word,—'Oblivion! 'Beautiful, how beautiful thou art even yet! that smile, that momentary blush, years have not conquered them. They are as when, my young bride, thou didst lean first upon my bosom, and dream that sorrow was no more! And I have brought ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a queen fell on Tower Hill.' Cicely pointed her little finger at her. 'And the taste of blood, even as the taste of wine, ensureth a certain oblivion.' ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... improve his victory for our salvation. And by taking on our sins he hath fully abolished the power and plea of them, as the goat that was sent to the wilderness out of all men's sight was not to be seen again. Truly, this is the way how our sins are buried in the grave of oblivion and removed as a cloud, and cast into the depths of the sea, and sent away as far as the east is from the west that they may never come into judgment against us to condemn us because Christ, by appeasing wrath and satisfying justice by the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... most eminent men in American public life. The specialties as given on the sign-board were well prepared; and many were the lamentations when the dear old madame died, and the restaurant, being transferred to another part of Paris, became pretentious and fell into oblivion. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... he and his followers would gladly join the United States against the British, asking nothing in return except that all proceedings against Barrataria should be abandoned, that amnesty should be given to him and his men, that his brother should be released from prison, and that an act of oblivion should be passed by which the deeds of the smugglers of Barrataria should ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... blossoms, bursts Into a rage to suffer for mankind, And recommence at sorrow: drops like seed After the blossom, ultimate of all. Say, does the seed scorn earth and seek the sun? Surely it has no other end and aim Than to drop, once more die into the ground, Taste cold and darkness and oblivion there: And thence rise, tree-like grow through pain to joy, More joy and most ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... the great-great-grandfather of the present Hes (much less is known of the Shes), and while speaking of him forgets not to take his travelling artist along to sketch him. This noble ancestor is Mr. Zaccheus He, and he is in the act of performing the feat that saves his name from utter oblivion. The deed is made doubly impressive by the travelling artist sketching the same. The poet too lends his sublime aid to render the act one never to be forgotten. In the present age of the world, many parents, from some deep-seated prejudice, ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... had seated herself at the pantry window and was ostentatiously hemming towels in apparent oblivion of suitor No. 2. Nevertheless, when Bryan came up she greeted him with an unusually sweet smile and at once plunged into an animated conversation. Bryan had not come to ask her to go to the picnic—business ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... dozen passed—or more or less it matters little. Boy an' man, where were they? O the sad world, sor! To all that knew them they were as people buried in their graves. Think o' this drowning in the flood o' years—the stately ships sunk an' rotting in oblivion; some word of it, sor, may well go ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... HISTORICAL MAGAZINE belongs, must appreciate the ability with which it is conducted, and the laborious and indefatigable zeal of its Editor, in collecting and placing on its pages, beyond the reach of oblivion and loss, the scattered and perishing materials necessary to the elucidation of historical and biographical topics, whether relating to particular localities or the country at large; and it was as gratifying as unexpected to receive the proffer, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... relaxed and she heard the swish of the whip followed by hoarse expletives, and did not resent it. The man, it seemed, was fighting for her life as well as his own, and even brutal virility was necessary. After that, there was a space of oblivion while the storm raged about them, until, when the wind fell a trifle, it became evident that the horses had left ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... with such wonderful speed that the fate I intended to force upon him befell myself. I saw his car disappearing ahead, and the next moment I was just conscious of a shock that sent me flying into oblivion. ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... expect of these the toil, When o'er their minds a soft oblivion steals, And through the long-drawn hookah's pliant coil They soothe their senses, and ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... and strange bedroom—her husband being absent because of a sudden call to a country patient. The speaking-tube had been pretty well worked, and John had been lively in consequence— though patient—but at last the drowsy god had calmed the good lady into a state of oblivion. ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... peace have been entirely Jacobinical. If we seek for peace, it must be done in the spirit of peace. We are not to make it a question who was the first aggressor, or endeavour to throw the blame that may attach to us on our enemy. Such circumstances should be consigned to oblivion, as tending to no one useful purpose. France, in the beginning of the Revolution, had conceived many romantic notions. She was to put an end to war, and produce, by a pure form of government, a perfectibility ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... any hope of reconciliation. But I must know more of your lives during the past few months. I fear that you have wholly misunderstood your wife, and so alienated her that oblivion ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... was over, she sought the refuge of a convent. But she quitted it without professing. The past gave her no peace, and she returned to the world to seek in excesses an oblivion which the cloister denied her and only death could give. In her will she disposed that her skull should be placed over the doorway of the house in the Calle de Ataud, as a measure of posthumous atonement for her sins. And ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... unintelligible; while they invoke the pagan deities with a shameless prodigality that would scandalize even a French lyric. This cheap display of school-boy erudition, however it may have appalled their own age, has been a principal cause of their comparative oblivion with posterity. How far superior is one touch of nature, as the "Finojosa" or "Querella de Amor," for example, of the marquis of Santillana, to all this ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... and possesses all the calmness of a man whose first years have been spent in excitement and troubles, and who at length finds consolation in study alone; the well of science proving to him the waters of Lethe, in which he drinks the oblivion of all his past sorrows. And it is very much the case in Mexico at present, that the most distinguished men are those who live most retired; those who have played their part on the arena of public life, have seen the inutility of their efforts in ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... patents under the seal of the young republic and the hand of George Washington, whose name will continue to be loved and honored throughout the world long after the memory of the last king and peer of Great Britain shall have sunk in oblivion. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... it, and the whining, screaming missiles from guns of friend and foe weaving a curtain of tangled threads above it, this young soldier of the American Legion, his breast shot half in two, his rich blood reddening the soil of France, lay steeped in merciful oblivion. ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... appear to run in a circle. "This cannot be true, because it is not true; and, that is not true, because it cannot be true." Such seems to be the style, in which testimony upon testimony, statement upon statement, is consigned to denial and oblivion. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... anything to keep him as long as possible. For Jimmy's own sake, too, she dreaded his going back to his people, knowing, as she did, that he could never forget her, and that he would inevitably seek oblivion and find death in the bottle. She had divined his tendency that way from the very first, and the fear of it had never been out ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... that, however hot her lover may be in pursuit, the race began by giving her a long start, and, being well ahead, she can listen in camouflaged amusement to the man's protestations of her "divinity" as he "galollups" madly after her. When you come across lovers in that state of oblivion to staring eyes—as you do come across them so often during these beautiful warm evenings—it is always the man who looks supremely sheepish; the woman doesn't "turn a hair." She simply stares at the intruder as if she wanted him to see for ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... Tom's corpse had rested for a moment upon this grim stone. As I bent to catch the answer, and saw how like to death her face was, I thought how well it were for both of us, should we be resting there so together; not leaving the acre of the dead, but entering it as rightful heirs of its oblivion. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and imagination was able to fill the gaps; and though it failed, no doubt, to reproduce Margery Schopper's memoirs phrase for phrase and word for word, I have on the whole succeeded in transcribing with considerable exactitude all that she herself had thought worthy to be rescued from oblivion. Moreover I have avoided the repetition of the mode of talk in the fifteenth century, when German was barely commencing to be used as a written language, since scholars, writers, and men of letters always chose the Latin tongue for any great or elegant intellectual work. The narrator's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... all documents submitted to what is called the "sacred glance" of His Majesty. In a similar sense, until quite a recent date, skill in archery was required of every Bannerman; and it was undoubtedly a great wrench when the once fatally effective weapon was consigned to an unmerited oblivion. But though Bannermen can no longer shoot with the bow and arrow, they still continue to draw monthly allowances from state funds, as an hereditary right obtained ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... stuff she wrote to keep the cormorant and, incidentally, to immortalize herself, has fallen deservedly into oblivion. But we—some of us—do not forget and never want to forget Mary Russell Mitford. Her letters remain—the little friendly letters which came from her pen like balls of silvery down from a sun-ripened plant, and were wafted far and wide over the land to those she ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... even in the most vainglorious sense a heritage. It did not in the ordinary sense make a monument, or even a trophy. It destroyed a monument to make a procession. We might almost say that it destroyed a trophy to make a triumph. There is the true barbaric touch in this oblivion of what Jerusalem would look like a century after, or a year after, or even the day after. It is this which distinguishes the savage tribe on the march after a victory from the civilised army establishing a government, ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... naught the achievements of the good, and glorify and exalt the deeds of the wicked? Enchanters have persecuted me, enchanters persecute me still, and enchanters will continue to persecute me until they have sunk me and my lofty chivalry in the deep abyss of oblivion; and they injure and wound me where they know I feel it most. For to deprive a knight-errant of his lady is to deprive him of the eyes he sees with, of the sun that gives him light, of the food whereby he lives. ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... new sensation with which to advertise themselves. Mr. TWAIN, for instance, having gone through Fenianism and France, seems to have collapsed for the present; and here now comes Mr. WEMYSS JOBSON, who subsided into oblivion years ago, but has just emerged again into the light of The Sun. The efforts of both these gentlemen to keep themselves prominently before the public, however, are very inadequate and feeble. They should suffer more and be stronger. Let TRAIN do a bold stroke of business by declaring ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... rest. Peru, the muse that vainly mourn'd thy woes, Whom pity robb'd so long of dear repose; The muse, whose pensive soul with anguish wrung Her early lyre for thee has trembling strung; 350 Shed the weak tear, and breath'd the powerless sigh, Which soon in cold oblivion's shade must die; Pants with the wish thy deeds may rise to fame, Bright on some living harp's immortal frame! While on the string of extasy, it pours 355 Thy future ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... present day two spots have claims which are urged, each with such arguments of probability as to make the whole question the most difficult in sacred topography.... We shall probably never be able to know the exact fact. Jesus damned it to oblivion, and there it lies. We shall content ourselves with the New Testament notices as bearing on the work ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... retreat I have nothing relative to this world to do, but to study all the tranquillity that in the state of my mind I am capable of. To that end I find it but too necessary to call to my aid an oblivion of most of the circumstances, pleasant and unpleasant, of my life,—to think as little and indeed to know as little as I can of everything that is doing about me,—and, above all, to divert my mind from all presagings and prognostications of what I must ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a dutiful citizen, to celebrate. No joy can be truthfully reported till just this side of the High Street, where there were three girls with linked arms dancing in lax and cheerful oblivion, one of them quite drunk. Near them stood a cart with a man, a woman, and a monkey in it. The superior animals were clothed in red, white, and blue, and the monkey was wearing a Union Jack for a ruff. The ape was humping himself on the tail-board, and from his expression ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... conduct in civil life had been such as could have been approved of, former transactions might have been buried in oblivion. But when I see a man endeavouring to injure the reputation of those, whose principles and conduct, from the beginning of the contest, have been uniformly exerted to obtain those ends intended by the revolution; and when he denies all merit to ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... the rash men who were directly concerned in the events of 1837 and 1838, was also well calculated to heal the wounds inflicted on the province during that troublous period. It needed only the passage of another measure to conceal the scars of those unhappy days, and to bury the past in that oblivion in which all Canadians anxious for the unity and harmony of the two races, and the satisfactory operation of political institutions, were sincerely desirous of hiding it forever. This measure was pecuniary compensation from the ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... perhaps exalted moral sense, was no sooner made than I found myself peeping to right and to left in my double mirror, not without a lively sense of curiosity. At first I saw—what Flemming, indeed, was wont to see when he consulted the Fountain of Oblivion—only streets and moss-grown walls and trembling spires, like those of the great City of the Past, and children playing in the gardens like reverberations from one's lost youth. Soon a nearer image approached. From a troop of blond girls, who dragged after them little chariots ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Louisiana, which I occupy, is of great importance in the present crisis. I tender my services to defend it; and the only reward I ask is that a stop be put to the proscription against me and my adherents, by an act of oblivion, for all ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... to say that without training such men would have botched the job and instead of being praised to the skies would have sunk into oblivion under the heap of public scorn. Sometimes it happens that a man accidentally becomes a hero, but it was no accident that he was able to become one. He must have had initiative—he must have had self-reliance. Archibald C. Butt was such a man. He went down on ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... the conversation with her usual high hand, feigning utter oblivion of the thundercloud on Molly's countenance; and, if somewhat rambling in her discourse, nevertheless contriving to plant her points where ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... temptation! What society condemns the practice but a cold, heartless, uncivilized people that know nothing of the warm attachments of refined society? Here the dead was raised to his long-cherished hopes, and the lost was found. Here all doubt and danger were buried in the vortex of oblivion; sectional differences no longer disunited their opinions; like the freed bird from the cage, sportive claps its rustling wings, wheels about to heaven in a joyful strain, and raises its notes to the upper sky. Ambulinia ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... deciding that in the dim light such details could hardly have been adequately distinguished, and that the apparition must have been a cavalier or Jacobite maiden, whose heart-rending story was buried in the oblivion of years. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... earthquake, or burst of civil commotion. When such are the facts most alive, in the memory of the common people, we cannot wonder," he concluded, "that the ferocious warrior is remembered, and the peaceful abbots are abandoned to forgetfulness and oblivion." ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... than in the place through which we had passed, and the nausea began to leave me, my brain to grow more clear. Had I known what was to follow I should have cursed the lucidity of mind which now came to me; I should have prayed for oblivion—to be spared the ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... all this be so punctually committed to sacred story, with the day in which these things were done, under denomination, over and over, saying, These things were done on the first day, on the first day, on the first day of the week, while all other days are, as to name, buried in everlasting oblivion! And shall we not take that notice thereof as to follow the Lord Jesus and the churches herein? ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of the world have filched away The time I had for thinking upon God; His grace lies buried deep 'neath oblivion's sod, Whence springs an evil-crop of sins alway. What makes another wise, leads me astray, Slow to discern the bad path I have trod: Hope fades; but still desire ascends that God May free me from self-love, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... were built under these charters. The financial panic of 1837 swept them all into oblivion, together with a multitude of other roads projected throughout the country. Some of them were heard of no more, and others were revived in after years, the charters greatly amended, and the roads eventually built. The design of the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... globe hadn't been turned on without good reason. Consequently, I hoped that some crewmen would soon make an appearance. If you want to consign people to oblivion, you don't light ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... its mad plunge over the lofty wall of Tequendama, whence it subsides into the dignity of broad maturity, and begins its long, wandering, adult life, which slowly draws to a sluggish old age and final oblivion in the infinite sea. Toward the close of its meandering course, long after the follies and excesses of early life, it takes unto itself a consort, the beautiful Cauca; and together they flow, broadening and deepening as life nears its end; merging ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... would you sever, (Harsh fate!) and forever, The friends who to life gave a charm, What oblivion effaces Fond mem'ry retraces, And pictures ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... second and the third, with gradual lessening of narcotic power. The vision of the senses was gone, and the relentless reality of duty returned. Once more he left his chair and began his restless pacing to and fro. Thus the miserable night wore on, until he threw himself upon his bed to win the oblivion ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... had been elsewhere, and had not been employed in my brother's trial; he had only inherited the connection with our family affairs when the matter had passed into comparative oblivion. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was beyond words. He had set his heart, for the sake of the children of his late colleague, and even for Roger's sake, on covering with a cloak of oblivion the crime of which chance had made him the detector. This American had it in his power to aid or thwart him, and had chosen the former course; and a great weight was lifted off the tutor's mind ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... on the edge of the moor, was heavy in the air, and the sun was very hot, and still high in the heavens. The hills that bordered the moor drowsed and brooded, like ancient gods, clothed in a lordly radiance that was slowly consuming them as they meditated upon their coming oblivion. ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... lead The life of innocence and fly Irreverence in word or deed, To follow still those laws ordained on high Whose birthplace is the bright ethereal sky No mortal birth they own, Olympus their progenitor alone: Ne'er shall they slumber in oblivion cold, The god in them is strong and ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... however, carried much too far by the partisans of reaction; in its desire to repair all and to punish all, it fell into excesses of justice. After the abolition of the decemviral regime, the past should have been buried in oblivion, and the revolutionary abyss closed after a few expiatory victims had been thrown into it. Security alone brings about pacification; and pacification only admits of liberty. By again entering upon a course characterized by passion, they only effected a transference of tyranny, violence, and calamity. ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... over,—the pageant melts from the fancy, —monarch, priest, and warrior return into oblivion with the poor Moslems over whom they exulted. The hall of their triumph is waste and desolate. The bat flits about its twilight vault, and the owl hoots from the neighboring ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... have seen the black last of him, and the very name of Croker already begins to be a memory. But why should one repine?" Lemon's sneer was deepening. "In every age the other great have come and ruled and gone to that oblivion beyond. They arose to fall and be forgot. It is the law. Then why not Mr. Croker? True, even while we consent, there comes that natural sadness which I now observe to sparkle so brightly in every present eye. What then? ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... community good-naturedly suffered themselves to be persuaded to go to the other end of the room, by which means we were enabled to lie down by the fire. There they rolled themselves up, and, in the shortest possible time, were in a state of oblivion. I may observe that the people in general, men or women, have seldom any beds. They lie down any where on the floor, ensconced in a capote or cloak, removing perhaps their opunkas, but scarcely ever any other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... same story beginning afresh: an apparition; a persecuted shepherdess, who was called a liar; next the covert propulsion of human misery hungering after illusion; then propaganda, and the triumph of the sanctuary shining like a star; and afterwards decline, and oblivion, when the ecstatic dream of another visionary gave birth to another sanctuary elsewhere. It seemed as if the power of illusion wore away; that it was necessary in the course of centuries to displace it, set it amidst new scenery, under fresh circumstances, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Auvergne, the commander of Aquitaine, Godfrey de Gonaville, the great visitor of France, Hugues de Peraud, were still pining in the royal dungeons. It was necessary to determine on their fate. The King and the Pope were now equally interested in burying the affair forever in silence and oblivion. So long as these men lived, uncondemned, undoomed, the order was not extinct. A commission was named: the Cardinal-Archbishop of Albi, with two other cardinals, two monks, the Cistercian Arnold Novelli, and Arnold de Fargis, nephew of Pope Clement, the Dominican ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... and the burnt woods were buried deep under the shadow of young forests, more beautiful than the old. Thanks also to the government of the wisest mind in the island, the moral evils of the struggle were made subordinate to its good results. It was not in the power of man to bury past injuries in oblivion, while there were continually present minds which had been debased by tyranny, and hearts which had been outraged by cruelty; but all that could be done was done. Vigorous employment was made the great law of society— ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... had sacrificed themselves for the common weal; but to the eternal disgrace of the town, all of them were now down and out, and in various retired spots, where they had been deposited by their sympathising friends, were snoring in peaceful oblivion. Even Len Barker, game disciple of the great master, had reached his limit and, no longer formidable, had, without form of law, been deposited for safekeeping, and with a sigh of relief, in the corporate Bastile; but Mr. Sweeney himself, Mr. Sweeney of the hawk eye and the royal tread, despite ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... placed between oppression and license: the liberty of man in the social state is necessarily restrained by certain laws, the abuse or oblivion of which are equally dangerous; but the circumstances which expose society to either of these perils are different. In a well-established government, solidly constituted, the danger against which the friends ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... accept. Thoughts, ideas, conceptions, may enhance the value of a work of art, provided it is first of all a piece of beautiful art in itself, but they have never preserved, and never will preserve from oblivion bad painting or bad sculpture. The style is the artist, if not the man; and of the two, beautiful painting with no idea at all (granting, for the sake of argument, that it exists), will ever be infinitely more valuable ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... degrees the old phrases, old catch-words, and old opinions have come to reign again. Troy's unchanged loveliness too, the daily round full of experiences familiar as old friends, the dear monotony of sight and sound in the little port—all have made for healing and oblivion. If you question us on a certain three months in our life, the chances are you will get no answer. We have agreed to forget, you see; and so we are beginning to persuade ourselves, almost, that ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... we go on hanging. Mr. Drishna is a dangerous animal who for the sake of pacific animals must cease to exist. Let his barbarous exploit pass into oblivion with him. The disadvantages of spreading it broadcast ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... play, I have left in this diary of mine a long interval to oblivion; and after the fashion of the poet, I make Time himself intervene to explain the omission of ten whole years. Ten whole years, indeed, have passed since I wrote one single line in this diary; and now that I take up the pen again, I have ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... Books, a narrative of the Roman wars in Germany; begun by Pliny when serving in that country, the apparition of Drusus having besought him to rescue his name from oblivion (so Pliny the younger). Cf. Tac. Ann. i. 69, 'Tradit C. Plinius, ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... and private character of America's greatest statesman, whose record of distinguished public service will adorn the pages of his country's history with unfading lustre long after the unjust aspersions on his character shall have passed into oblivion forever. ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... remember, Mendelssohn and Tennyson. "Of course," he said, "they both wrote a great deal—perhaps too much—and some kind of sorting is necessary. I don't mind the Idylls of the King, or the Elijah, being relegated to oblivion, because they both show signs of having been done with one eye on the public. But the progressive young man won't hear of Tennyson or Mendelssohn being regarded as serious figures in art at all. Yet I honestly believe that poems like 'Now ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the urethra.[198] It should be added that when once introduced the physiological mechanism of the bladder apparently causes the organ to tend to "swallow" the foreign object. Yet for every case in which the hair-pin disappears and is lost in the bladder, from carelessness or the oblivion of the sexual spasm, there must be a vast number of cases in which the instrument is used without any such unfortunate result. There is thus great significance in the frequency with which cases of hair-pin in the bladder ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of it the boys paid very little attention. In fact, the subject was to all of them so painful a one, that they could not bear to have it brought forward even as the text of a sermon. They only wanted to forget all about it as soon as possible, and let it sink into complete oblivion. ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... name is lost in oblivion, said in tones which would melt a heart of stone: "Shall an oak and a rose tree receive the same culture? Better to us is the clear, steady, softened, silvery moonlight of woman's quiet, unobtrusive influence, than the flashes ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... her prey beforehand and watches over it for the appointed number of days, until the moment when, crazily, through the hole which she digs with a hatchet in the middle of the skull, she absorbs the sleep which stupefies her and grants her oblivion for a given period. And here again we see absurdity and madness. Why does she fix that period at so many days? Why should one victim ensure her a hundred and twenty days of sleep and another a hundred and twenty-five? ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... it became desirable to ascertain and to indicate the nature of the sea-bottom, since this circumstance greatly affects its goodness as holding ground for anchors. Some ingenious tar, whose name deserves a better fate than the oblivion into which it has fallen, attained this object by "arming" the bottom of the lead with a lump of grease, to which more or less of the sand or mud, or broken shells, as the case might be, adhered, and was brought to the surface. But, however well adapted ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... tissue was pressed close to the form beneath him. He was scarcely conscious of taking the leap. His brain had yelled one distinct order to his active limbs: "Keep him down flat!" He had obeyed that subconsciously. For a second or so it was pure oblivion, and then he realized what had happened. If there should not be enough clearance?... ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... attracted the attention of astronomers, and they sought for some method by which the place of the planet could be recovered so as to prevent Piazzi's discovery from falling into oblivion. A young German mathematician, whose name was Gauss, opened his distinguished career by a successful attempt to solve this problem. A planet, as we have shown, describes an ellipse around the sun, ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... sword. The frenzied laugh of Zarathustra ends in an avowal of discouraged impotence. The delirious passion of Don Juan dies away in nothingness. Don Quixote when dying forswears his illusions. Even the Hero himself admits the futility of his work, and seeks oblivion in an indifferent Nature. Nietzsche, speaking of the artists of our time, laughs at "those Tantaluses of the will, rebels and enemies of laws, who come, broken in spirit, and fall at the foot of the cross of Christ." Whether it ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... seize upon great opportunities are the men whom History rescues from oblivion, and sets in the memory of mankind forever, whether with blessings or cursings, with glory or shame, as the benefactors or the enemies of their kind. A rare opportunity is passing before this nation. Who will seize upon it, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... be very old. The forest established since the ruin began, the entire disappearance of every thing more perishable than stone, the utter oblivion which veiled their history in the time of Montezuma, and probably long previous to his time, all these facts bear witness to their great antiquity. In many of them, as at Quirigua and Kabah, the stone structures ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... amid the bandages a small fruit-berry, the species of which it is difficult to determine. Perhaps it was a berry of the nepenthe, which brought oblivion. On a bit of stuff, carefully detached, was written within a cartouche the name of an unknown king belonging to a dynasty no less forgotten. This mummy fills up a vacant place in history and ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... life unbearable he would find his mistake; she simply should not heed him; perhaps he would return to his senses before long—and in this vein Mrs. Jordan continued until night was at odds with morning, only becoming silent when her partner had sunk into the oblivion of ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... people who will produce whole newspaper columns of what to the uninformed reads like sensible matter, love to make war. In a way, the U-boats in the Aegean served as a blessing in disguise; they helped to squash many hare-brained schemes inchoated around Whitehall, and to consign them to oblivion ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... wrote, she did not even understand what they were about. No, she was a failure surely, she told herself. This little song was like her acting on the school stage in the old days at home. She had promised to be a star and had suddenly set in oblivion. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... was Lady Jane Grey. This subject had been chosen by Mr. Smith, whose papers were put into Rowe's hands, such as he describes them in his preface. This play has, likewise, sunk into oblivion. From this time he gave nothing more to ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... magic of old world forests. From yellowing leaves, fluttering earthward, celebrating the glorious agony of the trees, from the clangorous angelus bidding the fields to slumber, rose a sweet persuasive voice, counseling perfect oblivion. The sun was setting solitary. Beasts and men turned peacefully homeward, having ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... instance, that he viewed as the password, which the knowing ones gave in answer to the challenge of the sentinel; but, as soon as it had obtained admission for the party within the gates of the camp, it was rightly dismissed to oblivion or to laughter. No case so much illustrates Swift's essential irreligion; since, if he had shared in ordinary human feelings on such subjects, not only he could not have been surprised at his own exclusion from the ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... close over him, and knew he had struck. In the moment he knew—oblivion, deep, ebon and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... and I am proud of it; but it is that honorable blood that is this minute sending me back to the life I hate, and the oblivion I loathe. I can't lie here, and see you and Captain McTavish ruined. The Indian part of me says, 'Yes, take it; no one will ever know.' But the McTavish of me rebels, and I ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... which he spoke of John Bright, whose name came incidentally into our conversation. He seemed to feel personally annoyed and hurt as an Irishman, that Irishmen should permit themselves to revile and abuse Mr. Bright because he will not go with them on the question of Home Rule, in utter oblivion of the great services rendered by him to the cause of the Irish people "years before many of those whose tongues now wag against him had tongues to wag." I was tempted to remind him that not with Irishmen only is gratitude a lively sense ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... of their trial and condemnation were so unskillfully managed, that these wicked men obtained, in the public opinion, the glory of suffering for the obstinate loyalty with which they had supported the cause of Constantius. The rest of his servants were protected by a general act of oblivion; and they were left to enjoy with impunity the bribes which they had accepted, either to defend the oppressed, or to oppress the friendless. This measure, which, on the soundest principles of policy, may deserve our approbation, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... said: "There is nothing real but riches, all else is a dream; let us enjoy and then let us die." Those of moderate fortune said: "There is nothing real but oblivion, all else is a dream; let us forget and let us die." And the poor said: "There is nothing real but unhappiness, all else is a dream; let us blaspheme ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... he was quite sincere. It is also possible that he was becoming discredited at Ravenna, where they must have known about his oppressions and suspected his ambitious intrigues. Anyhow, whether he was really disgusted with the world, or whether he deemed it prudent to throw a little oblivion over himself just then, he spoke on all hands of resigning his post and living in retreat like a monk. It was just at this moment that Augustin and Alypius begged him not to desert the ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... touch that was at one moment all fire and flame, and the next smooth as velvet or soft and light as thistle-down. What had my home piano in common with this wonder? Why did all the efforts at piano playing I had hitherto listened to sink into oblivion when I heard this master? What was the ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... story made its appearance—over which critics and antiquaries wrangled for nearly a century—of numerous ancient poems and other MSS. taken by the elder Chatterton from a coffer in the muniment room of Redcliffe church, and transcribed, and so rescued from oblivion, by his son. The pieces include the "Bristowe Tragedie, or the Dethe of Syr Charles Bawdin," a ballad celebrating the death of the Lancastrian knight, Charles Baldwin; "Aella," a "Tragycal Enterlude," as Chatterton ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... There are mothers here, among us, who might have been in heaven fifty years ago, if they could forbear to cherish earthly joy and sorrow, reflected from the bosoms of their children. Husbands and wives have a comfortable gift of oblivion, especially when secure of the faith of their living halves. Jealousy, it is true, will play the devil with a ghost, driving him to the bedside of secondary wedlock, there to scowl, unseen, and gibber inaudible remonstrances. ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of floating downward on a current that was too strong for him; and though he knew that the idea was absurd, it was impossible for him to put it out of his mind, for when he made an effort to do so, he felt that he was slipping again into oblivion. For a time he let himself drift helplessly like a leaf on the stream. Then seized by a sudden terror of the gulf beyond, he tried to stop, to hold back, to catch at something—at anything—that would check ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... centuries of silence and oblivion under the shroud of the desert sands, which, thickening each year, proceeded to bury, and, in the event, to preserve ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... in the self-consciousness of his immense vitality, sweeps into the limbo of oblivion these dusty debris of the past, with no nearer approach to the romantic regret of a Malory for the glories of old time or to Villon's awestruck contemplation of the mysterious evanishment of storied ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... which he displayed in behalf of the Creeks, history would have written him down as a great statesman. It was only by an accidental suit at law that some of his most characteristic letters were brought to light; but those that have been rescued from oblivion show that in wielding the pen he was more than a match for the many able men ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... occasioned you! I can really scarcely pardon myself for having written the piece!—When the Princess informed me of your kind intention I wrote to her that a performance of my things in Leipzig appeared to me untimely, and that I was resolved to let them fall into oblivion rather than to importune my friends with them. Hence the heterogeneousness of the letters and telegrams to you, dear madam, which I beg you kindly to excuse. Candidly, I still think it is better not to have the "Preludes" ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... was now over. Some time or other we must have reached our destination; I cannot remember. I have the vaguest recollection of placing a nosebag for a pillow, but that is all; the rest of that night is lost in deep oblivion. ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... its orbit shone The lamp of all things beautiful; then on, Following more heedfully, did softly trace Each arch and prominence and hollow place That shall revealed be when all else is gone— Warmth, colour, roundness—to oblivion, And nothing ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... your Lordship would not approve of such an occurrence being thrown into oblivion without an attempt at explanation, and I am persuaded that any backwardness under such circumstances would only serve to confirm the Porte in her present infatuated course of policy. I have, therefore, communicated upon the subject ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... would be a great pity to do away with such beautiful verses, and he pleaded with Ambrosio against their consignment to oblivion. As he was speaking, he reached out his hand for some of the papers that were close to him, and Ambrosio considerately permitted him to keep them. The remaining ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... shallow, affection. But the Indian puts up with anything rather than quarrel with his mother, and her memory remains fresh and green long after other departed relations and friends have been lost in oblivion. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... fellow-citizens. The request and the reasoning would not, therefore, have influenced me, had they not been assisted by other motives. The first in order of these verses, which I have thus endeavoured to reprieve from immediate oblivion, was originally addressed "To the Author of Poems published anonymously, at Bristol." A second edition of these poems has lately appeared with the Author's name prefixed; and I could not refuse myself the gratification ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... with faces bright and gay. None seem to think of yesterday; None seem to hear the passing bell, That bade the dying year farewell. None seem to think this infant year, Which now so gay and bright appears, Will soon by dark oblivion's wave Be chas'd into the ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... be so rude as to refuse this: he ate the fruit, and in a moment the fatal effects of it were apparent, for he sank into utter oblivion, losing all ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... and they carefully abstain from it. The chief motive for this abstinence appears to be a fear of evoking the ghost, although the natural unwillingness to revive past sorrows undoubtedly operates also to draw the veil of oblivion over the names of the dead. Once Mr. Oldfield so terrified a native by shouting out the name of a deceased person, that the man fairly took to his heels and did not venture to show himself again for several days. At their next meeting he bitterly ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... forgotten a matter of so much consequence, and which must have given me so great a pleasure. It is fresh in my mind, that Lord Oxford and the Auditor desired you to confer with me upon the subject matter of it; that we accordingly did so; and that the conclusion was, you would bury everything in oblivion. We reported this to those two, I mean to his lordship and his uncle, and they acquiesced in it. Now I find you have finished that piece. I ask nothing but what you grant in your letter of July 23d, viz. That your friend shall read it to me, and forbear sending it to the press, till you have considered ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... pin-point of surface remained the same. And this was the very place to bring out the completeness of the renewal. The sublimities, the perpetuities, might have left him as he was: but this tent pitched for a day's revelry spread a roof of oblivion between himself and his ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... few blessed moments of oblivion caused by the bustle of their departure from the house, then Angelica looked up, and instantly her intellect awoke. They were driving down the avenue—"The green leaves rustle overhead," was the first impression that formulated itself into words. "The carriage wheels roll rhythmically. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Repeat passionate speech, The sunset burns, As my soul In desire's golden heat, Though night be not far Shadows creep near With chilling breath and clutching hands To pluck To destroy The flowers of yielding from your heart: Powerless, fear-stricken; I tremble, I stagger, I fall Into oblivion's pit As time creeps Into winter's ...
— Sandhya - Songs of Twilight • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... coffee-house. In one circle of yellow light two bearded Sheiks were playing dominoes with imperturbable gravity; the other lamp flickered over an empty table beneath which the thin, flea-bitten legs of a ragged urchin were showing in the oblivion of his tired sleep. In the shadow beyond sat a young American with a keen, impatient face, and a one-eyed Arab ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... of that son had been removed, and he was now willing to be my friend; and I determined to bury the past in oblivion, and to believe him really and ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie |
