"Solitary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we any difficulty in discovering Haji Wali's tree, a solitary Mimosa to the right of the caravan-track, springing from the sands of the Shigdawayn gorge. The latter is formed by the sister-blocks before alluded to. The western Shigd, on the right of the Wady 'Afal, is composed of carbonate of lime and sandstones dyed with manganese, the whole resting ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... belonged to her; she thought she would like to live in a place like that, with warlike Indians all around and that gorge to guard day and night. She wished she had been Marthy, discovering that place and taming it, little by little, in solitary achievement the sweeter because ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... whom he considered much too animated, on account of her numerous vagaries, and it may be he was right. In consequence of this idea he reached his old age without a companion, which was certainly not to his advantage. Always leading a solitary life, this said man had no idea of making himself agreeable to others, having only been mixed up with wars and the orgies of bachelors, with whom he did not put himself out of the way. Thus he remained stale in his ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... caged lion ready to break loose from bondage. But the lion freed might take refuge in his native woods, while Gaston, if he rushed forth into the world, knew that his bashfulness, his stammering, his near-sightedness, would render society a more intolerable prison than his solitary home. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Barnardines, Anthonines, Iohannites, Cisternois, and innumerable other. Whiche al haue their habite, and maner of liuing by them selfe: acordinge to the rule that echeone priuately prescribed to them selues. And liued for the moste parte a solitary life, professing chastitie, pouretie, and perpetualle obedience. And for their solitarines the Greke called them Monarchi. Some of these haue for the heades Abbotes, some Priours: whiche are either subiecte to the Pope onely, or to the bishoppes. Al these vsed ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... be limited indeed, if it does not include this most abundant of all the wild roses from Ontario to Georgia, and westward to Wisconsin. In light, dry, or rocky soil we find the exquisite, but usually solitary, blossom late in May until July, and, like most roses, it has the pleasant practice of putting forth a stray blossom or two in early autumn. The stamens of this species are turned outward so strongly that self- pollination must ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... about her! But what happiness it was for me to see her convinced that she was right in loving me, and that, without me, she would certainly have been lost in a town where the policy of the government tolerates debauchery as a solitary species of individual freedom. We congratulated each other upon our fortuitous meeting and upon the conformity in our tastes, which we thought truly wonderful. We were greatly pleased that her easy ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... definitely the moral which they were pointing, before my brother-in-law was able to grasp the one or to appreciate the other. And when it had been, as they say, borne in upon him that he was for the high jump, another ten minutes were wasted while he made one final, frantic, solitary endeavour to attract the servants' attention. His feminine personality discarded, he raved about the house, barking, screeching and braying to beat the band; he thundered upon the door with his fists; he flung much of ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... of looks and loss of health—the end of the shelf—should drop her abruptly to the very bottom. She could guess what was there. Every day she saw about the streets, most wretched and most forlorn of its wretched and forlorn things, the solitary old women, bent and twisted, wrapped in rotting rags, picking papers and tobacco from the gutters and burrowing in garbage barrels, seeking somehow to get the drink or the dope that changed hell into heaven ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... horse, as though waiting for some one. Malvey at once thought of Young Pete—then of The Spider's warning—and finally that the solitary horseman might be some companion from below the border, cautiously awaiting his approach. Half-inclined to ride wide, he hesitated—then loosening his gun he spurred his restless pony toward the other, prepared to "bull" through if questioned ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... was bearing away the Lady Nisida in the manner described in the preceding chapter, Fernand Wagner was pacing his solitary cell, conjecturing what would be the result of the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... of society, which can be partly but not entirely accounted for by the conditions of the time. After a few centuries a far more wholesome type of monachism supplanted the hermits; the anchorites of the Middle Ages retained the solitary life, but were very unlike the crazy savages of the Thebaid. In modern times, those who have been most under the Greek spirit have generally lived with austere simplicity, but without any of the violent self-discipline which is said to be still practised ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... here, so is he always, unwavering in decision, prompt of speech and of action. Caught in ambush, ill-armed and solitary, by the treacherous Thebans, as he returns from his futile embassy, he never hesitates; he seizes the one point of vantage, crushes his foes, and when he speaks, speaks briefly and to the point. He spares the last ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... accompanied by his faithful Terence, but solitary and alone did the aged Palmer go forth. Great as he was, many sins had he to mourn, and much had he to ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... thinking low, silly, or uninteresting. Whether this is done from affectation and conceit alone, or whether it may not arise, in some measure, from the self-illusion of a mind of extraordinary sensibility, habituated to solitary meditation, we cannot undertake to determine. It is possible enough, we allow, that the sight of a friend's garden-spade, or a sparrow's nest, or a man gathering leeches, might really have suggested to such a mind a train of powerful impressions and interesting reflections; but it is certain, that, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... poor solitary dove, Must make, unheard, thy joyless moan; The heart that Nature formed to love ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... to the firstling of her gifted son's imagination, the Common soon missed the solitary, melancholy figure that had for months haunted the old historic walks. Edgar A. Poe dropped out of the world, or perhaps out of the delusion of fancying himself in the world, and Edgar A. "Perry" appeared, an enlisted soldier in the First Artillery at Fort Independence. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... into the solitary night. Was he not alone? Then phantasms came as on a flood. He was in a kind of euthanasy. The pain of his foot had ceased. He saw the Paradise by Sardis and its bending feathery palms; he heard the tinkling of the Lydian harps, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... without being favourable to virtue: pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporeal health; and those who resist gaiety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite; for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember," concluded he, "that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... and at the same time a pleasing prospect to the ships which sailed by at its foot, for it stood, not a huge and solitary mass in the midst of the surrounding gardens, but in picturesque groups of various outline. On each side of a large structure, which contained the state rooms and banqueting hall, three rows of pavilions of different sizes extended in symmetrical order. They were connected with each other by colonnades, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... shore of Europe, trip and fall with unceasing roar upon an almost uninterrupted beach of snowy sand, a hundred and more miles long. Near the southern end of this expanse of sand stands a lighthouse, towering solitary above the surrounding plain of sea and sand. No inviting beacon giving notice to the weary marines of safe haven is this steady light that pierces the darkness night after night. It tells of treacherous shoals and roaring breakers; of the loss of many a good ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... palm-branch broken from the trees of Paradise between its bill. And he that has no such present has a future dark, chaotic, a heaving, destructive ocean; and over it there goes for ever—black-pinioned, winging its solitary and hopeless flight—the raven of his anxious thoughts, which finds no place to rest, and comes back again to the desolate ark with its foreboding croak of evil in the present and evil in the future. Live in Christ, 'the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... As if to do away even with its memory, every feature of the surrounding scene which was associated with that festival has been in succeeding ages destroyed. With one solitary exception,[36] there is not a house left in the whole Piazza of Santa Maria Formosa from whose windows the festa of the Maries has ever been seen: of the church in which they worshipped, not a stone is left, even the form of the ground and direction of the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... quickly, the boys amusing themselves by exploring their little island, fishing from the bank, and loafing in the shade of the solitary palm, at whose base was supposed ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... gentle birth, but a stolid, worthy merchant. Here, at last, she indulges in a substantial spectre, who cannot be explained away as the figment of a disordered imagination, since he seriously alarms, not a solitary heroine or a scared lady's-maid, but Henry III. himself and his assembled barons. Yet apart from this daring escapade, it is timidity rather than the spirit of valorous enterprise that is urging Mrs. Radcliffe into new and untried paths. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... preceding day; Katya had a preoccupied look. Her sister had, directly after their morning tea, called her into her room, and after some preliminary caresses, which always scared Katya a little, she had advised her to be more guarded in her behaviour with Arkady, and especially to avoid solitary talks with him, as likely to attract the notice of her aunt and all the household. Besides this, even the previous evening Anna Sergyevna had not been herself; and Katya herself had felt ill at ease, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... from the wisdom of the pagan theorists; but, one day, as he walked, somewhat sad and pensive, near the sea shore, a casual meeting with an aged stranger led him to turn his thoughts to the Christian revelation. The individual, with whom he had this solitary and important interview, was a member and, perhaps, a minister of the Church. After pointing out to Justin the folly of mere theorising, and recommending him to study the Old Testament Scriptures, as well on account of their great antiquity ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... stems the notched and gorgeous leaves. The wind fingered playfully my hair, and clouds of birds went whirring through the tree-tops; but no sight nor sound could divide my thoughts from her whose voice had so often filled with music these solitary places. ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... than her mistress, Janet perceived that the gleam was stationary, and informed the Countess, in a whisper, that the light proceeded from the solitary cell in which the alchemist pursued his occult experiments. "He is of those," she added, "who sit up and watch by night that they may commit iniquity. Evil was the chance which sent hither a man whose mixed speech of earthly wealth and unearthly or superhuman knowledge ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... made thee happy; For though 'tis true, this solitary life Sutes not with youth and beautie, O my child, Yet 'tis the sweetest Guardian to protect Chast names from Court aspersions; there a Lady Tender and delicate in years and graces, That doats upon the charms of ease and pleasure, ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... rise abruptly in bare crags, covered here and there by a low growth of myrtle and wild olives, on either hand this gorge, quite inaccessible to any large array of armed men, though capable of being traversed by solitary foresters or shepherds. Below, the hills fall downward in a succession of vast broken ridges, in places rocky and almost perpendicular, in places swelling into rounded knolls, feathered with dark rich forests of holm oak ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... course of conversation, she learned that he had that morning sailed for Naples. The scene which so lately appeared enchanting to her eyes, now changed its hue; and in the midst of society, and surrounded by gaiety, she was solitary and dejected. She accused herself of having suffered her wishes to mislead her judgment; and the present conduct of Hippolitus convinced her, that she had mistaken admiration for a sentiment more tender. She believed, too, that the musician ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... to render the sentiment of a few of these songs into as good negro dialect as I am master of, but I cannot hope to repeat the precise words, or to convey the indescribable humor and pathos which my darky friend threw into them, and which made our long, solitary ride through those dreary pine-barrens pass rapidly and pleasantly away. The first referred to an old darky who was transplanted from the cotton-fields of "ole Virginny" to the rice-swamps of Carolina, and who did not like the ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... with his horse gear, and his wife, with the bed-cord, to some of the furniture in her own apartment. In another place, the whole household was quietly disposed down a shallow well, up to their knees in water, and half frozen. In a third, a solitary man, who was the only inmate at the time, having fled, in his fright, to the house-top, was left there by the unfeeling thieves, who secured the trap-door within. But the last party who arrived had a bloody tale to tell: they had been to the house of Joseph Farr, the sexton to a neighboring ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... went to the reformatory. It was a beautiful building fitted with every appliance necessary . . . and one not necessary—a solitary confinement room. A young teacher, Mr. Conijn, a very decent chap, who could speak excellent English, showed me round. Every door we came to had to be opened with a key and locked behind us. Here there was more of military discipline than in the Observatiehuis, but none of the boys looked ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... alone, as always. She sighed as she remembered how lonely she had been all her life. Except Alden, there had never been anyone to whom she could talk freely. Even at school, the other children had, by common consent, avoided the solitary, silent child who sat apart, always, in brown gingham or brown alpaca, and taking refuge in the fierce pride that ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... in the day, when we left the cars at one of those solitary wayside station-houses. I shall never forget the look and feeling of the place. We had been for some miles going through a region of swamp or swampy woods, where sometimes the rails were laid on piles in the water. This little station-house was in the midst of such a region. The woods were thick ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Silverton and its duties ceased to be very irksome, until the anniversary of the morning when he had twined the lily in her hair, and looked such fancies in her heart. It was well for her that too many things were claiming her attention to allow of solitary regrets. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... thirteenth centuries each generation beheld at least one great army of crusaders gathering from all parts of the West and starting toward the Orient. Each year witnessed the departure of small bands of pilgrims or of solitary soldiers of the cross. For two hundred years there was a continuous stream of Europeans of every rank and station making their way into western Asia. If they escaped the countless hazards of the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... of the Faithful, there is a proverb that says, "the more one has, the more one wants." So it was with me. I could not rest as long as one solitary camel remained to the dervish; and returning to him I redoubled my prayers and embraces, and promises of eternal gratitude, till the last twenty were ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... as an open scroll, that magnificent, wonder-compelling cult of the skies, not the sealed book of other sciences. Since the days of the Chaldean, all men of receptive soul in solitary places, the sailor, the shepherd, the hunter, or the hermit, whether of the wilderness of nature or the isolation of crowds, have read there of the mystery of the infinite, of the order and symmetry of the plan of creation, of the proof of the existence of a God, who controls the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... a moment afterward, when I went into the schoolroom and found Dot fractious and weary, and Jack vainly trying to amuse him. Allan was busy, and the two children had passed a solitary morning. ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... places. Job seems to make allusion to this ancient custom, when he says,[293] "Would to God I had never been born: I should now sleep with the kings and great ones of the earth, who built themselves solitary places; like unto those who seek for treasure, and are rejoiced when they find a tomb;" doubtless because they hope to find ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Introductions, where the lady was self-possessed and bewitching, the gentleman monosyllabic and poker-like; others, where he was off-hand, ogling, and facetious; she, timid, credulous, and blushing. All kinds of costumes, from the solitary dress-coat, and low-necked ball-dress, worn respectively by Mr. and Mrs. Van Brueck from Albany, to the mixed tweed sack and trousers, and the checked gingham, adorning the Browne boy ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... mud, he sprang into the road, without previously going through the empty form of advising the driver of his intention, to pick it up. When he turned to speak to Lessingham, he thrust his elbow into my eye; and when he turned to speak to me, he thrust it into Lessingham's. Never, for one solitary instant, was he at rest, or either of us at ease. The wonder is that the gymnastics in which he incessantly indulged did not sufficiently attract public notice to induce a policeman to put at least a momentary period to our progress. Had speed not been of primary importance I should have insisted ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... and one of them, my friend Harry Bolles, who had his handkerchief up to his mouth, made a bee-line to meet me. From his lips I learned what had happened, which was this wise: The horny-handed pot-hunter, having presently pulled a solitary pickerel out upon the ice and freed it from his hook, turned aside to cut another piece of bait; whereupon my hopeful picked up the fish and popped it back into its native element without so much as a syllable of commentary; and ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... reach the reception apartments of the duchess, gave Nina a little thrill in spite of her antipathy. The Scorpas had belonged to the "Blacks," that is to the ecclesiasticals, and this room was not repaired in modern fashion, but hung in tattered purple silk. On one side stood a solitary piece of furniture—a great gilt throne upholstered in red velvet, and above it hung a portrait of Pope Alexander VI, the whole surmounted by a ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... some intervening bushes and looked, to see upon its crest a solitary figure seated on a very tired horse, for it panted and its head drooped. This figure, which was entirely hidden in a long cloak with a hood, appeared to be watching our camp just as a spy might do. Higgs lifted ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... Wimberley immediately took the lead in every detail of a dangerous sort, such as exploding a mine field, or hunting for traps and snares. His nerve was inexhaustible; his judgment sure. There was, after all, a simple key to the mystery. Wimberley had led a solitary life as a dynamiter, deep under ground. He was frightened of men, but danger was his element. When he saw other men recoil at the thing which bothered him not at all, he realized that he was the big man, though he only stood 5 feet 3 ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... graceful and perfectly appointed. Her dress was of dark green, of a most delicate shade, and with the clinging softness and texture of velvet. She wore a jacket of the same material, and a single brilliant ornament at her throat relieved the simplicity. In the hat, too, one big solitary emerald shone against the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shops were not open yet, but there were already some people walking about; occasionally a solitary carriage rumbled along ... there was no one walking in the garden. A gardener was in a leisurely way scraping the path with a spade, and a decrepit old woman in a black woollen cloak was hobbling across the garden walk. Sanin could not for one instant mistake this poor old creature for Gemma; ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... at this failure was so great that he compelled his daughter to propose another meeting in a solitary spot which he indicated, and where he made every preparation to secure the assassination of the imprudent monarch; but although she despatched the letter containing the assignation, Marie de Balzac found ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... month of May 1819. Of the high importance and value to navigators of the chronometer, Captain Parry had a striking and undoubted proof in the early part of his voyage. On the 24th of May he saw a small solitary crag, called Rockall, not far from the Orkney Islands. "There is," he observes, in this part of his journal, "no more striking proof of the infinite value of chronometers at sea, than the certainty with which a ship may sail directly ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... Oliver himself. These tales operated upon our imagination in the usual way; and many and many a moonlight evening, while wandering in those green lanes—now obliterated by Onslow and Thurloe Squares—and listening to the nightingales, have we watched the huge shadows cast by that solitary and melancholy-looking house, and, as we have said, associated it with the stern and grand Protector of England. Upon closer investigation, how grieved we have often been to discover the truth, for ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... little hut which contained our fellows, the scene was a different one. The three officers who commanded sat moodily over a wretched fire of wet wood; a solitary candle dimly lighted the dismantled room, where a table but ill-supplied with cheer stood unminded ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... are usually of a bright red colour, and covered with little warts; the leaves are small with many depressions on their upper sides like scars; the flowers are not always solitary, but frequently ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 4 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... of the heir-at-law of Major Abbott is nearly a solitary exception. Being about to retire from office, Major Abbott applied for a reserve of 210 valuable acres at Launceston, and 3,000 acres elsewhere. On the recommendation of Sorell, then lieutenant-governor, who stated minutely ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... as I saw the bowed head of her devoted mother, who was giving up her first-born child so young to lie in the tomb. But I was not prepared for the sight of the white casket as it was wheeled into the church, with the solitary mourner, her promised husband, slowly following all that was left of his bride-to-be, robed as for the bridal and her shimmering veil tied in a large bow knot and the bridal wreath placed lightly upon the casket with lilies of the valley and maiden-hair ferns, trailing in graceful festoons around ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... just a little cross with the nightingales, for they almost ceased singing; and considering that the spring had been a backward one, it seemed to me that their silence was coming too soon. I was not sufficiently regardful of the fact that their lays are solitary, as the poet has said; that they ask for no witness of their song, nor thirst for human praise. They were all nesting now. But if I heard them less, I saw much more of them, especially of one individual, the male bird of a couple that had made their nest in a hedge a stone's ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... were all in the darkened sitting-room—all, indeed, save Harriet, who sat in solitary state in the chamber above, her face pale and her heart beating almost to suffocation. It had been arranged that she was not to be seen until some sort of explanation had ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... from going; but this time, unfortunately, had not been hearkened to. Probably she set out along with him, on her way to Edinburgh to pass the time of his absence there, which was a place where news could be had more readily than beyond the sea in Fife. The solitary castle, high perched upon its hill, whence messengers could be seen approaching, or, better still, the King's banners coming back, was a fitter home for an anxious wife than the palace over the Firth among its woods. How long she remained there we are not told, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... they walked toward the solitary figure they had seen standing under the tree. "Lieutenant!" Phyllis called softly. The young officer did not reply. The girls drew nearer. The man ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... intended for straight wooden handles, and thus represent the earlier type. The blades are about 12-1/4 inches in length. It is important to note that the rivets are of two kinds: some are large and stout like the usual Irish form; and some have metal washers, like the solitary example found in Ireland (fig. 7), and which has caused some authorities to consider the Irish halberd blades somewhat later than we should care to place them. In general appearance these halberd blades from Stendal are ...
— The Bronze Age in Ireland • George Coffey
... nearly so, opening when mature. They vary in size from minute species to large fleshy ones, 3 to 4 inches in diameter. They are generally small, thin, and tough. They grow on twigs, leaves, dead wood, or on the ground. Many are stemless. They are both solitary and densely clustered. The color varies from pale brown to a dark gray, resembling, when moist, india-rubber cloth, and then, again, there are many of brilliant hues—red and orange. Some are erect, some are split down at the side like the ear of a hare. ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... anyone had to pass that way he was not allowed to pause for a moment at the door of the room upon which the interest of the political world was centred at the moment. Nearly all the time I was there I only saw the policeman at either end, and one solitary figure seated on the bench outside the door. It was the figure of a woman with a kind, homely-looking face, resting with her head upon her hand. She seemed not to be aware of, or at least not interested in what was going ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... recollections of his early days awakened by the death of this loved companion of his childhood, we may attribute some of the most heartfelt passages in his Deserted Village. Much of that poem, we are told, was composed this summer, in the course of solitary strolls about the green lanes and beautifully rural scenes of the neighborhood; and thus much of the softness and sweetness of English landscape became blended with the ruder features of Lissoy. It was in these lonely and subdued moments, when tender regret was half mingled with self-upbraiding, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... books rightly, was to go to them for help: to appeal to them, when our own knowledge and power of thought failed: to be led by them into wider sight—purer conception—than our own, and receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... like a besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some rumour of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge their curiosity; and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he divined them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear—solitary people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger: ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the table sat Commander Bainbridge, the executive officer, for the captain of a battleship dines in solitary state in his own apartments. On either side of the executive officer sat the other officers, in two long rows, according to their rank. On either side of the Commander were seated the officers with rank ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... crimson ribbon, beneath which it had been thrust into a net, with a long thing that had once been a curl on the shoulder of the white tumbled bodice worn over a gray skirt which looked as if it had done solitary duty for the five weeks since the marriage, and was but slightly relieved by a ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... half-past twelve, by all the clocks and watches of Powyss Place. Miss Stuart sat alone, in the pleasant boudoir or sitting-room, assigned her, her foot on an ottoman, a novel in her hand, a frown on her brow, and most beautifully dressed. In solitary state, at half-past ten, she had breakfasted, waited upon by the trimmest of English handmaidens in smiles and lace cap. The breakfast had been removed for over an hour, and still Miss ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... dealt largely in this jargon, but not lyrically; and one of the earliest and best specimens of a canting-song occurs in Brome's 'Jovial Crew;' and in the 'Adventures of Bamfylde Moore Carew' there is a solitary ode addressed by the mendicant fraternity to their newly-elected monarch; but it has little humour, and can scarcely be called a genuine canting-song. This ode brings us down to our own time; to the effusions of the illustrious Pierce Egan; to Tom Moore's Flights of 'Fancy;' to John Jackson's ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... Harbor, her mother to visit friends in Orange. Thomas walked with a straight spine always; but it stiffened to think that, without knowing a solitary item about his past, they trusted him with the run of the house. The first day there was work to do; the second day, a little less; the third, nothing at all. So he moped about the great house, lonesome as ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... of Grenada, heir to the Spanish throne, imprisoned by order of the Crown for fear he would aspire to the throne, was kept in solitary confinement in the old prison at the Palace of Skulls, Madrid. After thirty-three years in this living tomb, death came to his release, and the following remarkable researches, taken from the Bible, and marked with an old nail on ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... the best stone-wall builders, as the best wood-choppers, come from those solitary mountain towns; a tall, athletic, and hardy race, unerring with the axe as the Indian with the tomahawk; at stone-rolling, patient ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... valley of Brand lay deserted quite, and no sound brake the pervading quiet save the wind that moaned feebly through those dark and solitary woods wherein Death lay hid, so very silent—so very patient, but Death in grim and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... a "solitary horseman," wholly and ludicrously at the mercy of his steed, a mischievous young horse that had never felt the bridle and ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... in silence, save the gurgling of another stream, hid from sight the shadowy semblance of houses and barns and sheds. Their disappearance slumped her spirits again, for without them she was no more than a solitary speck in the vast loneliness. Their actual nearness could not comfort her. She was seized with a reasonless, panicky fear that by the time she crossed the stream and climbed the hill beyond they ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... pounded the glass-front with the silver top of her purse—the only thing in her possession which could make a noise, but still the chauffeur sat motionless as if he were entirely alone. She rose in her seat and called to the driver of a team as they passed it; she tried to get the attention of a solitary foot-passenger, but the car flew too fast, and if the men saw her she was out of their reach ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... all crowded to his imagination with a power which reduced his spiritual ambition and ecclesiastical pride, at least to the possession only of a divided empire. He had, therefore, with his book in his hand as usual, taken many solitary walks for the preceding few days, with the expectation of meeting Susan. He heard that for the last month or six weeks she had looked ill, been in low spirits, and lost her health. The cause of this change, though a ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... her brother, and endeavored—not without success, as is the way with women—to blind herself to his faults. She saw him seldom, however, and in her solitary musings in the far-off Manor House of Tilly, she invested him with all the perfections he did and did not possess; and turned a deaf, almost an angry ear, to tales ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... a solitary French vidette who had, in the hurry of their retreat, been left behind; and told him that he had best be off, as the whole army was in full ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... that is not so bad as it might be. It is one to one." But a second glance told him who this solitary pursuer was. "The devil!" he laughed—as one of Tasso's heroes might have laughed!—"The devil! how that man loves me!" He was confident that the white horse would ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... excellence of its climate than by the certainty that it possessed, in an especial degree, those sources of novel and sustained interest which conduce so essentially to the enjoyment and restoration of a solitary health-seeker. The climate disappointed me, but, though I found the country a study rather than a rapture, its interest ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... glaring fiercely, flashing its lamps, and making the pier tremble. Compartment after compartment of first-class carriages flit by, each lit up so refulgently as to show the crowded passengers, with their rugs and bundles dispersed about them. It is a curious change to see the solitary pier, jutting out into the waves, all of a sudden thus populated with grand company, flashing lights, and saloon-like splendour—ambassadors, it may be, generals for the seat of war, great merchants like the Rothschilds, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... and Court being out of town, this is a solitary place. The Danish Ambassador and the Dutch Resident are still here. The Spanish, German, and Muscovite Envoys are gone away. My business remains in a readiness to be signed, which is appointed upon the Queen's ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... up in the withered-pine tree, bobbing up and down, and calling to his mate in a tone of affected sweetness, "salute-her, salute-her," but when you come in sight he flies away with a harsh cry of "thief, thief, thief!" The kingfisher, ruffling his crest in solitary pride on the end of a dead branch, darts down the stream at your approach, winding up his red angrily as if he despised you for interrupting his fishing. And the cat-bird, that sang so charmingly while she thought herself unobserved, now tries ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... over all men, and is the same in all, it occurs more frequently in discourse, is cherished by society and conversation, and the blame and approbation, consequent on it, are thereby roused from that lethargy into which they are probably lulled, in solitary and uncultivated nature. Other passions, though perhaps originally stronger, yet being selfish and private, are often overpowered by its force, and yield the dominion of our breast to those social and ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... in Holy Church; for we see her left utterly alone! Thus the Truth showed, as I write you in another letter. And as the Bride has been left solitary, so is her bridegroom. Oh, sweetest father, I will not be silent to you of the great mysteries of God, but I will tell them the most briefly that I can, so far as the frail tongue can express them by telling. ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... and imprisoned land, is bursting down a steep slope in tremendous glaciers, bristling with ridges and spikes of ice and seamed by thousands of crevasses. Along the whole length of the coast we have seen no bare land or rock. Not as much as a solitary nunatak has appeared to relieve the surface of ice and snow. But the upward sweep of the ice-slopes towards the horizon and the ridges, terraces, and crevasses that appear as the ice approaches the sea tell of the hills ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... parts, can never, under any circumstances, be made of the least practical value; and the business of multiplying colonies by them, will be found far more laborious, uncertain and vexatious, than to rely on natural swarming. I do not know of a solitary practical Apiarian, who, on trial of this system, has not been compelled to abandon it, and allow the bees to swarm from his dividing hives in ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... sharp, solitary note, repeated at short intervals, and answered, in the same, manner, and with the exclamation "Hugh!" in a satisfied tone, the tired warrior seated himself for the first time since morning at the root of a large tree, holding his head in his dark sinewy ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... condemned were not placed together in one cell, as Tanya Kovalchuk had supposed they would be, but each was put in solitary confinement, and all the morning, until eleven o'clock, when his parents came, Sergey Golovin paced his cell furiously, tugged at his beard, frowned pitiably and muttered inaudibly. Sometimes he would stop ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... for all three of them in that meeting, an unreasoning tendency toward a closer intimacy, then Jane Withersteen believed she had been subject to a queer fancy. She imagined any child would have feared Lassiter. And Fay Larkin had been a lonely, a solitary elf of the sage, not at all an ordinary child, and exquisitely shy with strangers. She watched Lassiter with great, round, grave eyes, but showed no fear. The rider gave Jane a favorable report of cattle and horses; and as he took ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... strange and unreal to Second-Lieutenant Angus M'Lachlan, as he alighted from the train at railhead, and supervised the efforts of his solitary N.C.O. to arrange the members of his draft in a straight line. There were some thirty of them in all. Some were old hands—men from the First and Second Battalions, who had been home wounded, and had now been sent out to leaven ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... After a terrible struggle, the Romanists were banished from their dominions, and the ancient faith was restored. The churches rejoiced in their freedom, and they never forgot the lesson they had learned concerning the deception, the fanaticism, and the despotic power of Rome. Within their solitary realm they were content to remain, unknown to the rest ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... for the first time about one of my friends who was going to separate from her husband, and who, through my intervention, asked you to draw the plan of a villa in which she might spend the rest of her days in solitude? You entered so completely into this idea of a solitary retreat that your plan was almost perfect. Every time we met last year we talked about the "White Villa," as we called it, and it pleased us to share this little secret together. Nor were you less interested in the interior of the house; in making sketches for the furniture, and arranging the ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... gets drunkards to band together in clubs; and worldly people band together in clubs, and back one another up and concentrate their forces. All who see the curse and misery of the drink should sign, and not stand apart as solitary abstainers; they won't do the same good; it is by uniting together that the great work is done by God's blessing. A body of Christian abstainers united in the same work, and bound by the same pledge, attract others, and give them something to lean on and cling to: and that is one ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... The influence of that impressive calm Which rests upon them. Nothing that has life Is visible:—no solitary flock At will wide ranging through the silent Moor Breaks the deep-felt monotony; and all Is motionless save where the giant shades, Flung by the passing cloud, glide slowly o'er The ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... La Force, a prison situated between the Rue Payenne and the Rue des Ballets, where he was placed in solitary confinement. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... discover the woods about Wardour Castle, and amongst them the silvery gleam of another sheet of water. To the south-west is the giant spire of Salisbury, which since the fall of Fonthill Tower now reigns in solitary stateliness over these vast regions of down and desert. Stourton Tower presents itself to the north, whilst to the west, in the extreme distance, several high hills are traced which have ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... the Good. It will make you welcome everywhere, and everywhere it will make you an instrument to good. The lantern of Diogenes is a poor guide when compared with the Light God hath set in the heavens; a Light which shines into the solitary cottage and the squalid alley, where the children of many vices are hourly exchanging deeds of kindness; a Light shining into the rooms of dingy warehousemen and thrifty clerks, whose hard labour and hoarded coins are for wife and child and friend; shining into prison and workhouse, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... likes to own something in his or her own right. The custom and prejudice that, since the abolition of slavery, make wives the solitary exception to the rule that the "laborer is worthy of his hire," are unworthy of a progressive age. The idea that such having and holding will alienate a good woman from the husband who permits it, degrades the sex. ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... about eighteen miles from Florence, owes its original to Giovanni Gualberto, a Tuscan nobleman, whose brother Hugo having been killed by a relation in the year 1015, he resolved to avenge his death; but happening to meet the assassin alone and in a solitary place, whither he appeared to have been driven by a sense of guilt, and seeing him suddenly drop down at his feet, and without uttering a word produce from his bosom a crucifix, holding it up in a supplicating gesture, with look submissively imploring, he felt ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... dull season, a solitary traveler from the North arrived at the nearest post-town to Mount Morven. A sketchbook and a color-box formed part of his luggage, and declared him to be an artist. Falling into talk over his dinner with the waiter ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... at that time a "reserved and solitary" youth, tall, spare, dark complexioned and usually dressed in black, who used to be seen hanging about the Close and talking through the railings of his garden to some of the Grammar School boys. He ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... delights even Lord Salisbury's political foes. Replying to the very clever speech of Lord Ribblesdale, Lord Salisbury described the speech as a confession, and all confessions, he added, were interesting, from St. Augustine to Rousseau, from Rousseau to Lord Ribblesdale. That, I say, was the solitary gleam. For the rest, it was an historical essay—with very bad history and worse conclusions; and the whole spirit was as bad as it could be. The Irish were still the enemy such as they appear in the bloody ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... a narrow bridge over an arroyo. Dobe lifted and leaped forward, as though in a race. From behind came the quick patter of hoofs. One of Sneed's men had evidently managed to get his horse loose from the reata. A solitary house, far out on the level, flickered past. Bartley glanced back. The house door opened. A ray of yellow ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... my brothers to the fire. A solitary Phoenix, I survive, and at cost of a hundred gold pieces ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that led to the right; and, after riding about two miles further, arrived at the solitary home of the hunter—a log-cabin surrounded by a clearing. I soon found he was its sole occupant—as he was its owner—some half-dozen large dogs being the only living creatures that were present to bid us welcome. A ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... we quitted school for good arrived. Aubrey had just left me for solitary prayers, and I was sitting alone by my fire, when Montreuil entered gently. He sat himself down by me, and, after giving me the salutation of the evening, sank into a silence which I ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vaguely estimated how far they were dependent on gifts and court fees for the means of living with appropriate state. John Knyvet, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, has L40 and 100 marks per annum. The annual fee of Thomas de Ingleby, the solitary puisne judge of the King's Bench at that time, was at first 40 marks; but he obtained an additional L40 when the 'fees' were raised, and he received moreover L20 a year as a judge of assize. The Chief of the Common Pleas, Robert de Thrope, received L40 per annum, payable during ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson |
