"Stark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and refuse of the camp, or crouched over small fires as if it were bitter cold. The dogs started up yelping, for a blackfellow's dog doesn't know how to bark properly, as the white men passed, but their masters took no notice. A stark naked gin, with a fillet of greasy skin bound round her head, and a baby slung in a net on her back, came whining to Turner with outstretched hands. She had mixed with the stockkeepers before, and knew a ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... for my deliverance from the stark death that had been so near me all day, I looked up to heaven and remembered the blessed birth eighteen centuries ago when Jesus Christ came to the earth ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... myself, "I may now bid farewell to life, these cursed witches will convey me to the pantry or cellar of some nobleman, and there leave me, to pay with my neck for their robberies; or they will abandon me stark naked, to freeze to death upon the sea-brink of old Shire Caer, {3} or some other cold, distant place;" but on reflecting that all the old hags whom I had once known had long been dead and buried, and perceiving ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... the cab, Clay was already in the right-hand control seat and was running down the instrument panel check. The sergeant lifted the hatch door between the two control seats and punched on a light to illuminate the stark compartment at the lower front end of the car. A steel grill with a dogged handle on the upper side covered the opening under the hatch cover. Two swing-down bunks were racked up against the walls ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... of death fell over the fort, broken only by the groans of some poor, wounded fellow. The people within the fort went about talking in whispers. Three bodies, which they had not had time to bury, lay, stark and silent under the shed, and there were nine fresh graves on the hillside. In addition, more than thirty of the defenders were disabled ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... in the heavens; the gondola drifted away to the northward; the islands of the lagoons seemed to rise and sink with the light palpitations of the waves like pictures on the undulating fields of banners; the stark rigging of a ship showed black against the sky, the Lido sank from sight upon the east, as if the shore had composed itself to sleep by the side of its beloved sea to the music of the surge that gently beat its sands; the yet leafless boughs of the trees above me stirred themselves ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... At the time of the commencement of the armistice and the German retirement "Simplicimus" published a picture of a "Farewell to Strasbourg." It was a stormy sunset and late evening, and the black silhouette of the very memorable cathedral, the stark and ragged grandeur of that cathedral and its spire which looks as if nothing exists in Strasbourg but it, stood for the significance of the city. Some German horse-soldier symbolized the last to go, and lifting his hat, took one last look at the place, and said, ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... weeks since the last one was shot outside the Japanese lines at night, and now there is nothing but regular soldiery encamped around us. This last Boxer was a mere boy of fifteen, who had stripped stark naked and smeared himself all over with oil after the manner of Chinese thieves, so that if he came into our clutches no hands would be able to hold him tight. The most daring ones have always been boys. He had crept fearlessly right up to the Japanese posts armed ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... ranges, at the foot of an ironbark, The bonnie, winsome laddie was lying stiff and stark; For the Reckless mare had smashed him against a leaning limb, And his comely face was battered, and his ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... No, if other things as great in the Church, and in the rule of life both economical and political, be not looked into and reformed, we have looked so long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin hath beaconed up to us that we are stark blind. There be who perpetually complain of Schisms and Sects, and make it such a calamity that any man dissents from their maxims.... Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... me cease, for why should I prolong My notes, and vex a Singer with a Song? Oh thou with pen perpetual in thy fist! Dubbed for thy sins a stark Miscellanist, So pleased the printer's orders to perform For Messrs. Longman, Hurst and Rees and Orme. Go—Get thee hence to Paternoster Row, Thy patrons wave a duodecimo! (Best form for letters from a distant land, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... had witnessed their quick kills in the wilds, but this stark ferocity of spitting, howling rage was new. They answered that challenge from the camp, streaking out from under his hands. Yet both animals skidded to a stop before they passed the first dome and were lost in the gloom. A spark glowed for an instant to ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... distance. Mr. Beaseley, C.E., in a lecture on coast-fog signals, May 24, 1872, speaks of these bells as unusually large, saying that they and the one at Ballycottin are the largest on their coasts, the only others which compare with them being those at Stark Point and South Stack, which weigh 313/4 cwt. and 411/2 cwt. respectively. Cunningham, speaking of the fog-bells at Bell Rock and Skerryvore lighthouses, says he doubts if either bell has been the means of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... his senses, perhaps even imperceptible to his instruments, but perceptible to each other, and so to some known ray at the end of the scale. Langley seemed prepared for anything, even for an indeterminable number of universes interfused — physics stark mad ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... a wild and stark and empty place, as you must perceive. And the far side did be great miles off, as I did say; and everywhere there was abundance of rock and lonesomeness. And before me there went the great and dim length of the gorge, and ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... lighted his cigarette and exhaled his first satisfying puff of smoke, not in rings this time, he took the cigarette from his mouth, and with his eyes on its blazing end expressed his thought with stark simplicity. ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... a hut-ward is—to the aesthetic eye—a hideous structure. Knowing what it stands for, the science, the tenderness and the fundamental civilisation which it represents, we may descry, behind its stark geometrical outlines, a real nobility and beauty. Entering a typical hut-ward you behold thirty beds, fifteen on each side of the room. Between each pair of beds is a locker in which the patient stows his belongings. (Woe ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... said to madam (as she called me), that you was very good, and very forgiving. No, said he, I have been stark naught; and it is she, I hope, will be very forgiving. But all this preamble is to tell you, Mrs. Jewkes, that now I desire you'll study to oblige her, as much as (to obey me) you was forced to disoblige her before. ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... plundered, borne off was booty. His boon was granted that wretched man; and his ruler saw first time what was fashioned in far-off days. When the dragon awoke, new woe was kindled. O'er the stone he snuffed. The stark-heart found footprint of foe who so far had gone in his hidden craft by the creature's head. — So may the undoomed easily flee evils and exile, if only he gain the grace of The Wielder! — That warden of gold o'er the ground went seeking, greedy to find ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... immovable and stark in the open space around the Circus—spoke mutely of combats that had been fierce and bloody: but the people had remained victorious; the people held their ground. One hundred thousand fists and staves, a few agricultural and building implements had asserted ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Fiesolani are not Florentines, people of the valley, but Etruscans, people of the hills, and that you may see in half an hour any day in their windy piazzas and narrow climbing ways. Rough, outspoken, stark men little women keen and full of salt, they have not the assured urbanity of the Florentine, who, while he scorns you in his soul as a barbarian, will trade with you, eat with you, and humour you, certainly without betraying ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... horizon, but it gave no light, and was more oppressive than the night; it made the darkness only darker; it was a deathly light. The clouds came down almost to earth. The hedges grew enormous and moved. The gaunt trees were like grotesque old men. The sides of the wood were stark white. The darkness moved. There were dwarfs sitting in the ditches, lights in the grass, fearful flying things in the air, shrill cries of insects coming from nowhere. Jean-Christophe was always in anguish, expecting some fearsome ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the forenoon, a man came to Emain Macha. He was grim and swarthy, with great hands and arms. He made no reverence to Concobar or to any of the Ultonians, but standing stark before them, spake thus, not fluently:—"My master, Culain, high smith of all Ulster, bids thee to supper this night, O Concobar; and he wills thee to know that because he has not wide territories, and flocks, and herds, and tribute-paying peoples, ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... all the charm of diction, not all the ingenious theories in the world, can for a moment be set in the balance against rigid exactness, even if some of the concomitants of rigid exactness are such as to spoil the subject for popular treatment. The truth, the stark naked truth, the truth without so much as a loin-cloth on, should surely be the investigator's sole aim when, having discovered a new set of facts, he undertakes to present them to the ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... was flooded in moonlight and the birch trees wavered their stark shadows across it like supplicating arms. Suddenly I heard the soft padded sound of snow falling upon snow, to slowly perceive a figure, the slender figure of a young child attempting to arouse itself almost at ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... reduced to a trickle among the rocks of their beds. The uplands were covered with a mat of baked, dead grass. The second growth of stunted timber, showing everywhere the scars of the wasting rapacity of man, stood stark and wilted to the roots. All roving life, from the cattle to the woodchucks and even the field mice, had moved down to hide itself in the thicker growths near the water courses or had stolen away into the depths of the ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... the armed fugitives from the town. The compounds and huts were full of wounded and unwounded dervishes, most of the latter having Remingtons and waist-belts full of cartridges, besides carrying spears and swords. In the open thoroughfares there were many bodies of women and children lying stark and stiff. The majority of these victims were young girls. Many of the poor creatures had evidently been running towards the river to try and escape when caught and killed by jealous and cruel masters or husbands. The scenes were shocking, the smells abominable ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... witch-dens of ancient Edinburgh, the bat-haunted castles of Drachenfels or Rheinstein, you will come at nothing built of man more informed with the soul of the Middle Ages, more drenched with their peculiar savour of mystery, than these stark keeps whose crests and girouettes rise above encircling woods or frown upon mirroring rivers over the length and breadth of the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Judging from the stark horror which I experienced myself, I doubted, now, if Burke could sustain the role allotted him. In beneath the slightly raised window came a hand, perceptible to me despite the darkness of the room. It seemed to project from the black silhouette ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... day is sunny and the ground bare, you meet him at all points and hear him at all hours. At sunset, on the tops of the tall Maples, with look heavenward, and in a spirit of utter abandonment, he carols his simple strain. And sitting thus amid the stark, silent trees, above the wet, cold earth, with the chill of winter still in the air, there is no fitter or sweeter songster in the whole round year. It is in keeping with the scene and the occasion. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... involves chance. Every man realizes it, and even the most bombastic bachelor has moments in which he humbly whispers: "There, but for the grace of God, go I." But that chance has a sugarcoating; it is swathed in egoistic illusion; it shows less stark and intolerable chanciness, so to speak, than the bald hazard of the die. Thus men prefer it, and shrink from the other. In the same way, I have no doubt, the majority of foxes would object to choosing lots to determine the victim of a projected fox-hunt. ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... man of God was lamenting the deplorable state of the church of Vervignole in the cloister of the cathedral, his meditations were disturbed by strange shrieks, and he saw a woman, stark naked, walking on all fours, with a peacock's feather for a tail. As she came nearer, she barked, sniffed, and licked the ground. Her fair head was covered with mud, and her whole body was a mass of filth. In this unhappy creature ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... behind him. Everyone composed himself for miserable sleep. Everyone except Judas, who went on talking to Rockyfeller, and Rockyfeller, who proceeded to light one of his candles and begin a pleasant and conversational evening. The Fighting Sheeney lay stark-naked on a paillasse between me and his lord. The Fighting Sheeney told everyone that to sleep stark-naked was to avoid bugs (whereof everybody, including myself, had a goodly portion). The Fighting Sheeney was, however, quieted by the planton's order; whereas Rockyfeller ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... 1739, under the name of Winnisimmet, Chelsea formed a part of Boston, but in that year it was made a township; it became a city in 1857. In May 1775 a British schooner in the Mystic defended by a force of marines was taken by colonial militia under General John Stark and Israel Putnam,—one of the first conflicts of the War of Independence. A terrible fire swept the central part of the city on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... nothing in what direction. Exert your instinctive powers of vegetation and emotion; let your philosophy itself be a frank expression of this flux, the roar of the ocean in your little sea-shell, a momentary posture of your living soul, not a stark adoration of ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... cloudy thoughts that moved in some unseen heaven cast exquisitely delicate changes of light and shade as they floated over it. Percivale strode on as if he bore a feather behind him. I did wish we were at the top, for my arms began to feel like iron-cables, stiff and stark—only I was afraid of my fingers giving way. My heart was beating uncomfortably too. But Percivale, I felt almost inclined to quarrel with him before it was over, he strode on so unconcernedly, turning every corner of the zigzag where I expected him to propose a halt, and striding on again, as if ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... abundance. The battering-rams breached the wall and found new walls rising just within. The besieged fished with iron hooks from the top of the walls, and hauled the captured Crusaders alive to their death at the summit. Stripped, they were used as stones for catapults, and stark naked were fired back into the Christian camp. A Goliath among the Saracens being killed, the Crusaders were greatly heartened, and, having gained some advantages, redoubled their attack. The enemy's supplies by way of the lake were cut off, and their resistance grew feebler. ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... table, a work bench deserted, a store smashed and turned to debris and left to petrify as the shell wrecked it—a thousand little details of a life that had gone, the soul vanished from a town, leaving it stark and dead, mere wood and stone and iron—this was the Verdun that we saw in the twilight after the Germans had ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... his mother's lap, by Michael Angelo. The figure of Christ is as much emaciated, as if he had died of a consumption: besides, there is something indelicate, not to say indecent, in the attitude and design of a man's body, stark naked, lying upon the knees of a woman. Here are some good pictures, I should rather say copies of good pictures, done in Mosaic to great perfection; particularly a St. Sebastian by Domenichino, and Michael the Archangel, from a painting ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... A long time had passed since anybody had spoken. A long time had passed since anybody had moved. Indeed, it, looked almost as if they would never speak or move again. So bruised and bloodless of skin were they, so bleak and sharp of feature, so stark and hollow of eye, so rigid and moveless of limb that they might have been corpses. Mentally, too, they were almost moribund. They stared vacantly, straight out to sea. They stared with the unwinking fixedness of those whose gaze is caught in ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... but when one sees a Malay pirate, there is no mistaking her for anything else. At night it is generally a stark calm, and whether one is lying idle, with the sails hanging flat against the mast, or whether one is at anchor, one knows that they can't come upon us under sail, and on a still night one can hear the beat of their oars miles away. There is never any fear of being ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... jes' like people sell hosses now. I saw a lot of slaves sold on de auction block. Dey would strip 'em stark naked. A nigger scarred up or whaled an' welted up wus considered a bad nigger an' did not bring much. If his body wus not scarred, he brought a good price. I saw a lot of slaves whupped an' I was whupped myself. Dey whupped me ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... mad?" cried I, losing all patience, and unconsciously raising my whip as I spoke—"are you stark staring mad, to keep us talking here about flour and butter, and fips and levies, while the rain is falling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... untruss, and so the other and Coleman stood still; by and by the other keeper desired Coleman to hold his horse, for he had occasion also: Coleman immediately took one of their swords, and ran through two of the horses, killing them stark dead; gets upon the other, with one of their swords; 'Farewell, gentlemen,' quoth he, 'tell my master I have no mind to be whipped in Leicestershire,' and so went his way. The two keepers in all haste went to a gentleman's ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... barns an' big walnut-trees, right away to the left, sir. She's own niece to Poyser's wife, an' they'll be fine an' vexed at her for making a fool of herself i' that way. But I've heared as there's no holding these Methodisses when the maggit's once got i' their head: many of 'em goes stark starin' mad wi' their religion. Though this young woman's quiet enough to look at, by what I can make out; I've not ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... long, winding trail and over another summit to Yucca Pass Casey dreamed, while the stark, scarred buttes on either side regarded him with enigmatic calm. Since the first wagon train had worried over the rough deserts on their way to California, the bleak hills of Nevada had listened while prospectors ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... no knowing beyond his own; though, for his comfort, I said that it might be the wind. Yet, at that, he shook his head; for indeed, it was plain that it could not be by such agency, for there was a stark calm. ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... out in the matter of thy justification, but quarrellest with the doctrine of free grace, or else dost wrest it out of its place to serve thy Pharisaical designs; saying, "God, I thank thee, I am not as other men"; fathering upon thyself, yea, upon God and thyself, a stark lie; for thou art as other men are, though not in this, yet in that; yea, in a far worse condition than the most of men are. Nor will it help thee any thing to attribute this thy goodness to the God of heaven: for that is but a mere toying; the truth is, the God that thou intendest, is nothing ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Stark, Dr., on the death-rate in towns and rural districts; on the influence of marriage on mortality; on the higher mortality of males ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... with convulsive thrills, and the dark Of her spirit wavered like water thrilled with light; And my heart leaped up in longing to plunge its stark Fervour within the pool of her twilight, Within her spacious soul, to ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... neared and reached the horizon. There was no change in the star-studded sky. There were no sunset colorings. The incandescent brightness on the mountains was not lessened in the least. Only the direction of the stark black ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... story thus: "But when they opened the doors they found Cleopatra stark dead, laid upon a bed of gold, attired and arrayed in her royal robes, and one of her two women, who was called Iris, dead at her feet, and the other woman (called Charmion) half dead, and trembling, trimming the diadem which Cleopatra wore upon ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... matter of thy justification, but quarrelest with the doctrine of free grace, or else dost wrest it out of its place to serve thy Pharisaical designs; saying, "God I thank thee, I am not as other men;" fathering upon thyself, yea, upon God and thyself a stark lie; for thou art as other men are, though not in this, yet in that; yea, in a far worse condition than the most of men are. Nor will it help thee anything to attribute this thy goodness to the God of heaven; ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... time, as Odo had hoped, they were putting off from the shore in a blunt-nosed fishing-boat which was the lightest craft the village could provide. The lake was stark calm, and the two boatmen, silhouetted against the moonlight, drove the boat forward with even vigorous strokes. Fulvia, shivering in the autumnal chill, had drawn her hood close about her and sat silent, her face in shade. Measured by their secret ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... world-wide, widespread, far-famed, extensive; wholesale; many &c. 102. goodly, noble, precious, mighty; sad, grave, heavy, serious; far gone, arrant, downright; utter, uttermost; crass, gross, arch, profound, intense, consummate; rank, uninitiated, red-hot, desperate; glaring, flagrant, stark staring; thorough-paced, thoroughgoing; roaring, thumping; extraordinary.; important &c. 642; unsurpassed &c. (supreme) 33; complete &c. 52. august, grand, dignified, sublime, majestic &c. (repute) 873. vast, immense, enormous, extreme; inordinate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... as a poet, year by year, we come to Thoroughfares (1908-14). These are short poems more conventional in form than their predecessors, but just as stark and grim as chronicles of life. Every one remembers the torture inflicted on women in the good-old-times, when they were strapped to posts on the flats at low tide, and allowed to watch the cruel slowness of approaching death. The same ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... now he was to be confronted with a monstrous and insupportable truth—the craven cowardice of the man who had been eligible to service in army or navy, and who had evaded it. In camp and trench and dug-out he had heard of the army of slackers. And of all the vile and stark profanity which the war gave birth to on the lips of miserable and maimed soldiers, that flung on ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... {113} thoughts for his home. Great is therefore his surprise at finding himself repulsed by his own father, who not recognizing him, believes him to be an impostor. All the young man's protestations are of no avail, for in his knapsack are found the papers of a certain Wilhelm Stark, for whom he is now mistaken.—When silly Peter perceives him, he believes him to be the Grenadier, who had so ill-treated him at the wedding, though in reality it was Schwarzbart. Gustav is shut up in a large garden-house of his father's; ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... line, so beautiful when it describes the modesty of Eve, in its new context becomes stark nonsense. It is Ulysses who is "reluctant," and Calypso who is "amorous." The misuse of Milton's line makes the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... and after grinning at the four men, says he to them, 'Bid your daughters and your brides farewell for awhile. You,' says he to the youngest, 'needn't fear, you'll recover your princess all in good time, and you and she will be as happy as the day is long. Bad people, if they were rolling stark naked in gold, would not be rich. Good-bye.' Away they sailed, and the ladies stretched out their hands, but weren't able ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... in perilous plight were we, Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain, And half of the rest of us maimed for life In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife; And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold, And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent; And the masts and the rigging ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... climes, the polar bear Protects himself with fat and hair, Where snow is deep and ice is stark, And half the year is cold and dark; He still survives a clime like that By growing fur, by growing fat. These traits, O bear, which thou transmittest Prove the ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... thing a rose, and plant it in a child's garden! The only place where it might fitly grow is by the side of the road that led Childe Roland to the Dark Tower: between the bit of "stubbed ground" and the marsh near to the "palsied oak," with its roots set in the "bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth." ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... He lay stiff and stark upon the sofa, with a few white froth bubbles gathered upon his lips, and a letter clasped tightly in his hand. It seemed that he was not yet dead, for a physician, who had been hastily summoned, was attempting to force open his mouth, as if to administer a restorative ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... across the strait, between Ticonderoga and Mount Independence, the Americans waited for the enemy to come and attack them, for with such leaders as Gates and Stark they felt confident ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... strength encountered strength, Thus long, but unprevailing—the event Of that portentous fight appeared at length. Until the lamp of day was almost spent It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent, Hung high that mighty serpent, and at last Fell to the sea, while o'er the continent, With clang of wings and scream, the eagle past, Heavily borne away on ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... copied for me, to look at; and one day, who should come in but Elliott, who was staying with his governor on the West Cliff, where the old gentleman has taken a house. Well, you know, I told you what a madcap fellow Poole is; and what should he do, but tell Elliott that I was going stark mad for a girl that couldn't have me because her dad had engaged her to somebody else; and then he shewed him the music that was lying on the table with your name on it. So you may guess how Elliott stared, and all the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... Revolution of 1776 ten distinct settlements were made by colonists from Londonderry, N.H., all of which became towns of influence and importance. Notable among the descendants of these colonists were Matthew Thornton, Henry Knox, Gen. John Stark, Hugh McCulloch, Horace Greeley, Gen. George B. McClellan, Salmon P. Chase, and Asa Gray. From 1771 to 1773 "the whole emigration from Ulster is estimated at 30,000 of whom ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... heart-sickening. Children began their life in the coal mines at five, six, or seven years of age. Girls and women worked like boys and men, they were less than half clothed, and worked alongside of men who were stark naked. There were from twelve to fourteen working hours in the twenty-four, and these were often at night. Little girls of six or eight years of age made ten to twelve trips a day up steep ladders to the ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... in velveteens unexpectedly found himself doing as he was told. There was a suggestion of compulsion about the gray-blue eyes fastened on his, something in the clamp of the strong jaw that brought him up for a moment against stark reality. ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window. Only with morning comes the real throb of the passion and the craving in its stark horror. Then you can admire the real gambler, who has neither eaten, slept, thought, nor lived, he has so smarted under the scourge of his martingale, so suffered on the rack of his desire for a coup of trente-et-quarante. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... day comes; thy kisses on my face Shall seal all things that are old, outworn; and anger and regret Shall fade as the dreams and days shall fade, and in thy salt embrace, When thy fierce caresses blind mine eyes and my limbs grow stark and set, All that I know in all my mind shall no more have a place: The weary ways of men and one ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... nothing at all in that direction to excite any attention. The distant mountains provided a stark, dark blue background. Up their foothills and lower slopes was a thick furring of trees with foliage of so deep a green as to register black from this distance. And on the level country was the lighter blue-green of the other variety of wood edging the open ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... Gen. Stark, of Mississippi, who fell at Sharpsburg, was an acquaintance of mine. His daughters were educated with mine at St. Mary's Hall, Burlington, N. J.—and were, indeed, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... on down or cliff Let no soft curves intrude Of a woman's silhouette, But show the escarpments stark and stiff As in utter solitude; So shall you ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... just before, and since, when he made his Escape from his Enemy Indians at Christanna, where his Queen and abundance of his People were slain, and he ty'd in order to be carried away Prisoner; yet broke loose, and ran directly Home several hundred Miles stark-naked, without Arms or Provision, in the Month of March, when the Trees afforded no Fruit; neither did he go near any other Nation, till he got to his own; therefore I suppose Roots were his Provision, and Water ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... party went down the great staircase of Gaunt House, the morning had risen stark and clear over the black trees of the square; the skies were tinged with pink; and the cheeks of some of the people at the ball,—ah, how ghastly they looked! That admirable and devoted Major above all,—who had been for hours by Lady ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the first explosion was still grumbling back in Epping Forest when all Walthamstow, rubbing its eyes, tumbled out into the black streets. Men, women, children, all ludicrously clotheless, swarmed aimlessly like bees in an overturned hive. Stark terror gripped them. It distorted their faces and set their legs quivering. The dullest among these toil-dulled people knew what that explosion meant, knew that it was part of the punishment promised by the German foe. "Gott strafe England" had come to pass. But they could not understand ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... he could see the Beecham's house, stark white in the early morning light. It was after seven o'clock, he thought, and the family would soon be at breakfast. A small stream of smoke drifted up from the kitchen chimney, wavering and drooping in ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... at her from the low mantel. She caught her breath, and the deep silence was broken by the metallic tongue that dirged out "twelve." The last stroke of the bronze hammer echoed drearily; the old year lay stark and cold on its bier; Munin flapped his dusky wings with a long, sepulchral, blood-curdling hoot, and the dying man opened his dim, failing eyes, and fixed them for the ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... smell of hunger was in the air. The armed men were emaciated. Lights came on, and stark, harsh shadows lay black upon the ground. Calhoun's captors were uniformed, but the uniforms hung loosely upon them. Where the lights struck upon their faces, their cheeks were hollow. They were cadaverous. And there were the splotches of pigment ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... Dick, and when I saw her—I went stark, staring, raving mad over her. She is the most beautiful, wonderful girl I ever saw. Her name is Mercedes Castaneda, and she belongs to one of the old wealthy Spanish families. She has lived abroad and in Havana. She speaks French as well ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... some chance escaped from the guardians which the good Earl of Kent had put over him to take care of him in his lunacy, was found by some of Cordelia's train, wandering about the fields near Dover, in a pitiable condition, stark mad, and singing aloud to himself, with a crown upon his head which he had made of straw, and nettles, and other wild weeds that he had picked up in the corn-fields. By the advice of the physicians, Cordelia, though earnestly desirous of seeing her father, was prevailed ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... a stark Spanish drama, too intense for any but Latins, foreign; debauched vaudeville, incredibly vulgar; or at the concert-hall, sentimental Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon songs, with an audience of grave uncritical exiles—a ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... came along the great thoroughfare dressed like Eve before the fall. We would have called her thirteen at home; but here girls who look thirteen are often not more than nine, in reality. Occasionally we saw stark-naked men of superb build, bathing, and making no attempt at concealment. However, an hour's acquaintance with this cheerful custom reconciled the pilgrims to it, and then it ceased to occasion remark. Thus easily ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Alone, I was stark alone, and the shadows were each a fear; And thinly I laughed, but once, for the echoes were strange to hear; And the wind in the hallways howled as a green-eyed wolf might cry, And I heard my heart: I must look on the face of a ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... actions, as, to the pile of clothing in her arms, she added the revolver that lay on the blanket, and, returning to the little trap-door in the ceiling, hid them away; but her brain was whirling again in a turmoil of doubt. This was madness, utter, stark, blind madness, this thing that she was doing! It was suicide, literally that, nothing less than suicide for one in Gypsy Nan's condition to attempt this thing. But the woman would certainly die here, too, with out medical assistance—only ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... writing of the prophets and apostles abound with tropes, and metaphors, types, and allegories, parables, and dark speeches; and are as much, nay, much more unintelligible in many places, than the writings of the ancients.' It is well this author, who talks of people being stark Bible-mad, stopped here; and did not with a celebrated wit * cry, 'The truly illuminated books are the darkest of all.' The writer above mentioned supposes it impossible, that God's will should be fully revealed by books; 'except,' says he, 'it might be said perhaps ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... judgment, in its simplicity, purity, and integrity,—private judgment, all private judgment, and nothing but private judgment,—is held by very few persons indeed; and that the great mass of the population are either stark unbelievers in it, or deplorably dark about it; and that even the minority who are in a manner faithful to it, have glossed and corrupted the true sense of it by a miserably faulty reading, and hold, not the ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... you face beneath its crown of thorn That figure stark against the smoking skies, The arms outstretched, the sacred head forlorn, And those ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... covered only with a blanket), rushed excitedly into the crowd of soldiers and servants. When they tried to stop him, and seized hold of his blanket, he gave a cry of terror, and took to flight like the others, leaving his garment in the hands of the soldiers. And so he ran stark-naked, with desperate leaps, and his bare body glistened strangely ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... annihilator of time and space must camp out under the blue and hunt for his dead among the rubbish. Given a violent convulsion (only just such a slipping of strata as carelessly piled volumes will accomplish in a book-case) and behold, the heir of all the ages is stark, raving mad—a brute among the dishevelled hills. Set a hundred of the world's greatest spirits, men of fixed principles, high aims, resolute endeavour, enormous experience, and the modesty that these attributes bring—set ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... Wadham-Colledge, being alone in a Boat (without a Water-man) having newly thrust off from shore, at Medley, to come homewards, standing near the Head of the Boat, were presently with a stroke of Thunder or Lightning, both struck off out of the Boat into the Water, the one of them stark dead, in whom, though presently taken out of the Water (having been by relation, scarce a minute in it) there was not discerned any appearance of life, sense, or motion: the other was stuck fast ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... tragedy [('vide The Rehearsal'), 'British Bards'], unfortunately takes away the merit of originality from the dialogue between Messieurs the Spirits of Flood and Fell in the first canto. Then we have the amiable William of Deloraine, "a stark moss-trooper," videlicet, a happy compound of poacher, sheep-stealer, and highwayman. The propriety of his magical lady's injunction not to read can only be equalled by his candid acknowledgment of his independence of the trammels of spelling, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... e'er, with finger of thine, Strike asunder one limb of mine; {f:16} I am for thee too woxen and stark, As thou, to thy cost, shalt quickly mark." Look out, ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... pale rays upon thousands of crumbling skeletons, bleached by unnumbered suns, picked bare by dead and gone generations of carrion, white, rigid, sinister. Detached skulls lay in heaps, grinning derisively. Stark digits pointed threateningly, as if the old warriors still guarded their domain. Other frames lay face downward, as though the broken teeth had bitten the dust in battle. Slender forms lay prone, their arms encircling cooking utensils, beautiful in form and colour. Great bowls and urns, ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... Osgood, son of our Lieutenant, a quiet, fair-haired, pleasant-spoken boy, but as brave and earnest as his gallant father, sank under the combination of hunger and cold. One stinging morning he was found stiff and stark, on the hard ground, his bright, frank blue eyes glazed over ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... meantime Amy was next door to stark-mad about her; she durst not see her at my lodgings for her life; and she went days without number to Spitalfields, where she used to come, and to her former lodging, and could never meet with her. At length she took up a mad resolution that she would go directly to the captain's house in Redriff ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... which are to effect this laudable purpose. What else can be the meaning of our preacher's taking upon himself to denounce the sentiments of the most serious professors in great cities, as vitiated and stark-naught, of relegating religion to his native glens, and pretending that the hymn of praise or the sigh of contrition cannot ascend acceptably to the throne of grace from the crowded street as well as from the barren rock or silent valley? Why put this affront upon ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... aghast, amazed that the Almighty did not personally intervene to save a man from his own inefficiency. He began to grasp the hitherto unnoted fact that meals and a bed and fires and clothes and all the other stark necessities involved labor of the hands, skilful ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and glittering. In the church-yard, upon some of the pews arranged for the purpose, had been placed the lifeless bodies of the three men who had died during the night. There they lay, stark and stiff. Upon these cold, dead faces no mourners' tears would fall; no friends would bear with reverend tread these honored forms to their last resting-place. Rough pine boxes would soon cover the faces once ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... lay on the deck, bound up my wound for me with a kindness I did not expect from him. As soon as he was somewhat recovered, he told me to come with him and examine into the state of affairs. Many of the crew lay stiff and stark on deck—their last fight over. We carried the water to the few who remained alive, and very grateful they were for it. Among the killed was the first mate; but poor Charley I did not see. I observed another man moving forward. I crawled up to him. He was Edward Seton. I ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... him to a room and told him to strip for a bath; after which he had to walk down a long gallery, past the grated cell doors of the inmates of the jail. This was a great event to the latter—the daily review of the new arrivals, all stark naked, and many and diverting were the comments. Jurgis was required to stay in the bath longer than any one, in the vain hope of getting out of him a few of his phosphates and acids. The prisoners roomed two in a cell, but that ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... victory at Bennington came, the call was for every able-bodied man to turn out, in order to defeat Burgoyne. Every well man went, including Carleton's two grandfathers, Captain Peter Coffin, who had been out in June, though not in Stark's command, and Eliphalet Kilborn. The women and children were left to gather in the crops. The wheat was ripe for the sickle, but there was not a man or boy to cut it. With her baby, one month old, in her arms, Mrs. Peter Coffin mounted the horse, leaving her ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... perspiration, and my heart thumped wildly. For either I was stark, staring mad, or these were lines from Searles's "Lady Larkspur," the manuscript of which was carefully locked ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... on it, that tiny, telltale initial, his face went white under its tan and his mouth compressed till all the humor and kindliness of it were lost in a line of stark grimness. And then he swung on his heel and packed up his painting kit in a fury of haste, and with one last, upturned look at those mocking windows, he was off down ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the bed lifted his eyes, great dark eyes full of weariness and stark fear—but bowed his head again and ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... patrol, Captain Malet-Marsac would reflect upon the relativity of things, the false values of civilization, and the extraordinary devitalising and deteriorating results of "education". When it came to vital issues, elementals, stark essential manhood,—then the elect of civilization, the chosen of education, weighed, was found not only wanting but largely negligible. Where the highly "educated" was as good as the other he was so by ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... levelled all distinctions of rank. When an officious benefactor put a pair of new shoes at his door, he threw them away with indignation. He seems to have treated his tutors with a contempt which Boswell politely attributed to "great fortitude of mind," but Johnson himself set down as "stark insensibility." The life of a poor student is not, one may fear, even yet exempt from much bitterness, and in those days the position was far more servile than at present. The servitors and sizars had much to bear from richer ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... point which has any bearing upon their subsequent relations. There was no other bond between them than that of their common allegiance to the Government of the mother-country. As an illustration of this may be cited the historical fact that, when John Stark, of Bennington memory, was before the Revolution engaged in a hunting expedition in the Indian country, he was captured by the savages and brought to Albany, in the colony of New York, for a ransom; but, inasmuch as he belonged to New Hampshire, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... into a most complex machinery, indefinitely multiplies the combinations, in any one of which chance might have gone astray. From this infinite array of proofs of design, it seems to man's reason, in ordinary moods, stark madness to account for the phenomena of the universe upon any other supposition than that which docs account, and can alone account, for them all,—the supposition of a Presiding Intelligence, illimitable alike in ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... I mean not cuckold-mad; but, sure, he's stark mad. When I desir'd him to come home to dinner, He ask'd me for a thousand marks in gold: "Tis dinner time' quoth I; 'My gold,' quoth he: 'Your meat doth burn' quoth I; 'My gold,' quoth he: 'Will you come home?' quoth I; 'My gold,' quoth he: 'Where is the thousand marks I gave thee, villain?' 'The ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... augment his good grace to thee, Door! which of old, men say, didst serve Balbus benignly, whilst the oldster held his home here; and which contrariwise, so 'tis said, didst serve with grudging service after the old man was stretched stark, thou doing service to the bride. Come, tell us why thou art reported to be changed and to have renounced thine ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... such real agony in his tone that Peggy and I were suddenly stricken with contrition. What were we doing? We had no right to be listening to this pitiful interview. The pain and protest in his voice had suddenly banished all the humour from it, and left naught but the bare, stark tragedy. We rose and tiptoed out of the room, wholesomely ashamed ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... so, as anthropologists knew from sad experience. Suppose a traveler came to a camp where he saw thousands of men and women dancing round the image of a young bull. Suppose that the dancers were all stark naked, that after a time they began to fight, and that at the end of their orgies there were three thousand corpses lying about weltering in their blood. Would not a casual traveler have described such savages as worse than the negroes of Dahomey? Yet these savages were really the Jews, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... than half an hour he returned, riding one horse and leading the other, and found that Gerrard had risen and was looking at the bodies of the three men, which lay stark and stiff under the now bright starlight. Tommy's face wore an expression of supreme satisfaction as he ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... The Expedition against Bennington: (1) Colonel Baum sent to take supplies from the Americans there. (2) Met General Stark with a force outnumbering him two or three to one. (3) Rain delayed battle, and British entrenched. (4) Baum surrounded; his force captured or killed, including ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... he drinks, he takes his rest, he fears no man nor woman. Though Croesus compassed great wealth, yet he still craved more; He was as needy a beggar still as goes from door to door. Though Ovid was a merry man, love ever kept him sad; He was as far from happiness as one that is stark mad. Our merchant, he in goods is rich, and full of gold and treasure; But when he thinks upon his debts, that thought destroys his pleasure. Our courtier thinks that he's preferred, whom every man envies; When love so rumbles in his pate, no sleep comes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fountain, sprinkled it on the ground, and in an twinkling of an eye a large river rose up on the spot. When the ogre saw this new obstacle, and that he could not make holes so fast as they found bungs to stop them, he stripped himself stark naked and swam across to the other side of the river with his clothes ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile |
