"Withering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with fruit, that has the smell of wine; a wood without fault, without withering, with leaves of the ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... another figure appeared, a brisk figure, at which the dead leaves of the porch bestirred themselves in vague, uneasy rustlings. Uncle Buzz stepped meekly aside and Mrs. Mosby—Aunt Loraine—joined the group, giving him a momentary withering glance. She was an inexorable woman, an inch taller than Uncle Buzz, who stood five feet three, but she matched him whim for whim in her attire. Her hair looked black in the graying light; in reality it was splotched ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... outdoors at the garden. Everything is withering. The moisture does not move through the earth to where the roots of the plants can reach it. Before everything withers completely, you rush to the switchboard and turn on the capillary ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... do not know what you are talking about," he finally blustered with withering contempt. "You are an Argentinian and do not understand the affairs ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... family; that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place; that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion. Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension,—nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependants to protect,—nothing but this could have thrown a brave ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... sat the wretched mother, gazing upon the still quivering remains. At intervals, she stooped down and kissed the pale, withering lips. She did not weep. I have said she was an Indian. They do not act as whites do; but, anyhow, her anguish was too keen to allow her tears to flow. She did not scream or call for help. It could be of no use now. It was too late. She knew there was no ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... find the yellow violet, and the wake-robin, and the pink lady-slipper, and the scarlet sage, and the fringed gentian. You will understand how the buds trust themselves to the spring in their unfolding, and how the blossoms trust themselves to the winter in their withering, and how the busy bands of Nature are ever weaving the beautiful garment of life out of the strands of death, and nothing is lost that yields itself ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... divided, her from us, considerably passed the line of demarcation. Lady de Brantefield, with all the pride of all the De Brantefields since the Norman Conquest concentrated in her countenance, threw an excommunicating, withering look upon the arm—but the elbow felt it not—it never stirred. The lady seemed not to be made of penetrable stuff. In happy ignorance she sat fanning herself for a few seconds; then suddenly starting and stretching forward to the front row, where five of her young ladies were ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... blasted oak, with a bundle of brushwood upon his shoulder. He was an honest-eyed, grizzled-haired old negro, who wrung his meagre living from a blacksmith's trade, bearing alike the scornful pity of his white neighbours and the withering contempt of his black ones. For twenty years he had moved from spot to spot along the turnpike, and he had lived in the dignity of loneliness since the day upon which his master had won for himself the freedom of Eternity, leaving to his servant ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... lady-doctor, turning uneasily away from the little things that lay squirming and making such grimaces, as only very young babies can make, in the face of Mrs. Pimble. The alleged father stood there, chuckling over the smartness of his progeny. Mrs. Pimble darted one withering glance upon him, and walked away without another word. She roused old Dr. Potipher, and took him home with her. Well she did so, for Garrison was much worse than when she left him, and the doctor pronounced ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... morning dawned after a restless, sleepless night. Phantoms of terror haunted her couch. The agonies of anticipated remorse had cast a withering shadow on her thoughts. She could not believe her own depravity in entertaining for a moment ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... troops reserved their fire, until the column was within fifty yards of them. Then they poured in a withering volley, and charged. The column fell back in disorder. General Floyd at once charged them, with five regiments of cavalry, sabred great numbers of them, and drove the remainder back in headlong rout. The whole British line then ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... My dear Mrs. Chalmers. I assure you the whole circumstance is unfortunate. But you are so palpably in the wrong that I cannot interfere—(Margaret turns from him in withering scorn.)—That I cannot interfere. ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... inflated I've a withering reply, And vanity I always do my best to mortify; A charitable action I can skilfully dissect; And interested motives I'm delighted to detect. I know everybody's income and what everybody earns, And I carefully ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... I wept in manhood upon the grave, as I had in infancy upon the bosom, of my mother. Alas! how little do we appreciate a mother's tenderness while living! how heedless are we in youth of all her anxieties and kindness! But when she is dead and gone; when the cares and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts; when we find how hard it is to find true sympathy;—how few love us for ourselves; how few will befriend us in our misfortunes—then it is that we think of the mother we have lost. It is true I had always loved my mother, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... forces gives the historian an opportunity of dropping a withering sneer at an unfortunate man, so provincial in his notions as to suppose that a hundred pounds or two would be of any ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... villager wishes to level a withering sarcasm at the head of a plausible, talkative fellow, all promise and no performance, ready with tongue but not with purse or service, he calls him a vakeel, that is, a lawyer. If he has to cool his heels in your office, or round the factory to ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... graces to the throng displayed. Winona came the last, but as she stept Into the mystic ring one word, "Beware!" Rang out in such a tone of high command That all was still, and every look was turned To where the Raven stood; his stern eye burned, And like a flower beneath that withering glare She faded fast. No need that heavy hand To lead Winona from the joyous band; No need those shameful words that stained the air: "Let not the sacred circle be defiled By one who, all too easily beguiled, Beneath her bosom bears ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... civilization, on many more complex and civilized men she exerts an attraction of an almost reverse kind. She appeals by her fresh and natural coarseness, her frank familiarity with the crudest facts of life; and so lifts them for a moment out of the withering atmosphere of artificial thought and unreal sentiment in which so many civilized persons are compelled to spend the greater part of their lives. They feel in the words which the royal friend of a woman of this temperament is said to have used in explaining ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Quentyns—he turned round now and looked at his wife; his face was very cold, its expression carefully veiled. He was intensely anxious not to show even a trace of ill-temper. His words were guarded. "Is that your final decision, Hilda?" he said, and there was a fine withering sort of sarcasm in his voice. "Do you mean seriously to desert the husband you married not three months ago for the sake of a child's whim? Is that the way you ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... never been fully portrayed. No pencil is black enough to paint the picture and do it full justice. No tongue is eloquent enough to tell the sad, sad story in all its details. It has so spread itself as to compel us to style it a wide and verily a withering curse. It is the parent of many physical disorders, that begin with bleared eyes, a blistered tongue, general derangement of the stomach, paralysis of the nerves, and hardening of the liver; and to so great an extent it poisons the blood as to cause coagulation of the brain. ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... dangling from a short pole, fastened above the door. If Benedetta knew anything of the proverb that "good wine needs no bush," she had not sufficient faith in the contents of her own casks to trust to their reputation; for this bush of hers was as regularly renewed as its withering leaves required. Indeed, it was a common remark among her customers, that her bush was always as fresh as her face, and that the latter was one of the most comely that was to be met with on the island; a circumstance ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... but perforce (for what else could he do in the grasp of a man of twice his power?), to a brilliant and convincing summary of his character, terminating in a withering sketch of his personal ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... shudder on hearing M. Leroux exclaim, "There is neither a paradise nor a hell; the wicked will not be punished, nor the good rewarded. Mortals! cease to hope and fear; you revolve in a circle of appearances; humanity is an immortal tree, whose branches, withering one after another, feed with their debris the root which is always young!" Where is the man who, on hearing this desolate confession of faith, does not demand with terror, "Is it then true that I am only an aggregate of elements ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... his face into a very grave and confidential twist, when Mrs. Paget's equerry, the young gentleman before mentioned, offered his arm, and, giving Frank a withering look, warned the lady ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... those useless, personal prejudices, and galling hatreds against conspicuous sinners, not Sin—which so widely prevail among men of warped understandings and unchristian and uncharitable hearts. No; the superstitions and dogmas concerning Sin had not laid their withering maxims upon our hearts. We perceived how that evil was but good disguised, and a knave a saint in his way; how that in other planets, perhaps, what we deem wrong, may there be deemed right; even ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... unreachable superiority—in its completeness as a whole—that is not to be disturbed. Her delivery of 'Casta Diva' is a transcendent effort of vocalization. In the scene where she discovers the treachery of Pollio, and discharges upon his guilty head a torrent of withering and indignant reproof, she exhibits a power, bordering on the sublime, which belongs exclusively to her, giving to the character of the insulted priestess a dramatic importance which would be remarkable ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... was taken, and greater part of the day (except the time passed in the little Temple) was spent. Large branches of the palm and cedar, the willow, acacia, and the oak, cut so as to prevent their withering for the seven days, formed the walls of the tent; their leaves intermingling over head, so as to form a shelter, and yet permit the beautiful blue of the heavens to peep within. Flowers of every shade and scent formed a bordering within; and ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... were shouting themselves hoarse, while the red emblem of terror still waved lazily from the top of the barricade. The men manning the improvised defence kept up a withering fire upon the troops, who, in the open road, were afforded no cover. Time after time the place shook as those terrible bombs exploded with awful result, for the yellow-haired girl seemed to keep up a continuous supply of them. They were only seven ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... feelings by a strong nature, and yet can not hide that consuming passion which underlies all the words, and makes them burn with intensest heat. Here the hot fire of his indignation seemed to be expressed in a blighting and withering power; and Hilda shrank within herself involuntarily in fear, trembling at ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the difficulties—mud, disease, prejudice, famine—through which the writer brought her charge triumphantly to safety, and you will be inclined, with me, to throw your critical cap into the air and thank Heaven for such women of our race, which would be to invite, not unsuccessfully, some withering snub from the very lady you were endeavouring to praise. But that can't be helped. Meantime of her exploit and the book that recounts it I can sum up my verdict in the only Serbian that I have gleaned from its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... there, high crevices unstopped and widening every day, beams mouldering and tending downward. The Blind Girl never knew that iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper peeling off; the size, and shape, and true proportion of the dwelling, withering away. The Blind Girl never knew that ugly shapes of delf and earthenware were on the board; that sorrow and faint-heartedness were in the house; that Caleb's scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey before her sightless face. The Blind Girl never knew they had a master, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... is unnecessary: I shall do it myself," said her father, with the same dryness of tone that always made Lesley feel as if she were withering ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... continuing and exaggerating the work of absolute monarchy; in preparing for a community of officials and administrators; in lowering the level of humanity; in reducing to sloth and brutalizing or blighting the elite of the families which maintain or raise themselves; and in withering the most precious of nurseries, that in which ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... dry, like sand she thought, and her mind felt dry too, as if insomnia was withering it up. She opened her lips to breathe in the salt freshness ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... who, forsworn, hath yielded up That promise to the deadly cup, And led her down from love and light, From all that made her pathway bright, And chained her there 'mid want and strife, That lowly thing,—a drunkard's wife! And stamped on childhood's brow so mild, That withering blight, a ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... detail, and trying the conclusions that had been drawn therefrom by the most rigorous and searching logic,—and then, assailing the credibility of the testimony brought forward to prove the habitual cruelty of his client, he gave utterance to a withering torrent of invective and sarcasm, in which the character of the main hostile witness shrivelled and blackened like paper in a flame. Then—having been eight hours on his feet—he began to avail himself of that last dangerous resource which genius only may use,—the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... dress appear luminous. Small and dainty, as if radiating a light of her own in the deep shade of the interlaced boughs, she resembled a good fairy, weary with a long career of well-doing, touched by the withering suspicion of the uselessness of her labours, the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... along the footboard, collecting tickets and identifying passengers. He was generally in fine trim on the way up, and took ample revenge for the insults of the departure. But it was supposed that Peter had taken Drumsheugh's withering sarcasm to heart, for he attached himself to the second that night, and was invisible to the expectant ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... that independent observers were beginning to bring out the same or similar facts. Mrs. Treat, of New Jersey, noticed the habitual infolding of the leaf in the longer-leaved species of sundew (American Journal of Science for November, 1871), as was then thought for the first time—Roth's and Withering's observations not having been looked up. In recording this, the next year, in a very little book, entitled "How Plants Behave," the opportunity was taken to mention, in the briefest way, the capital discovery of Mr. Darwin that the leaves of Drosera act differently ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... descriptions of action, so completely hide the actual feelings of the men engaged that the inexperienced may be pardoned the thought, that, having donned the insignia of a soldier, a man instantly becomes filled with martial ardor, and eager to face the most withering fire of musketry or artillery. But the reality is far different; very few men are so constituted, or are so reckless of their lives, that they can listen to the unearthly screech of the shell or the crash of solid shot, mingled ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... the tent was drawn aside, and the huge form of Antiochus appeared, followed by the Queen's slave, her head bent down and eyes cast upon the ground. If a look could have killed, the first glance of Zenobia, so full of a withering contempt, would have destroyed her base kinsman. He heeded it but so much as to blush and turn away his face from her. Upon Sindarina the Queen gazed with a look of deepest sorrow. The beautiful slave stood there where she entered, not lifting her head, but her bosom rising and falling with ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... blighted face Wears desolation's withering trace; Long shall my memory retain Thy shattered huts and trampled grain, With every mark of martial wrong, That scathe thy towers, fair Hougomont! Yet though thy garden's green arcade The marksman's fatal post was made, Though on thy shattered beeches fell The blended rage of shot ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... telegraphy of their glances, than sit in a theatre or read an interesting book; but it is when they are active in war that the one privileged to observe them gets his real treat, always provided he can dodge the rain of blazing sparks and the withering hail of wrath that pours out on the offender. To watch them then requires real nerve, for it is only a nimble, stout-hearted, mail-covered individual that can sustain ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... whom friendship would be given but in kindly pity; to whom love—that blissful dream in which she had of late indulged—would be denied for evermore. How hard seemed her doom! If it were for months only, or even years; but, to bear for a whole life this withering ban—never to be freed from it, except through death! And her lips unconsciously repeated the bitter murmur, "O God! why hast ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... until the night of this last awful day, that a withering sense of his helpless, desperate state came in its full intensity upon his blighted soul; not that he had ever held any defined or positive hope of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more than the dim probability of dying so soon. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... not for the rejuvenating vitality poured into it by the youth it cynically despises? True wisdom, indeed, springs from the wide brain which is fed from the deep heart; and it is only when age warms its withering conceptions at the memory of its youthful fire, when it makes experience serve aspiration, and knowledge illumine the difficult paths through which thoughts thread their way into facts,—it is only then that age becomes broadly and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... passed with the parts still spread about the floor. Elihu Titus told Sharon the boy was only playing with them. Sharon said he was glad they could furnish amusement, and mentally composed the beginning of what would be a letter of withering ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... the body over again, And said, while he rose upright, "May the brand of Cain, with its withering stain, On the murderer's forehead light, For he never was slain on the open plain, Nor yet in the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... events, the abruptness and monotony in the Inferno, are excessive: but the interest never flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power is in combining internal feelings with external objects. Thus the gate of hell, on which that withering inscription is written, seems to be endowed with speech and consciousness, and to utter its dread warning, not without a sense of mortal woes. This author habitually unites the absolutely local and individual with the ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... notwithstanding, and she knew it, and sickened under it as under an evil influence. He was very angry with her—she was fully conscious of that—unjustifiably, unreasonably angry. More than once, when Mr. Granger was especially attentive, she had encountered a withering glance from those dark gray eyes, and she had been weak enough, wicked enough perhaps, to try and make him perceive that Mr. Granger's attentions were in no way pleasant to her. She could bear anything better than that he should think her capable of courting this man's admiration. She ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... no doubt from consideration, they seemed to be much forgotten. The family was like an old thistle-head, withering on its wintry stalk, alone in a wind-swept field. All the summer through not a single visitor, friend or stranger, had slept in the house. A fresh face was more of a wonder to Cosmo than to desert-haunting Abraham. The human heart, like the human body, can live without much ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... nature; the pope might canonize them, and the priesthood bow submissively to their spiritual guidance, still they remained for all that but mortals of dust and clay, and their bulky tomes yet retain the swarthiness of the tomb about them, the withering impress of humanity. Such being the case we, who do not regard them quite so infallible, feel no surprise at a circumstance which sorely perplexed the monks of old, they unchained and unclasped their cumbrous "Works of the Fathers," and pored over those massy expositions ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... the withering hand Of bigot power is on that hapless land; While, for the faith my fathers held to God, Even in the fields where free those fathers trod, I am proscribed, and—like the spot left bare In Israel's halls, to tell the proud ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... everlasting spring abides, And never withering flowers; Death, like a narrow sea, divides This ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... of nearly twelve feet. Captain Dall applied a match to the tarry pieces of the long-boat, which had been placed at the foundation, and the flames at once leaped up and began to lick greedily round the timber, winding through the interstices and withering up the leaves. Soon a thick smoke began to ascend, for much of the timber in the pile was green, and before the sun had set a dense black cloud was rising straight up like a pillar and spreading out into the sky. As the fire gathered strength, a great tongue of flame ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... Chesnel, no one but you would think of such a thing!" she added, with a withering look; before such a look from a woman's eyes no mortal can stand. "There is but one crime that a noble can commit—the crime of high treason; and when he is beheaded, the block is covered with a black cloth, as ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... was one of those Spring evenings which you could not tell from an Autumn one except for a certain something in the air appealing to an undefined sense—rather that of smell than any other. There were green buds and not withering leaves in it—life and not death; and the voices of the gathering guests were of the season, and pleasant to the soul. Of course Nature did not then affect me so definitely as to make me give forms of thought to her influences. It is now first that ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... the story of the two brothers in Central America who, starting on their dangerous journey to the land of Xibalba, where their father had perished, plant each a cane in the middle of their grandmother's house, that she may know by its flourishing or withering whether they are alive or dead. Exactly the same conception occurs in Grimm's "Maehrchen," when the two gold-children wish to see the world and to leave their father; and when their father is sad, and asks them how he shall bear news of them, they tell him, "We leave you the two ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... time for the arrival of re-enforcements which came not, he led the charge. The attack was disordered by the uneven ground, the fences and the ravines; and it was broken by the granite front of the English (three-fourths of them Americans) and their long-reserved and withering fire. The undisciplined Canadians flinched from that certain death; and Wolfe, advancing on them with his grenadiers, saw them melt away before the cold steel could reach them. The two leaders faced each other, both equally undaunted and alert; it was like ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... scene of action and are within thirty paces of the cemetery wall, when from behind it rises a battalion of men in the green uniform of the Santee Rangers and pours a withering fire into the ranks. The shock is too great to withstand, and the red-coats stagger away with broken ranks, leaving many dead and wounded on the ground. Lord Percy is the coolest of all. He urges the broken columns ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... her glittering toilette apparatus lay about on the marble dressing-table. The atmosphere of the room was almost oppressive for the rich odors of perfumes in bottles whose gold stoppers had not been replaced. A bunch of hot-house flowers was withering upon a tiny writing-table. Two or three handsome dresses lay in a heap upon the ground, and the open doors of a wardrobe revealed the treasures within. Jewelry, ivory-backed hair-brushes, and exquisite china ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... from one to another of the rest with a withering scorn.] Ha! Now you think you have conquered, do you? No, I'm not going to stay! Do you think your vile slander could influence me to give up my work? And neither shall you influence the life of my son. I leave him here. I must. But not to your tender mercies. No, no! Thank ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... Losses, misfortunes, poverty, want itself had overwhelmed them; his father's temper had become so soured, that the oldest friends of Francois Sarzeau declared he was changed beyond recognition. And now, all this past misfortune—the steady, withering, household blight of many years—had ended in the last, worst misery of all—in death. The fate of his father and his brother admitted no longer of a doubt; he knew it, as he listened to the storm, as he reflected ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Mrs. Harper cast a withering look of contempt at her husband, folded her arms and leaned back in her chair, more puzzled than ever at his ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... the atmosphere sometimes; sometimes a subdued, gray light is diffused everywhere. In the country, there is often, on these afternoons, a remarkable stillness in the air, amid which you can hear a withering leaf rustling down. I will not think that the time of bare branches and brown grass is so very near as yet; Nature is indeed decaying, but now we have decay only in its beautiful stage, wherein it is pensive, but not ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... from the wonderful tales which he relates! Niobe at the head of the canal, changing into stone! To be sure we should want a rock there. Then on one side Narcissus, gazing at himself in the clear pool, with poor Echo withering away in the grove behind! King Cygnus, in the very act of being metamorphosed into a swan, on the other! It would be so apropos, you know; a swan, and a canal, and king Cygnus! And then at the further end Daphne, with her arms and legs sprouting ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... vapid vacuity of the last years of my aunt Siddons's life had made a profound impression upon me,—her apparent deadness and indifference to everything, which I attributed (unjustly, perhaps) less to her advanced age and impaired powers than to what I supposed the withering and drying influence of the overstimulating atmosphere of emotion, excitement, and admiration in which she had passed her life; certain it is that such was my dread of the effect of my profession upon me, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... saw the rugged mountain start to life with armed men! Like a tempest down the ridges swept the hurricane of steel, Rose the slogan of Macdonald—flash'd the broadsword of Lochiel! Vainly sped the withering volley 'mongst the foremost of our band, On we pour'd until we met them, foot to foot, and hand to hand. Horse and man went down like drift-wood, when the floods are black at Yule, And their carcasses are whirling in the Garry's deepest pool. Horse and man went down before us—living ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... of color in the leaves at a time when they should be perfectly green indicates that the tree is not growing under normal conditions, possibly because of an insufficiency of moisture or light or an overdose of foreign gases or salts. Withering of the leaves is another sign of irregularity in water supply. Dead tops point to some difficulty in the soil conditions or to some disease of the roots or branches. Spotted leaves and mushroom-like growths or brackets protruding from ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... nectarine or apple on a tree stung in a single day; and in South Jersey the curculio has proved victorious in the struggle with man. Every year we see these trees white with blossoms, and as regularly every specimen of the fruit bearing the plague-spot—a tiny crescent-shaped wound in the cuticle—withering, fading and falling. We painfully gather up this fallen fruit by the bushel, burn it to destroy the grub of the curculio, and, hoping against hope, witness the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... that kills a' ither things, His withering touch 'twill brave, 'Twill live in joy, 'twill live in grief, 'Twill live beyond the grave! 'Twill live, 'twill live, though buried deep, In true heart's memorie— Oh! we forgot that ane sae fair, Sae bricht, sae young, could ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the wood, the general had enjoined his men to charge without a halt, in double time, and without firing. "Had these orders," says General Law, "not been strictly obeyed the assault would have been a failure. No troops could have stood long under the withering storm of lead and iron that beat in their faces as they became fully exposed to view from the Federal line."* (* Battles and Leaders volume 2 page 363.) The assault was met with a courage that was equally admirable.* (* "The Confederates ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... houses. On this day, however, their work of destruction was stopped. By the evening of the day, probably not finding sufficient drink in the cellars of the Dissenters, they had begun to break open and to destroy the houses of churchmen. They were busy in breaking open the house of Dr. Withering, at some distance from the town, when the words "light horse" sounded in their ears, and the whole mob melted away as if by magic; when the light-horse appeared, not a shadow of them could be found. In fact, the mob ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been borne willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all these gifts of the heart ennobled the men who gave not less than the men who received them, and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism, numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes;—this nature bade not,—this ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... whose very life was bound up in his, his manner had in it a reserve that chilled her heart as if an icy hand had been laid upon it. She asked for no explanation of the change; but, as he grew colder, she shrunk more and more into herself, like a flower folding its withering leaves when touched by ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... odor and rustle at my back, That, silenced by my advent, finds once more, After an interval, his instrument, And tries once—twice—and thrice if I be there; And on the worn book of old-golden song I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold And freshen in this air of withering sweetness; But on the memory of one absent most, For whom these lines when they ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost
... can't tell whether it mayn't be so. Anne, dear, you've got such a nice, pretty body, why have you such a withering contempt for it? It behaves so well to you, too. That's more than I can say of mine; and yet, I believe I shall quite miss it when it's gone. At any rate, I shall be glad that I was decent to the poor thing ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... the Brussels carpet, and even the oilcloth around the toilette-table was remembered. They saw that the round table was covered with a red tablecloth, and that writing materials were there, a pair of stays, a pair of tan gloves, and some withering flowers. They saw the ball-dress that Lady Helen had worn thrown over the arm-chair; the silk stockings, the satin shoes—and a gleam of sunlight that found its way between the blinds fell upon a piece of white petticoat. Lady Helen lay in the bed, thrown back ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... head since I saw him last? The face that tried to smile at us from the pillow was strangely wizened and old. It was as though a withering blight had touched it. Only the eyes were the same. They glowed in the sunken face, beneath the shock of black hair, with a startling luster ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... followed. A parent warns his child of the ill effects that may be expected from the line of behaviour he is taking, and when those effects are realised, he says, "Well, what did I tell you?" and adds a grunt of withering contempt. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... and Isle of Foulness (rented in part by two of my credible parishioners, who attested it, having paid dear for the truth thereof); when an army of mice, nesting in ant-hills, as conies in burrows, shaved off the grass at the bare roots, which, withering to dung, was infectious to cattle. The March following, numberless flocks of owls from all parts flew thither, and destroyed them, which otherwise had ruined the country, if continuing another year. Thus, though great the distance betwixt a man and a mouse, the meanest ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... to break over the desolate hills, the fun began. From three sides the Indians poured into the camp a withering fire. As a result the entire command became panic stricken. Seven men were knocked down, almost at the first fire, and it has always been a matter of surprise to me that Hasbrook, old campaigner as he was, should be caught off his guard. It began to look like another Wright-Thomas massacre. ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... drains national resources to support standing armies, how it mocks all enterprises which do not receive imperial approbation, how everything is concentrated to reflect the glory of one man or family; how impossible, under its withering shade, is manly independence, or the free expression of opinions or healthy growth; how it buries up, under its armies, discontents and aspirations alike, and creates nothing but machinery which must ultimately ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... by our sins for judgment,—visible draughts and prognostics of it were to be read upon the condition and frame of all spirits and people, and then did our iniquities raise the storm of thy indignation, and that, like a whirlwind, hath blown the withering leaves off the tree, hath driven us out of our own land, and scattered us among strangers. Sin and uncleanness and the filthiness of our righteousness prepared us for the storm, made us light matter that could resist ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... end as the hotel-keeping ended. Wastefulness, cheap luxury, tawdry living, took the place of the old, frugal, simple life. But the mother went about with that unchanging sweetness of face, and a body withering about a fretted soul. She had no bitterness, only a miserable distress. But every slight that was put upon her, every change, every new-fangled idea, from the white sugar to the scented soap and the yellow buggy, rankled in the old man's heart. He had resentment both ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... weather closed in, in the summer of 1604, the malaria in the Tower began to affect Raleigh's health. As he tells Cecil, now Lord Cranborne, in a most dolorous letter, he was withering in body and mind. The plague had come close to him, his son having lain a fortnight with only a paper wall between him and a woman whose child was dying of that terrible complaint. Lady Raleigh, at last, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... willing to take its place beside Buddha under his Bo tree, and share the lowliness of his followers. This may be rather hard after the rapid success of Theosophy in India, where in four years from its foundation (1879) it counted seventy-seven flourishing branches; but these are withering away under the Blavatsky scandals, and if Theosophy is to live it must "take refuge ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... horrible task they did was when they hauled eighty poor French boys out to be shot for mutiny! Spies in Paris, working through the mistresses of the department heads, the sad strain of war upon the French economic resources, and the withering hand of winter upon the heart of France had achieved all but a victory for the forces of evil in ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... whereas he might hear and apprehend what they said, unseen of them, and heard one say to the other, "Listen, O my brother, to what my sire told me yesternight of the calamity which hath betided him in the withering of his crops before their time, by reason of the rarity of rain and the sore sorrow that is fallen on this city." Quoth the other, "Wottest thou not the cause of this affliction?"; and quoth the first, "No! and, if thou ken it pray tell it me." Rejoined the other, "Yes, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... fighting it and winning out. Heads that had drooped in discouragement were raised. The cattle keep increased, and with it came the farmer's wealth. Marl changes the character of the heath soil; with manure to fertilize it there was no reason why it should not grow crops—none, except the withering blast of the west wind. The time for Dalgas to preach tree ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... pipe-bowl glowing and blackening in time to his pulling at it, smoked on alone in the dusk. In the nibbling, iterative way of the old, he started a kind of reflection; but it was as if a harmattan had blown along the usual courses of his thought, drying up his little brooklet of recollection and withering the old aquatic star-flowers that grew along its banks. His mind, in its meandering among old images, groped, paused, fell pensive. His head sank lower between his shoulders, and the shoulders eased back against the wall behind his bench. When Jim ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... run along the line. Moments are ages now. Seconds are years. How fast men live when everything is at stake! Ah! but how fast they die down in that ravine! Up, down, across, through, over it, drive the withering blasts, cutting, tearing, sweeping through the column, which shakes, wavers, totters, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... wife's criminal shapelessness and voluminousness of antediluvian, New-England swimming dress with a withering, contemplative eye. They had been married a sufficient number of years for him frankly ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... battle was already joined. The Spaniard had fired one single hasty shot which had gone wide, and now one of the corsair's grappling-irons had seized her on the larboard quarter, a withering hail of arrows was pouring down upon her decks from the Muslim crosstrees; up her sides crowded the eager Moors, ever most eager when it was a question of tackling the Spanish dogs who had driven them from their Andalusian Caliphate. Under her quarter sped ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... in her womanly dignity, Eve gave Cerizet a withering look and went upstairs again. At dinner-time she ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the sentence. I can imagine that there is something rich and voluptuous and sating about amber, its color, and its lustre, and its scent; but for others, not for me. Yea, you have beauty, after all," turning suddenly, and withering me with his eye,—"beauty, after all, as you didn't say just now.—Mr. Willoughby is in the garden. I must go before he comes in, or he'll make me stay. There are some to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... imagined his own funeral: he, the injured husband, lies in his coffin with a gentle smile on his lips, and she, pale, tortured by remorse, follows the coffin like a Niobe, not knowing where to hide herself to escape from the withering, contemptuous looks cast upon ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... question that civilization achieved most splendid triumphs, even under the influence of pagan institutions. But it was not paganism which achieved these victories; it was the will and the reason of a noble race, in spite of its withering effects. It was the proud reason of man which soared to such lofty heights, and attempted to secure happiness and prosperity. These great ends were measurably attained, and a self-sufficient philosopher might have pointed to these victories as both glorious and permanent. When the eyes of ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... held an opinion, not altogether unfounded in human experience, that in course of time, when quite deserted by Patty Baxter, his heart might possibly be caught on the rebound. It was only a chance, but Lucy would almost have preferred remaining unmarried, even to the withering age of twenty-five, rather than not be at liberty to accept Philip Perry in case she ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... entered, fanning his hot brow. The leaves, on high, rustled like falling rain. The elms tossed their branches, striking one another in blind confusion. The long grass whispered as the breeze stirred it like the surface of an inland lake. Withering flowers gave up their last perfume, while a storm-cloud fled wildly across the heavens. Some of the restlessness of the external world disturbed that silent dark figure at the window; within him, conflicting passions jarred like ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... bud of her, pore of her?— don't call these things, kisses— mouth-kisses, hand-kisses, elbow, knee and toe, and let it go at that— disappear and promise what you'll never perform: we've known you to slink away until drought-time, drooping-time, withering-time: we've caught you crawling off into winter-time, try to cover what you've done with a long white scarf— your own frozen tears (likely phrase!) and lilt your, I'll be back in spring! Next spring, and you know it, she won't be the same, though she may look the same to you from ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... the mother curse of the ages. No man suffering from her withering, blighting touch can be in harmony with the best. Socialism tackles the master job of abolishing it. Not by any fantastic plan of redistribution but by giving to the creator all that he creates and to the social charges, pensioners and cripples an assurance of life ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... upon mules for the habitation of the planter. The sun had illumined the sky, but had not yet made his appearance, although the golden fringes upon the clouds, which floated in broad belts in the horizon, indicated his glorious yet withering approach. The dew moistened each leaf, or hung in glittering pendant drops upon the thorn of the prickly pears which lined the roads. The web of the silver-banded spider was extended between the bushes, and, saturated with moisture, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... finally drew out a goatskin bag. Hillyard, like other Englishmen, had been brought up in a creed which included the inefficiency of all Postmasters-general. A blight fell upon such persons, withering their qualities and shrivelling them into the meanest caricatures of bureaucrats. It could not be that the postal service was now to reveal resource and become the servant of romance. Yet the Arab drew forth a sealed envelope and handed it to Hillyard. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... The withering storm of bullets poured from the three magazines had no more effect in checking the dacoit rush than if the bullets had been drops of rain. The men actually struck dropped, of course, but their comrades were not in the least terrified by their fall. The short, broad, powerful figures rushed ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... was surely no one else's business to say a dissenting word. Percival might go home and lecture his own wife if he liked. 'It is a pity you and Gage are so worldly,' she said, in what was meant to be a withering tone. Audrey had never been so near ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... They appear in most cases to have been brought into action by the impulse of private malice. They occasioned mortality of greater or less extent in man and beast. They blighted the opening prospect of a plentiful harvest. They covered the heavens with clouds, and sent abroad withering and malignant blasts. They undermined the health of those who were so unfortunate as to incur their animosity, and caused them to waste away gradually with incurable disease. They were notorious two or three centuries ago for ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt in my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain on the southern mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundation. In the hurry of my imagination I commanded rain to fall; and by comparing the time of my ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... appointment of Providence, to the highest eminence.—EVE was accessary to the ruin of man—MARY instrumental in the birth of him who came as the Restorer and Saviour of mankind—EVE beheld the fatal curse first take effect, in overcasting the heavens with clouds, in withering the blossoms of paradise, envenoming the spirit of the animal creation, disordering the human frame, and ultimately destroying it, and introducing all the nameless diversities of wo which fill up the tragedy of human life.—MARY ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... be a thousand times happier than we in civilized society who seek fortune and satisfy our caprices, our follies, in the midst of excitement and strong emotions, living in a continual fever of suspicion, jealousy and envy, accumulating perhaps riches but withering up the soul which cannot enjoy even for a day the supreme ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... entered the same door almost as hastily, but she was a stately and rather handsome woman of forty, who gave the intruder such a withering look from her serene blue eyes that the unrefined member of the Seven Arts slunk out and could be ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... would be; and there is a scene in which the royal birth of the "Red Eagle" is spoken of without concealment, and in which the admiral begs his "foster son" not to destroy, by such a marriage, the last hope that was withering on his father's foreign tomb. In his will Admiral Allen bequeathed his whole fortune to his eldest son, and only left a legacy of L100 to Thomas; so that it may reasonably be inferred that his displeasure had ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... of election arrived. It was no longer an individual struggle, but a party contest between the ins and outs. The question was, whether the withering influence of the overseers, the domination of the churchwardens, and the blighting despotism of the vestry-clerk, should be allowed to render the election of beadle a form—a nullity: whether they should ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... far better than that calm and withering heat—this rouses me," said Amine, as she cast her eyes up, and watched the forked lightning till her vision became obscured. "Yes, this is as it should be. Lightning, strike me if you please—waves wash me off and bury me in a briny tomb—pour the wrath of the whole elements upon this devoted ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... This will be an improvement upon my old reading of the part. She must be always merry and by turns scornful, tormenting, vexed, self-communing, absent, melting, teasing, brilliant, indignant, sad-merry, thoughtful, withering, gentle, humorous, and gay, Gay, Gay! Protecting (to Hero), motherly, very intellectual—a gallant creature and complete in mind ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... the country in ruin and desolation. Nor is this the only instance of the effect of free institutions on the Spanish race. In Old Spain the same experiment has been tried, and has produced the same result. Under their withering effect, the empire of Spain and the Indies has passed away; the mother country, torn by internal dissensions, has fallen from her proud estate, and can with difficulty drag on a precarious existence amidst all the tumult and blood of incessant revolutions. How long will it be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... A molten globe dropped through the branches of the poplar, and striking the hard surface of the road at a distance of fifty yards scattered itself like a huge ingot dropped from a blast furnace. Great clouds of dust descended and choked him. A withering heat enveloped him.... ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... insupportable. There was a certain moisture and softness about the high temperature at Colombo, which we had experienced a month before; while here there was a dry, burning directness of the sun's power which was absolutely withering. As we passed over the road, swayed hither and thither upon the backs of the huge animals, it was amusing to watch the gambols of the wild monkeys in the trees, and to observe the flocks of wild peacocks in the open fields, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... their full strength, the Indians, comprehending how small was the number, made a desperate charge from two sides, getting so near us that several of the soldiers were badly wounded by arrows. But the Indians were received with such a withering fire that they fell back in confusion, leaving twenty of their warriors on the ground. Another charge resulted like the first, with heavy loss to the redskins, which so discouraged them that they drew off and held a protracted council. After discussing ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... may be driven by bitter wrong into transcendencies of wrath and scorn. "Ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you." The old desert-prince will not succumb even in his worst extremity, and he lashes his tormentors with wild but strong bursts of withering satire. But Job was down, and his cool friends went on imperturbably, probing his weakness, sneering at his excuses, and, I suspect, rejoicing not a little in his wild outbreaks of pain and despair. The ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... company felt that way about it, for Dane was not popular. She gave no handle for an active grievance, to be sure. She wasn't superior in the sense in which Dolly used the word. She didn't look haughty nor say withering things to people, nor tell passionately-believed stories designed to convince her hearers that her rightful place in the world was immensely higher than the one she now occupied. One didn't hear her exclaiming under some bit of managerial tyranny, that ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... (p. 11.) The hopelessly corrupt moral state of the youthful Colossus, described with such sickening force and power by the great Apostle in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, cannot have occurred to Dr. Temple's remembrance, for he says nothing about it. Certain withering denunciations of "a wicked and adulterous generation[24];"—of "adulterers and adulteresses[25];"—"serpents," a "generation of vipers," which should hardly "escape the damnation of Hell[26];"—ought to have reached him with a reproachful echo; but he is silent about ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... he asked lightly. 'It ruins a complexion no less than before. Or does a complexion cease to count? Look!' He leaned forward. A pink carnation was in a glass in front of him, already withering from the heat. He touched the faded tips of the petals. 'That is the colour which conies ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... reluctant to abandon the hopes to which it had given birth, at the very moment they were plotting to obtain the scalp of the "medicine-man." The beloved "fire-water," that seduces so many to their destruction, who have enjoyed the advantages of moral teaching, and which has been a withering curse on the red man of this continent, still had its influence; and the craving appetites of several of the drunkards of the party brought them to the spot, as soon as their eyes opened on the new day. The bee-hunter could see some of this cluster kneeling on ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... the delightful phenomena which are observable at the commencement of the rainy season, (immediately following that of the withering hot winds,) the joy displayed by the peacocks is one of the most pleasing. These birds assemble in groups upon some retired spot of verdant grass; jump about in the most animated manner, and make the air re-echo with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... settlements; that her ports and rivers, instead of affording a shelter to the extensive commerce of China, should at this enlightened period of the world hold out only terror and dismay to the mariner; and that all that she should have acquired from the deadly vicinage and withering grasp of Dutch power and dominion has been the art of more speedily destroying each other, and rendering themselves obnoxious to the rest of mankind. Now that her destinies are transferred to the enlightened heads and liberal hearts of Englishmen,—now that her fortunes are embarked under ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel |
