"Defile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Opposite the defile through which the enemy was to march to the attack eight field-pieces were concealed behind a hill. The King must necessarily have been informed of the whole plan of the Austrian general, for he had called in the advanced posts from the heights, that he might ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy: for the temple of God is holy; which temple ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... overtaken the Indians as well as the horses. They had continued the pursuit alone after Fuentas left them, and towards nightfall entered the mountains into which the trail led. After sunset, the moon gave light until late in the night, when it entered a narrow defile, and was difficult to follow. Here they lay from midnight till morning. At daylight they resumed the pursuit, and at sunrise discovered the horses; and immediately dismounting and tying up their own, they crept cautiously to a rising ground which intervened, from the ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... might turn back now," said Lady Blanchemain. "It's getting rather gloomy here." She looked round, with a little shudder, and then gave the necessary order. The valley had narrowed to what was scarcely more than a defile between two dark and rugged hillsides, —pine-covered hillsides that shut out the sun, smiting the air with chill and shadow, and turning the Rampio, whose brawl seemed somehow to increase the chill, turning the sparkling, sportive Rampio to the colour of slate. "It puts one in mind ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... that purpose, were friends of the deceased, descended, like him, from the race of MacDhonuil Dhu; and while they prepared for the dismal task which their duty imposed, it was not without a stern feeling of gratified revenge. The leading company of the regiment began now to defile from the barrier-gate, and was followed by the others, each successively moving and halting according to the orders of the adjutant, so as to form three sides of an oblong square, with the ranks faced inwards. The fourth, or blank side of the square, was closed up by the huge and lofty ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... mouth of the latter a wall of rock opposes the progress of the river, and leaves at length but a narrow and precipitous defile for the passage of its waters: a pathway cut into the cliff at a very remote date leads almost perpendicularly from the bottom of the precipice to the summit of the promontory. Commerce followed these short and direct routes, but invading hosts very rarely took advantage of them, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... between the rows of trees Glare of the mid-day sun; Creeping along the highway wide, Slowly in long defile, we ride— The ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... various places in the vicinity of Dijon, ready at a moment's warning to assemble at the point of rendezvous, and with a rush to enter the defile. Immense magazines of wheat, biscuit, and oats had been noiselessly collected in different places. Large sums of specie had been forwarded, to hire the services of every peasant, with his mule, who inhabited the valleys among the ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... fiction, and under this heading there is more or less accessible to her every possibility in the gamut of morality, from the teaching of such a book as "Richard Feverel" down to the excrement and sewage that defile the railway book-stalls to-day under the guise of "bold, reverent, and fearless handling of the great sex problems." The present writer is one of those old-fashioned enough to believe that it matters a great deal ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... them were broken and ragged, those coming from the east overlapping the cliffs from the west. Into the defile formed by this overlapping the party filed. I could see them climbing upward for a few minutes, and then they disappeared from view. When the last of them had passed from sight, I rose and bent my steps in the direction of the pass—the same pass ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... my road the whole character of the way was changed; no longer was I crossing a great plain, but winding among the hills, while Arno, noisier than before, fled past me in an ever narrower bed among the rocks and buttresses of what soon became little more than a defile between the hills. Though the road was deep in dust, there was shadow under the cypresses beside the way, there was a whisper of wind among the reeds beside the river, and the song of the cicale grew fainter and the hills were touched with light; ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... had wrapped herself in a black cloak, and placed two pistols in her belt, and she carefully concealed the dark lantern. The mole-hole of the Hussites yawned before her! A long, dark, black defile, the more gruesome since it did not run straight but round about; the entire tunnel so like a catacomb, was vaulted, hewn out of the hard quartz. The walls were already as black as a scaffold, with the ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... for the time was September of 1790, two months after the passing—on the motion of that downright Breton leveller, Le Chapelier—of the decree that nobility should no more be hereditary than infamy; that just as the brand of the gallows must not defile the possibly worthy descendants of one who had been convicted of evil, neither should the blazon advertising achievement glorify the possibly unworthy descendants of one who had proved himself good. And ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... wide, men said there must be another attracting world beyond; and, looking there, Neptune was found. So, when individual men are so strong that nations or armies cannot break down their wills; so brave, that lions have no terrors; so holy, that temptation cannot lure nor sin defile them; so grand in thought, that men cannot follow; so pure in walk, that God walks with them—let us infer an attracting world, high and pure and strong as heaven. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is a roll-call of heroes of whom this world was not worthy. They were tortured, not accepting ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... were to be wished, that none would write Histories with so great a desire of setting foorth nouelties & strange things, that they feare not, in that regard to broch any fabulous & old-wiues toyes, & so to defile pure gold with filthy mire. But I pray you, how might those drowned men be swimming in the infernal lake, & yet for al that, parletng with their acquaintance & friends? What? Will you coniure, & raise vp vnto vs from death ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... not in a particularly complaisant mood that day. He was cross and snappish at trifles; irritable and out of humour with himself. As he waded through the narrow defile, the dumb assistant behind him whistled faintly, and perhaps inadvertantly. The fisherman looked ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... a procession and began to defile past him. "Smoking in the Court, half-a-crown," said one, in a dreadful voice. "Mr. BURROWES irregular in his attendance at Chapel, gated at eight," roared a second. "Mr. BURROWES persistently disorderly, sent down for the term," shouted a third; and then they ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... showers.' Other snakes, the best of their kind, proposed, 'Going, by night, let us steal away the vessel of Soma juice. That will disturb the rite. Or, at that sacrifice, let the snakes, by hundreds and thousands, bite the people, and spread terror around. Or, let the serpents defile the pure food with their food-defiling urine and dung.' Others said, 'Let us become the king's Ritwiks, and obstruct his sacrifice by saying at the outset, 'Give us the sacrificial fee.' He (the king), being placed in our power, will do whatever we like.' Others ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... close to the khan, running between an abrupt face of the hill and the river, when the advanced guard came back at full speed with the announcement that a body of the enemy's infantry was near at hand. Closely jammed in a narrow defile, between inaccessible cliffs and the precipitous banks of the Jordan, with nothing but cavalry at my disposal, I was placed in rather a disagreeable position. There remained, however, no alternative but to put spurs to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... dawn of morning the Austrian army—the first that ever entered the country—made its appearance in the pass, headed by Duke Leopold and his formidable cavalry. Suddenly, when the whole narrow defile was blocked with horse and foot, thousands of heavy stones and trees were hurled among them from the neighboring heights, where the peasant band, forming the Swiss force, lay concealed. The suddenness ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... which we must cleanse ourselves. The connection between the two is so close, that in every sin both are partakers. The lowest and most carnal form of sin will enter the spirit, and, dragging it down into partnership in crime, will defile and degrade it. And so will all defilement of spirit in course of time show its power in the flesh. Still we may speak of the two classes of sins as they owe their origin more directly to the flesh or ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... integrity of purpose, his unwillingness to conceal his disloyalty. When temples are shattered and altars crumble, we save our idol and flee into the wilderness, exulting in the assurance that no clay feet defile it. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of wind with a flying cloud-wrack overhead whence peeped the pallid moon betimes; a night of gloom and mystery. The woods about them were full of sounds and stealthy rustlings as they strode along the forest road, and so came to that dark defile where the fight had raged. Of what they saw and heard within that place of slaughter it bodeth not to tell, nor of those figures, wild and fierce, that crouched to strip the jumbled slain, or snarled and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... than himself, is herein of no validity. But now, indeed, my burden is great; now Plato his name is laid upon me, whom I must confess, of all philosophers, I have ever esteemed most worthy of reverence, and with great reason, sith of all philosophers he is the most poetical. Yet if he will defile the fountain, out of which his flowing streams have proceeded, let us boldly examine with what reasons he did it. First, truly, a man might maliciously object that Plato, being a philosopher, was a natural enemy of poets; for, indeed, after the philosophers ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... our way up the hollow, intending to see what lay beyond the mountain. The hollow was several miles long, forming a good pass (some maps designate this pass as Fremont Pass, others as San Emidio Canyon), the snow deepened to about a foot as we neared the summit. Beyond, a defile between the mountains descended rapidly about two thousand feet; and, filling up all the lower space, was a sheet of green water, some twenty miles broad (Pyramid Lake). It broke upon our eyes like the ocean. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... body a forlorn-hope of thirty men was chosen, to force the perilous entrance to the foe. The command of this devoted corps was assigned to Francis Marion, still a lieutenant under the command of Moultrie, in the provincial regiment of Middleton. The ascent of the hill was by means of a gloomy defile, through which the little band, headed gallantly by their leader, advanced with due rapidity; a considerable body of the army moving forward at the same time in support of the advance. Scarcely had the detachment penetrated the defile, when the war-whoop gave the ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... foremost Tartar's in the gap Conspicuous by his yellow cap; 550 The rest in lengthening line the while Wind slowly through the long defile: Above, the mountain rears a peak, Where vultures whet the thirsty beak, And theirs may be a feast to-night, Shall tempt them down ere morrow's light; Beneath, a river's wintry stream Has shrunk before the summer beam, And left a channel bleak and bare, Save shrubs that spring to ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... world. I was seventeen and Emmy twenty. There still followed weeks, long months - melancholy moods returned again, discouragements - there were also walks through the dusky parks. And the hungry dogs continued to whine and to howl and the thought-flies continued to buzz and to defile themselves. Man may be reasonable and patient; he has natures to control, apparently for his own good, that are neither reasonable nor patient; that themselves never rest and demand guidance from a spirit, that does need rest; that always want to ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... little, which affected them some, but we gave them some fat bacon, which is said to be good for them. Great sign of buffalo here; also saw one today galloping away through a gap[69] in the mountains. [June 23—71st day] To day we passed through a narrow defile in the mountains, where we were compeled to ford the river 3 times,[70] in less than 2 miles, we had to block up our waggon bed several inches; it is a very bad place, there is a way to go around, but I am told that it is about 10 ms. & very sandy. There were goose berry bushes here by the road side, ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... flag of truce came to ask for terms, and the town surrendered on condition of the garrison going out with their arms and their private property. We went out to see them defile past the Prince and his staff. The poor fellows were in rags, and the bundles they carried on their backs contained everything they had in the world. Wives and children in numbers followed or preceded, and to our attempts to show them little kindnesses they shrank from us as if we had been ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... The truth is, that, as a military barrier, the Balcan is a fabulous mountain. Such seems to be the view of Major Keppell, who looked on it towards the east with the eye of a soldier, and certainly in the Sophia Pass, which I followed, there is no narrow defile, and no ascent sufficiently difficult to stop, or delay for long time, a ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... snow defile, when the leading sleigh, in which rode Ruth and Alice, swerved to one side. There was a crashing sound, a splintering of wood, and the two forward horses went down ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... safe, unless Bardur could be taken and the wires cut. There might be treason in the town, but that again was not his affair. Let him but send the message before sunset, and he would still have time to get to Khautmi, and with good luck hold the defile for sixty minutes. The thought excited him wildly. His face dripped with sweat, his boots were cut with rock till the leather hung in shreds, and a bleeding arm showed through the rents in his sleeve. But he felt no physical discomfort, ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... the village and of this I was heartily glad, since the remains of a cannibal feast are not pleasant to behold, especially when they are——! Indeed, of these I determined to be rid at once, so slipping off the waggon with Hans and some of the farm boys, for none of the Zulus would defile themselves by touching such human remnants—I made up two of the smouldering fires, the light of which the voorlooper had seen upon the sky, and on to them cast, or caused to be cast, those poor fragments. Also I told ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... reporter. He run into me on his filthy bicycle and he asked me if I could furnish 'im with particulars about the mutiny in the Army. You false-'earted proletarian publicist," he says, shakin' his finger at 'im—for he was reelly annoyed—"I'll teach you to defile what you can't comprebend! When my regiment's in a state o' mutiny, I'll do myself the honour of informing you personally. You particularly ignorant and very narsty little man," he says, "you're no better than a dhobi's donkey! ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... to their right. They were eight or ten miles from the city gates and more than half way up the winding road that ended at the monastery gates. Beverly and Quinnox came up with them and found all eyes centered on a small company of men encamped in the rocky defile a hundred yards ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... apart from Buddhism.[471] Caves decorated for Buddhist worship are found not only in the Tarim basin but at Tun-huang on the frontier of China proper, near Ta-t'ung-fu in northern Shensi, and in the defile of Lung-men in the province of Ho-nan. The general scheme and style of these caves are similar, but while in the last two, as in most Indian caves, the figures and ornaments are true sculpture, in the caves of Tun-huang and the Tarim not only is the wall prepared ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... Indians." Confident in his strength and in the efficacy of his firearms, and anxious to enjoy the spoils of a successful raid against a chief reported to be traveling surrounded by his family "and with rich treasure," he pressed eagerly on, up through a lofty valley toward a defile in the mountains, probably the Pass of Panticalla. Here, fatigued and exhausted by their difficult march and suffering from the effects of the altitude (16,000 ft.), his men found themselves ambushed by the Inca, who with a small party, "little more than eighty Indians," "attacked ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... mountains still higher, in which dwell the remnants of that curious white race first described by Stanley. The only access to our region from the lower country is by means of the ordinary wagon road which winds upward through a vast defile or gorge in the mountains. At one point the precipitous walls of this gorge approach so closely together that there is room for only two wagons to pass abreast. We determined to assemble all our men the next day at this place, and ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... morning from Berryville ten miles east, had to pass through a gorge in which for a considerable distance the turnpike extends towards Winchester. Sheridan's plan at first was to bring his army, except Merritt's and Averell's Divisions of Torbert's Cavalry, through the defile, post the Sixth Corps on the left, the Nineteenth on the right, throw Crook's Army of West Virginia across the Staunton turnpike (leading southwest from Winchester), and so cut off all retreat up the valley. Meanwhile those two cavalry divisions were ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... ground moist, there being a small well, but almost dried up; it would have cost us some time to dig it up to obtain water, which no longer rose above the surface, though it still maintained some verdure around it. This defile was thickly overgrown with fennel, three or four feet high; the Bedouins eat the stalks raw, and pretend that it cools the blood. Farther down we came to two copious springs, most picturesquely situated among the rocks, being overshaded by large wild fig-trees, a great ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... omnibus pegged slowly up, then charged round a corner, swirled into another loop, and pegged heavily once more. It seemed dark between the closing-in mountains. The rocks rose very high, the road looped and swerved from one side of the wide defile to the other, the vehicle pulsed and persisted. Sometimes there was a house, sometimes a wood of oak-trees, sometimes the glimpse of a ravine, then the tall white glisten of snow above the earthly blackness. And still they went on and on, up ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... at present, for Stransom had entered that dark defile of our earthly descent in which some one dies every day. It was only yesterday that Kate Creston had flashed out her white fire; yet already there were younger stars ablaze on the tips of the tapers. Various persons ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... entered the Buryea or Hingan mountains. This chain extends across the valley of the Amoor at nearly right angles, and the river flows through it in a single narrow defile. The mountains first reach the river on the northern bank, the Chinese shore continuing low for thirteen miles higher up. There are no islands, and the river, narrowed to about half a mile, flows with a rapid current. In some places it runs five miles an hour, and its depth ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... thief." "Lord," said he, "rather than see thee touch this reptile, I would purchase its freedom." "By my confession to Heaven, neither will I sell it nor set it free." "It is true, lord, that it is worth nothing to buy; but rather than see thee defile thyself by touching such a reptile as this, I will give thee three pounds to let it go." "I will not, by Heaven," said he, "take any price for it. As it ought, so shall it be hanged." And the priest ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... unhappy's last reserve. Where shall he turn? or whither fly? Despair Gives courage to the weak. Resolved to die, 530 He fears no more, but rushes on his foes, And deals his deaths around; beneath his feet These grovelling lie, those by his antlers gored Defile the ensanguined plain. Ah! see distressed He stands at bay against yon knotty trunk, That covers well his rear, his front presents An host of foes. Oh! shun, ye noble train, The rude encounter, and believe ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Andujar and Bailen, and on the third day reached Carolina, a small but beautiful town on the skirts of the Sierra Morena, inhabited by the descendants of German colonists. Two leagues from this place, we entered the defile of Despena Perros, which, even in quiet times, has an evil name, on account of the robberies which are continually being perpetrated within its recesses, but at the period of which I am speaking, it was said to be swarming with banditti. We of course expected to be robbed, perhaps ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... that defile the land, the shrieking of steam, and the perpetual, terrible grinding of iron against iron (sounds which our little children grow up not to heed) are part of a system which enables Mr. Ruskin, one day to address a crowd in the theatre of the British Institution, and on the next—or ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... thee never to defile Beauty with gold? For every wise man knows That riches only mantle with a smile A thousand sorrows ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... closing round them, but the capture of Pontorson deranged the plans of the Republicans. The place had been held by four thousand men and ten pieces of cannon and, as it could be approached only by a narrow defile, it was believed that it would be impossible for the Vendeans to force their way into it. However, after three hours' fighting, their desperate valour won the day, and the Republicans were routed, with the loss ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... for instance," asked Schill, indignantly, "why we lost the important defile of Koesen? In consequence of the night-sweat of General ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... influences that stand between humanity and its redemption. He is a very excellent, a very estimable man,—but he is not shocked at intemperance, he would not have slavery disturbed, he sees a necessity for war. Does Christ know who and what sort of a woman it is that touches him? Will he defile himself by such a contact? Can he expect to accomplish anything by familiarity with such matters? Why is he not satisfied with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to rise. This immense volume of water was vainly seeking an outlet through the narrow defile formed by the hills and which ordinarily sufficed for the bed of the Gardon; but, finding the passage inadequate now, it dashed itself violently against the rocks and against the supports of the aqueduct which haughtily defied the furious flood; then, converted ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... using this Americanism, properly a diluvium or deposit of sand, and improperly (Bartlett) a find of drift gold. The word, like many mining terms in the Far West, is borrowed from the Spaniards; it is not therefore one of the many American vulgarisms which threaten hopelessly to defile the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... a tree, in front of the palace of the Thuilleries, within a few yards of the spot where Louis XVI. and many other victims of the revolution had perished; and they saw the last man of their armies defile past the town, and proceed to take a position beyond it, before ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... smoke which rose in volumes from the discharge of musketry, on whose wing, at every round, he dreaded might be carried the fate of his grandfather. At last the firing ceased, and the troops were commanded to go forward. On approaching near the contested defile, Thaddeus shuddered, for at every step the heels of his charger struck upon the wounded or the dead. There lay his enemies, here lay his friends! His respiration was nearly suspended, and his eyes clung to the ground, expecting at each moment ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... passions, would sacrifice the lives, the loves, the very souls of men! She lived to separate, where Jesus died to make one! How weak and unworthy was I to be caught in her snares! how wicked and vile not to tear myself loose! The woman whose touch would defile the Pharisee, is pure beside such ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... it sets up the only true sanctuary for his worship on earth, the sanctuary which is found in the heart of every sincere and obedient believer in him. Paul says to the Corinthian brethren: "Know ye not that ye are the sanctuary of God? If any man defile the sanctuary of God, him will God destroy; for the sanctuary of God is holy, ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... mighty and a brave hero, but turbulent, and delighted in hunting the deer and the boar. After killing these beasts, he would throw their dead bodies into the sacred hall of his sister, and otherwise defile her dwelling. When he had done this several times, his sister was angry, and hid in the cave called the Rock Gate of Heaven; and when her face was not seen, there was no difference between the night and the day. The heroes who served her, mourning over this, went to seek her; but ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... have forgotten nothing, that was connected with the morals of the society. He was anxious for the purity of its character, he seemed afraid of every wind that blew, lest it should bring some noxious vapour to defile it. And as those things which were spoken or represented, might corrupt the mind, so those which were written and printed, might equally corrupt it also. He recommended therefore, that the youth of his newly formed society should abstain from the reading of romances. William Penn and ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... murmured at the expense attending the war, and, to bring it to a crisis, proposed to commence an attack the next morning by crossing the river. Surrey, an experienced warrior, hesitated to engage his troops in the defile of a wooden bridge, where scarce two horsemen could ride abreast; but, urged by the imprudent vehemence of Cressingham, he advanced, contrary to common-sense as well as to his own judgment. The vanguard of the English was attacked before they could get ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... of penitents, starting on a pilgrimage to far-off Rome, defile past the Virgin's shrine, saluting her and asking her grace upon their pilgrimage. Their pious chant stirs in Tannhaeuser deep, long-untouched chords. At the same moment that the aroused sense of pollution would overwhelm ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... into that same tenement, in a room of which the sick girl lay, her spirit fled. Judgment, also, was said to have fallen on a woman who occupied a room in that house, and who had violently and excitedly objected to the body of a hanged man being brought to defile any abode which sheltered her. That same evening the body of her own son, found drowned in Tweed, was carried over that threshold across which she had tried to prevent them from bringing the corpse of Hislop. All these events tended ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... cover myself with any thing that had been on the back of a Yahoo. I only desired he would lend me two clean shirts, which, having been washed since he wore them, I believed would not so much defile me. These I changed every second day, and ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... scandals, immorality, and intrigue. With her, the question was not one of dogma, but concerned, instead, the religion which she considered most conducive to progress and reform. It grieved her to see her religion defile itself by cruel and inhuman persecutions and tortures, by intolerance and injustice. She felt for, but not with, the heretics in their errors. "She typifies her age in all that is good and noble, in artistic aspirations, in literary ideals, in pure politics—in ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... road,—which winds in and out of the passes, on and on, and leads to a definite place at last,—and, because he sees an apparently impassable mountain wall across the path, forsakes this and wanders off into some other valley and defile that looks more open, but in whose mazes he loses himself and makes no progress ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... days, word was sent by telephone that Frost and his caravan were unable to cross Sylvan Pass because of fifty feet of snow in the defile, and that he had returned to Cody where he would take an auto truck and come around to the northern entrance to the Park, through ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... the only plan that offered, and abandoning the straight road they wound down the defile spanned further on by the old castle arch, and forming the original ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... with the breath of poetry where others in general spoke the word of prose. Turgenev's horizon always broadens before our eyes: where Fielding and Richardson speak for the country and the town, Turgenev speaks for the nation. While Balzac makes defile before us an endless stream of human figures, Turgenev's characters reveal themselves as wider apart in the range of their spirit, as more mysteriously alive in their inevitable essence, than do Meredith's or Flaubert's, than do Thackeray's ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... cross, the water being less in volume by reason of the dry weather. All at once I stopped, for amid these rocks and boulders I saw caught all manner of drift, as sticks and bushes, branches and the like, washed down by the current and which, all tangled and twisted together, choked this narrow defile, forming a kind of barrier against the current. Now as I gazed at this, my eyes (as if directed by the finger of God) beheld something caught in this barrier, something small and piteous to see but which set me all a-trembling and sent me clambering down these rocks; ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the circle steadily growing less, and the terrified beasts becoming more crowded together, until at length they were driven down some narrow defile, along whose course the lords and gentlemen had been posted, lying in wait for the coming of the deer, and ready to show their marksmanship by shooting such of the bucks as ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the Jewish Sabbath—and after that Puritanic Sunday ... after which mayhap, we'll all go to hell, driven thither by my Lord Protector. Wench, another bumper ... canary, sack or muscadel ... no thin Rhenish wine shall e'er defile this throat! Gentlemen, take your places.... Mistress Endicott, can none of these wenches discourse sweet music whilst we do homage to the goddess of Fortune? ... To the tables ... to the tables, gentlemen ... here's to King Charles, whom may God protect ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... cover, make a dash for it and escape. 3. Do not get lost. 4. Do not allow yourself to think of the enemy as being in one direction only. 5. In entering or passing through woods take an extended skirmish line formation. 6. In passing any short defile bridge or ford, send one man ahead. 7. If you suspect the presence of the enemy under certain cover, a good way to find out is to let one man approach within a reasonable distance and then, acting as though he had been discovered, turn and run. This will ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... freedom from the feverishness of every-day life, and suggest the lofty wisdom of the classic poets. But the serpent of futile melancholy, of the brief cadence of mortal dreams, and of the vanishing seconds that defile down the corridor of time, has stolen into this Garden of the Hesperides. Puvis de Chavannes, no more than Gustave Moreau, could escape the inquietude of his times. He is occasionally Parisian and ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... we, a nation of children, without any grown-up people among us, with no property in the language, but using it merely by courtesy of its owner the English nation, were trying to defile the sacredness of it by removing from it peculiarities which had been its ornament and which had made it holy and ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... out through a narrow and rocky defile, at whose narrowest part the banks rise in precipitous walls. Down this ravine the stream rushes in rapids and cascades, at one point forming a picturesque waterfall seventy-five feet in height. Only through ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... in cold contempt at the Old-time Barricade tricks— Each street, did I so order, were a cannon-swept defile, I've bound Fortune to my Chariot, and defying all her jade tricks, More in pity that in anger hear the roar ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... invoke the chisel's breathing grace, In marble majesty their forms to trace; Ye, who the sleeping rocks would raise, To guard their dust and speak their praise; Ye, who, should some other band With hostile foot defile the land, Feel that ye like them would wake, Like them the yoke of bondage break, Nor leave a battle-blade undrawn, Though every hill a sepulchre should yawn— Say, have not ye one line for those, One brother-line to spare, Who rose but as your Fathers rose, And dared as ...
— An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830, • Charles Sprague
... Priscilla had entertained a horror as to the coming of this Colonel equal to that which she herself had felt,—when her imagination painted to her all that her niece had suffered, her heart was softened somewhat. She had declared to Dorothy that pitch, if touched, would certainly defile; and she had, at first, intended to send the same opinion, couched in very forcible words, to her correspondents at the Clock House. They should not continue to go astray for want of being told that they were going astray. It must be acknowledged, too, that there was a certain amount of ignoble ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... nor thought the while, That falshood such a tale could tell: That dark deceit could e'er defile, The tongue that ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... that in our day there are so many truly Christian officers and common soldiers in the service. Drunkenness and swearing were dreadfully prevalent; indeed, in those days it was quite a rare thing to find an officer who did not defile his speech continually with profane oaths. But Colonel Gardiner was not a man to do things by halves: he was now enlisted under Christ's banner as a soldier of the Cross, and he must stand up for his ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... are women, that is to say: the females of man, nothing more. They are above all what men make them, and as we are generally vicious and spoilt, since from the most tender age we take care to defile ourselves in the street, in the workshop or on the school-benches; as the atmosphere we breathe is corrupt, we have no claim to believe that our wives, our sisters and our daughters can remain unspotted by our touch, ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... because of the silence of the god, resolved to perform harakiri in the temple, and so to defile the sacred building. ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... Nice, 1247 ft., at the base of lofty frowning rocks. Inns: trangers, Poste. Coach daily between this and Ventimiglia. To the E., on the Roja, are Breglio, pop. 2580, and the ruins of the castle of Trivella. The road now ascends a narrow defile of the Roja, which, suddenly widening, discloses Saorgio, pop. 1600, 400 ft. above the torrent, composed of parallel rows of dingy houses among almond and olive trees. On the top of the hill is the castle ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... considered authentic. "The King," he says, "brought back his army without experiencing any loss, save that at the summit of the Pyrenees he suffered somewhat from the perfidy of the Vascons (Basques). While the army of the Franks, embarrassed in a narrow defile, was forced by the nature of the ground to advance in one long close line, the Basques, who were in ambush on the crest of the mountain—for the thickness of the forest with which these parts are covered is favorable to ambuscade—descend and fall suddenly on the baggage-train and on the troops of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... from it by a narrow defile at the south, and on all other sides the Apennines encircle it with ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... scrupling to defile Bulika with my presence, I took advantage of the shelter, poor as ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... were now rapidly approaching. It consisted of a nearly straight defile, about half a mile in length, with a bend in its middle just sufficient to shut out the view of one end of it from the other. This defile was simply a cleft in the stupendous mass of rock that formed a great spur of the mountain on the left-hand ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... permitted Dumouriez to occupy the difficult country of the Argonne, where, while waiting for his reinforcements, he was able for some time to hold the invaders in check. At length Brunswick made his way past the defile which Dumouriez had chosen for his first line of defence; but it was only to find the French posted in such strength on his flank that any further advance would imperil his own army. If the advance was to be continued, Dumouriez must be dislodged. Accordingly, on the 20th ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... pushed her remonstrances so far that she boldly declared that the man was engaged to her daughter, and wrote to him more than once declaring that it was so. She wrote, indeed, very often, sometimes abusing him for his perfidy, and then, again, imploring him to return to them, and not to defile the true old English blood of the Caldigates with the suds of a washerwoman and the swept-up refuse of a porter's shovel. She became quite eloquent in her denunciation, but always saying that if he would only come back to Babington all would be forgiven him. But in these days ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... that sacrilege is not a special sin. It is stated (XVII, qu. iv) "They are guilty of sacrilege who through ignorance sin against the sanctity of the law, violate and defile it by their negligence." But this is done in every sin, because sin is "a word, deed or desire contrary to the law of God," according to Augustine (Contra Faust. xxi, 27). Therefore sacrilege is a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... towered above this protection were in a trice shorn of their tops, as though a gigantic scythe had swept across them. The storm was now at its height. The lightning filled the defile, and the thunderclaps had become one continued peal. The ground, struck by the concussion, trembled as though the whole Ural chain was shaken to ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... defile, the travellers advanced with steadily increasing difficulty, the boulders with which their path was strewed growing ever larger and more numerous until at length the narrowing road became completely choked ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... I — within such coil The immortal spirit rests awhile: When this shall lie beneath the soil, Which its mere mortal parts defile, THAT shall for ever live and foil ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... knocks were heard at the house door; the women rushed in and unlocked it at once; and so great had been the hopeless excitement of the last few minutes, that it was almost with a sense of relief that Anton saw a strong body of soldiery defile into the court. He rose from the ground, and left the landlord free. But the merchant walked slowly, and with uncertain steps, like a broken-down man, to meet the enemies who, at this decisive moment, frustrated ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... Comforter.... Pray much for this Comforter that He may enlighten your mind, that He may fill your hearts. Oh, pray for the Spirit of God, for there is no other way of walking to heaven but by the Spirit. Let Him lead you. My dear brethren, in this way, and in this way alone, will you not defile your garments." "Thy Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness."—Psalm cxliii. 10. She had faith in the power ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... landscape, as in the romantic German tale. It is not only a mill, but likewise an ale-house and rural inn; so that the associations it suggests are not of labor only, but also of pleasure. It stands in the narrow defile, with its picturesque, thatched roof; thither throng thepeasants, of a holiday; and there are rustic dances under ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Ebed gamal Mohar n'amu ('A camel's slave is the Mohar! they say'); so they say, and thou gainest a name among the Mohars and the knights of the land of Egypt. Thy name becomes like that of Qazairnai, the lord of Asel, when the lions found him in the thicket, in the defile which is rendered dangerous by the Shasu who lie in ambush among the trees. They measured four cubits from the nose to the heel, they had a grim look, without softness; they ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... Captain Gerard distinguishes between the summits that rise in the middle of the plateau, where he states the elevation of the snow-line to be between 18,000 and 19,000 feet, and the northern slopes of the chain of the Himalaya, which border on the defile of the Sutledge, and can radiate but little heat, owing to the deep ravines with which they are intersected. The elevation of the village of Tangno is given at only 9300 feet, while that of the plateau surrounding ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... formidable. 'The stream of the Bolan river was tainted by the bodies of the camels that had sunk beneath their loads. The Beloochee freebooters were hovering about, cutting off our couriers, murdering stragglers, carrying off our baggage and our cattle. Among the rocks of this stupendous defile, our men pitched their tents, and toiled on again day after day, over a wretched road, covered with loose flint-stones, surmounting, at first by a scarcely perceptible ascent, and afterwards by a difficult acclivity, the great Brahoo chain ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... send by surreptitious conveyance, letters to refugee statesmen, which discussed the political situation as calmly as if written upon the work-table of a secure and peaceful home. Calumny now busied itself to defile her. Hebert, vilest of editors, flung the ordure of Pere Duchesne, vilest of newspapers, upon this spotless woman, soon to be a saint, and sent the newsmen to cry the disgusting charges under her prison windows, so that she heard them rendered in all the villainies ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... same line of paling, but, in reality, a close pheasant preserve, occupying the banks of a ravine, which, after a deep and tortuous course, terminated in the declivity heretofore described as forming the park boundary. Luke plunged into the heart of this defile, fighting his way downwards, in the direction of the brook. His progress was impeded by a thick undergrowth of brier, and other matted vegetation, as well as by the entanglements thrown in his way by the taller bushes of thorn and hazel, the entwined and elastic branches of which, in their ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... divested themselves of their licentious and predatory habits, and learnt now for the first time to distinguish between right and wrong? Do they understand what it is to commit sacrilege? To intrude into the sanctum sanctorum of the meat-safe? To rifle and defile the half roseate, half lily-white charms of a virgin ham? To touch with unhallowed proboscis the immaculate lip of beauty, the unprotected scalp of old age, the savoury glories of the kitchen? To invade with the most ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... false or frowns, To bear the Cross, and save our crowns. O honour those that honour Thee! Make babes to still the enemy! And teach an infant of few days To perfect by his death Thy praise! Let none defile what Thou didst wed, Nor tear the garland from her head! But chaste and cheerful let her die, And precious in the Bridegroom's eye So to Thy glory and her praise, These last ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... into battalion columns and go round the village!" he said angrily to a general who had ridden up. "Don't you understand, your excellency, my dear sir, that you must not defile through narrow village streets when we are marching against ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... through One Tree Gulch," he declared. "We c'n overtake them in the defile, goin' by way of Poison Spider Creek and the old Buffalo Trail, droppin' on 'em ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... mountain-range of Guadarrama, which had to be crossed by the pass of Somosierra. This defile was found to be strongly guarded; there were not only infantry stationed on the heights, but artillery also, sixteen guns being below the turn of the pass in a most advantageous position. In the early morning of the thirtieth the French infantry began to climb the cliffs on each side of the narrow ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... lead, and was walking along, glancing idly about. He came to a place where two peaks were so close together that it was all he could do to squeeze through. But the moment he had passed the defile and looked out on a broad, level field, he came to a sudden stop. His companions, who pressed after him, saw him rub his eyes and shake his head, as if disbelieving the evidence of what lay before him. Then Jack murmured: "It can't be true! It can't ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... of rain after two or three days of fine weather, leave your window well open to the street, and some books or papers on the table; and if you do not, in a little while, know what the Harpies mean, and how they snatch, and how they defile, I'll give up ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... they have become impure. But if there is no other woman in the house and she must continue to do the household work herself, she does not throw them away until the last day. [29] Similarly she must not sleep on a cotton sheet or mattress during this time because she would defile it, but she may sleep on a woollen blanket as wool is a holy material and is not defiled. At the end of the period she proceeds to a stream and purifies herself by bathing and washing her head with earth. When a woman is with child for the first time her women friends ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... their Method in these polemical Debates, first to discharge their Syllogisms, and afterwards to betake themselves to their Clubs, till such Time as they had one Way or other confounded their Gainsayers. There is in Oxford a narrow [Defile, [1] (to make use of a military Term) where the Partizans used to encounter, for which Reason it still retains the Name of Logic-Lane. I have heard an old Gentleman, a Physician, make his Boasts, that when he was a young Fellow he marched several Times at the Head of a Troop of Scotists, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele |
