"Desert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... true their situation was not so bad as if each had been left alone by himself. Many a poor castaway upon a desert island has been condemned to a far more unhappy fate. They knew and acknowledged this. Each had the other two for companions; but as they reflected thus, they could not hinder their thoughts from casting forward into ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... now joined in making common cause against the Scots, so that Gebhardt strongly advised that these should be withdrawn to Nanci for the present, the which advice George Douglas hotly resented. He had as good a claim to watch the castle as the Duke. He was not going to desert his King's sisters, far less the lady he had followed from Scotland. If any one was to be ordered off, it should be the fat lazy Alsatians, who were good for nothing but to ride big Flemish horses, and were ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... A stooping figure in a shabby, black frock-coat, the figure of a man who wore a dilapidated bowler pressed down upon his ears, who had a greasy, Semitic countenance, with a scrubby, curling, sandy colored beard, sparse as the vegetation of a desert, appeared at ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... cage was an African lioness, a beautiful and powerful beast, docile as a cat. Housed under other arches were two surly hyenas, goats from the White Nile, and an antelope of Kordofan. In a stable opening upon the garden were a pair of beautiful desert gazelles, and near to them, two cranes and a marabout. The leopards, whose howling now disturbed the night, were in a large, cell-like cage immediately below the spot where of old the chapel ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... quiet opportunity to assure me that, whatever may be the final order of the Supreme Government, they will do their best for the good of the people and the state; for I have always considered Jhansi among the native states of Bundelkhand as a kind of oasis in the desert, the only one in which a man can accumulate property with the confidence of being permitted by its rulers freely to display and enjoy it. I had also to receive the visit of messengers from the Raja of Datiya, at whose capital we were ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... desert strip along Red Sea coast; cooler and wetter in the central highlands (up to 61 cm of rainfall annually); semiarid in western hills and lowlands; rainfall heaviest during ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... he found a pleasure in satisfying his curiosity, which so much pleased the poor young prisoner, that, as a great condescension, he invited him to come out on the roof of the tower and drink sherbet with him in the cool of the evening, and tell him of the country beyond the desert, and what seas are like, and ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... point which they reached was Etham. This was a district of country just on the edge of the desert. From this point there were three routes to Palestine. The Israelites, by divine direction, took ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... break for me," Manning shrugged. "What did you expect? There's precious little opportunity on this desert rock for leadership in any sense that you might approve of." He paused. "I don't know if it will be necessary to kill any of them. Take it easy ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... place in a respectable house, and it was to me she talked, my lad," pointing self-consciously with quivering forefinger at her own bosom; "so Elizabeth has not begged herself in there at all. You didn't need to desert your watch to bring such tales here; and Elizabeth shall hear of it—that she shall," she repeated, excitedly, striking one hand into the other with a loud smack—"she shall hear what fine faith you ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... especially since he did not satisfy Descartes and still less Pascal. That the mystics should be dissatisfied was natural enough, since they were committed to the contrary view, but that Descartes should desert was a serious blow which threw the French Church into consternation from which ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... the Restoration critics had an immoderate passion for classing authors according to their supposed rank in the scale of literary desert. A glance at The Battle of the Books—a faint reflection of the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns—is enough to place this beyond dispute. Dryden himself is probably as guilty as any in this matter. His parallel between Juvenal ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... of poverty—comparative poverty. You have withheld the advantages which you must know to have been designed for him. You have deprived the best years of his life of that independence which was no less his due than his desert. You have done all this! and yet you can treat the mention of his misfortune ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... with his deep-rooted desires. He would never drink as he had done, but might he not have just one tumbler?—That one tumbler he did not take. And—rich reward!—after two months the well of song within him began to gurgle and heave as if its waters would break forth once more in the desert; the roseate hue returned to the sunsets; and the spring came in with a very childhood of greenness.—The obfuscations of self-indulgence will soon vanish where they have not been sealed by crime ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... benefit from an opportunity which it may be in her power to procure for me, my own mind would shrink from the investigation. My heart is not conscious of an unworthy ambition; nor of a desire to establish either fame, honor, or fortune upon any other foundation than that of desert. But it is conscious, and the consideration is equally painful and humiliating, it is conscious that the ambition is constant and unceasing, while the exertions to acquire the talents which ought ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... not be neglected. Egon's whole future depended upon his half-brother's caprice, he hinted to the Baroness in asking leave to desert her pleasant party for a few hours. So of course she sent the Chancellor her regrets, with the Baron's; and Egon went off charged with a friendly message from ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... are numerous. Among them are "St. Louis," "Sappho," "Petrarch and Laura," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert," "A Devotee of the Virgin," exhibited at Turin in 1884; a series illustrating the "Seasons," and four others representing ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... growth by which innocence passed into positive goodness. If the home was such a school of discipline, its neighbors, less earnest and less favored with spiritual training, furnished more abundant occasion for self-mastery and growth. The very fact that in his later years Jesus was no desert preacher, like John, but social, and socially sought for, indicates that he did not win his manhood's perfection in solitude, but in fellowship with common life and in victory over the trials and temptations incident to it ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... sides and along the entire lines. Now and then the monotony was broken by a conversation or trade, but never to last a great while, the foe not allowing their men such liberties when it could be helped, for they would not unfrequently take advantage of these occasions to desert. ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... feel so far removed from this in your Yorkshire desert that it has no interest for you, but I know how devoted you are to Peter and one doesn't want to see the boy turned into the society novelist creature—the kind of creature, God forgive me, that brother Percival is certain to become. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... the general resemblance of the physical features of the two countries, and the fact, that the existence of an only river in each is the sole cause of an immense tract of territory being prevented from becoming throughout a parched and unprofitable desert. In Upper Scinde, there are very rarely more than three or four showers in the year, and the cultivator has to depend entirely upon the overflow of the river for the growth of his crops, in the same ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... friendly nod to the northward hills that marked a day of his past, Pringle turned his eyes to the westlands, outspread and vast before him. To his right the desert stretched away, a mighty plain dotted with low hills, rimmed with a curving, jagged range. Beyond that range was a nothingness, a hiatus that marked the sunken valley of the Rio Grande; beyond that, a headlong infinity of unknown ranges, tier on tier, yellow ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... his room or lost in sorrowful broodings an hour passed, and then he began to tell himself that he must not for the indulgence of even his great grief desert his lawful work. If things went wrong at the mill, because of his absence, and gain was lost for his delay, he would be wronging many more than John Hatton. Come what might to him personally, he was bound by his father's, as well as his own, promise to be "diligent ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... began to think the whole expedition out West would be a failure—an experience not worth alluding to in future times—unless the family were well robbed on the way. Jonathan and Thrusty Ellen, in the great overland colony, would have Indians to shudder at, a desert and mountains to cross, besides the tremendous Mississippi River. Robert would hate to meet Jonathan in coming days—and he had a boy's faith that he should be constantly repassing old acquaintances in this world—and have no peril to put in ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... is one situation in which the futility of these social mockeries becomes most thoroughly obvious, it is the situation presented by an attempt to imitate the conventional society life in a woman's college. And yet—she had gone over the whole question so often—what a desert of awkwardness and learned provincialism such a college would be without the attempt! How often she had cordially agreed to the statement that it was precisely because of its insistence upon this connection with the forms and relations ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... Peace with me; Not that you love me, but for the Kingdom's good: Then in a Tent which I will pitch on purpose, Get him to meet me: He being drawn off, Thousands of Bigots (who think to cheat the World Into an Opinion, that fighting for the Cardinal is A pious Work) will (when he leaves the Camp) Desert it too. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... spray flies up a hundred feet from the exploding mass, the little sea-larks only mount to higher levels of the cliff, never coming inland or forsaking its salt-spattered resting-place. Compared with these home-loving birds, all the gulls are wanderers, even though they do not desert our shores and come fifty miles up the Thames. Of the rock-fowl, the puffins fly straight away to the Mediterranean, and the guillemots and razorbills go out to sea and leave their nesting crags. Only the cormorants stay at home, flying in to roost on the same lofty ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... have no need to stick at a bank-desk now (though I have been poor enough in my time I assure you, or I should have married Mrs Meagles long before), we go trotting about the world. This is how you found us staring at the Nile, and the Pyramids, and the Sphinxes, and the Desert, and all the rest of it; and this is how Tattycoram will be a greater traveller in course of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Robinson describes Wady Feiran, northwest of Sinai, as well watered, with gardens of fruit and palm trees; and he was assured by the Arabs that in rainy seasons grass springs up over the whole face of the desert. The whole northeastern part of the wilderness, where the Israelites seem to have dwelt much of the thirty-eight years, is capable of cultivation, and is still cultivated by the Arabs in patches. ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... Nile, and attempt the removal of the sand-hills which covered the principal portion of the magnificent temple of Ebsamboul. Belzoni readily consented, set out for Lower Nubia, ventured boldly among the savage tribes who wander through the sandy desert; returning to Thebes, he was rewarded, not only by the success of his special mission, but also by discovering the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... all-prevailing sunbeams have chased each other over the wooded slopes, and down into the dark hollow where the lake lies sleeping, making a pageant far finer than the one Prospero raised for Ferdinand and Miranda on his desert island.... ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Hamath, pressed on against Philistia, the last inhabited country on the route which led to Egypt. Shabak, having made alliance with Hanun, king of Gaza, marched to his aid. The opposing hosts met at Ropeh, the Raphia of the Greeks, on the very borders of the desert. Sargon commanded in person on the one side, Shabak and Hanun on the other. A great battle was fought, which was for a long time stoutly contested; but the strong forms, the superior arms, and the better discipline of the Assyrians, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... world was racing. He could see masses of vividly green forest; vast expanses of bare, cracked, ocherous desert; ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... Sometimes I would expand until I felt larger than the mountain itself; then again I would shrink to the size of a flea. One time I would feel as if I were up near the North Pole, surrounded by ice and freezing to death. At another time I would imagine that I was in the middle of the Sahara Desert, being roasted alive by the scorching rays of the sun. And, still again, I would feel that I was shipwrecked upon a barren island, and was slowly dying for the want of food and water. Sometimes I fancied that I could see ships all about me, and I would yell, and roar ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... Skating and sliding, on the other hand, are honoured more and more; and curling, being a creature of the national genius, is little likely to be disregarded. The patriotism that leads a man to eat Scots bun will scarcely desert him at the curling pond. Edinburgh, with its long, steep pavements, is the proper home of sliders; many a happy urchin can slide the whole way to school; and the profession of errand-boy is transformed into a holiday amusement. As for skating, there is scarce ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... maestro, meaning "the masterful." It is very prevalent along the south coast of Europe at certain times of the year, drying up the soil, and doing much damage to the fruit trees. The dust, like sand in the desert, is almost blinding; on one side you have a cold cutting wind, on the other perhaps scorching heat—altogether very far from pleasant. This wind sometimes raises a tumult in the Mediterranean Sea, which is much dreaded by the ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... as he went along the street he began to question himself whether the prospects of his own darling Mary were at all endangered by his visits to Park Lane; and to reflect what sort of a blackguard he would be,—a blackguard of how deep a dye,—were he to desert Mary and marry Madame Max Goesler. Then he also asked himself as to the nature and quality of his own political honesty if he were to abandon Mary in order that he might maintain his parliamentary independence. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... whole may be said literally to relish of nothing else. Something of the same, though in a manner perhaps still better, because less pronounced, occurs in As You Like It, ii. 1, where, the exiled Duke having expressed his pain that the deer, "poor dappled fools, being native burghers of this desert city," should on their own grounds "have their round haunches gor'd," one of the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the Emperor Joseph. By that event, the Archduke Charles succeeded to his throne. Joseph died 17th April. Four months earlier, 23rd December, Harley, by his intermediary, Gautier, informed Torcy that England would give up Spain and the Indies to the Bourbon king, and would desert the allies as soon as trade interests were provided for. The surrender of that which the English had claimed from 1703 to 1710, the return, in spite of success and glory, to the moderate policy laid down by William in 1701, was not caused by the prospect of ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... love what Cais, that madman[FN16] hight, Did never undergo for love of Leila bright. Yet chase I not the beasts o' the desert, as did he; For madness hath its kinds for ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... dungeon hears thee groan, 50 Maimed, mangled by inhuman men; Or thou upon a desert thrown Inheritest the lion's den; Or hast been summoned to the deep, Thou, thou and all thy mates, to keep 55 An ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... exclusive economic zone: not specified territorial sea: 12 nm International disputes: administrative boundary with Sudan does not coincide with international boundary creating the "Hala'ib Triangle," a barren area of 20,580 km2, the dispute over this area escalated in 1993 Climate: desert; hot, dry summers with moderate winters Terrain: vast desert plateau interrupted by Nile valley and delta Natural resources: petroleum, natural gas, iron ore, phosphates, manganese, limestone, gypsum, talc, asbestos, lead, zinc Land use: arable land: 3% permanent crops: 2% meadows ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was named Christ, Whom it typified; whereas the dove and the fire suddenly appeared to signify only what was happening. They seem, however, to be like to the flame of the burning bush seen by Moses and to the column which the people followed in the desert, and to the lightning and thunder issuing forth when the law was given on the mountain. For the purpose of the bodily appearances of those things was that they might signify, and then pass away." Thus the visible mission is neither displayed by ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... you, and now, because of a man of whom you know nothing, you desert her cause. Is that loyalty, mademoiselle? We shall not ask you to remain at Dr. Franklin's any longer; Miss Lawton does not wish unwilling service from anyone. But for your own sake, go back to the club, and remain ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... unaccustomed warmth. It was as if it had just been unclasped from the arm of a yohng woman full of red blood and tingling all over with swift nerve-currents. Life had never looked to her as it did that evening. It was the swan's first breasting the water,—bred on the desert sand, with vague dreams of lake and river, and strange longings as the mirage came and dissolved, and at length afloat upon the sparkling wave. She felt as if she had for the first time found her destiny. It was to please, and ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... everywhere evidence of this inclination to desert the positive, to bring the ideal even into historic annals, I believe that with greater reason we should be completely indifferent to historical reality in judging the dramatic works, whether poems, romances, or tragedies, which borrow from history celebrated characters. Art ought never to be ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... rapidly and coolly serving his gun at Trafalgar, helping to win the dominion of all seas, or taking his trick at the helm through arctic iceblocks with Parry, or toiling on with steadfast Sturt, knee-deep in the sand of the middle desert, patiently yet hopelessly scanning the low quivering line ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... when weighed in lofty minds against glory or immortality? When the shadow he pursues is worth more, and is more enduring than the substance, well might it be said that "Man is but a shadow, and life a dream." Such were my reflections on this day of rest, in the heart of a desert, while protected from the sun's rays by a blanket, and in some uncertainty how long these dreams under it would ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... county, the Heath lies to the north and north-east, and would merge into what is now Chobham Common. It must have covered many more miles than the maps allow it to-day. Chobham Ridges stretch from its south-west corner, a long, sandy scar of three miles, overlooking the Bisley rifle ranges and the desert ground behind them. You are sure to be invited to admire Chobham Ridges, and no doubt twenty years ago it was fine wild country. But frequent notice-boards observing that when the red flag is flying ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... on all these desert places! The fear which hath no name hath wrought a spell, Strength, courage, wrath, have been, and left no traces! They came—and fled; but whither? who ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... proof from the records of the criminal police court of Ashbury, wherein, on January 27, 2734, one John Tourney, found guilty of telling the tale in a boozing-ken of labourers, was sentenced to five years' penal servitude in the borax mines of the Arizona Desert.—EDITOR'S NOTE.] ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... ladies on this subject last night, they asserted that the infrequency of elopements in France proved the superiority of morals of the French, and that few examples ever occurred of a woman being so lost to virtue as to desert her children and abandon her home. "But if she should have rendered herself unworthy of any longer being the companion of her children, the partner of her home," asked one of the circle, "would it be more moral to remain under the roof she had dishonoured, and with the ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... of the plant which had contained the dew in the morning, and had found them, although acid, full of watery sap and grateful to the palate. The plant in question is the one provided by bounteous Providence for the support of the camel and other beasts in the arid desert, only to be found there, and devoured by all ruminating animals with avidity. By the advice of Philip they collected a quantity of this plant and put it into the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to yield its power. Touched by so unequivocal signs of suffering, Don Camillo kept close at his side, reluctant to enter more deeply into the feelings of one of his known character, and yet unable to desert a fellow-creature in so ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... "And whereas, the importation of Spanish Indians, mustees, negroes, and mulattoes, may be of dangerous consequence by inticing the slaves belonging to the inhabitants of this Province to desert with them to the Spanish ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Clarence Bulbul, because he has made part of the little tour that all of us know, comes back and gives himself airs, forsooth, and howls as if he were just out of the great Libyan desert. ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as a dainty is attested by the frequency with which it appears as a desert and the extensive use of various nuts as confections. That nuts do not hold a more prominent place in the national bill of fare is due chiefly to two causes; first, the popular idea that nuts are highly indigestible, and second, their comparatively ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... an hour before sunrise one fine morning, when I left it, was as picturesque as it seemed unreal and spectral. It was no matter that the people were not yet out of bed; for if they had all been up and busy, they would have made but little difference in that desert of a place. It was best to see it, without a single figure in the picture; a city of the dead, without one solitary survivor. Pestilence might have ravaged streets, squares, and market-places; and sack and siege have ruined the old houses, battered ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... of the gentlewomen of this age, That set their beauties to the open view, Making disdaine their lord, true love their page, A custome zeale doth hate, desert doth rue: Learne to looke red, anon waxe pale and wan, Making a mocke of love, ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... muscles, while overhead streams and thunders that other river whose every wave is a human soul flowing to eternity as the river below flows to the ocean,—lying there, moored unseen, in loneliness so profound that the columns of Tadmor in the desert could not seem more remote from life, —the cool breeze on one's forehead,—... why should ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... alone of an Americanised, 'pirated-edition' reading world, the book remains the sacred thing it is. Therefore, he would not have it degraded by, so to say, an indiscriminate breeding, such as has also made the children of men cheap and vulgar to each other. We pity the desert rose that is born to unappreciated beauty, the unset gem that glitters on no woman's hand; but what of the book that eats its heart out in the threepenny box, the remainders that are sold ignominiously in job lots by ignorant auctioneers? Have we ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... raised her eyebrows; she was really surprised. "Naturally, she must stand by her husband when he is in trouble; why, if his own wife didn't, who would, Rudolph? It is just now that he needs her most. It would be abominable to desert him now." ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Both the Meos and Minas are divided into twelve large clans called pal, the word pal meaning, according to Colonel Tod, 'a defile in a valley suitable for cultivation or defence.' In a sandy desert like Rajputana the valleys of streams might be expected to be the only favourable tracts for settlement, and the name perhaps therefore is a record of the process by which the colonies of Minas in these isolated patches of culturable land developed into exogamous clans ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... as he was to know the news, Jack Benson did not desert his post by the steering wheel. Some one must be there. Nor had Hal thought of ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... begun by the other. Thereupon Francia executed the decorations right round one part of that cloister, and finished two of the scenes, which he painted with great diligence. These are, first S. John the Baptist obtaining leave from his father Zacharias to go into the desert, and then the meeting of Christ and S. John on the way, with Joseph and Mary standing there and beholding them embrace one another. But more than this he did not do, on account of the return of Andrea, who then went on to finish ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... careful. Then she burst into tears and told me about her sister. It appeared her sister was afraid to be left alone. Every time Olga left the room, her sister caught at her dress and made her promise not to desert her. She thought of the Germans day and night. She cursed Olga if she should ever run away and leave her to them. A few days later, Olga came again. She was so pale and thin it frightened me, and she didn't hurry nervously any ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... the results of my Abyssinian inquiry, I next proceeded to Syria; for among certain desert tribes I hoped to find further evidence to support my theory. In short, in the Arabic tradition of the jackal-man (which is allied to the medieval and universal belief in the were-wolf or loup-garou) and in the Indian myth of the woman who, possessing an ordinary human ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... it be borne in mind that from the windows of the newspaper office the American desert was visible; that within a radius of ten miles Indians were encamping amongst the sage—brush; that the whole city was populated with miners, adventurers, Jew traders, gamblers, and all the rough-and-tumble class which ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... attend this state of the atmosphere, known as the Fata Morgana of Sicily, the Mirage of the Desert, the Spectre of the Brocken, and the more common exhibitions of halos, coronae, and mock suns. The Mountain House at Catskill has repeatedly been seen brightly pictured on the clouds below. Rainbows are also due to this ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... hold communion with the open profane, is most pernicious and destructive. (1.) 'Twas the wicked multitude that fell a lusting, and that tempted Christ in the desert (Num 11:4). (2.) It was the profane heathen, of whom Israel learned to worship idols. They 'were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works. And served their idols; which were a snare unto them' (Psa 106:35,36). (3.) It is the mingled people that God hath ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... expert: Where is large, shallow, unmapped body of salt water in United States, or near border, surrounded by hot, snake-infested desert and mountainous country, reputed to contain gold? Spanish associations indicated. Wire details and name of best guide, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... she's very lonely. We must see to that, mustn't we? Lady Henry can buy another companion to-morrow—she will. She has heaps of money and heaps of friends, and she'll tell her own story to them all. But Julie has only us. If we desert her—" ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... easily understood. Ralph Percy, his wife, and several others (see notes) are cast on a desert shore after the sinking of their boat. Percy leaves his companions for a time and falls among pirates; he pretends to be a "sea-rover" himself. Why does he allude to the pirate ship as a "cockboat"? Why are the pirates impressed by his ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... State convention of 1881, Mrs. Mary E. Nash was nominated as the candidate of that party for State superintendent of schools. Mrs. Nash declined the honor intended, and said that her political flag, if it were to float at all, would be found in another camp. She would not desert her colors for office. In 1884 Mrs. H. J. Bellangee and Mrs. A. M. Swain were regularly accredited delegates to the National Greenback convention, held at Indianapolis, Ind., to nominate a candidate for the presidency, where they were received with ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... face was flushed and her wood-brown eyes looked grieved and pleading. Mary Isabel was still pretty, and vanity is the last thing to desert a properly ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... through the regions of the polar star; defies time, trouble, and Tartary; marches in the track of tribes, of which all but the names have expired; follows the glories of conquerors, whose bones have mingled five hundred years ago with the dust of the desert; gives a flying glance on one side towards the Wall of China, and on the other towards the Arctic Circle; still presses on, till he reaches the confines of the frozen civilisation of the Russian empire; and sweeps along, among bowing governors and prostrate serfs,—still ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... near the cushion, as if prepared to shed light on the curious cryptography, stood an exquisite white glass lamp, shaped like a vase, and richly ornamented with Arabic inscriptions in ultra-marine blue—a precious relic of some ruined Laura in the Nitrian desert, by the aid of whose rays the hoary hermits, whom St. Macarius ruled, broke the midnight gloom chanting, "Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison," fourteen hundred years before St. Elmo's birth. Immediately opposite, on an embossed ivory stand, and protected from air and dust ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... seemed veritably to hum with secret and, to judge by the pitch of its rumour, well-nigh panic activity. One divined a scurrying as of rats about to desert a sinking ship. Untoward events had thrown this establishment into a state of excited confusion: their nature Lanyard could not surmise, but their conjunction with his designs was exasperatingly inopportune. To search this place and find his man—if he were there at all—without being ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... precise nature of all the features, each one of which bears the imprint of callow morbidezza. Even the hair has the dainty qualities of childhood: it has the texture of silk. It is a striking contrast to the life-sized Baptist who has just reached manhood. We see a St. John walking out into the desert. He looks downward to the scroll in his hand, trudging forward with a hesitating gait,—but only hesitating because he is not sure of his foothold, so deeply is he absorbed in reading. It is a triumph of concentration. Donatello has enlisted every agency that could intensify the oblivion ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... going to desert us, Miss Foster," Nevill replied. "Your company is preferable to ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... youth had vanished utterly: where he had stood, the tesselated pavement, with the serpent of life twining through it, and the sculptured walls of the temple, shone out clear and bare, as if Hyacinth had walked out into the desert to return no more. Again the tears gushed from the heart of Florimel: she had sinned against her own fame—had blotted out a fair memorial record that might have outlasted the knight of stone under the Norman canopy in Lossie ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... sacred splendor, and the thunder-bolt Fell. Then on every side the foodful earth Roared in the burning flame, and far and near The trackless depth of forests crashed with fire; Yea, the broad earth burned red, the floods of Nile Glowed, and the desert ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... covers on the map a vast but ill-defined area, stretching on the west into the Kalahari Desert, and on the north-west into the thinly peopled country round Lake Ngami, where various small tribes live in practical independence. Sovereignty among African natives is tribal rather than territorial. Khama is the chief of the Bamangwato, rather than ruler of a country, and where the Bamangwato ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Aunt said, "Certainly not! She will never need to know. Even on a desert island she will find some Woman Friday ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... passes and good roads, the almost entire lack of railway facilities and the whole nature of the country rendered offensive operations as difficult as on the northeast frontier of Italy or in the Carpathians. In Syria and on the road to the Suez Canal, the waterless desert, the entire absence of railways, the paucity and inadequacy of roads and the nature of the obstacles to be crossed before an invasion of Egypt was possible made the task one of terrible difficulty. In the Dardanelles the peninsula of Gallipoli, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... made fast to a boom, under a pile of white houses; it is Royan. Here already are the sea and the dunes; the right of the village is buried under a mass of sand; there are crumbling hills, little dreary valleys, where you are lost as if in the desert; no sound, no movement, no life; scanty, leafless vegetation dots moving soil, and its filaments fall like sickly hairs; small shells, white and empty, cling to these in chaplets, and, wherever the foot is set, they crack with a sound like a cricket's ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... on the fertility of the soil, it is not on the mildness of the atmosphere, that the prosperity of nations chiefly depends. Slavery and superstition can make Campania a land of beggars, and can change the plain of Enna into a desert. Nor is it beyond the power of human intelligence and energy, developed by civil and spiritual freedom, to turn sterile rocks and pestilential marshes into cities and gardens. Enlightened as your founder was, he little knew that he was himself ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... into the crevices of the rocks and discover nothing that acknowledged the influence of the seasons. There was no spring, no summer, 75 no autumn: and the winter's snow, that would have been lovely, fell not on these hot rocks and scorching sands. Never morning lark had poised himself over this desert; but the huge serpent often hissed there beneath the talons of the vulture, and the vulture screamed, his wings imprisoned within the coils of 80 the serpent. The pointed and shattered summits of the ridges of the rocks made a rude mimicry of human concerns, and seemed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to seeke him. So the world often harbours in disguised attire among them that flie the world. This is an abuse. But follow wee the company of men, the worlde hath his court among them: seeke we the Deserts, it hath there his dennes and places of resorte, and in the Desert it selfe tempteth Christ Iesus. Retire wee our selues into our selues, we find it there as vncleane as any where. Wee can not make the worlde die in vs, but by dieng our selues. We are in the world, and ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... Isles lie a few miles south of Mount Desert Island and about 25 miles east of Penobscot Bay. They are in the track of migrating salmon, as a few herring weirs set around the islands have for several years taken one or more salmon almost annually. [3] Mr. W. I. ...
— The Salmon Fishery of Penobscot Bay and River in 1895-96 • Hugh M. Smith
... brooksides gave a voice to the quivering valley; the poplars were laughing as they swayed; not a cloud was in the sky; the birds sang, the crickets chirped,—all was melody. Do not ask me again why I love Touraine. I love it, not as we love our cradle, not as we love the oasis in a desert; I love it as an artist loves art; I love it less than I love you; but without Touraine, perhaps I might not ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... and work-table stood, a scrupulous order prevailed; but the rest of the apartment had the dreary untidiness, the damp grey look, which the worker in clay usually creates about him. In the centre of this desert stood the shrouded image of Caspar's disappointment: the colossal rejected group as to which his friends could seldom remember whether it represented Jove hurling a Titan from Olympus or Science Subjugating Religion. ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... are nothing! It's a simoon that you're thinking about, and they happen only on the desert. In what ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... old story. The more things the better; why not? You'd be happy on a desert island full of horrid naked savages. You think you're civilised, but you're really the most primitive person ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... that is, in a certain place, for if it were, Jesus was mistaken in telling his disciples not to believe those who said, "Lo, here!" or "Lo, there!" not to go into the desert when men say, "Behold, he is there," and not to believe those who declare that he is hidden somewhere in the city, for that the coming of the Son of man should be like that of the lightning, which shines all round the sky, and seems to be ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... his own earlier standard he was damned, and he had dragged Doris Cleveland down with him. So was Myra smeared with the pitch of moral obloquy. They were sinners all. Pain should be their desert; ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... said. "I'd like to go. I think you and the others will be in the thick of great events, but I could never desert Tayoga and Willet. I feel that my business, whatever it is, is here. But we may meet on the front again, though ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... long been eclipsed by the lustre of Marlborough, began again to hold up their heads, Mr. Prior and Dr. Garth espoused opposite interests; Mr. Prior wrote for, and Garth against the court. The Dr. was so far honest, that he did not desert his patron in distress; and notwithstanding the cloud which then hung upon the party, he addressed verses to him, which, however they may fail in the poetry, bear strong the marks of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... in the forests a few nourishing fruits, a few salutary roots, and thus supplied their most immediate wants. The first shepherds observed that the stars moved in a regular course, and made use of them to guide their journeys across the plains of the desert. Such was the origin of the mathematical and physical sciences. Once convinced that it could combat nature by the means which she herself afforded, genius reposed no more, it watched her without relaxation, it made incessantly new conquests ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... he sped on once more; but as they crossed the busy river all his light-heartedness seemed suddenly to desert him; the questions he had been vainly asking himself earlier that day were reiterated in his brain. Where was she? What had become of her? His hands clasped closely. A red spot burned ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... only a few, and these were such as they could not sell nor use for any work as helpers. And whenever they did give back any of those in good condition, they would keep their relatives at home in order that the men given up might desert again to join their friends. They also expelled their king, Furtius, and on their own responsibility made Ariogaesus king instead. Consequently the emperor did not confirm him, since he had not been legally installed, ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... crime, pauperism, disease, and death. Occasionally circumstances produce a happy combination, and the result is a reasonably correct union in spite of ignorance; but such cases are so rare that they are like oases in the desert, and the subject of universal admiration and comment when they occur. The most casual observer notes, that unhappiness is the rule in the married state, and conjugal felicity the exception. A recent discussion of the question, ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... I'm obliged to put this thing through—on Evie's account as much as mine. After getting her to care for me, I can't desert ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... mankind, would become entirely useless. In a democracy, like ours, where few are very rich, and the majority are in comfortable circumstances, this collecting and dispensing of drops and rills, is the mode, by which, in imitation of Nature, the dews and showers are to distil on parched and desert lands. And every person, while earning a pittance to unite with many more, may be cheered with the consciousness of sustaining a grand system of operations, which must have the most decided influence, in raising all mankind to that perfect ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... Learn to be wise, and practise how to thrive; That would I have you do: and not to spend Your coin on every bauble that you fancy, Or every foolish brain that humours you. I would not have you to invade each place, Nor thrust yourself on all societies, Till men's affections, or your own desert, Should worthily invite you to your rank. He that is so respectless in his courses, Oft sells his reputation at cheap market. Nor would I, you should melt away yourself In flashing bravery, lest, while you affect To make a blaze of gentry to the world, A little puff of scorn extinguish ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air." ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... For the Service he had sacrificed everything in life, ease, wealth, home, yes, even wife and family, to a certain extent. With him the Force was a passion. For it he lived and breathed. That anyone should desert it for any cause soever was to him an act unexplainable. He almost reckoned ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... foreign powers, rather than bequeath to the next generation a broken Union, and an interminable civil war, I would light the torch of fanaticism and destroy all that the labor of two generations has accumulated. Better a desert and universal poverty than disunion; better the war of the French Revolution than an oligarchy founded upon the labor of slaves. But, sir, there is no need of this. The resources, wealth, and labor of twenty millions of freemen ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... women, the transfiguration of bread, potatoes and beefsteak into human intelligence, grace, beauty and noble action. We read in holy writ how the wandering Israelites were abundantly fed in the Assyrian desert with manna from the skies and marvel at the Providence which saved a million souls from death, forgetting that every harvest is a repetition of the same miracle, that each morsel of food we eat is a gift of Heaven ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... noon to dinner at the Wardrobe; where my Lady Wright was, who did talk much upon the worth and the desert of gallantry; and that there was none fit to be courtiers, but such as have been abroad and know fashions. [See note on Sir Harry Wright, 27th March 1660.] Which I endeavoured to oppose; and was troubled to hear her talk so, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... most delightful things in the world is going a journey." Now if there be one of our million of friends who, like the fop in the play, thinks all beyond Hyde Park a desert, let him forthwith proceed on a pilgrimage to Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of SHAKSPEARE; and though he be the veriest Londoner that ever sung of the "sweet shady side of Pall Mall," we venture to predict his reform. If such be not the result, then we envy him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... soul I looked from my Hades, above To the world I had left, and I craved the pure love That but late had seemed cold, unresponsive. Her eyes, Mabel's eyes, shone in dreams from the far distant skies Of the lost world of goodness and virtue. Like one Who is burning with thirst 'neath a hot desert sun, I longed for her kiss, cool, reluctant, but pure. Ah! man's love for good women alone can endure, For virtue is God, the Eternal. The rest Is but chaos. The worst must give way to the best. Tell Mabel—Ruth, Ruth, she is here, oh ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... former way of life; all his disquietudes had vanished. He felt that he was balanced, lacking those alternations of courage and cowardice which had previously formed the characteristic thing in him. It was the oasis after the desert; the calm that follows ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... preceding night. I had nothing to apprehend from Rob Roy. He was now at liberty, and I was certain, in case of my falling in with any of his people, the news of his escape would ensure me protection. I might thus also show, that I had no intention to desert Mr. Jarvie in the delicate situation in which he had engaged himself chiefly on my account. And lastly, it was only in this quarter that I could hope to learn tidings concerning Rashleigh and my father's papers, which had been the original cause of an expedition ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... such as gnats and flies, and yet because of the continual nuisance which they find them, complain more of these than they do of the other: so most men hate the unmannerly and untaught as much as they do the wicked, and more. There is no doubt that he who wishes to live, not in solitary and desert places, like a hermit, but in fellowship with men, and in populous cities, will find it a very necessary thing, to have skill to put himself forth comely and seemly in his fashions, gestures, and manners: the lack of which ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney |
