"Drift away" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... direction, at which point there was a white expanse of floe extending right up to the land. Wild and Kennedy, walking several miles towards the land, estimated that it was about twenty-five miles distant. As the surface over which they travelled was traversed by cracks and liable to drift away to sea, all projects of landing there had to be abandoned; furthermore, it was discovered that the ice-tongue, alongside of which the ship lay, was a huge iceberg. A landing on it had been contemplated, but was now ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... means express his feelings. He was so terrified and unnerved that for a moment he thought of leaving the raft to its fate, and making good his own escape while he had time. Then he wondered if it would not be better to cast it loose and drift away through the fog to some new hiding-place. It would never do to go without his partners, though; for, in the first place, he could not manage the raft alone, and in the second there was no knowing what ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... earnest and protracted meditation to modify, the impressions of early years, it may not be possible for our young men, the instant they emerge from their academies, to scatter themselves like a flock of wild fowl risen out of a marsh, and drift away on every irregular wind ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... shaken in his struggle against the unseen foe, and he had spoken to her querulously, almost sharply. Yet in her tears there was no reproach for him, rather for herself—the fear that she might lose her influence over him, that she could not keep him close to her heart, that he might drift away from her in the commonplaces and monotony of work and domestic life. Everything so depended on her being to him not only the one woman for whom he cared, but the woman without whom he could care ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sudden explosion from the other side of the wall, and everybody decides all at once they would like to be someplace else, and they all pick the same spot. The space ferry is pretty crowded, but we jam aboard it and drift away from the Saturn—musicians, waiters and paying customers all sitting in each ...
— The Flying Cuspidors • V. R. Francis
... navigation which may be but temporary. While costing less than lighthouses, they are not in favor with the Lighthouse Board, because the very conditions which make a light most necessary, are likely to cause these vessels to break from their moorings and drift away, leaving their post unguarded. Their keepers suffer all the discomforts of a sailor's life and most of its dangers, while enjoying none of its novelty and freedom. The ships are usually anchored in shoal water, where the sea is sure to run high, and the tossing and rolling ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... riddle to him, and he let the subject drift away. "Shall we go and sit in the cathedral?" he asked, when their ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... to me: 'We are not fastened; those men did not attach the rope; and we may drift away from him, perhaps across the river, and so lose him. Is it too ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... the greatest that come into the lives of most children. Love of home, of parents, of brothers and sisters, of children, are the perfectly natural things of existence. Yet often the ties are weak; not infrequently are they broken. Children drift away from the restraining and helpful influence of their parents, and families disintegrate. The results are bad. By properly teaching such selections as the following, much may be done to correct the evil and to intensify the highest, holiest emotions ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... large room, watching every movement, every figure intently until prevented by physical pain which produced a sense of utter isolation. His perceptions were now concentrated in his chest, the source of all his suffering. Gradually, very gradually, he began to drift away from life. When now he saw something, it seemed to him strange and meaningless. The last fight between life and death had begun; it filled his whole being; it created a new world, strange and lonely, a world of terror, agony and despairing conflict. Now and ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... why, but—but I dread something," Hermione said. "I feel as if—no, I don't know what I feel. But if Vere should ever drift away from me I don't know how I could bear it. A boy—one expects him to go out into the world. But a girl! I want to keep Vere. I must keep Vere. If anything else were to be taken from me I don't ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... hard gale came on from the southward, threatening every moment to snap them in two, and drive us from our anchorage. We held on for several hours, till, at nine P.M., some swell having set in upon the margin of the ice, it began to break off and drift away. Every possible exertion was instantly made to shift our stream cable farther in upon the floe; but it broke away so quickly as to baffle every endeavour, and at ten the ship went adrift, the wind blowing still harder ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... the lads frequently looked at the sky. But the clouds, that had been gathering, appeared to drift away to the northward. ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... the man, with a sombre look in his eyes, "he caught it, and began to smooth his pole, letting the raft drift away; and though I begged and prayed of them to stop for me, they only laughed, and let her get right into the current. It was life or death to me, as I thought then," continued the stranger, "and I climbed along that shelf ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... weather before night, and set about rubbing the barrel of the flintlock till it gleamed. The day dragged slowly by. At last, about three in the afternoon, a slight wind from the northeast sprang up, and the wreaths of vapor began to drift away seaward. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... they had reached the cigarette and coffee stage of the proceedings that she allowed a small, well-considered sigh to escape her and drift away into the silence that had fallen between them. Storran glanced across at her ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... yonder broken fragment of a flag-staff; its truck is still remaining, though the flag is gone, and every nation might claim it. As you stir, the burning brands evince a remembrance of their sea-lost life, the sparks drift away like foam-flakes, the flames wave and flap like sails, and the wail of the chimney sings a second shipwreck. As the tiny scintillations gleam and scatter and vanish in the soot of the chimney-wall, instead of "There goes the parson, and there goes the clerk," it must be the ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... misty, seems to drift like a cloud through the trees ahead. You scarcely notice it till, on your right, a stir, and another cloud, and another—The caribou, quick, a score of them! But before your rifle is up and you have found the sights, the gray things melt into the gray woods and drift away; and the stalk begins all ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... who half his life had spent Toiling at ledgers in a city grey, Thinking that so his days would drift away With no lance broken in life's tournament: Yet ever 'twixt the books and his bright eyes The gleaming eagles of the legions came, And horsemen, charging under phantom skies, Went thundering past ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... fellow, and he loves companionship. He will drift away presently, and one won't see anything ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things that were heard, lest haply we drift away from ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... naturally there are some who are lazy and reckless. They think it is an easy life, idle away a couple of years; and then, because their funds come to an end or because angry parents refuse any longer to support them, drift away from the hospital. Others find the examinations too hard for them; one failure after another robs them of their nerve; and, panic-stricken, they forget as soon as they come into the forbidding buildings of the Conjoint Board the knowledge which before they had so pat. They remain year after ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... little dingy, belonging to the 'Monkshaven,' had been cast away as soon as the men had disembarked from her, and there was something melancholy in seeing her slowly drift away to leeward, followed by her oars and various small articles, as if to rejoin the noble ship she had so lately quitted. The latter was now hove-to, under full sail, an occasional puff of smoke alone betraying the presence of the demon of destruction within. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... by your still dead form, With my cheek on your breast, and die that way, Than to live and battle with night and storm, And drift away from ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... people did not care to go too near to the dangerous place. There was a row of thick bushes which concealed the gulf below, and as they approached these bushes the rain abruptly ceased, and the clouds began to break and drift away in the sky. "Two of you seize the girl and throw her over," said Tourmaline in a calm, matter-of-fact way, "and two others must throw the boy over. It may take four, perhaps, to lift the huge ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... day the king and his mother watched the boys at their play. The older two amused themselves by building barns, in which they put toy cows and sheep; but Harold launched mock boats on a pond and watched them drift away. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... take a "specimen day." It is early morning, or to be more precise, about eight of the clock, and the white fog is just beginning to curl and drift away from the surface of the river. Sooner than this it would be idle to go out. The preternaturally early bird in his greedy haste may catch the worm; but the salmon never take the fly until the fog has lifted; and in this the scientific angler ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... great that we halted, giving the camels a chance of grazing on what tamarisks they could find during day-light, for indeed camels are troublesome animals. They must not eat after sundown or it makes them ill. They are let loose on arrival at a camp, and they drift away in search of lichens or other shrubs. At sunset they are driven back to camp, where they kneel down and ruminate to their hearts' content until it is time for the caravan to start. The heavy wooden saddles with heavy padding under them are not removed ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... congregation. There came a time when but very little of Lutheranism was to be found in the old colony of the Salzburgers. (600.) During Bergmann's long pastorate, which was conducted in the German language exclusively until 1824, the Americanized young people gradually began to drift away from the mother church. However, to the present day descendants of the Salzburgers are found in the Lutheran congregations of Savannah and ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... talk to her every afternoon. She talked wonderfully, and her friends' joy in her was wonderful, too. It evidently made people happy to be near her. All she said and did was like her light step and the movements of her delicate, fine head—gracious and soft and arrestingly lovely. She did not let me drift away and sit in a corner looking on, as I usually did among strangers. She kept me near her, and in some subtle, gentle way made me a part of all that was happening—the talk, the charming circle under the ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... retirement, withdrawal; retreat; retrocession &c 283 [Obs.]; departure, &c 293; recoil &c 277; flight &c (avoidance) 623. V. recede, go, move back, move from, retire; withdraw, shrink, back off; come away, move away, back away, go away, get away, drift away; depart &c 293; retreat &c 283; move off, stand off, sheer off; fall back, stand aside; run away &c (avoid) 623. remove, shunt, distance. Adj. receding &c v.. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... brain, the communicator's mind should wander, and that he should either think aloud to himself as it were (all this coming through as confused writing, be it understood), or that the spirit should lose its grasp of the organism altogether and drift away? The mind cannot retain two vivid pictures at the same time; either one or the other must grow fogged and dim; and this would certainly be so in the case of any communicator, where we may suppose a certain amount of mental energy—corresponding to a mental picture perhaps—is necessitated ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... rolled a cigarette and passed the "makings" to the other, who received it gravely and proceeded to help himself. Luck scratched a match on a stone that lay beside him, lighted the Indian's cigarette and then his own, took four puffs and blew the smoke upward, watching it spread and drift away, and made the gesture that meant "Our pow-wow will be good," as he had seen the Sioux medicine men do before a council. Afterwards he began placidly ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... with a scripture text or two, and a postscript from his father with some sound advice and more scripture texts. Since then he had not written. He could not comprehend how he could so completely drift away, and yet clearly it was because he had found here in Sanger the well for ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... for a considerable time, then all was silent; and I suppose that the piece we were on had already begun to drift away from the main body of ice. I fancied, even, that I could feel a peculiar undulating movement, as if it was acted on by the waves. As soon as morning dawned we eagerly looked out. At first there appeared to be no change; but, as the light increased, we found ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... his chair, drink from his glass. It wrought a change in all his nature; everything that went to make up his daily life—wife, business, the methodical prudence of the small bourgeois—seemed suddenly to become unstable and drift away from him. And he shut himself up in his house and barricaded it, he paced the empty apartments with the restless impatience of a caged wild beast, going from room to room to make sure that all the doors and windows were securely fastened. He counted his cartridges and found he had forty left, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the pity of it, Edith brushed away a tear or two. She was not at all sleepy, but drew the blanket closer around her, for the night grew chill as the earth swept farther and farther away from the sun. The clouds had begun to drift away, and faintly, through the shadow, glimmered one pale star. Gradually, others came out, then a white and ghostly moon, with a veil of cloud about it, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... They drift away. Ah, God! they drift for ever. I watch the stream sweep onward to the sea, Like some old battered buoy upon a roaring river, Round whom the ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... labour, and had been laid at her feet a dead man. She was free to go and join her love. To me, child as I was, this was sorely cruel. Death, as I know now, is very merciful even when he seems most merciless, but as I sat and watched the dear life slowly drift away from me, it was a hard ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... becoming inglorious instead of famous, bankrupt instead of wealthy. For a city's wealth consists, I imagine, in allies, confidence, loyalty—and of all these you are bankrupt. {67} And because you are indifferent to these advantages, and let them drift away from you, he has become prosperous and powerful, and formidable to all, Hellenes and foreigners alike; while you are deserted and humbled, with a splendid profusion of commodities in your market, and a contemptible lack of all ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... I will," she whispered to herself, a hand pressed to each temple to constrain her mind. And for five minutes she would attend, and then she would drift away on a sea of pleasant indolence, and time fluttered away from her like an escaping bird, and she knew herself for a light woman who would never excel. And Kay's brown head was bent over his book, and ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... been planning something like this, and then to have it taste like stale wine! Vaguely he knew that he had made a discovery. The girl! If he were poring over his chart, his glance would drift away; if he were reading, the printed page had a peculiar way of vanishing. Of course it was all nonsense. But that night in Shanghai something had drawn him irresistibly to young Cleigh's table. It might have been the colour of her hair. ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... saw the rest of the squadron drift away to leeward, she again headed for the Rock. The Spanish admiral, Barcelo, in a seventy-four gun ship, endeavoured to cut her off—firing two broadsides of grape and round shot at her—but, with the other man-of-war, was compelled to retire by the batteries ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... reached Leningrad aside from Paco and Loo, his cabinmates, Hank had built an Iron Curtain all of his own between himself and the other members of the Progressive Tours trip. Which was the way he wanted it. He could foresee a period when having friends might be a handicap when and if he needed to drift away from the main body for any ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... and the question then was, whether we should separate or keep together. After some discussion, we agreed to separate in twos, and the Portuguese captain and I agreed to keep each other company. We first pushed the boat into the stream, that she might drift away, and then, shaking each other by the hand and bidding adieu, we all started in different directions. For some time the captain and I threaded the woods in silence, when we were stopped by a stream of deep ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... the point of asking her to describe her visitor, but, fearing to be indiscreet, she asked Veronica to tell her who were the counterparts, and whence they came. Veronica could tell her nothing, and, untroubled by theory or scruple, she seemed to drift away— perhaps into the arms of her spiritual lover. On rousing her from her dream Evelyn learnt that Sister Angela, who was fond of reading the Bible, had discovered many texts anent counter-partial love. Which these could be Evelyn wondered, and Veronica quoted ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... the river, don't let them drag for me. Let me calmly drift away, and be borne off into the Atlantic Ocean. I want oblivion. Hang headstones! Let ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... see through't," murmured Junkie, after watching for some time. "See! he has hooked another. Ye see, Tonal', it must be lettin' the hook drift away down under the ledges that does it. Look! ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... observation will apply mutatis mutandis to Mr. Jones, who is built on a much slenderer connection. Mr. Jones (or whatever his name was) did not drift away from me. He turned his back on me and walked out of the room. It was in a little hotel in the Island of St. Thomas in the West Indies (in the year '75) where we found him one hot afternoon extended on three chairs, all alone in the loud ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... in her manner. His eyes had flitted almost instantly to Miriam Arnold's, and there they hung. A few minutes of swift, purposeless chat ensued, Mrs. Stannard and Mrs. Sumter doing most of it. Then, somehow, three women seemed to drift away and become engrossed in matters of their own over by the Navajo-covered lounge, and then Miriam lifted up her eyes and looked one moment into the ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... own way she thought that maybe after awhile that the big, big violet might drift away, away, and great grown people might say, "No, Bessie Bell, there never was a violet in all ...
— Somebody's Little Girl • Martha Young
... fascinating companion for a voyage down the sparkling stream of life; only his boat was very small. There was room in it for a girl-partner at the oar, but no accommodation for passengers. He was allowed to drift away from the threshold of the Belgravian mansion while Winnie averted her tearful eyes. He was not a lodger. The lodger was Mr Verloc, indolent, and keeping late hours, sleepily jocular of a morning from under his bed-clothes, but with gleams of infatuation ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... there is one, a single one, who.... Yes, I mean Pythagoras. He has proclaimed this and that doctrine in the East and the West, but I have found one anchor in his philosophy, and I have gripped firm ground with it. I certainly swing in the wind, but I do not drift away from it." ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... see the Jersey shore. The sea in every direction was now darkened with millions of black gulls, wild ducks, and other aquatic birds; we shot many of these from the ship's deck, but were, much to our mortification, obliged to see them drift away, the pilot, seconded by our austere captain, strenuously objecting to a boat being lowered; this was very discouraging, as such a change in our diet would, after a rather prolonged voyage, have ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... try to guard their happiness. You would say that I had plenty of opportunities in my profession; it is true in a sense, and I think I am perhaps a better schoolmaster for being unmarried. But these boys are not one's own; they drift away; they come back dutifully and affectionately to talk to their old tutor; and we are both of us painfully conscious that we have lost hold of the thread, and that the nearness of the tie that ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... extraneous institution called a school for the children. The church spends its money for adults; it compasses sea and land to make one proselyte and coerce him back in old age, and allows the many that already as children are its own to drift away. It often fails to see that if it is to grow lives it must grow them in the growing period. There still remain many churches that must be converted from the selfishness of adult ministry and entertainment to self-giving service for the development of spiritual lives and, especially, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... was in the boat business and the little fellow had often heard how needful it was to tie boats fast so they would not drift away or be taken out by the tide. So it was one of the first things he thought of when he and Sue landed ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... his mates said nothing more at the time, however. They all made their way to the stables, kicked the drift away from the door, and got the horses into their stalls. They all went inside out of the storm and closed the doors against the driving snow. In five minutes, when the animals were made secure and fed, and they tried to open the doors again, the wind had heaped the snow to such a height against them ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... by and the ice moved out. This is the phrase that is always used along the lakes. The ice 'moves out' of every harbor from Ogdensburg to Duluth. You can see the great white floes drift away into the horizon, and the question comes, Where do they go? Do they meet out there the counter floes from the Canada side, and then do they all join hands and sink at a given signal to the bottom? Certainly, there is nothing ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson |
