"Ebb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... circumstance only (besides the effect). The flowing tide is an antecedent of the ebbing tide; it is invariably so, and is equal to it; but it is not the cause of it: other circumstances are present; and the moon is the chief condition of both flow and ebb. In several instances, States that have grown outrageously luxurious have declined in power: that luxury caused their downfall may seem obvious, and capable of furnishing a moral lesson to the young. Hence other ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the stereotype and the facts, that cannot be ignored, definitely part company. There is always such a point, because our images of how things behave are simpler and more fixed than the ebb and flow of affairs. There comes a time, therefore, when the blind spots come from the edge of vision into the center. Then unless there are critics who have the courage to sound an alarm, and leaders capable ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... found our three adventurers dropping down the Thames with the first of the ebb tide, and a slight breeze from the south-west; Mabberly and Jackman in the very small cabin looking after stores, guns, rods, etcetera; Barret anxiously scanning the columns of a newspaper; Quin and the skipper making each other's ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... is always the same flow from God. There are ebbs and flows in the spiritual power of the Church. Yes! and the tide runs out of your harbours. Is there any less water in the sea because it does? So the gift may ebb away from a man, from a community, from an epoch, not because God's manifestation and bestowment fluctuate, but because our receptivity changes. So we dismiss, and are bound to dismiss, if we are Christians, the unbelieving explanation, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... riotous and insolent behaviour of the boat's crew, and the other men brought down by the sergeant of marines. One of them fell back into a basket of eggs, and smashed them all to atoms; still the marine officer did not come down, and it was getting late. The tide being now at the ebb, running out against the wind, there was a heavy sea, and I had to go off to the ship with a boat deeply laden, and most of the people in her in a state of intoxication. The coxswain, who was the only one who was sober, recommended ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... celebration, nevertheless there stood many sober and composed individuals apart from the ranks who had looked on in silent acquiescence during the riotous proceedings. Arnold had fallen to the lowest ebb of infamy and contempt so that even his past services were entirely forgotten. There was no palliation. There were no extenuating circumstances. The enormity of his crime alone mattered. His name could not ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... the unfathomed depths of old Ocean there is no movement, no disturbance. Gigantic "Majesties" and "Kaiser Wilhelms" and "Oregons" and "Vizcayas" plow and whiten the surface; tempests rage and Euroclydons roar and currents change and tides ebb and flow, but the great depth knows no ripple. It is said that down there the most fragile of frail and delicate organisms grow in safety. In the depths of the sanctified heart there is no storm and no ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... and see," said Cleo. She rose up and came down the beach followed by the others. The wind from the mountains died away but the sea torment remained and, though the tide was beginning to ebb, the spray of the waves ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Becky should follow with her cushion—or else she would have Becky's arm and Rawdon with the pillow. "We must sit together," she said. "We're the only three Christians in the county, my love"—in which case, it must be confessed, that religion was at a very low ebb in the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Beneath all this ordinary ebb and flow of daily life, changes were taking place, old forces working silently, and new ones entering in to complicate the problems of the future. As unobtrusively as possible, Clancy kept himself ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... up by the episode of the afternoon Carl McGregor returned home with spirits at a lower ebb than they had been for many a day. To be out of work was a very real tragedy in the world in which he lived. He knew only too well how indispensable was money and that the necessity of it was even greater ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... provide a fitting reception for the first train, the arrival of which would mark a turning-point in the wooden city's history. I can remember each incident of that day perfectly, because it also marked the change from ebb to flood in the tide of our own affairs. We sat up late the previous night calculating the amount to our debit, which proved sufficiently discouraging, and endeavoring to value on the credit side work we had done in excess of contract; but this, Harry said, was ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... "Mohammed." Rich with all the colors of the East, glowing with the warmth and poetry of Arabian romance and story, "Mohammed" was rather the work of a thinker and a poet than of a master dramatist. It was never acted, Forrest himself judging that it had not that ebb and flow of passion, nor that strong presentation of character which of all things are so necessary for the stage. Yet in other plays, notably in "Senor Valiente" and especially in "De Soto," and "Mary's Birthday," Miles showed that in ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... steadying himself with his hand against the smooth wall. Before he had gone more than a few steps, the anger that pushed him began to ebb away. Of a sudden, the mountainous and incredible fact of his being here, in this place, this time, this ship, came down on him like an avalanche from which the hypnopedic pre-conditioning ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... assuming the responsibility of deciding the proposed question, however, she besought her husband not to distrust the providence of God, which had conducted them through so many perils towards the consummation of their wishes. She reminded him, that the Moorish fortunes were never at so low an ebb as at present, and that their own operations could probably never be resumed on such a formidable scale or under so favorable auspices as now, when their arms had not been stained with a single important reverse. She ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... at a low ebb as usual; they busied themselves in supplementing the inadequate amount of cash out of the local treasuries and even from the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... wretched horses dozing as they stood, the drivers huddled into their fur capes and numbed by the clinging cold. Everywhere was darkness and chill and the listless misery of a winter dawn, when vitality is at its lowest ebb and the passions of man ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... of this world. But all their efforts were of no avail. I remained as much a man as anyone of themselves. They found me in full health and vigor, for I had never had a day's sickness in my life, having come to my death by drowning while foolishly swimming too far from land in a strong ebb tide, and my body, being carried out to sea, was never recovered. Being thus put to their wit's end, they determined to keep the matter privy, and to make the best of it, and the first necessity was to provide me with clothing, for on my second entrance into this ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... to speak about a carp. Nobody made any answer. He afterwards addressed his remarks about these carp to some builder's-men who did not keep up the conversation in the regular way; it was but a question of carp with them. Everything was at a low ebb, and the king went away some little time after. As soon as we dared look at one another out of his sight, our eyes meeting told all." There was no venturing beyond looks. Fenelon had said, with severe charity, "God will have ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... hotels, rose darkly around him on the arc of the river, against the dark violet murk of the sky. Huge trams swam past him like glass houses, and hansoms shot past the trams and automobiles past the hansoms; and phantom barges swirled down on the full ebb, threading holes in bridges as cotton threads a needle. It was London, and the roar of London, majestic, imperial, super-Roman. And lo! earlier than the earliest municipal light, an unseen hand, the hand of destiny, printed a writing on the wall of vague gloom that was beginning to ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... himself felt that it was the silence before the storm. The courage which he had summoned up to meet a storm of disapproval, began to ebb slowly away in the face of this unnatural silence. It was clear that the onus of further speech was to ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... France. He secured from his French Pope approval of the extermination of the entire order and the torture and execution of its chiefs. Whether the charges against them were true or not, their helplessness in the grip of the King shows clearly the low ebb to which knighthood had fallen, and the rising power of the monarchs. The day of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... tradition preserved in the superscription of this psalm, it was written at the lowest ebb of David's fortunes, 'when the Philistines took him in Gath,' and as you may remember, he saved himself by adding the fox's hide to the lion's skin, and by pretending to be an idiot, degraded as well as delivered himself. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... finally Perk realized they were just around the corner, for he could pick up every word that was uttered as well as see specks of foam from the working oars as it carried past, the tide being on the ebb ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... humanity's beasts of burden, whose thoughts have once and for all taken the direction of anxiety about their livelihood, and cannot be put in motion in any other; whose muscular strength is so exclusively brought into play that the nervous power, which makes intelligence, sinks to a very low ebb. People like that must have something tangible which they can lay hold of on the slippery and thorny pathway of their life, some sort of beautiful fable, by means of which things can be imparted to them which their crude intelligence can entertain only in picture and parable. Profound explanations ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... traditions and longing for freedom, and on the other hand a corresponding desire, on the part of an extended and less cultured circle, for art of a more elastic kind. Literature has this cyclic ebb and flow; but what is romantic in one age tends to become classical in the next, as the new departure becomes in its turn traditional. These variations are no doubt the result of definite, psychological laws, at present little understood. The renaissance of a nation, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... filled with tiny images of gold—milagros. Each had received priestly blessing, and each was believed to have worked a miraculous cure. The relaxed lines of the priest's care-worn face instantly drew into an expression of hard austerity. Like the ebb of the ocean, his recalcitrant thought surged back ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Vestalia on the 9th of June, and from the night festival of the Bona Dea: the notorious escapade of Clodius in 62 B.C. shows the scandal raised by a breach of this rule even at the period when religious enthusiasm was at its lowest ebb. Slaves were specifically admitted to a share in certain festivals such as the Saturnalia and the Compitalia (the festival of the Lares), whereas at the Matralia (the festival of the matrons) a female slave was brought in with the express purpose of ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... Forthwith the strength melted out of my bones; the prospect of walking to Catanzaro, so alluring with a full stomach, faded out of the realm of possibility; and it seemed a special dispensation of Providence when, at my lowest ebb of vitality, a small carriage suddenly hove ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... her very hair partook of this magical quality and altered its tint, its degree of vitality even, in harmony with the other changes. . . . What was the explanation? By means of what rare mechanism did her nerve force ebb and flow from moment to moment, bringing about these fascinating surface changes in her body? Could anything, even any skin, be better made than that superb skin of hers—that master work of delicacy ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... had kept the faith. They had denied themselves and run straightly down the path of duty. But the compacts of life end with life. No man may bargain for the beyond; even the marriage service shrinks from it. And now that hope had gone and life was at its extremest ebb, why should they not take their joy before they passed to the land where, perchance, such things will be forgotten? So it seemed to them; if indeed they were any ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... possess. Otherwise how is it that little boys and girls are made to commit to memory William Blake at his highest reach of mystical fire, as in Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, or William Wordsworth at his lowest ebb of uninspired simplicity, as in We are seven? These are very popular, apparently, as poems for children to recite; yet in the one case it is beyond any teacher's power to show children the unearthly flaming beauty which alone gives the ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... of sacrifice, glorious patience, loving toil. Her life seemed to have been so without point, so useless heretofore; and all that could yet be, how useless and dreary it looked! Her spirit was at its lowest ebb. Her soul was weary unto death. She looked vainly for a break in that solid wall of cloud at the end of the road, and looked so hard that the tears came and fell plashing on the window-seat and on her thin, tired hands. It was because of the ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... Awake Adonis, for a little while, and kiss me yet again, the latest kiss! Nay kiss me but a moment, but the lifetime of a kiss, till from thine inmost soul into my lips, into my heart, thy life-breath ebb, and till I drain thy sweet love-philtre, and drink down all thy love. This kiss will I treasure, even as thyself; Adonis, since, ah ill-fated, thou art fleeing me, thou art fleeing far, Adonis, and art faring ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... disputers, as you know, come to think at last that they have grown to be the wisest of mankind; for they alone perceive the utter unsoundness and instability of all arguments, or indeed, of all things, which, like the currents in the Euripus, are going up and down in never-ceasing ebb and flow. ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... mood and her work were destroyed: if she resisted, they were equally destroyed, through the nervous disturbance and the intense depression which followed the winning of a liberty too dearly bought. The incessant rising and quelling of her impulse and her courage—like the ebb and flow of tides—represented a vast amount of force not merely wasted, but expended in producing a dangerous wear and tear upon the system. The process told upon her health, and was the beginning of the weakening and ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow—Hope, shining ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... interests. The British force at Estcourt and at Mooi River were considered safe, and the enemy's advance in fact did not extend in any force beyond the latter. Very shortly after the affair at Willow Grange the tide began to ebb. The precise cause for this is still a matter of surmise. It may be that Joubert considered he had gathered in all that was needed to supply his positions around Ladysmith and behind the Tugela; it was reported at the time that 12,000 ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... lug sail, does not work well to windward. It is possible by very careful steering to make a little by tacking if the breeze is good and the tide is running favourably. With a light wind and in the slack water of the ebb the most that can be done is not to go to leeward. Priscilla, with the necessity of meeting a train present in her mind, unstepped the mast and took her oars. In twenty minutes she was alongside the slip where Peter Walsh ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... clear. She leaned her head out of the window, and heard the mellow Sunday evening roar of the city as of a sea at ebb. And Dahlia was out on the sea. Rhoda thought of it as she looked at the row of lamps, and listened to the noise remote, until the sight of stars was pleasant as the faces of friends. "People are kind here," she reflected, for her short experience of the landlady was good, and a young ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were dull; commercial and material interests seemed wholly in the ascendant, and the anti-slavery cause was at a low ebb. But many things had happened in two decades, below the surface current of public events, and, just on the threshold of a new era, we may glance back over these twenty years. All the European world had been full of movement. France had passed through three revolutions. ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... been formed between the mercantile classes and the proletariate, and to wring from the senate an acceptance of the new military genius with his plans for reform, there are clear indications which prove that an ebb of political feeling had been witnessed, even during the last three years—a turn of the tide which shows how utterly unstable the coalition against the senate would have been, had it not been reinforced by the continuance of disasters abroad. The first sign of the reaction was the flattering ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... were essentially a religious people, if one may be allowed to use the term in connection with a tribe whose morals were at such a low ebb. They worshipped Ti-ra-wa, who is in and of everything. Differing from many tribes, who adore material things, the Pawnees simply regarded certain localities as sacred—they became so only because they were blessed by the Divine presence. Ti-ra-wa was not personified; he was as intangible ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... arm without a word. It was one of those rare nights in late October, when the wind is not cold. There was hardly the flutter of a leaf in the Pavilion garden. The neighbouring sea made the gentlest music—a melancholy ebb and flow of sound, like the murmuring of some great ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... there, motionless. Knee-high the flat ebb boiled and hissed, dragging at her stockinged feet as though to draw her seaward with the others. Yesterday she would have gone, without a thought, to join the others; but yesterday is yesterday. It seemed to her, as she stood there, ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Loire being a dull sailer, was the last which came to an anchor. The weather was fine: the wind N.W. and consequently too near to allow us to double Chassiron, with a contrary current. At seven in the evening, at the beginning of the ebb, we weighed anchor, and hoisted our sails; all the other vessels did the same: the signal to get under way had been given them a few minutes before. At night we found ourselves between the lights of Chassiron and La Baleine.[5] A few moments sufficed to double ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... and thickly Covered with wood. river here about 21/2 miles wide. Seven Indians in a Canoe on their way down to trade with the nativs below, encamp with us, those we left at the portage passed us this evening and proceeded on down The ebb tide rose here about 9 Inches, the flood tide must rise here much higher- we made 29 miles to ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... soundings were indicating shoaler water, although the murmuring of the surf had been left far astern. The almost imperceptible darkening of the mist on either beam seemed to show that the Excelsior was entering some land-locked passage. The movement of the vessel slackened, the tide was beginning to ebb. Suddenly a wave of far-off clamor, faint but sonorous, broke across the ship. There was an interval of breathless silence, and then it broke again, and more distinctly. It ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... were his Holy Life, Doctrine, Miracles, and especially his Sufferings and Agonies. My principal Hero was perfect, yet imitable, and that both in active and contemplative Life. He leaves his own Kingdom to save and conquer another, endures the greatest hardships, is reduc'd to the lowest ebb, nay is at last forc'd to suffer Death it self. Yet after all, he emerges from his Misfortunes, conquers all his Enemies, fixes Laws, establishes Religion, Peace, and his own Empire, and is advanced higher than any Conquerer ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... could draw you through the ebb and flow and the floods of London traffic, I could do as I would with you on the plains of India. I did not ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... over now, and Dagmar's courage was at lowest ebb. The motherly woman took the ever-present "telescope," and setting it down in a corner of the pleasant room, directed Dagmar to a chair near the little stove, in which a small light glowed, quite suitably opposed to the chill ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... on for a little longer, still sitting by the table, with her eyes now constantly smiling into his, until at last he had to remind himself so vigorously of the absent and lucky baronet that the pleasure began to ebb. And then they said good-night and he was left staring ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... been only muscle. Tom's headlong rushes became less easy to side-step, his swinging blows more difficult than the scientific counter that shot out to check them. As he tired Tom seemed to regain strength. The tide of the battle began to ebb. He clinched, and Tom threw him off. He feinted, and while he was feinting Tom was on him. It was the climax of the battle—the last rally. Down went Albert, and stayed down. Physically, he was not ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... myself beneath it, As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it In the cleansing sun, his wool,— Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness Some denied, discoloured web— So lay I, saturate with brightness. And when the flood appeared to ebb, Lo, I was walking, light and swift, With my senses settling fast and steadying, But my body caught up in the whirl and drift Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying On, just before me, still to be followed, As it carried me after with its motion: ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... cost. I recall an occurrence that happened when the schooner was anchored in Carquinez Straits, opposite the soldiers' camp on shore. We were waiting for daylight and a fair wind; the schooner lay anchored at an ebb-tide, and about daylight Ord and I had gone ashore for something. Just as we were pulling off from shore, we heard the loud shouts of the men, and saw them all running down toward the water. Our attention thus drawn, we ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... of educating their children? I affirm the fact to be exactly the contrary. Those communities in which there are no common schools, and in which the people generally are in a state of deplorable ignorance, are precisely those in which the sense of parental obligation on this point is at the lowest ebb. Go to a region of country in which not one man in ten can read and write, and you will find that not one man in ten will care whether his children are taught to read and write. Those communities on the contrary which have the best and most complete system of common schools, and in ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... old-fashioned little town faces eastward to the blue Pacific, whose billows, when the wind blows from any point between north and east, come tumbling in across the shallow bar in ceaseless lines of foaming white, to meet, when the tide is on the ebb, the swift current of a tidal river as broad as the Thames at Westminster Bridge. On the south side of the bar, from the sleepy town itself to the pilot station on the Signal Hill, there rises a series of smooth grassy bluffs, whose seaward bases touch the fringe of many small beaches, or start ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... woods nor kindred any longer with the creatures of the dark, and when all that Tarn hath given it shall be lost, then Tarn shall take me back over the western seas, where all the remembered years lie floating idly aswing with the ebb and flow, to bring me again to the river of Munra-O. Far up that river we shall haply chase those creatures whose eyes are peering in the night as they prowl around the world, for Tarn was ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... he had made several plans by which he could keep the men at work, in case they were obliged to remain in the cove after the cargo had been landed. Happily, however, none of these schemes was necessary, and the next day, with a western wind, and at the beginning of the ebb-tide, the schooner sailed away for another island where Captain Horn had purchased guano, leaving him alone upon the sandy beach, apparently as calm and cool as usual, but actually filled with turbulent ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... Fortune doth not ever flow; She draws her favors to the lowest ebb; Her tides have equal times to come and go; Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web; No joy so great but runneth to an end, No hap so hard but ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... nature, one of which is in respect of that nature's proper movement, while the other is in respect of the movement of the higher nature. Thus water by its proper movement moves towards the centre (of the earth), while according to the movement of the moon, it moves round the centre by ebb and flow. In like manner the planets have their proper movements from west to east, while in accordance with the movement of the first heaven, they have a movement from east to west. Now the created rational nature alone is immediately subordinate to God, since other creatures do ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... as she now had was like memory in what we call the lower lives. It increased, fluctuantly, with an ebb in which it almost disappeared, but with a flow that in its advance carried it beyond its last flood-tide mark. After the first triumph in which she could address Lanfear by his name, and could greet ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... gone so far I approached a little nearer and declared the purpose of my visit. He would have to come at once with me, sleep on board my ship, and to-morrow, with the first of the ebb, he would give me his assistance in getting my ship down to the sea, without steam. A six-hundred-ton barque, drawing nine feet aft. I proposed to give him eighteen dollars for his local knowledge; and all the time I was speaking ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... was preaching once a month. This was all. There were no prayer-meetings, no meeting together every first day of the week to break break and read the Holy Scriptures. Christian morality was at a low ebb, and Christian liberality down ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... of March 4th the Tosa Maru steamed out into the Yangtse river, already flowing with the increased speed of ebb tide. The pilots were on the bridge to guide her course along the narrow south channel through waters seemingly as brown and turbid as the Potomac after a rain. It was some distance beyond Gutzlaff Island, seventy miles to sea, where there is a lighthouse and a telegraph station receiving ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... she knelt, the religious instinct regained possession of her. It was as if her soul had been flung adrift, had gone out with the ebb of the spiritual sea, and now rocked, poised, waiting for the ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... rocks seemed to have no opening he detected a motion toward the bay, and, knowing that the tide was now on the ebb, had the captain steer closer ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... was at low ebb an' not able to pick an' choose. So he gives me a starvin' man's job. If I'd been in easy circumstances an' able to say 'Yes' or 'No' at choice, I'd never have ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... intervals, if we choose to make the best of them, or they may only be fitful breaks in the glad monotony of our sensual, easy-going lives—breaks, that our evil tendencies most often survive, seeing them rise, and surge, and ebb, in fearless defiance, and then quietly resuming their old sway, when the ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... moment of suspense in Piccadilly; the tide had flowed up to the theatres, and had not yet begun to ebb. The tranquil trees, still feathery, draped their branches along the farther bank of that broad river, resting from their watch over the tragi-comedies played on its surface by men, their small companions. The gentle sighs which distilled from their plume-like boughs ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... could be done and placed the army in winter quarters. He divided it into small detachments, and for the sake of protecting and encouraging the loyalists, extended his line of communication for eighty miles. The fortunes of the insurgents were at low ebb. Not only were the loyalists strong in New Jersey, but crowds of the rebel party, many of them men of high standing, took advantage of the amnesty which Howe was empowered to offer. The Delaware would soon be frozen over, and, if the British crossed ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... high and swing low "— The sea singeth so, And it waileth anon in its ebb and its flow; And a sleeper sleeps on to that song of the sea Nor recketh he ever of mine or of me! "Swing high and swing low While the breezes they blow— 'T was off for a sailor ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... days and nights, but I invented a formula instead, which I repeated to myself continually. Especially, I remember, it came in useful when at the end of the march with my feet frost-bitten, my heart beating slowly, my vitality at its lowest ebb, my body solid with cold, I used to seize the shovel and go on digging snow on to the tent skirting while the cook inside was trying to light the primus. "You've got it in the neck—stick it—stick it—you've got it in the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... work among their countrymen. At the late Decennial Missionary Conference in Calcutta they took a prominent and effective part. It is, indeed, a matter for deep regret that of late our accessions from this quarter have been few; but when hope has been at the lowest ebb one has appeared here and there to strengthen it by avowing himself a follower ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... pleasure-boat. But in autumn, as Westray saw it for the first time, the rank grass is of a deeper green, and the face of the salt-meadows is seamed with irregular clay-brown channels, which at high-tide show out like crows'-feet on an ancient countenance, but at the ebb dwindle to little gullies with greasy-looking banks and a dribble of iridescent water in the bottom. It is in the autumn that the moles heap up meanders of miniature barrows, built of the softest brown loam; ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... at its lowest ebb at that time of night; though the brain is quick to perceive, and so clear that its ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... it out," said De Aquila. He nodded to me, and Jehan and I heaved up Fulke—he was a heavy man—and lowered him into the shaft by a rope, not so as to stand on our gold, but dangling by his shoulders a little above. It was turn of ebb, and the water came to his knees. He said nothing, but ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... S. 35 deg. W., to N. 7 deg. E.; so that the extent of the inlet was now reduced to three points and a half of the compass; that is, from N. 1/2 E. to N.E. Between these two points no land was to be seen. Here was a strong tide setting to the southward out of the inlet. It was the ebb, and ran between three and four knots in an hour; and it was low water at ten o'clock. A good deal of sea-weed, and some drift-wood, were carried out with the tide. The water, too, had become thick like that in rivers; but we were encouraged to proceed, by finding it as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... to ebb. Margaret leant over the parapet and watched it sadly. Mr. Wilcox had forgotten his wife, Helen her lover; she herself was probably forgetting. Every one moving. Is it worth while attempting the past when ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... doubt thy mystic lore, Nor question that the tenor of my life, Past, present and the future, is revealed There in my horoscope. I do believe That yon dead moon compels the haughty seas To ebb and flow, and that my natal star Stands like a stern-browed sentinel in space And challenges events; nor lets one grief, Or joy, or failure, or success, pass on To mar or bless my earthly lot, until It proves its Karmic right to ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... on the boy's part they might even have trusted to this breeze to carry them the rest of the way, had it not been for the ebb tide. This too had steadily increased in strength, and now, unless a miracle happened, would sweep them far to the westward of their goal. Hitherto they had been working their oars one on each side of the boat. Now Tilda ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... we found held us about sixty miles; the channel deep, nor did we find any want of water for a great way. In short, we went merrily up the river with the flood and the wind blowing still fresh at E. and E.N.E. We stemmed the ebb easily also, especially while the river continued broad and deep; but when we came past the swelling of the tide, and had the natural current of the river to go against, we found it too strong for us, and began to think of quitting our bark; but the prince would by no means agree to that, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... The ebb and flow of life remains much the same from day to day. The earliest street sound, before the dawn breaks, is the rattle of the trams, the meat-carts on their way to the markets, the dust-carts and the watering-carts; and then, ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... 845 White, with eyes clos'd; only when heavy gasps, Deep, heavy gasps, quivering through all his frame, Convuls'd him back to life, he open'd them, And fix'd them feebly on his father's face: Till now all strength was ebb'd, and from his limbs 850 Unwillingly the spirit fled away, Regretting the warm mansion which it left, And youth and bloom, and ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... than the scientists, have illustrated and held by the great law of alternation, of ebb and flow, of turn and return, in nature. An equilibrium, or, what is the same thing, a straight line, Nature abhors more than she does a vacuum. If the moisture of the air were uniform, or the heat uniform, that is, in equilibrio, how could it rain? ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... ever upon earth his most mysterious perfection—Life, and the resurrections of Life—is it indeed true, that poor Kate must never see you more? Mutteringly she put that question to herself. But strange are the caprices of ebb and flow in the deep fountains of human sensibilities. At this very moment, when the utter incapacitation of despair was gathering fast at Kate's heart, a sudden lightening shot far into her spirit, a reflux almost supernatural, from the earliest effects of her prayer. A thought ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the shame-fac'd Henry! bear him hence, And once again proclaim us king of England.— You are the fount that makes small brooks to flow. Now stops thy spring; my sea shall suck them dry And swell so much the higher by their ebb.— Hence with him to the Tower! let him ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... carried the proud Bolingbroke to his coronation; he visits the captive king in prison, and shames the desertion of the great. The political incident of the deposition is sketched with extraordinary knowledge of the world;—the ebb of fortune, on the one hand, and on the other, the swelling tide, which carries every thing along with it. While Bolingbroke acts as a king, and his adherents behave towards him as if he really were so, he still continues to give out that he has come with an armed ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... and wrought; And teach the sportive younkers round, Saws of experience, sage and sound. Say, man's true genuine estimate, The grand criterion of his fate, Is not—Art thou high or low? Did thy fortune ebb or flow? Wast thou cottager or king? Peer or peasant?—no such thing! Did many talents gild thy span? Or frugal nature grudge thee one? Tell them, and press it on their mind, As thou thyself must shortly find, The smile or frown of awful ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... falls on old Quebec And in the purple shines a star, And on her citadel lies peace More powerful than armies are. O fair dream city! Ebb and flow Of race feuds vex no more your walls. Can they of old see this? and know That, even as they dreamed, you stand Gatekeeper ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Bridger, United States consul on the island of Ratona, was in the city. We had wassail and jubilee and saw the Flatiron building, and missed seeing the Bronxless menagerie by about a couple of nights. And then, at the ebb tide, we were walking up a street that parallels and ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to Fortune—But most of us catch our watered stock on the ebb. ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... Battery D was gradual—like a tiny stream, flowing on in its course, converging with the 311th Regimental, 154th Brigade, and 79th Division tides until it reached the sea of war-tossed Europe; there to flow and ebb; finally to lose its identity in the ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... so, father isn't ready yet. Dear me! Polly, you can get ready so quickly for things!" he said admiringly. And, in the glow of starting, he couldn't see that Polly's spirits seemed at a low ebb, and he drew a long breath as he tried to make himself believe that what he had noticed at luncheon wasn't really so ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... civilization, or however advantageous as a means by which the general taste of the people may be elevated and refined, will not be found all-sufficient, in itself, to raise our musical reputation as a nation. Native music is at a low ebb at present; and, while musical entertainments are in such general request as almost to have excluded the "legitimate" drama from the stage, no attempt to introduce any English opera has been recently made. Into such oblivion or disrepute have English composers fallen, that some of the most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... and it was stated that large sums had been withdrawn from the Treasury and charged to the secret service fund, the handling of which was entrusted to this gentleman. Dr. Leyds' personal popularity, never very great, was at the lowest possible ebb. He was regarded as the incarnation of Hollanderism—the 'head and front' of that detested influence. It was not credited to him in the Transvaal, as it has been elsewhere, that he designed or prompted the policy against the Uitlanders. There it is fully appreciated that ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... a vote: And, if the same power should declare the same censure against those who wore Indian stuffs and calicoes, or woollen manufactures imported from abroad, whereby this nation is reduced to the lowest ebb of misery; I should readily, heartily, and cheerfully pay obedience; and to my utmost power persuade others to do the like: Because, there is no law of this land obliging us either to receive such coin, or to wear such ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... induce him to join the army of the Parliament. He knew nothing about the quarrel—and he cared nothing; neither did he understand anything of the religious disputes of the period; for, generally speaking, religion upon the Borders in those days was at a very low ebb. In Berwick, and other places, John Knox, the dauntless apostle of the north, with others of his followers, had laboured some years before; but their success was not great; the Borderers could not be made to understand ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... of James I. was by no means as distinguished for Hebrew scholarship as were the immediate previous reigns. Indeed it would appear that the knowledge of the sacred languages was at a very low ebb in this country during the agitating period of the Reformation, so much so that even the unaccountable Henry VIII. was forced to exclaim, "Vehementer dolere nostratium Theologorum sortem sanctissime linguae scientia carentium, et linguarum doctrinam ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... corresponding phenomena; for the resemblance was no half-resemblance—it was the thing itself; and I had observed it a hundred and a hundred times when sailing my little schooner in the shallows left by the ebb. But what had become of the waves that had thus fretted the solid rock, or of what element had they been composed? I felt as completely at fault as Robinson Crusoe did on his discovering the print of the man's foot ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... corn, all springing from one prolific grain, and all rich with a golden produce. Or it may be likened to the unity of the ocean, where all the parts are not of the same depth, or the same colour, or the same temperature; but where all, pervaded by the same saline preservative, ebb and flow according to the same heavenly laws, and concur in bearing to the ends of the earth the blessings of civilisation and ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... nineteenth centuries, and the unmistakable advance which, since the times of Hildebrand, the world had made in knowledge, in the arts, in liberty, and in the comforts of life, although the tide of progress had its ebb and flow in different ages and countries. Yet when he cast his eye on America, where perhaps the greatest progress had been made in the world's history within fifty years, he saw nothing but melancholy signs of anarchy ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... loving and true. Edward; listen, my love: when I am gone, and you can forget me, take that dear girl into that place where you treasured me—into your affections, as your wife, Edward. The thought pleases me, for I think you will in her marry happiness, and my life seems to ebb away in the hope that you may be with her as you have been with me. Farewell; bring Caleb to kiss me before I go. There is a voice in my ears; it is Allah! Allah! but it is not listened to by the heart which whispers ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... weary of befriending you at play. What would have become of you, if your last misfortune had happened to you when your money had been at as low an ebb as I have known it? Attend carefully then to this necessary deity, and renounce the other. You will be missed at the court of France before you grow weary of this; but be that as it may, lay up a good store of money: when ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... He took the dead man's belt, and lashed himself to the upright. That act, and his tears for his beloved, were almost his last acts of perfect reason: for next day came the delusions and the dreams that succeed when hunger ceases to torture, and the vital powers begin to ebb. He lay and saw pleasant meadows with meandering streams, and clusters of rich fruit that courted the hand and melted ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Chaucer's boyhood was spent in London, near Westminster, where the brilliant court of Edward was visible to the favored ones; and near the Thames, where the world's commerce, then beginning to ebb and flow with the tides, might be seen of every man. His father was a vintner, or wine merchant, who had enough influence at court to obtain for his son a place in the house of the Princess Elizabeth. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... because I have no good news to communicate. My hopes ebb low indeed about Branwell. I sometimes fear he will never be fit for much. The late blow to his prospects and feelings has quite made him reckless. It is only absolute want of means that acts as any check to him. One ought, indeed, to hope to the very last; and I try to do so, but ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to make a tragic story out of it? Why, in the police-reports of the morning paper you can find a dozen such tragedies: hints of shipwrecks unlike any that ever befell on the high seas; hints that here a power was lost to heaven,—that there a soul went down where no tide can ebb or flow. Commonplace enough the hints are,—jocose sometimes, done ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the first draw of the ebb, and this being earth, Matey addressed himself to the guardian and absolving genii of matter-of-fact, by saying; 'Did you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ran between the trees, smiling and making them smile. And as Fleda's eye rested there another voice seemed to say, "At evening-time it shall be light,"—and "Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." She could have cried, but spirits were too absolutely at an ebb. She knew this was partly physical, because she was tired and faint, but it could not the better be overcome. Yet those streaks of sunlight were pleasant company, and Fleda watched them, thinking how bright they used to be once; till the oxen and sled came out from the woods, and she could see ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... to march on till they all stood on the bank of the river. The flood flowed in after the ebb, and the hostile armies could not reach each other, and it seemed too long to wait for the water to let them meet. Wulfstan, by race a warrior bold, held the bridge for his chief, and AElfhere and Maccus with him, the undaunted mighty twain. The Danes begged to be allowed to overpass the ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... felt smaller still, being young and alive to ridicule, when, at some sudden ebb or flow, wave or wavelet of the Babel sea, which weltered up and down every street, a shrill female voice informed them from an upper window, that Alexander's church was not on fire at all; that she had gone to the top of the house, as they might ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... proved to Mr Clare that they were going wrong, so the boat was turned and pulled in Ugly's wake until he was overhauled and taken on board. He shook himself, wagged his tail frantically, and kissed the hands of both Phil and Mr Clare. It was but slow progress with the oars against the ebb-tide. In about an hour, however, the first whiffs of the night-breeze came to fill the sails, and the oars were put in. They had rounded the cape, and ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... course, enhanced when we remember that in the whole realm of Hindu life—whether it be of gods or of men—there is no one who looms up as a perfect example. It is therefore little wonder that in India today morality is at so low an ebb and that even the code which prevails there is ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... for a time it was, Coe slipping out at dawn on the ebb with a cargo of Afiola rapscallions he was to drop, one here, one there, all around the Group, we having no further use for them ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... placed me in the character of a younger brother of a good house, and I was in my youth sent to school; but learning was now at so low an ebb, that my master himself could hardly construe a sentence of Latin; and as for Greek, he could not read it. With very little knowledge therefore, and with altogether as little virtue, I was set apart for the church, and at the proper age commenced ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... Devonshire that moles begin to work with the flow, and leave off with the ebb of the tide. The same thing is asserted ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... of course, a consistent Royalist like her father. But to some minds, such an ebb and flow may seem to justify the philosophy of Urbain, and even more, perhaps, the light ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... it to the light, my curiosity at a low ebb: I had seen Captain Trent once, and had no delight in viewing him again. It was a photograph of the deck of the brig, taken from forward: all in apple-pie order; the hands gathered in the waist, the officers on the poop. At the foot of the card was written "Brig Flying Scud, Rangoon," and ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... and fellow-citizens, must be purchased by great gifts. The ancients knew this, and when the river—on which, as we know only too well, the weal or woe of this land solely depends—refused to rise, and its low ebb brought evils of many kinds upon its banks, they offered in sacrifice the thing they deemed most noble of all the earth has to show a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a hundred thousand dollars, and with uncovered heads gazed through the gratings into the crypt where lies the dust of the great man. Then we saw the statue of John C. Breckinridge in the public square, and visited various old ebb-tide mansions where the "quarters" had fallen into decay, and the erstwhile inhabitants had moved to the long row of tenements down by the cotton-mill. My train whistled and we were half a mile from the ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... night as this I saw the last crew go Out of a world too beautiful to leave. Only a chosen few Beside the crew Were gathered on the pier; And in the ebb and flow Of dark and moon, we saw them fare Straight past the row of coffins Where the fifth crew lay Waiting their last ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... wiser spirit would not let him delude himself. Had he had a full stomach, and food in his pockets, he might, perhaps, safely have emulated this cunning trick of the partridge. But now, starving, weary, his vitality at the last ebb, he knew that if he should yield to the lure of the snow, he would be seen no more till the spring sun should reveal him, a thing of horror to the returning vireos and blackbirds, on the open, greening face of the barren. No, he would not burrow to escape the wind. He laughed ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... which was too well secured for a sudden attack of cavalry; or he must cross the river at Ashley ferry, ten miles from town. He determined on the latter, and put his four troops of cavalry in motion. When he arrived at the ferry it was ebb of tide, the water was running out as from a millsluice; the banks on each side were so miry as scarcely to support a crab—the river was at least one hundred yards wide, and there was not a boat.—He ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... cannot be quenched, yet will not despair. Then, at the lowest ebb of the sweet agony, an ecstasy of hope, a wildly blissful contemplation of a promise of reward. If I depart here for a brief space from my announced purpose not to analyze the music in the manner of the Wagnerian commentators, it will be only because the themes of the prelude ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... movement. To consider them apart from this, would be to localize a planetary phenomenon, and to provincialize a law of the universe. The art of healing in Massachusetts has shared more or less fully and readily the movement which, with its periods of ebb and flow, has been raising its level from age to age throughout the better part of Christendom. Its practitioners brought with them much of the knowledge and many of the errors of the Old World; they have always been in communication with its wisdom and its ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... half-past three in the morning I went to the beach, and found the boat on shore half-filled with water, in consequence of the man having left her. I called the people, and baled her out; found she was considerably damaged, and very leaky. At half-past 5 A.M., the ebb-tide making, we left Macao with ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... of Fortune doth not ever flow; She draws her favours to the lowest ebb: Her tides have equal times to come and go; Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web: No joy so great but runneth to an end, No hap so hard but may in ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... being now well on the ebb, the fish stopped biting, perhaps driven away by the sharks, and we sailed down to the inlet, where there is a long sandy beach fringed with mangroves: behind these, low hillocks of sand covered with saw-palmetto extend across to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various |
