"Empty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... theatrical curtain has really fallen and been taken up again for the night on that dull, dark vault which many of us know so well; if you will only think of the theatre or other place of entertainment as empty; if you will only think of the "float," or other gas-fittings, as extinguished; if you will only think of the people who have beguiled you of an evening's care, whose little vanities and almost childish foibles are engendered ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... uncanny possession of the soul of the German nation. Before 1914 none except a few initiated had ever heard of Treitschke. Since 1914 he has become a household name and a name of evil import. But to the immense majority of readers that name, however familiar and ominous, remains an empty name. Nomen flatus vocis. And even those to whom the name conveys something more definite do not trouble about its meaning. With that strange disbelief in the power of ideas which is one of our lamentable ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... concerned about the end. The fleeting moment I enjoy; each cup Of pleasure as it comes I empty,—letting All else go on to ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... replied May, looking mysterious; "pull out that little drawer, and empty the powder you will find in it into the coffee-pot, which I have just scalded—that is it; now pour on a little cold water; put in this fish-sound; fill up with boiling water—there, that is enough. Now comes the third, and last stage. Set the pot on the stove, and watch it; when ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... purpose, it must be fully equipped, and thoroughly competent and equal to its work. For God always adapts means to ends. Hence it can never resemble the tribunals existing in man-made churches, which can but mutter empty phrases, suggest compromises, and clothe thought in wholly ambiguous language—tribunals that dare not commit themselves to anything definite and precise. Yea, which utterly fail and break down just at the critical ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... rode in this fashion with his heart beating at his teeth. And each canyon as he passed was empty, and each had some shrub, like a crouching man, to startle him and upraise the revolver. At length, with the pinto wheezing from this new effort, he drew back to an easier gait. But still he had a companion ceaselessly following like the shadow of the horse he rode. It was fear, ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... to put it; it was underrating Bastian Cautley. He was the sort of man that any woman—But who would have thought it of Miss Quincey? And the really sad thing was that she did not think it of herself; it showed how empty of humanity her life had been. It was odd how these things happened. Miss Quincey was neither brilliant nor efficient, but she had made the most of herself; at least she had lived a life of grinding intellectual ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... knows the simple experiment in which a coin lying at the bottom of an empty basin, and hidden from the eye by its side, becomes visible when a certain quantity of water has been poured in. This is an example of refraction. The rays of light coming from the coin ought not to reach the eye, on account of the basin's side ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... whereupon Rosamond threw the rabbit in her mother's face. The king started up in a fury, and ran to seize her. She darted shrieking from the room. The king rushed after her; but, to his amazement, she was nowhere to be seen: the huge hall was empty.—No: just outside the door, close to the threshold, with her back to it, sat the figure of the wise woman, muffled in her dark cloak, with her head bowed over her knees. As the king stood looking at her, she rose slowly, crossed the hall, and walked away ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... used all its resources to barricade itself against all its opportunities? She knew there were girls who sought, by what is called a "good" marriage, an escape into the outer world, of doing and thinking—utilizing an empty brain and full pocket as the key to these envied fields. Some such chance the life at Lynbrook seemed likely enough to offer—one is not, at Justine's age and with her penetration, any more blind to ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... seat beside me, Fruen at the table, looking out of the window all the time, and hardly eating anything at all. Now and again she exchanges a word with the old woman, or glances at my plate to see if it is empty. The little place is cramped enough, with but two steps from the window to where I sit; so we are ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... Bonaparte, and created Duchess of St Leu by Louis XVIII., was in Paris, much suspected by the Bourbons, but really engaged in a lawsuit with her husband about the custody of her sons. She had to go into hiding when the news of the landing arrived, but her empty house, left unwatched, became very useful for receiving the Bonapartists, who wished for a place of concealment, amongst them, as we shall see, being, of all people, Fouche! Hortense was met by Napoleon with some reproaches for accepting a title from the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of a passing citizen, and seriously wounding three other people not far away. Keller the actor, in his start of apprehension, let his glass fall out of his hand; "I," says Hoffmann, "drank mine empty and cried, 'What is life? Not able to bear a little bit of hot iron? Poor weak human nature! God give me calmness and courage in the midst of danger! We can get over it all better so.'" Then he returned to the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... traffic began to meet us, flowing back toward Boulogne. There was a double stream then, and I wondered how collisions and traffic jams of all sorts could be avoided. I do not know yet; I only know that there is no trouble. Here were empty trucks, speeding back for new loads. And some there were that carried all sorts of wreckage—the flotsam and jetsam cast up on the safe shores behind the front by the red tide of war. Nothing is thrown away out there; ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... and circumstances would allow him to go back to the town, to a quick and crowded life. Could he then swear himself to the slow blank life of the Three Marshes, where events move deliberately as a plough? To the empty landscape, to the flat miles? He would have to love her enough to endure the empty flatness that framed her. He could never take her away, any more than he could take away Ansdore or North Farthing. He must make a renunciation for her ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... horses. The cowboys at the ranch had received warning that there were Indians about and had brought in the horse herd from the range and locked them in the corral. The Apaches came in the night and with their usual adroitness and cunning stole the corral empty. The first intimation which the inmates had that the ranch had been robbed was when the cowboys went in the morning to get their horses ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... parish of Glendow but knew that familiar sound, and would rush eagerly into the house with the welcome tidings, for did it not mean a piece of candy hidden away in most mysterious pockets, which seemed never to be empty? How often in the deep of night tired sleepers in some lonely farm-house had been awakened by their merry jingle, and in the morning husband and wife would discuss the matter and wonder what sick person Parson John ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... snip-jack of anything," Jack went on, peering vainly into a few empty baskets that Sam had left behind him. "The nerve of them, to steal our coffee and then take our coffee pot to make it in! Honest, fellows, I never knew such a thing to happen before. I've been up here a lot of summers and I never struck a crowd that would ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... he, "sweet to one so young as I. I have but tasted the cup; shall I throw it down not half empty?" ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... relieved to find that she was unhurt. The barrels had luckily been empty and had rolled over and ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... the holidays approached. The tree for the Sunday-School had long since been given up, but Christmas Eve a forlorn group of wistful-eyed children gathered in the church and spoke Christmas pieces and sang Christmas carols, with longing gaze fixed on the empty corner where was wont ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... girls. Wise were you, Nelly, most wise, not to exchange your beautiful Content for false pearls or prating Parade. You have a soul above froth and frippery, you despise both flattery and Folly, no one will catch you blowing bubbles of Fancy to furnish a most empty dwelling!" ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictatator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day. Had we failed to act, Security Council resolutions on Iraq would have been revealed as empty threats, weakening the United Nations and encouraging defiance by dictators around the world. Iraq's torture chambers would still be filled with victims, terrified and innocent. The killing fields of Iraq — where hundreds of thousands of men and women and children vanished into the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... room and saw her sister stretched upon the lounge and Delia kneeling beside her. On the floor was an empty bottle bearing a death's head and cross-bones and "strychnine" upon its label. She herself had bought it on their physician's prescription, as a tonic for Mrs. Marne, only ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... meeting split its sides with laughter, or to tear the sophistries of an opponent into tatters, but to be cheated out of one's money in a great city, and leave the Astor to enter the Irving, or the more fashionable 'New York,' with an empty pocket, though common among New Yorkers, was a feat I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Zeus, what art thou going to do for our people? Dost thou not see this, that our cities will soon be but empty husks? ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... again, the spirits (at least mine) need a little exhilaration, and I don't like laudanum now as I used to do. So I have mixed a glass of strong waters and single waters, which I shall now proceed to empty. Therefore and thereunto ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... And empty hands are outstretched, in vain, While aching eyes beseech, And hearts may break that cry for the Moon, The silver Moon out ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... mention the ugliest part of old-womanhood in the East, long empty breasts like tobacco-pouches. In youth the bosom is beautifully high, arched and rounded, firm as stone to the touch, with the nipples erect and pointing outwards. But after the girl-mother's first child (in Europe le premier embellit) all changes. Nature and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... another difficulty—to withdraw our children from the Government schools and to ask collegiate students to withdraw from the College and to empty Government aided schools. How could I do otherwise? I want to gauge the national sentiment. I want to know whether the Mahomodans feel deeply. If they feel deeply they will understand in the twinkling of an eye, that it is not right for them to receive schooling from ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... most brilliant, and the luminosity gradually fades away as the edge of the nebula is approached. In fact, we can hardly say that the nebula has any definite boundary, for with each increase of telescopic power faint new branches can be seen. There seems to be an empty space in the nebula immediately surrounding the multiple star, but this is merely an illusion, produced by the contrast of the brilliant light of the stars, as the spectroscopic examination of the nebula shows that the nebulous matter is continuous ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... room, nodding a greeting to Red Murdock. He lifted a foot and placed it upon the empty end of a bench on which some players were seated, leaning over to rest his elbow on his upraised knee and his chin upon the palm of his hand. He stood thus, the thumb of his other hand run in under ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... deadened hands and the threatening growls and cries were lost in a unanimous gasp of alarm. A moment's pause and then—utter rout. There was a mad stampede and in a trice the street was empty. Rebecca was alone under ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... to them; they racked me with laughter; and such laughter!—the shaking of husks in a half-empty sack. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... matter. All were of the opinion that the ships should be laded, even though we should postpone the fulfilment of what your Majesty lately ordered, for the damage that would ensue from the ships going empty would be beyond comparison far greater than the gain of the two per cent; and that the appeal interposed by the citizens ought to be granted, as it was apparent that the report which the visitor had made was ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... the crowd, And seem more striking as it grows more loud; But sober sense rejects it with disdain, As nought but empty ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... minded the rain much, because we were dry enough; but the cold was disagreeable, and we were obliged to wear our overcoats all day. We could watch the road from the front of the wagon, and saw a number of freighters go by, usually with empty wagons, as it soon became too muddy for those with loads. We saw one fourteen-ox team with four wagons, and another man with twelve oxen and three wagons. There were also a number of mule teams, and we noticed one of ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... led to much greater gain! Now, if in their intercourse one with another, and in the indulgence of human affections even not of the best kind, men seek friends with whom they may refresh themselves, and for the purpose of having greater satisfaction in speaking of their empty joys, I know no reason why it should not be lawful for him who is beginning to love and serve God in earnest to confide to another his joys and sorrows; for they who are given to prayer are thoroughly ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... odor of damp fern and pine. Both women were silent, and the baby, rolled in his long cloak, had slept all the way. It was but seven miles to Collingswood, yet the time seemed longer than all the rest of the journey before they were finally dumped out at the little empty station with the hills towering above it. A youth was just locking up the ticket-office and going off as they reached ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... grace of God is compared to water, for that it is it which causeth fruitfulness; water causeth fruitfulness, want of water is the cause of barrenness; and this is the reason why the whole world is so empty of fruit to Godward, even because so few of the children of men have the Spirit of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... world agreed to give Galba the title of Caesar. Galba with your approval gave that title to me. Even if the "country", the "senate", the "people", are empty terms, it is to your interest, my fellow soldiers, to see that it is not the rascals who create an emperor. From time to time one hears of the legionaries being in mutiny against their generals. But your good faith and your good name have stood to this day unimpaired. ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... thing," he said to himself. But, before striking the first blow, he peeped into the cave to see if it were empty. ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... find it so much more beautiful, for nature has made it of its kind perfect. The dim sea is always so beautiful a view because it is not disfigured by these buildings. In the ships men live; in the houses among the trees they live; these steeples and towers are empty, and no spirit can dwell in that which is out of proportion. Scarcely any one can paint a picture of the country without sticking in one of these repellent structures. The oast-houses, whose red cones are so plentiful in Kent and Sussex, have quite a different effect; they have some colour, and by ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... the door of the little empty book room, where nothing stood except the old bureau. That, she said, had been full of letters, but all the oldest things had been within a door opening in the wainscot, which she should never have found had not Bob pushed it open in his search for rats, and then she ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... proceeded to people the world with inhabitants by no means proportioned to the size of their countries. John-o'-Groat and his seven brothers took possession of their house, Turks paraded in the Mediterranean, and in the large empty space in the heart of Africa, Baron Munchausen caused the lion to leap down the ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... popery, did not some dotages there stagger him: he would come to us sooner, but our new name affrights him. He is taken with their miracles, but doubts an imposture; he conceives of our doctrine better, but it seems too empty and naked. He cannot drive into his fancy the circumscription of truth to our corner, and is as hardly persuaded to think their old legends true. He approves well of our faith, and more of their works, and is sometimes much affected at the zeal of Amsterdam. His conscience interposes itself ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... himself, subjective, if you like, and yet intensely objective. And more. For is it not also evident that the woman, the mortal woman who excites his Vision, has some closest relation to it, and is, indeed, far more than a mere mask or empty formula which reminds him of it? For she indeed has within her, just as much as the man has, deep subconscious Powers working; and the ideal which has dawned so entrancingly on the man is in all probability closely related to that which has been working most ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of the race a life-aim is to have an ideal which is not only the highest, but which also blends all other true ideals into harmony. And the lovers of culture should be the first to perceive that intellectual good is empty, illusory, unless there be added to it the good of the heart, the good of conscience. To live for the cultivation of one's mind, is, after all, to live for one's self, and therefore out of harmony with the eternal law which makes it impossible for us to find ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... Themselves to avenge his death: and they accuse me Of an ignoble loitering—they would not Forsake their leader even in his death; they died for him, And shall I live? For me too was that laurel garland twined That decks his bier. Life is an empty casket: I throw it from me. Oh, my only hope; To die beneath the hoofs of trampling steeds— That is a lot of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... about him in helpless dismay. All around was a wide, empty space. The long aisle to the Hampden Falls train was deserted save for the baggage-men loading the trunks and bags on to their trucks. Nowhere was there any one who seemed forlorn or ill at ease except a pretty girl with a suit-case, and with a covered basket on her arm, who ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... as empty as a bubble. No more has the captain touched a thing. She's here, there and everywhere, among her precious 'boys,' yet not a one of 'em has the decency to say: 'Share my supper, Lady Jess.' If they ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... of April, a large crowd collected on the quays of the New Prince's Docks; all the sailors of the place seemed to have assembled there. The workingmen of the neighboring wharves had abandoned their tasks, tradesmen had left their gloomy shops, and the merchants their empty warehouses. The many-colored omnibuses which pass outside of the docks were discharging, every minute, their load of sight-seers; the whole city seemed to care for nothing except watching the departure of ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... hand; a hook was fastened to its end. The rudderless mass came quickly nearer, like some drifting antediluvian monster—blind chance guided it; its paddle-wheel turned swiftly with the motion of the water, and under the empty out-shoot the mill-stone revolved over the flour-bin as if it was ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... wearing linen duster and dragging a big rope to which is attached a case of beer with about eight empty bottles in it. She ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... show what a brave man you are. It's "bully," I tell you. Well, I wanted to go to the top of the capitol—I went; wanted to go up in the cupola. Now, there was an iron ladder running up across an empty space, and you could see two hundred feet below from this cupola or dome on top. The ladder was about ten feet long, spanning the dome. It was very easy to go up, because I was looking up all the time, and I was soon on top of the building. ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... mission. In order that the crime of killing 'the postmen' may be recognised in its true light, it is but fair that I should say, that the brutes, having partaken once of the good cheer on board or around the ships, seldom seemed satisfied with the mere empty honours of a copper collar, and returned to be caught over and over again. Strict laws were laid down for their safety, such as that no fox taken alive in a trap was to be killed: of course no fox was after this taken ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Robert called one of the footmen, who replied, "I did call up your honour's carriage; but Colonel Churchill being with you, and his chariot driving up first, your honour stepped into that, and your own came home empty." Johnstone, triumphing on his own veracity, and pushing the examination farther, Sir Robert's coachman recollected that, as he left Palace-yard, three men, much muffled, had looked into the empty chariot. The mystery was never farther cleared up; and my father frequently said it was the only instance ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... there is to eat in the house, leave the Khichri pot by the fire, and hide in the garret. When the Bear comes he will think we have gone out and left his dinner for him. Then he will throw down his bundle and come in. Of course he will rampage a little when he finds the pot is empty, but he can't do much mischief, and I don't think he will take the trouble of carrying ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... small jar: cocoa, sugar, and coffee in small cans or heavy paper; also salt and pepper. Wrap bread in a moist cloth to prevent drying up; {152} bacon and dried or chipped beef in wax paper. Pickles can be purchased put up in small bottles. Use the empty bottle as candle-stick. ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... trivial things and a neglect of troublesome and important things. The one grave shock of the Boer War has long been explained and sentimentalised away. But it will not be so easy to explain away a dislocated train service and an empty coal cellar as it was to get a favourable interpretation upon some demonstration of national incompetence half the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... abodes. The island was deserted of its population. At about the same period a civil dissension among the Chatti—a powerful German race within the Hercynian forest—resulted in the expatriation of a portion of the people. The exiles sought a new home in the empty Rhine island, called it "Bet-auw," or "good-meadow," and were themselves called, thenceforward, Batavi, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... penetrate; he makes his way to the cells, rips them open, gorges himself with honey, and causes such havoc that in Switzerland, in certain years when these butterflies were abundant, numbers of hives have been found absolutely empty.[15] Many other marauders and of larger size, such as the Bear, also spread terror among these laborious insects and empty their barns. No animal is more crafty than the Raven, and the fabulist who wished to make him a dupe was ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... down, and sure enough, there were six empty cartridge-shells. I stood looking blankly at them, hardly able to believe what I saw; for Albert Cullen had said distinctly that the train-robbers had fired only four times, and that the last three Winchester shots I had heard had been fired by ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... its carefully premeditated style, its sameness, its stripping of supple syntax, its poverty of color and nuance, this language, pruned of all the rugged and often rich expressions of the preceding ages, was confined to the enunciation of the majestic banalities, the empty commonplaces tiresomely reiterated by the rhetoricians and poets; but it betrayed such a lack of curiosity and such a humdrum tediousness, such a drabness, feebleness and jaded solemnity that to find its equal, it was necessary, in linguistic studies, to go to the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Sabbath day, which is the very reverse of holy, inasmuch as it paves the way to the heaviest boredom and slackness of spirit. I have been in English houses on Sundays where the gentlemen threw themselves from one easy chair to the other, and proclaimed their empty state of mind by their awful yawns; where the children wandered about hopelessly depressed, because they might neither play nor read an amusing book, not even Grimm's Fairy Tales; where all the mental enjoyment of the household consisted of so-called 'sacred music,' which some young ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... thence to the upper story, and then with slow hesitation, Mhtoon Pah came out by the front of the house and locked the clamped padlock. He stood still for a few minutes, and then he gasped and shook his fist at the empty air, and he, too, took his way across the bridge and ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... garden, as he approached. He entered the front room, which was fitted up as a sort of shop, in which fishermen's requisites were sold. There was no one there. He pushed the door open into the inner room: it was also empty. He felt as if he could not breathe within the cottage walls, and went out again. The cliff overhung the sea a few yards in front of the cottage. He went to the edge and was scanning the shore for a sign of Jean, when below, on a narrow, zigzag path which led down the ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... For the first time for several years—Mary's girlhood had not been altogether empty of sentimental episodes—she blushed under a man's glance, because it was a man's. At this event, of which she was acutely conscious and at which she was intensely irritated, she drew herself up, with an attempt to return to her ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... strongest secondary branch to take the lead. A judicious and full-pursed planter, it is true, would either remove the whole of the maiden crop, or at least from the three upper pairs of primaries, but the crop of the fourth year is apt to find a young planter with empty pockets, and he may not be able to afford the sacrifice; but he should in any case remove the immature berries, or blossom buds, from the greenwood of the primary branches, and if he refrains from ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... small blue dress hung on the wall, and on the bureau were brushes, combs, and hair-pins. Beside the bureau was a wooden shelf full of books. A bird-cage swung in the window, but there was no bird in it, and the seed glass and water cup were empty. The narrow bed had a white coverlid and a great white pillow. It looked all ready for somebody, but it was years since the girl who once owned the room had slept there. The old housekeeper, who still loved the girl, came every day to dust and smooth and air and sweep. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... is your judgement bent to show A common lovers passion? let the World, That lives without a hart, and is but showe, Stand on her empty, and impoisoned forme, I knowe thy kindenesse and have seene thy hart Clest [Cleft?] in my uncles free and friendly lippes, And I am only now to speake and act The rite's due to thy love: oh, I cood weepe A bitter showre of teares for thy sicke ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... him, and it is a great satisfaction to watch the process of his thawing out. I find that the most effective medicine for such individuals is administered at first in the form of a story, although I never tell an anecdote simply for the sake of telling one. That kind of thing, I think, is empty and hollow, and an audience soon ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... Peak—paused to make a survey of the premises. When he entered, his scrutiny of the establishment was close, and he seemed to reflect with interest upon all he saw. The upper room was empty; a long table exhibited knives and forks, but there were no signs of active business. Andrew pulled a bell-rope; the summons was answered by an asthmatic woman, who received an order for tea, toast, 'watercreases', and sundry other constituents of ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... dogs. Of course, they are not at first given as heavy loads as are the old trains. The boys were allowed to go with their trains about three times a week. This was quite sufficient for them, for, although they rode on the empty sleds, wrapped in a buffalo skin, on the outward trip to the fishery camp, yet they felt in honour bound to imitate the Indian drivers of the older trains, and walk, or rather trot, as much as they could on the return with ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... hours the delicate glossy sac opens gently at one place, then there streams out a glairy fluid densely packed with semi-opaque granules, just fairly visible when their area was increased six millions of times, and this continued until the whole sac was empty and its entire contents diffused. To follow with our utmost powers these exquisite specks was an unspeakable pleasure, a group seen to roll from the sac, when nearly empty, were fixed and never left. They soon palpably ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... Her musical, empty laugh was as perfect as the indifferent glance she gave him. "Enjoying himself, I hope," she answered. "He hung around me until I sent him out in ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... I from imposing these conditions. I waited only till, by certain arrangements, I could gather enough to pay his debts, to enable him to execute his vow: empty would have been my claims to his affection, if I could have suffered, with the means of his deliverance in my hands, my husband to remain a moment ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... I found it best to shut my eyes and commend our case to our Maker. Then I counted very slowly to myself up to four hundred, and looked again. The vale was empty. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... the brilliantly-decorated but quite empty supper-room, and sat down. One of the servants happened to come in ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... wide and well-kept, with rubber-tired wheels. And the two heavy horses were fat and elegant and sober, too, and wide and well-kept. I didn't know it was the Bishop's then—I didn't care whose it was. It was empty, and it was mine. I'd rather go to the Correction—being too young to get to the place you're bound for, Tom Dorgan—in it than in the patrol wagon. At any rate, it was all the chance ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... long and sore when empty-handed returned Yaeethl, loud she wailed, making sure she must remain forever dark and barren. But Yaeethl, the Undaunted, comforted her with strong words, and renewed his promise that the Light should be given her in marriage, and her disgrace forgotten in many children, ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne
... aunt 'Ria, holding Prudy close in her arms, which she said felt "so empty" now, "it can't be right to cry, can it, Prudy, when I know my baby is so ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... Satiety, and Overgrowth. The Highest in rank, at length, without honor from the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honor, as from tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once-sacred Symbols fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even the expense; a World becoming dismantled: in one word, the STATE fallen speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the STATE shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened to ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... place of the lost letter was easily supplied by my loquacious pen, and I came at last to conjecture that I had carelessly whisked it into the fire, and that the visitant had been induced to withdraw, by finding the apartment empty. Yet I never discovered any one who had come in and gone out in this manner. Miss Jessup, whom I questioned afterwards, had spent that day elsewhere. And now, when the letter and its contents were almost forgotten, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... sees the arena walls go down, Bob rushed out through the nearest door, which, I thanked God, was a side one leading to the street where the crowd was thinnest. He cast a wild look around. His eyes lighted on an empty automobile whose chauffeur had deserted to the crowd. It was the work of a second to crank it; of another to jump into the front seat. Quick as had been his movement, I was behind him in the rear seat. With a bound the great machine leaped ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... cap have been thoroughly cleansed in warm water. A white glass bottle only should be employed in order that any want of cleanliness may readily be detected. It should be recollected that milk very quickly sours when kept in this way in a warm room; it is therefore better always to empty the bottle and fill it afresh each time it is given to the child, rather than to wait until its contents are ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... hand to hand. The heat of the smouldering charcoal in it rose to his face, gratefully warm. When he reached the anteroom of Lady Varia's apartments, going by the rear passages, he found no one. The room, warmed to Summer heat, and filled with flowers, was empty. Perfumed lamps burned low, swinging from their bronze and silver standards; in a curtained recess in the wall a marble Minerva gleamed shadowed white, half concealed by curtains of dusky red. A silver jar of incense, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... wantonness and lubricity were essential to that sort of poem, which ought to be avoided in it. His other allegation, which I have already mentioned, is as pitiful—that the Satyrs carried platters and canisters full of fruit in their hands. If they had entered empty-handed, had they been ever the less Satyrs? Or were the fruits and flowers which they offered anything of kin to satire? or any argument that this poem was originally Grecian? Casaubon judged better, and his opinion is grounded on sure authority: that ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... read the letter through two and three times, and could not understand it. There is nothing more difficult than putting an idea into an empty head. Then he had to call Master Mathias ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... was dead was alive again, he had come back, and he was here! As for him, in fearful surprise, he held her to his breast once more, still unbelieving. She noticed then an empty sleeve, and raised it ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... several notable improvements in the "Importation of Mad Dogs Bill," with which I was to be entrusted next session—and was found lying dead drunk in his bedroom, at eleven o'clock in the morning, on the second Sunday after his arrival. Half a dozen empty brandy bottles were afterwards discovered on the top of ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... early in the morning, upon an empty stomach, works more actively upon the bowels than if it is given later ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... number of guests, and there are always half a dozen; for dining alone or the master and mistress tete-a-tete as we do, is unknown to them, who make society very easy, and resolve to live much together. No odd sensation then, something like shame, such as we feel when too many dishes are taken empty from table, touches them at all; the common courses are eleven, and eleven small plates, and it is their sport and pleasure, if possible, to clear all away. A footman's wages is a shilling a day, like our common labourers, and paid him, as they are paid, every Saturday night. His livery, mean ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... things goes to support the theory; but if we consider the capacity of the shaft and the extreme difficulty of making room for such a volume of debris, we feel dubious once more; for to hide such a quantity of earth a considerable empty space would be necessary, which could only be obtained by the disposal of more debris. Thus we are caught in a vicious circle. The mere packing of the powdered earth rejected behind the excavator would not account for so large a void. The Cigale must have a special method of disposing of ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... hoped so much, worked evil, not good. It is said that he himself called on General Pavia, the Captain-General of Madrid, to clear them out. The deputies—Castelar had withdrawn—sat firm: "Death rather than surrender," they cried. Pavia, however, ordered his men to fire once down the empty lobbies, and the hint was enough: the Cortes dispersed, and Pavia, had he so minded it, might have been military dictator of Spain. But he had no such ambition, though there were not wanting those who ascribed ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... emperor, Duke of Styria, was now the oldest lineal descendant of Rhodolph of Hapsburg, founder of the house of Austria. The imperial dignity had now degenerated into almost an empty title. The Germanic empire consisted of a few large sovereignties and a conglomeration of petty dukedoms, principalities, and States of various names, very loosely held together, in their heterogeneous and independent rulers and governments, by one nominal sovereign upon whom the jealous ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... next morning by going down a bad rapid and across an awe-inspiring whirlpool. There again we had to lead the empty canoe down with ropes, and even so we had difficulty in ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... crazy vessel, the banished ministers drifted slowly on their way. Storms fell upon them, their provisions failed, their water-casks were empty, and, tossing in the wilderness of waves, or rocking on the long swells of subsiding gales, they sank almost to despair. In their famine they chewed the Brazil-wood with which the vessel was laden, devoured every scrap of leather, singed and ate the horn of lanterns, hunted ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... whence they had emigrated half a century before, was procuring them a great accession of strength and the surest means of defence. In the year 542 B.C., Phocea succumbed beneath the efforts of Cyrus, King of Persia, and her inhabitants, leaving to the conqueror empty streets and deserted houses, took to their ships in a body, to transfer their homes elsewhere. A portion of this floating population made straight for Marseilles; others stopped at Corsica, in the harbor of Alalia, another Phocean colony. But ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... returned to the table, I found that the waiter had replenished the liqueur glasses, and I saw, not only by the empty champagne bottle, but by Springfield's eyes, that ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... candle; others, that he had proposed and had been "sent packing." Among these latter was Mrs. Burton herself, and it will never be known what words of abuse she poured upon Eve. If Mrs. Burton deserved punishment she was receiving all that she deserved. Sick-headaches, despair, a vain, empty life with its last hopes melting away. Eve—her Eve—her beautiful daughter had a heart! That was the sum of Mrs. Burton's punishment. For a while she resisted her fate and fought against it, and then ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Without waiting for further questioning she flitted hastily down-stairs and from one concealed post of observation to another until she saw the angry party enter Mr. Burleigh's private office. A small parlor next to it was empty, and once within it, the loud tones spoken on the other side of the slight ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... the sheep into a corral built against an uprising ridge of stone. Naab dispatched him to look for the dead coyotes. The three burros were in camp, two wearing empty pack-saddles, and Noddle, for once not asleep, was ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... outspan and watch the cart. In a basket on her arm she had a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of medicine for rheumatism, that would make her coming seemly, and with the little revolver in her pocket knocking against her knee at every step, she faced the dark and the empty veld, and began the ascent of the hill alone. She was come to be a spur to her husband. This she knew clearly enough, yet as she went along, with the thin wind of the night on her forehead, she wasted no thoughts, but bent herself to the business of finding the laager and coming to Andreas. ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... come from the mines and circled round the fire darted past her like ghosts. Everything urged her back to the tent, to her husband, and with hasty resolution she entered the spacious room lighted by a lamp. But it was empty, and the female slave who received her said that Hur would spend the time until the departure of the people with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... high time to do something to diminish the overgrown disorder and confusion everywhere reigning. For some time there had been complete stagnation in all financial matters; the credit of the King had step by step diminished, private fortune had become more and more uncertain. The bag was at last empty, the cards were cast aside, the last trick was played: The administration of the finances had passed into the hands of La Houssaye, and his first act was to call the attention of the Regency Council to the position of the bank and the company. We were prepared to hear that things were ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... thick packet of unused envelopes—had not been disturbed by Strawn, and was about to remove an envelope in which to place the all-important checkbook, when he noticed something slightly peculiar. An envelope in the middle of the packet looked rather thicker than an empty case should.... ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... of the country is situated on deltas of large rivers flowing from the Himalayas: the Ganges unites with the Jamuna (main channel of the Brahmaputra) and later joins the Meghna to eventually empty into the ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... written to Bonaparte: "I cannot believe that the victor at Lodi, Castiglione, and Arcola—the conqueror of Italy and Egypt—would not prefer real glory to mere empty celebrity. Meanwhile, you are losing precious time. We can secure the glory of France; I say we, because I have need of Bonaparte in the work, and because he cannot ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... business. He was out himself attending a temperance committee, but his old father was behind the counter, and asked me inside. Though it was a chilly day there was no fire in the parlour, and the two old folks sat one each side of the empty hearth, silent and sad. They seemed little more pleased to see me than their son, but after a while Mrs. Burridge's natural garrulity asserted itself, and we fell ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... it all back," declared Clem, who was scooping up empty boxes in the hope of being agreeably disappointed in their contents as ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... shame-marked brow his outraged crown will fall In horror. I will go! Take out the troops, Bazaine. Ay, take them out! He will be glad To send them back and purchase with his blood Redemption from such shame. He'll empty France To do it! I will go. But I'll not kneel. A thousand years my blood has run through kings, And ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... island when we reached it. The pigs and fowls were already in motion, however, and were gathering near the door of the hut, where Marble was accustomed to feed them about that hour; the fowls on sugar, principally. I proceeded to the door, opened it, entered the place, and found it empty! Its late inmate was then up, and abroad. He had probably passed a sleepless night, and sought relief in the fresh air of the morning. I looked for him in the adjacent grove, on the outer beach, and in most of his usual haunts. He was nowhere visible. A ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... best and the warst is, just that the tower is standing hail and feir, as safe and as empty ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in confirmation of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch being quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off. Presently he was met by an elderly parson astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed a ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... on the whole, very comfortably, without much trouble either to himself or his neighbors, when one day, the coal-cellar being nearly empty, two men, and a great wagon-load of coals behind them, came to the ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine— Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made The tender-person'd Lamia ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... it out of him and made off with it into deep water. And," continued the medicine-man, "unless his stolen soul is restored to him and put back in its place he will die. Your boy is really dead already; it is only his lonely, empty body that is living now, and though it may continue to live in this way for a year or two, the boy will never be of any account, not ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... hands as the evening sacrifice.' In accordance with the genius of Hebrew poetry the same general idea is repeated in the second member of the parallelism, but with modifications. What is implied in likening the uplifted empty hands to the evening sacrifice? First, it is a confession of impotent emptiness, a lifting up of expectant hands to be filled with the gift from God. And, says this Psalmist, 'Because I bring nothing in my hand, Thou dost accept me, as if I came laden ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... weather. The driver was a farmer's son who had come to the station to fetch his small brother. Fenwick and he took the little school-boy between them, to protect him as best they could from the wind and sleet. They piled some empty sacks, from the back of the cart, on their knees and shoulders; and the old grey horse set forward cautiously, feeling its way down the many hills ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... writers make a grievous mistake who have an immoderate regard for the ear, and pay no attention to the thought so long as they are satisfied with the sound. Out of such concern we get tuneful trifles and verses empty of substance. Writers who have by an attentive consideration of the poets achieved the faculty of poetic diction and rhythm quite often fall into this error. They abound in choice phrases and so ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... turned away empty, though at a peril they were fed, aided, and comforted, and sent away well clothed. Indeed, so bountifully were the women and children supplied, that as they were being conveyed to the Camden and Amboy station, they looked more like a pleasuring party than like fugitives. Some of ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... your woods and orchards without birds! Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams As in an idiot's brain remembered words Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams! Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds Make up for the lost music, when your teams Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more The feathered gleaners follow ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... the military were able to withstand them, the tumultuous concourse poured back into the square. Weapons were now sought: broken flagstones, heavy bludgeons, and scythes were brought into use, while some loosened the pavement for the purpose of arming empty hands with missiles. The work of demolition soon commenced: the houses of Mr. Bourne, a grocer, and Mr. Leggett, an upholsterer, were plundered and set on fire. A simultaneous attack was next made ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... with a little forethought, composting home food waste will not breed flies or make the kitchen untidy or ill smelling. The most important single step in keeping the kitchen clean and free of odor is to put wastes in a small plastic bucket or other container of one to two gallons in size, and empty it every few days. Periodically adding a thin layer of sawdust or peat moss supposedly helps to prevent smells. In our kitchen, we've found that covering the compost bucket is no alternative to emptying it. When incorporating ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... party. Most of the boys had gone away; but they saw three or four collected together at the bank where the bully had been sitting. He was there; and his companions were bending over him endeavouring to rouse him up. Several empty porter bottles lay near, which plainly told what was the matter with him—he was helplessly tipsy. Lemon, and Ernest, and Buttar went forward to help to drag him along. He looked a picture of imbecility and brutishness. ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... the big old-fashioned key was in the lock. Nick pushed the door open and they both went in, followed by Billy. The Padre was not to be seen. So far as they could tell in the dimness the church was empty. ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... cookies long since forgotten, shamelessly listened at the door and held his breath to see which way Susan's footsteps led. Then, when he knew that the kitchen was empty, he slipped out, still cookyless, and hurried upstairs to ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... he cried, to the village, and bring up the rum-hogshead that lies before the door, in which I am making vinegar, and be quick, boy, dont stay to empty the vinegar, and stop at Mr. Le Quois, and buy a paper of tobacco and half a dozen pipes; and ask Remarkable for some salt, and one of her flannel petticoats; and ask Dr. Todd to send his lancet, and to come himself; and ha! Duke, what are you about? ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... false cowards!" exclaimed he in the blue harness; "do ye fly from the empty blast of a horn blown by ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... I returned to the Albany as a last desperate resort. The scene of my disaster was much as I had left it. The baccarat-counters still strewed the table, with the empty glasses and the loaded ash-trays. A window had been opened to let the smoke out, and was letting in the fog instead. Raffles himself had merely discarded his dining jacket for one of his innumerable blazers. Yet ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... basket they will find Food and drink of magic kind. Never will it empty grow And ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... this was done by the morning of the twelfth day; and all that day the people of the Cid were busied in making ready their arms, and in loading beasts with all that they had, so that they left nothing of any price in the whole city of Valencia, save only the empty houses. When it was midnight they took the body of the Cid, fastened to the saddle as it was, and placed it upon his horse Bavieca, and fastened the saddle well: and the body sate so upright and well that it seemed as if he was alive. ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... leather bag which they make. Budlas were formerly employed for holding ghi or melted butter, oil and the liquid extract of sugarcane, but vegetable oil is now generally carried in earthen vessels slung in baskets, and ghi in empty kerosene tins. Small bottles of very thin leather are still used by scent-sellers for holding their scents, though they also have glass bottles. The song of the Leather Bottel recalls the fact that vessels for holding liquids were made of leather in Europe prior to the introduction ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... luxuries in which they had always indulged occasionally were not to be thought of; and pork, which is almost a necessity, was to become a rarity and a luxury to them, and there were to be times when even the flour barrel would be empty. ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... almost perfect library of works on occult philosophy. Poor in everything but a genuine love for the mute companions of his old age, he was compelled to keep open his shop, and trade, as it were, in his own flesh. Let a customer enter, and his countenance fell; let him depart empty-handed, and he would smile gaily, oblivious for a time of bare ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... every person was my enemy, so I crouched lower while I stole along to a point from which I could get a better view of what was going on. I then perceived that these people were peasants, who were loading two waggons with empty wine-casks. I failed to see how they could either help or hinder me, so I continued ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... age of fifty-three Pestalozzi began his work at Stanz. The government gave him an empty convent in which to hold his school, and, before it was ready for occupancy, children flocked to it for admission. The devastation of the land by the French and the consequent lack of the necessities of life among the people increased the difficulties of ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... so the route and the pace of the horses had to be regulated in order to give us a good hour's ascent about noon. Fortunately hills are plentiful in this part of Italy, and in the keen air we generally made an end of the vast store of provisions we laid in, and the generous fiascho was always empty a little too soon. Our drive came to an end at Fano, whither we had gone on account of a strange romantic desire of Sir John to look upon an angel which Browning had named in one of his poems. Ah! how vividly I can ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... the world knew so little. She looked further. Everywhere were signs of disciplined hours and careful hands—cabinets with initialed drawers, shelves filled with books. There is no more impressive and revealing moment with man or woman than when you stand in a room empty of their actual presence, but having, in every inch of it, the pervasive influences of the absent personality. A strange, almost solemn quietness stole over Al'mah's senses. She had been admitted to the inner court, not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
