"Oblivion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... If, when the grave bursts, I am not to meet faces that have been my sunshine in this life, let me sleep on. Rather than that the doctrine of endless punishment should be tried, I would like to see the fabric of our civilization crumble and fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods and where even memory forgets. I would rather a Samson of some unprisoned force, released by chance, should so wreck and strain the mighty world that man in stress and strain of want and ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... in India she had heard of many tragedies of isolation, of sick and lonely Englishmen with none but ignorant, careless native servants to look after them in their illness, no doctor to alleviate their sufferings, until pain and delirium drove them to look for relief and oblivion down the barrel ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... repeated. "Here you have started as black, and must remain so. But if you wish to move away, and sink your past into oblivion, the case might be different. Let us see what the law is; you might not need it if you went far enough, but it is well enough to be within it—liberty is sweeter when founded securely ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... had in vain endeavoured to obtain a sick certificate for her daughter, that would have authorised her consigning her to the oblivion of her own apartment. The physicians whom she consulted all agreed, for once, in recommending a totally different system to be pursued; and her displeasure, in consequence, was violently excited against ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... countless multitude, numerous as insects in the summer air. AEneas, with surprise, inquired who were these. Anchises answered, "They are souls to which bodies are to be given in due time. Meanwhile they dwell on Lethe's bank, and drink oblivion of their former lives." "Oh, father!" said AEneas, "is it possible that any can be so in love with life, as to wish to leave these tranquil seats for the upper world?" Anchises replied by explaining the plan of creation. The Creator, he told him, originally made the ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... a dawning idea that she could not force into oblivion. But if she ever admitted it to her consciousness, she must fail in the contempt and scorn and fearlessness she chose to throw in this ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... compatriot who could exercise a privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest people afraid to speak of in a whisper, across the water there; for instance, the privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time; if his wife had implored the king, the queen, the court, the clergy, for any tidings of him, and all quite in vain;—then the history of your father would have been the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... depends not upon this, but upon the permanency in other men of the spirit that gave his music birth, whether it shall live in the minds of future generations. Year after year the language of the art grows richer and more complex, and work after work sinks into ever-deepening oblivion, until music that once thrilled men with delirious ecstasy becomes a dead thing, which here and there a student looks back upon in a mood of scarcely tolerant antiquarianism. In the temple of the art a hundred ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... colored citizens' of Toronto, held for the purpose of censuring me. Perhaps I ought not to notice their proceedings—perhaps it would be more becoming in me to allow them to pass at once into the oblivion which awaits them; but as it is the fashion in this country not unfrequently to assume that to be true which appears in print against an individual, unless he flatly denies the accusation, I shall, at least, for once, condescend to notice these absurd proceedings. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... thine anguish, Vexed heart, again. Why shouldst thou languish, With earthly pain? The husk shall slumber, Bedded in clay Silent and sombre, Oblivion's prey! But, Spirit immortal, Thou at Death's portal, Tremblest with fear. If he caress thee, Curse thee or bless thee, Thou must draw near, From him the worth of thy ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... Jerusalem is in trouble, the male children are killed and mothers are weeping for them. The child Jesus is saved only by the flight into Egypt, his whole life after the return from Egypt is covered in oblivion and he is a despised Nazarite. The cross is one of desolation with no penitent thief nor sympathy from any one, with his enemies reviling, smiting their breasts and passing by. Nor is there much optimism or expectation of success. The disciples are to be rejected and persecuted even as their Lord; ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... to recall the cold fact that, on her return to "Heidelberg," her aunt's interest in these ivories seemed to wane and disappear. Was there not a bowl of specimens in the drawing-room already consigned to oblivion and dust? Aunt Flora's character exhibited an amazing combination of fantastic caprice and ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... eleven or twelve at night a fair cover had been made, and the long-sought rest became possible at last—not, however, the sleep that the Subaltern had been longing for all day, not complete oblivion to body and mind, for the fear of surprise was upon him even in his sleep, and he knew that if his precautions should prove insufficient, he would have to answer for sixty good lives. In addition there was the cold of the cloudless ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... I had taken to walk to and from the basin appeared to have sufficed the carousers to drink themselves well on toward a condition of oblivion; for when I again reached the beach opposite the ship, the singing had subsided into an occasional maudlin howl that, in its turn, soon afterwards yielded to the stupefying effects of the liquor, and a dead silence fell upon ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... prison, I was advised to write an explanation of my conduct, I was disgusted with all works of the kind, by the numerous memoirs or notices by which so many persons had trespassed upon the attention of the public. Events had also spoken for us; and many accusers, and many accusations, had fallen into oblivion. ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... a last waking thought of "Poor Auntie! oh, if the watch could but be found!" while the watch's owner tossed about in wakeful distress. The more she tried to look bright in the day, the more impossible it seemed to forget her troubles in the temporary oblivion of a sound sleep. "It is really wrong of me to fret so about the loss of any thing," she would say to herself. "I seem more overwhelmed than even during the first few terrible days after mother's death. Though after all, were those first few days terrible? Just at the first ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... and faithful application; but unconsciously the object had been herself, not her subject, and her work showed it. Elise was no genius; but she was possessed of some of its most imperative essentials, an utter oblivion of self and an abounding love of her subjects. Miss Hartwell was astonished at her easy grasp of details which had come to her after ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... husbands at evening, tired and uncommunicative, to eat hurriedly and then go again into the streets or, the blessing of utter physical exhaustion having come to them, to sit for an hour in stockinged feet before crawling away to sleep and oblivion. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... an expression of absolute security and reliance; and he, under her gaze, felt the joy of devotion and an ardent longing to restore that woman's happiness, or, at least, to give her the peace and oblivion that heal ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... night. Still it was well that she was going to such a distance from our dwelling on the next day; and she had brought me in a stock of provisions, begging me to keep within doors, with a strange kind of fearful oblivion of the fact that I had never set foot beyond the threshold of the house since I had first entered it—scarce ever ventured down the stairs. But, although my poor, my dear, very faithful Amante was like one possessed that last night, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... observed, at a period not very long anterior to the Gracchan proposal; for Cato could point his argument against the declaration of war with Rhodes by an appeal to a provision attributed to this measure[333]—an appeal which would have been pointless, had the provision fallen into that oblivion which persistent neglect of an enactment must bring to all but the professed students of law. We can at least assert that the charge against Gracchus of reviving an enactment so hoary with age ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... "Historical Reflections on the Bishop of Rome, &c." Oxford, 1660, 4to. If it be written with any portion of the power evinced in his "Question of Witchcraft Debated," the ridicule with which Wood says it was received by the wits of the university, and the oblivion into which it subsequently fell, were ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... pass from age to age, from nation to nation, opposing a barrier to error and to tyranny; and that, from amidst the obscurity in which he has lived, there will shine forth a glory which will efface that of the common herd of monarchs, the monuments of whose deeds perish in oblivion, notwithstanding the flatterers who erect ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health by exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear low to busy people; but if he improves his strength, and I forget my infirmities, we both attain ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... condition of his times, when he said they were not famous for any public calamity, as the reign of Augustus was, by the defeat of Varus and the legions; and that of Tiberius, by the falling of the theatre at Fidenae; whilst his oblivion was eminent through the prosperity of his affairs. As that other voice of his was worthier a headsman than a head when he wished the people of Rome had but one neck. But he found when he fell they had many hands. A tyrant, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... with the two obelisks, and colossal statues in the front; the thick groups of enormous columns, the variety of apartments, and the sanctuary it contains. The beautiful ornaments which adorn every part of the walls and columns, cause in the astonished traveler an oblivion of all ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... the wagon-lit, so we had to stay up all night in a crowded first-class carriage. There was an old French Cure at one end of the compartment, who, quite early in the evening, drew out a silk handkerchief and covered his head and face therewith, leading us to suppose that he had sunk into oblivion. We therefore carried on a very pleasant and vivacious conversation, as the night was warm and we were not inclined to sleep. Suddenly the old Cure pulled off the handkerchief and said in a gruff voice, "It is the time for sleeps and not for talks." and, having uttered this stinging ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... of the eighteenth century, however, interest began to revive. In 1706-9-11 James Watson published the three volumes of his Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems, and in the third decade began to appear Allan Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany (1724-40). These collections rescued from oblivion a large quantity of vernacular verse, some of it drawn from manuscripts of pre-Reformation poetry, some of it contemporary, some of it anonymous and of uncertain date, having come down orally or in chap-books and broadsides. The welcome ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... spirit! o'er thine early grave Oblivion ne'er shall spread her freezing shade; Nature shall bid her richest foliage wave Where her reposing ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... a character talk, we hear his words, see his gestures, and distinguish his accent. All is true, real, living: this is more than talent—it is enchantment. Generations pass away in turn; a single one, or, rather, a group escapes the general oblivion—the group of ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... where, abide they now? Go search, and see if thou canst find, One trace which they have left behind, A single mound, or mossy grave, That holds the ashes of the brave; A single lettered stone to say That they have lived, and passed away. Men soon will cease to name their name, Oblivion soon will quench their fame, And the wild story of their fate, Will yet be subject of debate, 'Twixt antiquarians sage and able, Who doubt if ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... on my feet stirred me from oblivion. At first, when only half awake, I could not realize what had fallen on my bed, then hearing a deep groan I knew Moze had come back. I was dropping off again when a strange, low sound caused my eyes to open wide. The black ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... Save where Tritonia's airy shrine adorns Colonna's cliff, and gleams along the wave; Save o'er some warrior's half-forgotten grave, Where the gray stones and long-neglected grass Ages, but not oblivion, feebly brave, While strangers only not regardless pass, Lingering like me, perchance, to gaze, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... all the generations of the dead, for all that ladder of humanity that has descended down to us, there is scarcely anything, scarcely anything! The earth takes them back, and oblivion effaces ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... contrast. The one comes to the dark river with her pale, sickly lamp. It refuses to burn—the damps of Lethe dim and quench it. Philosophy tries to discourse on death as a "stern necessity"—of the duty of passing heroically into this mysterious, oblivion-world—taking with bold heart "the leap in the dark," and confronting, as we best can, blended ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... multitudes awaiting her coming. Her life, during one hour of each day, upon the platform, would be a rapturous intoxication—and when the curtain fell; and the lights were out, and the people gone, to nestle in their homes and forget her, she would find in sleep oblivion of her homelessness, if she could, if not she would brave out the night in solitude and wait for the next day's ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... conteyne in them pestiferous errours and blasphemies; and for that cause, shall from hensforth be reputed and taken of all men, for bokes of heresie, and worthy to be dampned, and put in perpetuall oblivion. The kingis said highnes therfore straitly chargeth and commandeth, all and every his subjectes, of what astate or condition so ever he or they be, as they wyll avoyde his high indignacion and most grevous displeasure, that they from hensforth do not bye, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... politeness, good taste, and appeared, from the very first introduction, perfectly at his ease. In his company one would feel astonished at all that he had suffered, for he supported his fate with a courage approaching to oblivion; and there was in his conversation a facility truly admirable when he spoke of his own reverses; but less admirable, it must be confessed, when ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... the Assembly, entered her boudoir by false keys when the queen was absent, and reported all these proceedings. The hair-dresser perished upon the scaffold for his fidelity. Let the name of Leonard be honored. The infamous informer has gone to oblivion, and we will not aid even to ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... claw and convulse and you twist and turn and toss and then you ride the crests of frenzy and plunge into the troughs of panic and despair and you sweep round and round and sink down into nothingness until you break through to the freedom which comes only with oblivion. ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... brain-centres, gives the heart too much work, and overthrows the equilibrium of the system. Ill-health follows; the mind is centred upon the suffering body, spiritual aspiration ceases, and the soul folds its wings and falls into the sleep of oblivion. The consciousness of man works from a centre, which co-ordinates and includes all the phenomena of thought, feeling, and volition. This centre of consciousness is capable of rapid displacement, ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes: Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devoured As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done: perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hang Quite ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... the slain The callous heaven under; Like twisted hieroglyphs of pain They fleck earth to oblivion's brink, As far as human mind may think, Accusing God with thunder Of dreadful silence. Nought it serves— Fate ever ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... sealed by the primal rites of baptism and blessing (vi. 2); and then the great revealed facts in prospect, resurrection and judgment, must be always remembered and reckoned with. These however must be "left" (vi. 1), not in oblivion but in progress, just as a building "leaves" the level of its always necessary foundation. We must "bear onwards" and upwards, into the upper air of the fulness of the truth of the glory of our Christ. We must seek "perfection," the profound maturity of the Christian, ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... more precious ones cast it into oblivion," observed Althea. "Let me see, Hermon: ivy and roses. The former is lasting, but the roses—" She shook her finger in roguish menace at the sculptor as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... beside Mordaunt on the other side of the cabin-top, leaned across. The crowded excitements of the afternoon had lapsed into oblivion. ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... imagined. Indeed, had it not been for the presence of a certain Major George, there is no doubt that when he heard the sweet 'Impossible!' of Miss Constantia, he would instantly have consigned her to the banishment and oblivion of her sisters. But Major George's quiet influence restrained the threatened ebullition of wrath; though when his best stories and jokes after dinner were received with a gentle 'impossible!' which meant either 'really,' or 'indeed,' or anything else it might ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... is nothing real but riches, all else is a dream; let us enjoy and then let us die." Those of moderate fortune said: "There is nothing real but oblivion, all else is a dream; let us forget and let us die." And the poor said: "There is nothing real but unhappiness, all else is a dream; let us ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... as the assailants were rushing through the streets, with death in their hands, they found Archimedes sitting in the public square, with a number of geometrical figures drawn before him in the sand, which he was studying in oblivion of the tumult of war around. As a Roman soldier rushed upon him sword in hand, he called out to the rude warrior not to spoil the circle. But the soldier cut him down. Another story says that this took ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... food satisfied her when her eyelids fell, her head dropped forward. Approaching oblivion drugged her ere it reached her and she dozed in her chair. But some instinct forced her to her feet as the landlady appeared, and fumbling in her bag for her card-case and pocketbook, ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... child of injustice; for so shortsighted were these hungry parasites that they developed a system of land-laws so bad as to cause universal poverty, and bring a reaction which is steadily sweeping the "landed" class of Ireland to extinction and oblivion. The fundamental principle of these bad land-laws was this: the tenant was compelled to renew his lease from year to year; and whenever, during the year, he had in any way improved the land in his possession,—by draining marshes, by reclaiming waste ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... tendernesses which," to use the words of Pradon, "are so agreeable." Of his numerous tragedies, two, only the Comte d'Essex and Ariadn, keep possession of the stage; the rest are consigned to oblivion. The latter of the two, composed after the model of Berenice, is a tragedy of which the catastrophe may, properly speaking, be said to consist in a swoon. The situation of the resigned and enamoured Ariadne, who, after all her sacrifices, sees herself abandoned by Theseus ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... intrigues and his natural influence with the mob, to carry away some prizes from him; though he was so mean and contemptible a poet that his very name would have been forgotten, and long since sunk in eternal oblivion, if it had not been buoyed up by the simple fact of his ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... and such a reputation has been made, and the majority will idly concur: "Ah, yes. By the way, we must not forget that such and such a reputation exists." Without that persistent memory-jogging the reputation would quickly fall into the oblivion which is death. The passionate few only have their way by reason of the fact that they are genuinely interested in literature, that literature matters to them. They conquer by their obstinacy alone, by their eternal repetition of the same statements. Do you ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... the tribes with whom Godefroy and Jack Battle and I wandered in nomadic life over the northern wastes? Buried in oblivion black as night, but for the lurid memories flashed down to you of later generations. Where are the Puritan folk, with their cast-iron, narrow creeds damning all creation but themselves, with their foibles of snivelling to attest sanctity, ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... will oblivion bring to me no care, As over thy vales and plains I sweep; Throbbing and cleansed in thy space and air, With color and light, with song and lament I fare, Ever repeating the ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... thread of a tail, whose existence the complacent mother ignores, his plethoric brothers and sisters repudiate, and for whose emaciated jaws there is never a spare or supplemental teat, till one of the favoured gormandizers, overtaken by momentary oblivion, drops the lacteal fountain, and gives the little squeaking straggler the chance of a momentary mouthful. This miserable little object, which may be seen bringing up the rear of every litter, is called the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... very remarkable in what manner their vehement pursuit of this object led the Directors to a speedy oblivion of those equitable correctives before interposed by them, in order to prevent the mischiefs which were apparent in the scheme, if left to itself. They could venture so little to trust to the bounties given from the revenues a trade which had a tendency ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of their countrymen, gleaming along the declivities of the mountains. They rushed out with tumultuous transport to receive them and pour forth their grateful acknowledgments, while the two commanders, embracing each other in the presence of their united armies, pledged themselves to a mutual oblivion of all past grievances; thus affording to the nation the best possible earnest of future successes, in the voluntary extinction of a feud, which had desolated it ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... maidens to seek and find beauty in the visible world about them and recognise in it the hand of God—but the world has known which of these men led the youth of Oxford to look up and which to look down, and to-day a merciful oblivion covers the names and doings of this triumphant vivisector and his valiant supporters, while to the farthest inch of the English-speaking realms the writings of Ruskin are treasured in a million homes and his name acclaimed ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... physiological mechanism of the bladder apparently causes the organ to tend to "swallow" the foreign object. Yet for every case in which the hair-pin disappears and is lost in the bladder, from carelessness or the oblivion of the sexual spasm, there must be a vast number of cases in which the instrument is used without any such unfortunate result. There is thus great significance in the frequency with which cases of hair-pin in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... immortal poet's political life had escaped the untiring industry of his countrymen. This toil was not wholly fruitless, and several interesting facts obscurely known, and others utterly unknown by the Italians themselves, are drawn forth by Mr. Wilde from the oblivion of these archives. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... of the Almighty. In a twinkling it had passed him, high in the dome of heaven, only to erase in a fabulous blast the moaning multitude. And prone upon the strand between the stormy waters and the field of muddy dead, Gerald Shannon prayed for a second cataclysm which might bring oblivion to ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... elapsed; when we consider that the wounds which I saw red and gaping and bleeding are now healed, scarcely leaving a scar, I think that the enemy might now be regarded as a friend; and that whatever unkind feelings were begotten in that terrible time should be now buried in the Red Sea of oblivion. [Applause.] There never before was a time when it was so expedient for England to say to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... facts and incidents gathered here and there from the traditional recollections of our oldest inhabitants, or from the musty records of our State and county offices; and yet, it is believed such facts, when truthfully transmitted to us, are worthy of preservation and rescue from the gulf of oblivion, which unfortunately conceals from our view ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... the coast hills, and all up that slope to the Truckee River country, where the long cold forbade his progress north. Then he worked back down one or another of the nearly parallel ranges that lie out desertward, and so down to the sink of the Mojave River, burrowing to oblivion in the sand,—a big mysterious land, a lonely, inhospitable land, beautiful, terrible. But he came to no harm in it; the land tolerated him as it might a gopher or a badger. Of all its inhabitants it has the least concern ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... themselves infamous and unworthy. The nation listened for a time with kindly pity to their indignant protests, and then buried the troublesome and persistent clamorers in the silence of calm but considerate disbelief. They were quietly allowed to sink into the charitable grave of unquestioning oblivion. It was not any personal attaint which befouled their names and blasted their public prospects, but simply the fact that they had obeyed the nation's behest and done a work assigned to them by the country's ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... first moment of overwhelming anger; if he had spurned him away, and ordered him any amount of punishment, it would have been far easier to bear than this Christian gentleness; this ready burying in pity and oblivion of the heaviest and most undeserved calamity which the master had ever undergone at the hands of man. Walter could not bear it; he flung himself on his knees again in a passion of weeping, and clasped Mr Paton's knees, uttering in broken ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... having been or not, would never change The lightest pulse of fate,—this is indeed A cup of bitterness the worst to taste, 200 And this thy heart shall empty to the dregs. Endless despair shall be thy Caucasus, And memory thy vulture; thou wilt find Oblivion far lonelier than this peak. Behold thy destiny! Thou think'st it much That I should brave thee, miserable god! But I have braved a mightier than thou, Even the sharp tempting of this soaring heart, Which might ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Henry," he said calmly, and in a voice of much melancholy. "These are severe expressions for a brother to use—but you are right—I did seek oblivion of my wretchedness in that whirlpool, as the only means of destroying the worm that feeds incessantly upon my heart; but Providence has willed it otherwise— and, moreover, I had not taken the danger of my faithful servant into the account. Had Sambo not saved me, I must have perished, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... appear again above. I suppose that those sections which are empty of an individual and his atmosphere represent the intervals between his lives which he spends in sleep, or in states of existence with which this world is not concerned, but of such gulfs of oblivion and states of being ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... unconnected with which India is now meeting her problems to-day. How did these problems first dawn in the minds of some men who forecast themselves by half a century? How fared their hopes, how did their dreams become buried in oblivion? Where lies the secret of that potency which makes certain efforts apparently doomed to failure, rise renewed from beneath the smouldering ashes? Are these dead failures, so utterly unrelated to some great success that we may acclaim to ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... with quite a show of cordiality; but the orphan shrank back from the offered kiss, and merely touched the extended hand. She had not forgotten the taunts and unkindness of other days; and, though not vindictive, she could not feign oblivion of the past, nor assume a friendly manner foreign to her. She took her seat in the carriage, and found it rather difficult to withdraw her fascinated eyes from Pauline's lovely face. She knew what was expected of her, however; and said, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Bob, having come into my inheritance of oblivion while living,—having in vain called upon Fame to sound the trumpet, which I am sure is so obstinately plugged that it will never syllable my name,—having resolutely determined to be nobody,—I do not waste my sympathy upon myself, but generously bestow it upon a mob of fine fellows in all ages, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... for a time well nigh bereft the stage of originality of thought or freedom of expression. Form, form, that was the cry still ringing in the ears of the author when he put the finishing touches to a production which was to be famous for the nonce, and then go down in the dark waters of oblivion with the wreck of ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... patient once well, however, he became nervously shy and embarrassed, retreating as soon as possible from her presence to the covert of his friendly office, where, with his boots upon the table and his head thrown back in a most comfortable position, he sat one April morning, in happy oblivion of the bevy of girls who must, of ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... genius broke through the mental twilight, in the shape of, "Some Account of the poet, Burns;" a Rustique by Bloomfield, or an elegant sonnet by Bowles or Charlotte Smith. The rest of would-be-sonneteers, tragedy-writers, and essayists, have long ago found, with their mediocrities, a congenial oblivion in "the tomb ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... Mrs. Clarke's own father had hidden away here all these years, utterly friendless except for the children, poor to the point of starvation, sick to the point of death, grappling with his great weakness in heroic silence, and going down to utter oblivion rather than obtrude his misfortune upon ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... for these! But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it— Oh, never! it shall not be counted true— That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover, Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... deathless as love from the depth of a spirit that sees and lives, From the soul of a seer and a singer, wherein as a scroll unfurled Lies open the scripture of light and of darkness, the word of the world, So, shapeless and measureless, lurid as anguish and haggard as crime, Pale as the front of oblivion and dark as the heart of time, The wild wan heaven at its height was assailed and subdued and made More fair than the skies that know not of storm and endure not shade. The grim sea-swell, grey, sleepless, and sad as a soul estranged, Shone, ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... profound author, or furnished him with readers? It is the wise choice of the subject that alone adorns and distinguishes the writer. For had a hundred such pens as these been employed on the side of religion, they would have immediately sunk into silence and oblivion. ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... images seemed to flit before me while putting into rhyme the "Song of Prince Hoel,"—but before I could write it down, tidings reached me of the illness, (perhaps incurable,) of him who drew it from the oblivion ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... sought for in vain. "Shrubs and trees," observes the same writer, "have found a footing in the crevices, and branches from the walls shook in undulating monotony, and with a gloomy and spiritual murmur, that spoke to the ear of time and events gone by, and lost in oblivion and dilapidation. At the end, immediately beneath the colossal window, grows an alder of considerable luxuriance, which, added to the situation of every other object, brought Mr. Southey's pathetic ballad of 'Mary ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... the flame from Ravan's eye, As thus in wrath he made reply: "Fair time, I ween, for sleep is this, To lull thy soul in tranquil bliss, Unheeding, in oblivion drowned, The dangers that our lives surround. Brave Rama, Dasaratha's son, A passage o'er the sea has won, And, with the Vanar monarch's aid, Round Lanka's walls his hosts arrayed. Though never in the deadly field ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... length, to the "Storm and Stress" movement in Germany, that boisterous forerunner of Romanticism, yet so unlike it that even Schlegel compared its most typical representatives to the biblical herd of swine which stampeded—into oblivion. Herder, proclaiming the vital connection between the soul of a whole nation and its literature, and preaching a religion of the feelings rather than a gospel of "enlightenment;" young Goethe, by ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... cousin of LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU (q. v.); was educated at Eton and at Leyden, where he graduated in 1728; led for some years a dissipated life in London, and achieved some celebrity by the production of a series of comedies and farces, now deservedly sunk into oblivion; in 1735 he married Miss Charlotte Cradock, and after a brief experiment as a theatre lessee studied law at the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar; literature was, however, his main pursuit, and in 1742 he came to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... his subject with zeal, industry, and patience. He has sought out the original authorities, has brought to light many important facts, has redeemed some great memories from unjust oblivion, and has presented a new view of several of the chief features of the history. In a graceful advertisement to the third volume he says, "The reader will observe that there is scarcely any allusion in this work to the kindred works of modern writers on the same ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... might be laying the foundation of a race that may never die? There is no one to whom he has done good and no one owes him a tear when his barren carcass is being given over as food to the worms. He is a rotten link on the chain of life and the curse of oblivion will vindicate the claims of his unborn generations. Young man, marry, marry now, and be something in the world besides an eyesore of unproductiveness and worthlessness; do something that will make somebody happy besides yourself; show that you passed, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... go on hanging. Mr. Drishna is a dangerous animal who for the sake of pacific animals must cease to exist. Let his barbarous exploit pass into oblivion with him. The disadvantages of spreading it broadcast immeasurably outweigh ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... piece with his career in Sweden. He scurried about from one court to another, endeavoring to raise an army with which to conquer Sweden. But nothing came of any of his projects, and after a short period oblivion settled ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... so great was the strain upon his mind as well as muscles that for a moment he found himself thinking whether it would not be a relief to loosen his hold and fall into oblivion. ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... was convinced beyond the question of a doubt that the horse had not been bred in Kentucky. As he described an aerial circle Wallie had a whimsical notion that his teeth had bitten into his brain and his spine was projected through the crown of his derby hat. Darkness and oblivion came upon him for a moment, and then he found himself being lifted tenderly from a bed of petunias and dusted off by the groom ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... Bedford employed the authority of parliament to reconcile them; and these rivals were obliged to promise, before that assembly, that they would bury all quarrels in oblivion.[***] Time also seemed to open expedients for composing the difference with the duke of Burgundy. The credit of that prince had procured a bull from the pope; by which not only Jaqueline's contract with the duke of Glocester was annulled, but ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... would hear them talking; talking; maddened, sweating, seeking oblivion in drink, he would lie there and hear the voices going on and on. And day after day Leonora would come to him and would announce the results of ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... some of the most eminent men in American public life. The specialties as given on the sign-board were well prepared; and many were the lamentations when the dear old madame died, and the restaurant, being transferred to another part of Paris, became pretentious and fell into oblivion. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... before reached our ears. Nicholas Blauvelt and William Phillips and a number of other utterly forgotten rhymesters were described and eulogized at length, the quoted specimens of their poetry proving all the while their admirable right to the oblivion which Mr. Payne deprecated. They were men of culture, some of them wealthy, and we could detect no lack of opportunity in the story of their lives. Had they been mechanics, they would have planed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... out of Legget's fierce band, the yoke of the renegades and outlaws was thrown off forever. Simon Girty migrated to Canada and lived with a few Indians who remained true to him. His confederates slowly sank into oblivion. The Shawnee tribe sullenly retreated westward, far into the interior of Ohio; the Delawares buried the war hatchet, and smoked the pipe of peace they had ever before refused. For them the dark, mysterious, fatal wind had ceased to moan along the trails, ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... to me is a convincing proof, the scent," Verisschenzko went on, "the card must be a forgery because of John's seeming oblivion of the possibility that you two might have already carried out his wishes. All this would have been very unlike him. But if it is, as I think, Ferdinand's and Harietta Boleski's work, they would not be likely to know that John had desired that Denzil should marry you, Amaryllis, and ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... Army. Various interruptions prevented the completion of my work at that time. More recently, after despairing of the hope that some more capable member of my old command, the Rockbridge Artillery, would not allow its history to pass into oblivion, I resumed the task, and now present this volume as the only published record of that company, celebrated as it was even in that matchless body of men, ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... critical time for Watts; his first allegorical picture, "Time and Oblivion," was painted, and, in the year following, "Life's Illusions" appeared on the walls of the famous Academy which contained the first works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Watts was not of the party, though he might have been had he ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... did not earlier begin to keep a diary. "Miss not the discourses of the elders," though put now in the Apocrypha, is a wise precept, but incomplete unless we add, "Nor cease from recording whatsoever thing thou hast gathered therefrom,"—so ready is Oblivion with her fatal shears. The somewhat greasy heap of a literary rag-and-bone-picker, like Athenaeus, is turned to gold by time. Even the Virgilium vide tantum of Dryden about Milton, and of Pope again about Dryden, is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... lively stories of my adventures," I said to myself, and I was at the point of pushing my notes to the edge of the table where (had I let go) they would have fallen into the convenient oblivion of the waste-basket. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... admit its truth ourselves, until a pretty extensive acquaintance with the writings of the Reformers compelled us to yield our conviction. Still we would have greatly preferred to remain silent on the subject and throw the mantle of oblivion over this deformity of our symbolic mother; had not ill-advised ultra-symbolists of late years carried on a crusade against all Lutherans who will not adopt the entire symbolic system. The charge in the Platform was advisedly made, after careful examination. Since the charge has ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... Logan—who had very properly refused to take the initiative—then made a very brief but a very handsome explanation of what he had done, and after a few lofty words from Mr. Gladstone and the Speaker the matter was allowed to drop into the dark abyss of oblivion. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... born of that likeness seen in the mirror. Many times since she had passed from childhood to womanhood had she speculated upon the mystery which enshrouded her, while one recollection after another of past events flitted through her brain, only to bewilder her awhile and then to disappear into oblivion. But never before had she been affected as she was that night when the possibility of what might be nearly drove ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... bones are dust, his grave a blank, His station, generation, even his nation, Become a thing, or nothing, save to rank In chronological commemoration, Some dull MS. oblivion long has sank, Or graven stone found in a barrack's station In digging the foundation of a closet, May turn his name ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... tyrant is afraid lest my destiny should become generally known. He wishes to hide it in obscurity; but my name, and that for which I die, will not sink into oblivion. The day of freedom will dawn yet on my native land, and my grave will be known and visited by my German brethren. You ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... an episode which lives in history two centuries after that scene of carnage on the decks of the stranded brig. It has preserved the name of a humble lieutenant of the Royal Navy and saved it from the oblivion which is the common lot of most brave men who do and dare when ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine |
