"Solitary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which descended to the ground stood open. The sight gave me a shock. Within the house those shutters had been opened. I felt the blood turn to ice in my veins and a chill crept along my spine. I thought of that solitary light burning steadily under the roof. I was convinced ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... grandfather, his principal lessons as a student were drawn from the paternal experience, and certainly no professor could more willingly and faithfully save him all the loss of time and patience occasioned by the long and often fruitless groping of the almost solitary Art-student. He was also thus saved from falling into the errors of the school of David. Certainly no great penchant towards the antique is discoverable in his father's works; nor in his own do we find painted casts of Greek statues dressed in the uniforms of the nineteenth ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Sara, for whatever she attempted she never failed to accomplish, and it would be well with Garthowen too! "Her ways are blessed," said the girl, clasping her hands, and returning to her solitary breakfast. "The spirits have her in their keeping, that I know, and she will come back and ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... constantly tried to impress upon myself. Sometimes, even, I think I have succeeded, under the combined stress of logic and experience. But there comes an unguarded moment, some evening in summer, like this, when I am walking, perhaps, alone in a solitary wood, or in a meadow beside a quiet stream; and suddenly all my work is undone, and I am overwhelmed by a direct apprehension, or what seems at least for the moment to be such, that everything I hear ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... are remarkable in being not only perched each upon a solitary hillock in a vast level or marsh, but in being hillocks in themselves. In the case of Winchelsea there are trees and green spaces to boot, but Rye and its hillock are one; every inch is given over to red brick and grey stone. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the worst attack for twenty years. The only medicine I took was blue mass—ten grains. My wife had a little tea and loaf-sugar, and a solitary smoked herring—and this I relish; and have nothing else. A chicken, I believe, would cost $50. I must be careful now, and recuperate. Fine weather, and an indulgence of my old passion for angling, would ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the lawyer. Sitting alone in my study, late in the afternoon, smoking a solitary pipe of peace, I remembered him: the man with the top button off. What had become of him? His presence (or, more accurately, his absence) suddenly loomed up before me as the forerunner of an unwelcome invasion of my preserves. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... An unexpected invitation had carried off Captain Higginbotham to pass a few weeks at Bath, with a distant relation, who had lately returned from India, and who, as rich as Croesus, felt so estranged and solitary in his native isle, that, when the Captain "claimed kindred there," to his own amaze "he had his claims allowed;" while a very protracted sitting of Parliament still delayed in London the Squire's habitual visitors ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... generation, pursuing the same routine of Agriculture which their fathers and grandfathers had pursued "time out of mind". In the days of my own boyhood, nearly seventy years ago, I spent some time at a solitary farmhouse in North Wiltshire, with a grandfather and his family, and can remember the various occupations and practices of the persons employed in the dairy, and on the grazing and corn lands. I never saw either a book ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... the pistil. We find that the arrangements of leaves and flowers are quite constant, that the leaves of some plants are opposite, of others alternate; of still others from the root only, that flowers are solitary, in raceme, ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... its exact size, which was enormous. I afterwards discovered that it could cover less than fifty square miles of ground. Anything more grand and imposing than the sight presented by this great natural castle, starting in solitary grandeur from the level of the plain, I never saw, and I suppose I never shall. Its very solitude added to its majesty, and its towering cliffs seemed to kiss the sky. Indeed, generally speaking, they were clothed in clouds that lay ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... evil with which Elisha Tyson, when "young, solitary, and friendless," undertook to grapple; the means he chiefly employed, were such as tended to purify and ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... the back of the Lads' Barn, and looked across the Paddock Close. A light in the window of a cottage shone out solitary in the darkness. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... my prospects are not very pleasant. Embarrassed in my private affairs, indifferent to public, solitary without the wish to be social, with a body a little enfeebled by a succession of fevers, but a spirit I trust, yet unbroken, I am returning home without a hope, and almost without a desire. The first thing I shall have to encounter ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... with frankness and honesty, a kindly smile hovered about his smooth, firm mouth. What at once attracted attention was his hair which was dark and unusually thick and bushy and a peculiar characteristic was a solitary white lock in the center of his forehead. Such a phenomenon of the capillary glands was not uncommon, but as a rule, the white hair is on the side of or at the back of the head. In Kenneth's case, it was the very center of the forehead and imparted to his ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... slipped away quickly, the boys amusing themselves by exploring their little island, fishing from the bank, and loafing in the shade of the solitary palm, at whose base was supposed ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... As with all solitary prisoners, throughout the long hours Ambrose's mind preyed upon itself. True, he had Job, who was friend and consoler in his dumb way, but Job ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... they rambled along the banks of the Po, climbed the hills in springtime looking for the first flowers, made collections of butterflies, and caught the sunlight in their hearts as it streamed across the valleys as the shadows lengthened. On these solitary little journeys they usually carried a copy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and seated on a rock the old man would read to the boy lying on the grass at his feet. In a year or two the boy did the reading, and would expound the words of the Saint as he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... a hired witness. And thirty farmers who went to Bismarck to testify in her favor, the judge refused to allow to testify. This would seem incredible to me if I had not some experience of my own with a Federal Court. Who appoints the Federal Courts? The people? Every solitary one of them holds his position through influence and power of corporation capital. And when they go to the bench, they go there not to serve the people, but to serve the interests who sent them. The other day, by a vote of five to four, they declared the Child Labor Law unconstitutional; ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... week of social diversion she permitted herself; the other stolen hours and Saturday afternoons spent with her brother at the hospital; and the seventh day, Sunday, her day of solace, on Mab's back, out among the blessed hills. But it was lonely, this solitary riding. Nobody of her acquaintance rode. Several girls at the University had been persuaded into trying it, but after a Sunday or two on hired livery hacks they had lost interest. There was Madeline, who bought her own horse and rode enthusiastically for several months, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... through a small ravine that crossed the hills, they found themselves on a fine extent of table-land, richly but not too densely wooded with white and black oaks (Quercus alba, and Quercus nigra), diversified with here and there a solitary pine, which reared its straight and pillar-like trunk in stately grandeur above its leafy companions; a meet eyrie for the bald eagle, that kept watch from its dark crest over the silent waters of the lake, spread below like a ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... where the trees fell away in scraggy clumps and the snow stretched up clear and unbroken to the hill-crest. Paul grunted, licked his pipe-stem significantly and pointed his pole to the hill-top. The dark peak of a solitary wigwam appeared above the snow. He pointed again to the fringe of woods below us. A dozen wigwams were visible among the trees and smoke curled up from ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the white-painted iron of the roof into a twisted and blackened mass. It fell in presently with a deafening roar, bringing one chimney with it; and soon all that Wally had to look at was a smouldering heap of coals, in the midst of which one chimney stood, tottering and solitary, with the kitchen stove a glowing mass of red-hot iron, and strangely contorted masses of metal that once were beds. The ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the whites of their faces turned up to him for the report of each shot. In a wave of anger and misgiving he realised the rashness of adding another responsibility to those of leadership. Only too eagerly they were piling on his solitary shoulders the whole burden of ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... What was to become of her? Out in the world where he came from, were they ever to reach it, she would be nothing. Her station in life was beneath his so far that the only recognition she could have would be one which would degrade her. This solitary journey they were taking, how the world would lift up its hands in horror at it! A girl without a chaperon! She was impossible! And yet it all seemed right and good, and the girl was evidently recognized by the angels; else how had she escaped from ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... front of us was bounded by the park wall and railings, and our seat was prettily approached on one side by a plantation of young trees. No entrance gate was near; no carriage road crossed the grass. A more safe and more solitary nook for conversation, between two persons desiring to be alone, it would be hard to find in most public parks. Lovers are said to know it well, and to be especially fond of it toward evening. We were there in broad daylight, and we had ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... of Italy were to do the same, the constitution and form of government of the whole country could be settled by a convention of the various assemblies. The idea was worthy of respect because it pointed to unity; but in view of the existing situation, Tuscany's solitary adhesion would hardly have helped the nation, while it was accompanied by serious risks to the state. The Grand Duke seemed about to yield to the proposal, but, on receiving a strong protest from the Pope, he refused to do so on the ground ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... I became solitary in my habits, for I dreaded meeting a human being. For a time my health suffered to a serious degree. My tribulations increased to such an extent that I seriously contemplated suicide. I am convinced that this period left an indelible mark, and that not an improving one, on my character. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... covered pretty thickly with trees; generally, however, the country was thoroughly park-like, and I could not help expecting to see a herd of deer start up and go bounding away before us. In lieu of them, we occasionally caught sight of three or four kangaroos, and sometimes of solitary individuals,— which, however, made their escape before we could get a shot at them. They are wary animals; and it is difficult to approach them unless where the cover is thick, and the sportsman is on the alert. ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... not permitted to say "by," for before he could fairly get the word out, Betty was whisked away, and Mr. Bombus stood solitary and alone under a bare maple-tree, chuckling to himself in an amused fashion and, it must be confessed, ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... Napoleon invaded Russia, or Timour and Genghis Khan desolated Asia—that we are gravely told that it is to be arrested by education and moral training; by infant schools and shortened hours of labour; by multiplication of ministers and solitary imprisonment! All these are very good things; each in its way is calculated to do a certain amount of good; and their united action upon the whole will doubtless, in process of time, produce some impression upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... the value of such things, than to the interest with which I myself regarded them. But the conversation turning on my family, who were old proprietors in the Upper Ward of Clydesdale, gradually excited some interest in my mind and when I retired to my solitary parlour, the first thing I did was to look for a pedigree or sort of history of the family or House of Croftangry, once of that Ilk, latterly of Glentanner. The discoveries which I made ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... clinging around the reservations of the most formidable tribes, and even making lodgement at a hundred points on lands secured by treaty to the Indians. Even where the limit of settlement in any direction has apparently, for the time, been reached, we learn of some solitary ranchman or miner who has made his home still farther down the valley or up the mountain, far ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... disappointments, but more particularly where they arose from causes inferior to those which have been now mentioned, or from little frivolous excuses, or idle and unfounded conjectures, unworthy of beings expected to fill a moral station in life. Yes, O man! often in these solitary journeyings have I exclaimed against the baseness of thy nature, when reflecting on the little paltry considerations which have smothered thy benevolence, and hindered thee from succouring an oppressed brother. And yet, on a further view of things, I have reasoned myself ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... all their heart. But the Baronage or Squirearchy of the country were of another mind. These, in the late anarchies, had set up for a kind of kings in their own right: they had their feuds; made war, made peace, levied tolls, transit-dues; lived much at their own discretion in these solitary countries;—rushing out from their stone towers ("walls fourteen feet thick"), to seize any herd of "six hundred swine," any convoy of Lubeck or Hamburg merchant-goods, that had not contented them in passing. What were pedlers and mechanic fellows made for, if ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... Van Diemen's Land, from the solitary Mewstone to the basaltic cliffs of Tasman's Head, from Tasman's Head to Cape Pillar, and from Cape Pillar to the rugged grandeur of Pirates' Bay, resembles a biscuit at which rats have been nibbling. Eaten away by the continual ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... "culture" it is, of course, possible to mean something altogether blameless. It may mean an education that aims at nothing but sharpening sensibility and strengthening the power of self-expression. But culture of that sort is not for sale: to some it comes from solitary contemplation, to others from contact with life; in either case it comes only to those who are capable of using it. Common culture, on the other hand, is bought and sold in open market. Cultivated society, ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... gratitude and unexpected benefits operate upon honest minds, who have little more than plain artless nature for their guide; and we flatter ourselves with the hopes of many a delightful hour, by your means, in this our solitary situation, if obliged to pass the next winter in it, as my lord and the earl threaten me, and the countess, and Lady Betty, that we shall. Then let us hear of every thing that gives you joy or trouble: and if my brother carries you to town, for the winter, while he attends ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... himself; and with his eyes stubbornly fixed on his own reverie or his own principle, buries himself deeper in it every day, weaving its consequences off one by one, and always holding fast to the various ends. Do not go near him. Like a solitary, enraged spider he weaves this out of his own substance, out of the most cherished convictions of his brain and the deepest emotions of his heart. He trembles at the slightest touch; ever on the defensive, he is terrible,[4136] beside himself;[4137] even venomous through suppressed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... hailed her with firing of guns and loud hurrahs as she stepped into the boat; still she did not raise her eyes, but remained silent. A small cannon, also an heir-loom in the family, was placed amidships, and Truls, with his violin, took his seat in the prow. A large solitary cloud, gold-rimmed but with thunder in its breast, sailed across the sky and threw its shadow over the bridal boat as it was pushed out from the shore, and the shadow fell upon the bride's countenance too; and when she lifted it, the mother of the bridegroom, who sat opposite her, shrank back, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... a familiar object by this time, for he had passed it many times, not only on his solitary walks but on several occasions with Alix. The desolate house, with its weed-grown yard, its dilapidated paling fence, its atmosphere of decay, had always possessed a certain fascination for him. He secretly confessed to a queer little sensation as of awe whenever he looked ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... great object of all the rites and mysteries which constituted the "Spurious Freemasonry" of antiquity to teach the consoling doctrine of the immortality of the soul.[159] This dogma, shining as an almost solitary beacon-light in the surrounding gloom of pagan darkness, had undoubtedly been received from that ancient people or priesthood[160] what has been called the system of "Pure Freemasonry," and among whom it probably existed only in the form of ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... second century, was there any such thing as a convent in England, or perhaps in any part of Christendom. During the dominion of the Saxons in this island, monasteries indeed were erected here, and in many other kingdoms, in great abundance; and as the monks generally chose thick woods or other solitary places for their residence, where could they meet with a spot of ground fitter for their purpose than this woody island called Thorney, then destitute of inhabitants? But I am inclined to think that neither this or any other monastery was erected in South Britain till the seventh ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... service for Fadrique as he did for me, unconsciously, with his angelic sister." And then he would sing some German song of Clara's grace and beauty, the sound of which rang with strange sweetness through the desert, while it happily beguiled his solitary hours. ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... from this to the south-east for nine yojanas, and came to a small solitary rocky hill,(1) at the head or end of which(2) was an apartment of stone, facing the south,—the place where Buddha sat, when Sakra, Ruler of Devas, brought the deva-musician, Pancha-(sikha),(3) ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... rattle in a sort of trance, shrieked with laughter at the nurse. Lines of people with linked arms chanted and surged along, bare-headed, or with hats turned into jokes. A private car, a beautiful little saloon in which a lady was solitary, stopped near me, and the lady beckoned with a smile to a Canadian soldier who was close. He first stared in surprise at this fashionable stranger, and then got in beside her with obviously genuine ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... "Barintus," of the royal race of Neill; and when he was questioned, he did nought but cast himself on the ground, and weep and pray. And when St. Brendan asked him to make better cheer for him and his monks, he told him a strange tale. How a nephew of his had fled away to be a solitary, and found a delicious island, and established a monastery therein; and how he himself had gone to see his nephew, and sailed with him to the eastward to an island, which was called "the land of promise of the saints," wide and grassy, and bearing all manner of fruits; wherein was no night, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... and the beautiful moonlight nights near the equator, have been talked of, and written of, till we know all about them. Mention but passing the line, and you conjure up a wide, apparently interminable, glassy dull sea: sails flapping, a solitary bird sinking with heat, or a shark rising lazily to catch a bait; or, at best, a calm warm night, with a soft moonlight silvering over the treacherous deep, and rendering the beholders, who ought to be lovers if they are ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... a travelling-party you belong to, the moment they are all mounted and climbing a mountain, single file, you feel yourself a unit in creation. Everybody has turned his back upon you, and you have turned your back upon everybody. You are a solitary traveller. Are you aghast at your own situation on the steep slope of a mule's back, with a precipice above your head and your feet dangling over a gulf below? There is no help for it. Imagine yourself a sack of meal, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... seldom admitted into my uncle's drawing-room, and never allowed to mingle with evening parties, which, during the brief visits of Theophilus to his home, were not only frequent, but very brilliant. This I felt as a great hardship. My solitary and companionless youth had deeply imbued my mind with romance. I was fond of castle-building; I pictured to myself the world as a paradise, and fancied that I was an illustrious actor in scenes of imaginary splendour, which bore no analogy to the dull ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... life, before or since, have I felt so alone. What was there for me to do now? All my care, all my heart, was with the solitary figure on horseback somewhere yonder in the forest. Had life any ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... linked to that of our far-off and latter-day islands, India has not one but many interests. There is the interest of the architectural glories of the Moghul emperors, in whose grand halls of audience, now deserted and merely places of show, a solitary British soldier stands sentry over a visitors' book. For the great capitals of India have moved from Delhi and Agra, the old strategic points in the centre of the great northern plain, to Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Rangoon, new cities on the sea, to suit the later over-sea rulers ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... of success which he had found for himself in the book of life—in those interesting chapters that the Devil has been permitted to write in it, to test the sharpness of men's eyesight and the steadfastness of their hearts. For one short, dark and solitary moment he was dismayed, but he had that courage that will not scale heights, yet will wade bravely through the mud—if there be no other road. He applied himself to the task of restitution, and devoted himself to the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... known to Barrows by means of a system of espionage conducted by Woofer, who, Ted now recalled, was in the habit of leaving the camp for long, solitary rides at intervals. What could be easier than when Woofer heard them talking about their plans to ride out and meet a courier sent by Barrows ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... whether it was real, was difficult to tell. She had flung open her coat. The vivid coloring of her gown, her crimson cheeks and flashing eyes made a brilliant bit of coloring in the dark room lighted by a solitary, smoking oil-lamp. Her tones ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... Smart completed his education. He was now apprenticed to a watchmaker in his native town, his hours of leisure being sedulously devoted to the perusal of the more distinguished British poets. It was his delight to repeat his favourite passages in solitary rambles on the sea beach. In 1819, on the completion of his apprenticeship, he proceeded to Edinburgh, where, during a period of six months, he wrought at his trade. But the sedentary life of a watchmaker proving injurious to his health, he was led to seek employment in a printing-office. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... different starting-points, and by unconnected roads. As products of the same generation they partake indeed of a common character, and unconsciously illustrate each other; but of the producers themselves, each group is solitary, gaining what advantage or disadvantage there may be in intellectual isolation. Art and poetry, philosophy and the religious life, and that other life of refined pleasure and action in the conspicuous places of the world, are each of them confined to its ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... his mother had let him; and in every vague plan of running off the forest had its place as a city of refuge from pursuit and recapture. The pioneer days were still so close to those times that the love of solitary adventure which took the boys' fathers into the sylvan wastes of the great West might well have burned in the boys' hearts; and if their ideal of life was the free life of the woods, no doubt it was because their near ancestors had lived it. ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... one universal shriek there rush'd, Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash Of echoing thunder; and then all was hush'd, Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash Of billows; but at intervals there gush'd, Accompanied with a convulsive splash, A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry Of some strong ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Perhaps, on the other hand, behind the deep-sea vegetation provided for them at the bottom, they had from time to time as the years went by withdrawn and replaced themselves. Were they or were they not, she sometimes wondered, contemplating them between the courses of her solitary means, the same goldfish that had that day been there when Carlyle—how well she remembered it—angrily strode up to them in the middle of some argument with her father that had grown heated, and striking the glass smartly with his fist had put them to flight, shouting ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... like solid battalions of infantry; sometimes solitary trees appeared, as if distributed by chance upon the grassy slopes, or scaling the summit of the steepest rocks like a body of bold sharpshooters. A little, unfrequented road, if one can judge from the scarcity of tracks, ran alongside the banks of the stream, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... any good. But I cannot bear that he should be so solitary. And if he breaks down in it, then his companions will not be fit for him. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... hardly expect to find fishermen in this solitary corner of the world struggling for political preferment on the seats of a lifeboat," laughed one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... to see a large, well-controlled camp, moving in a long line through a narrow road or pathway, over plains, covered with so rich a variety of crops, and studded with such magnificent evergreen trees. The solitary mango-tree, in a field of corn, seems to exult in its position-to grow taller and spread wider its branches and rich foliage, in situations where they can be seen to so much advantage. The peepul and bargut trees, which, when entire, are still more ornamental, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... The baroness thanked Providence, and Hilda thought it was all due to her love for Greif. Perhaps they were all three right, and possibly each shared in some measure the views of the other two. At least so far as the gnomes are concerned, most people who have lived long in forests and solitary places have discovered that their work, if they like it, is performed with a rapidity and skill which is marvellous in their own eyes, and if you do not call the little gentleman who comes at night and helps you by ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Premier was taking a solitary stroll the other evening through Palace-yard, meditating upon the late turn which had brought the Tories to the top of the wheel and the Whigs to the bottom, and pondering on the best ways and means of keeping his footing in the slippery position that had cost him so much labour to attain. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... in a sequestered spot on a rising ground on the right bank of the River Ruchill, near the farm-house of Cultabraggan. The name, which is Celtic, Tulachchadail—"hill of sleep"—well describes the place, for a more solitary spot could hardly be selected for the repose of the dead. Judging from the inscriptions upon the tomb-stones it has been for long the burying-place of the Macnivens, the Macgreuthers, the Maccullochs, and other clans. There is a curious slab over the grave of the Riddochs. ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... what was then the little town of St. Louis. The country stretched away west for more than a thousand miles, with nothing in it but wild beasts and Indians. In much of it there were no trees, no houses, no human beings. If you shouted as hard as you could in that solitary land, the only reply you would hear would be the echo of your own voice; it was like shouting in an empty room—it made it seem lonelier ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... human life there; the reflexion, in sacred image or ideal, of its flocks, and orchards, and wild honey; the dangers of its hunters; its weariness in noonday heat; its children, agile as the goats they tend, who run, in their picturesque rags, across the solitary wanderer's path, to startle him, in the unfamiliar upper places; its one adornment and solace being the dance to the homely shepherd's pipe, cut by Pan first from the sedges ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... day, I paused a moment to note how matters stood. I confess it was not without some compunctions that I heard the cries of the young birds, and saw the widowed mother, her cares now doubled, hastening to and fro in the solitary woods. She would occasionally pause expectantly on the trunk of a tree and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... above the fretted boughs of an oak and his music plunges forth upon the January wind. Now when Mark was ringing the Sanctus-bell, it was with a sense of his place in the scheme of worship. If one listens to the twitter of a single linnet in open country or to the buzz of a solitary fly upon a window pane, how incredible it is that myriads of them twittering and buzzing together should be the song of April, the murmur of June. And this Sanctus-bell that tinkled so inadequately, almost so frivolously ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... years more generally known by his family name of Gotama, but his individual name was Siddhattha. When he was nineteen years old he was married to his cousin Yasodhar[a], daughter of a Koliyan chief, and gave himself up to a life of luxury. This is the solitary record of his youth; we hear nothing more till, in his twenty-ninth year, it is related that, driving to his pleasure-grounds one day, he was struck by the sight of a man utterly broken down by age, on another occasion by the sight of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... was very considerably worse than we had dreamed it to be during the hours of darkness; for then we had believed that the loss of our masts and the springing of a somewhat serious leak represented the sum total of our misfortunes; while now we saw, to our unspeakable dismay, that, with the solitary exception of the longboat, the whole of our boats were so badly damaged as to be altogether beyond our ability to repair; of two of them, indeed, nothing save the stem and stern remained dangling forlornly from the davit tackles. But that, bad though it was, was not ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... almost glabrous; leaves with 1 to 2 pairs of small obovate-cuneate leaflets; in front rounded, or truncate, or retuse, or sometimes 3-toothed, flat at the margin; rachis dilated; fruit-bearing pedicels solitary; capsules 3 to 4-celled; valves cymbeo-semiorbicular, all around broadly winged; the wing rounded-blunt on both extremities; dissepiments persistent with the columella. On the River ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... little chin thrust itself forth into stubborn outline again. "Only, Father," she articulated with inordinate distinctness, "you might just as well understand here and now, I won't budge one inch toward Nunko-Nono—not one single solitary little inch toward Nunko-Nono—unless at London, or Lisbon, or Odessa, or somewhere, you let me fill up all the trunks I want to—with just plain pretties—to take to Nunko-Nono! It isn't exactly, you know, like a bride moving fifty miles out ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... mother she read billets-doux and love-letters when that pious lady supposed that she read her prayers, because her eyes were fixed upon her breviary. Without relating to any one this discovery of his Josephine's frailties, Napoleon, after a violent connubial fracas and reprimand, and after a solitary confinement of her for six days, gave immediate orders to have the chapels of the Tuileries and of St. Cloud repaired; and until these were ready, Cardinal Cambaceres and Bernier, by turns, said the Mass, in her private apartments; where none but selected favourites or favoured courtiers ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... history of America, from the time when it first [108] became apparent that the occupancy of the country was the object of the whites, up to the present period, is there perhaps to be found a solitary instance, in which an attempt, made by the English to effect a settlement in a wilderness claimed by the Natives, was not succeeded by immediate acts of hostility on the part of the latter. Every advance of the kind was regarded by them, as tending to ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... or not, Mag, it was all I got, after all. For—would you believe Tom Dorgan would turn out such a sorehead? He's kicked up such a row ever since he got there, that it's the dark cell for him, and solitary ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... air without any cause or reason for such unaccountable conduct—unless that the mass of leaves transfixed upon it or tied to it, entirely dependent on its single strength, have been too much, as well they may be, for its powers of solitary endurance. This total ignorance of tree structure is shown throughout their works. The Sinon before Priam is an instance of it in a really fine work of Claude's, but the most gross examples are in the works of Salvator. It appears that this latter artist ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... highest floor, at the other extremity of the cathedral, in front of the apse, a figure had appeared in a frock-coat and a silk hat. The figure stood solitary, gazing around in ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... before calving, or just after the birth of its young. The fashion of keeping flocks of animals taken from the desert died out between the XIIth and XVIIIth dynasties. At the time of the new empire, they had only one or two solitary animals as pets for women or children, the mummies of which were sometimes buried by the side ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... sled continued along the old winter road all the way up to the clearing where the negro had lived, and by ten o'clock we came into view of the two log cabins. Very still and solitary they looked under that ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... case of a boy of poor parents who was from childhood possessed of the idea of becoming a teacher. He was always a solitary child, endowed with great religious fervor. In spite of poverty he obtained an education, studied the classics, and did excellent work. He developed early religious eccentricities, became unsound on money matters, boasted of his father's millions, spent freely as a benefactor, bought expensive ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... of a man is not to be judged from the pictures which he may draw or from the antics which he may play in his solitary hours. Those who act generally with the most consummate wisdom in the affairs of the world, often meditate very silly doings before their wiser resolutions form themselves. I beg, therefore, that Mr Belton may be regarded and criticized in accordance with his conduct on the following morning ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... his trenches or no; and so our patrols could, and did. In practice, however, our most active patrols were frequently deceived. Shots and Verey lights, which came from several directions, might be discharged by a solitary German, whose function it was to go the round of the enemy posts and fire from each spasmodically in turn. A trench entered and found empty might be a disused sap or bay habitually unoccupied. To maintain the normal semblance of trench-warfare was an easy task for the German, ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... proclaimed that he had at some time in his life served in a military capacity. "The young master is late to-night," he muttered to himself, as the daylight faded. "What possible pleasure can he find in these long, solitary rambles over the dunes? It is true though that it is so dreary here, in this lonely, dismal house, that any other place ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... these circumstance were considered insignificant in comparison with the fact that it was from Abydos to Sestos and back that Leander was fabled to have swum on his nightly visits to his beloved Hero; for the coins of both the cities were adorned with the solitary tower in which Hero was supposed to live at the time. Why she lived there is not stated by any of the poets who elaborated the legend, but it may be surmised that she did so in order to give them a chance to invent a romantic ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... unselfish, self sacrificing, and almost virginal in her purity in spite of her fault. One has for her only sympathy and affection whereas it is difficult to feel either for Abelard in spite of his belated efforts at rectifying his own sin and his life-long devotion to his solitary wife ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... clang that it sounded into Arthur's heart, his sense of weakness returned. It was a toilsome journey up-stairs to his room, and he re-entered its dark solitary precincts in ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... ball of the earth whose rotation had now ceased entirely—one side forever facing the dying sun. There it pursued its lonely way, a cosmic coffin, accompanied by its funeral cortege of scintillating stars amid the deep silence of the eternal space which enshrouded it. Solitary it remained, except for the occasional passing of a meteor flitting by at a remarkable speed on its aimless journey through the ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... with churches and tall campanili like gigantic galleys setting sail for fairyland over "the foam of perilous seas forlorn." Let a blue-black shadow from a thunder-cloud be cast upon this plain, and let one ray of sunlight strike a solitary bell-tower: it burns with palest flame of rose against the steely dark, and in its slender shaft and shell-like tint of pink all ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... grateful. She could not help thinking, as they slid along smoothly and swiftly over the hard-frozen snow, that it was a good deal pleasanter, for once, than sitting alone in the parlour at home with her work-basket. Those days of solitary duty, however, had prepared her for the pleasure of this one; Ellen knew that, and was ready to be thankful for everything. Throughout the whole way, whether the eye and mind silently indulged in roving, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... evening, more than a year ago, after a drive of fourteen miles over a lonely Kentucky road, I drew rein in front of a huge, rambling wooden building, standing solitary in the midst of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... Catherine for your unit, multiply her to the nth, and there you see the irreducible power we have to fight against. All one's political economy is very well in its way; but the practical master of the situation is Pi, sitting autocratically in many-headed judgment on our poor solitary little individualities, and crushing us irretrievably with the dead weight of its inexorable cumulative nothingness. And to think that that quivering old mass of perambulating jealousy—that living incarnation of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness—should ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... extend for twenty or thirty miles under the sea, where it rises again to the surface, forming a little group of islands, more wild and rugged even than the land. These are the Scilly Isles. They lie secluded and solitary, and are known chiefly to mankind through the ships that seek shelter among them in storms. Prince Charles retreated from post to post through Cornwall, the danger becoming more and more imminent ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... travelled about ten miles west by south, over an immense plain, with here and there a solitary tree, or a small patch of forest. It was full of melon-holes, and much resembled the plains of the Condamine. Salicornia and Binoe's Trichinium were wanting. At the west side of the plain, a green belt of forest stretched from north to south. Before we entered ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... she can fool me," said Doctor Hugh, apparently addressing his remark to the solitary white hen that wandered around a bush on the lawn at that moment. "She thinks I don't know the signals—those famous storm signals. She thinks I didn't know the moment I looked at her that she wanted something she ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... nature" as if he knew all about it. "The conditions of primitive man," says Mr. Morley, "were discussed by very incompetent ladies and gentlemen at convivial supper-parties, and settled with complete assurance." That was the age when solitary Frenchmen plunged into the wilderness of North America, confidently expecting to recover the golden age under the shelter of a wigwam and in the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... complete conjunction. The trader sought to exploit the Indian for his own advantage, selling him whisky, trinkets, and firearms in return for rich furs and costly peltries; yet he was often a hunter himself and collected great stores of peltries as the result of his solitary and protracted hunting-expeditions. The rancher and the herder sought to exploit the natural vegetation of marsh and upland, the cane-brakes and pea-vines; yet the constantly recurring need for fresh pasturage made him a pioneer also, drove him ever nearer to the mountains, and furnished the ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... now and again as wreckage shows amongst billows, the gleam but momentary, so that when I caught sight of a kneeling figure across t' other side of the mere I could scarce distinguish anything at all, whether 'twere a boggart, as they say here, or some solitary shepherd seeking his sheep. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... and staring, with stiffened limbs and eyes fixed, not on him, not on me, but on one of their own number, the only woman amongst them, Janet Clapsaddle, who, with clutching hands clawing her breast, was reeling in solitary agony in her place beside the board. As they looked she fell, and lay with upturned face and staring eyes, in whose glassy depths the ill-fated ones who watched her could see mirrored their own ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... behind, and placed his foot in each print that the prisoner made, so as to destroy the impression of the boy's European shoe. The other Indians did the same; as exactly did they tread in one another's steps, that, when all had passed, it seemed as if only one solitary traveler had left his track on the ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... concourse of people about the court was necessarily attended with noise, which might disturb him in his present infirm state of health, these reasons were assigned for fitting up an apartment for him in a solitary house at some distance, called the Kirk of Field. Mary here gave him marks of kindness and attachment; she conversed cordially with him; and she lay some nights in a room below his; but on the ninth of February, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Iohannites, Cisternois, and innumerable other. Whiche al haue their habite, and maner of liuing by them selfe: acordinge to the rule that echeone priuately prescribed to them selues. And liued for the moste parte a solitary life, professing chastitie, pouretie, and perpetualle obedience. And for their solitarines the Greke called them Monarchi. Some of these haue for the heades Abbotes, some Priours: whiche are either subiecte to the Pope onely, or to the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... wonder, when they hear what it was, why he never thought of it before, and it is somewhat surprising, but by no means without precedent. Artemus Ward has told us somewhere of a ferocious bandit who was confined for sixteen years in solitary captivity, before the notion of escape ever occurred to him. When it did, he opened the window and ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... to assemble about the grave early in the long afternoon. They came one by one, solitary and silent, wrapped in blankets and ornamented with gray plumes. The warriors came in the same solitary way and met in silence, and stood in a long row like an army of shadows. Squaws came, leading children by the hand, and seated themselves on the soft earth in the same stoical ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... a circle of twenty miles. The country was an unbroken wilderness. Mr. Winters's nearest neighbors were bands of roving freebooters, who robbed all who came in their way. They did not, however, content themselves with waylaying solitary travelers. They frequently made organized attacks upon remote farm-houses, and one night they made a sudden descent upon Mr. Winters's rancho. But the old frontiersman had lived too long in that country, and was too well acquainted with the character of his ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... the tall wet grass to a less exposed station, a solitary figure came haltingly through the little gate. It was the head-waiter, and, as he carried no lantern, he was compelled to light matches now and then; after getting his bearings he would dart resolutely on for a dozen paces before ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... more quiet. He moved to the chair nearest the window and looked out over the dunes and the wide stretch of tumbling blue sea. The surf was rolling up the shore, the mackerel gulls were swooping and dipping along the strand, the beach grass was waving in the wind. A solitary fish boat was beating out past the spar buoy. She was almost over the spot when the San Jose ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in any open way to what he held the truth, must still remain uncertain; sure it was that a profound distrust of himself in every practical direction, a very humble sense of follies committed and dangers barely escaped, would for a long time make him a silent and solitary man. He hoped that some way might be shown him, some modest yet clear way, by following which he would live not wholly to himself; but he had done for ever with schemes of social regeneration, with political theories, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... with such little fatigue. I know you write with great ease to yourself, and would rather write ten poems than prune one; but remember that excellence is not attained at first. All your pieces are much mended after a little reflection, and therefore take some solitary walks, and think over each separate thing. Spare no time or trouble to render each piece as perfect as you can, and then leave the event without one anxious thought. I have always admired a saying of one of the old heathen philosophers. When a friend was condoling ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... and solitary. It is true they could hear the moaning of the wind upon the tops of the trees, but there was no sound of life, and no motion but that of the fine flakes descending through the air in a gentle shower. ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... land of Cat was a land of heath and woods[3] and rocks, studded, especially in the west, with lochs abounding in trout, a vast area of rolling moors, intersected by spacious straths, each with its salmon river, a land of solitary silences, where red deer and elk abounded, and in which the wild boar and wolf ranged freely, the last wolf being killed in Glen Loth within twelve miles of Dunrobin at a date between 1690 and 1700.[4] No race of hunters or fishermen ever surpassed the Picts in ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... accomplished in the interval, that would indeed be a privilege. What I have I will offer, and one who had shared with me the struggles and hardships that had to be faced, has wished to bequeath all that is hers for the same object. In all my struggling efforts I have not been altogether solitary while the world doubted, there had been a few, now in the City of Silence, who never wavered in ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... the alert for any peril that might by chance lie in wait along the trail—there were other dangers besides that solitary rattlesnake that might suddenly crop up to give them a chill—how about those nasty looking water moccasins that swarmed in the oozy swamp?—what of the ferocious bobcats such as were said to crouch on the lower limb of some tree close beside a woods trail, waiting to drop down on any moving object ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... left him. He had no wish to use the last moments of their companionship in adding fresh words to what he had already said. Since they had stopped talking, she had become to him not so much a real person, as the very woman he dreamt of; but his solitary dreams had never produced any such keenness of sensation as that which he felt in her presence. He himself was also strangely transfigured. He had complete mastery of all his faculties. For the first time he was in possession of his full powers. The vistas which opened ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... interests on bonds, were left to accumulate, or were applied to aid Robert in obtaining a new step in the army. Lands began to be granted nearer and nearer to his own, and here and there some old officer like himself, or a solitary farmer, began to cut away the wilderness; but none ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... moment conceal from her correspondents her sense of the dangers which surround her. She has not only open hostility to fear, but treachery, which is far worse; and she declares that "a perpetual imprisonment in a solitary tower on the sea-shore would be a less cruel fate than that which she daily endures from the wickedness of her enemies and the weakness of her friends. Every thing menaces an inevitable catastrophe; but she is prepared for every thing. She has learned from her mother ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... brightest graduates, had emulated his master by setting up in business in Chicago, where he ran everything with the same rigid cleanliness, sanitation, and scientific cruelty. Michael received nothing but the excellent food and the cleanliness; but, a solitary and brooding prisoner in his cage, he could not help but sense the atmosphere of pain and terror about him of the animals being broken for the delight ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... meaning, wondrous and eloquent, has often repaid my toil, soothing me in sorrow, and exciting my imagination to daring flights, through the immensity of nature and the mind of man. For awhile my labours were not solitary; but that time is gone; and, with the selected and matchless companion of my toils, their dearest reward is ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... three weeks. They had been normal when he saw them last and as this latter impression was the stronger he knew that he would find them untouched by madness; yet the vividness of the dream lingered with him and held him back from the low country. He howled once and started on a solitary hunt through the hills. The cry drifted faintly to the flats below and reached the ears of Cripp and Peg. They started instantly in the ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... gained ground to such an extent that the boy was completely unnerved. And no wonder, for the gloom of the great gulch with its perpendicular sides towering up to a vast height, the solitary grandeur, the silence, and the oppression wrought by the tremendous nature of his task, began to be more than his ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... the old man once more resumed his narration:—"If ever there was a man perfectly miserable it was myself, after the loss of that cherished woman. I sat solitary in the house, in which I had hoped in her company to realise the choicest earthly happiness, a prey to the bitterest reflections; many people visited and endeavoured to console me—amongst them was the clergyman of the parish, who begged me to be resigned, and told me that ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... its statues were carried off to adorn the African residence of the king, and half the roof was stripped of its gilt bronze tiles. From that time the place was used as a stone-quarry and lime-kiln to such an extent that only the solitary fragment of a column remains on the spot to tell the long tale of destruction. Another piece of Pentelic marble was found January 24, 1889, near the Tullianum (S. Pietro in Carcere). It belongs to the top of a column, and has the same number of flutings,—twenty-four. This ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... in the face of the mere, whose black smooth waters seemed to form an inverted curve to complete the arch of spangled glory overhead. From far and near came the many sounds peculiar to the wild fen, while every now and then there was a solitary splash, or perhaps a loud flapping and beating of the water following closely upon the whistling ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... yet unspeakable joy when I think that you yourself built the walls within which I am living in solitary confinement. ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... shell-fish; while sturdy sloops and schooners—suggestive of lobsters or pineapples—bow their big heads meekly and sway themselves at rest. I see again those long lines of green-wooded slope, here crowned by a lonely farm-house musing solitary on the hills as it looks off on the blue Sound, there ending abruptly in a weather-worn cliff of splintered trap, or anon bringing down some arable acres to the very beach, where a gray old cottage, kept in countenance by two or three ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... suddenly, and then the abrupt contrast showed Maskull the real Leehallfae. Aer sensuality was solitary, but vulgar—it was like the heroism of a lonely nature, pursuing animal aims with ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... permit the professor to tell you what is not unknown in America: a crowd of older young gentlemen surrounding one younger fellow, forcing him to do disagreeable and disgusting things, pouring cold water down his back, making a fool of him to his personal injury, he being solitary, helpless, and abused—all this is not unknown in America, young gentlemen. But it is all very different from what we have been accustomed to consider American. If we would morally define or paraphrase the word America, I think we should say ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... in spite of our efforts we could only discern dimly the shape of the umbrella rising like a miniature black mountain out of the white blur of the fog. The long empty street with the wind-drifts of dead leaves, the pale glimmer of the solitary light at the far corner, the steady splash! splash! of the rain as it fell on the brick pavement, the bitter draught that blew in over the shivering geranium upon the sill—all these brought a lump to my throat, and I turned ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... had no meaning to-night for Reginald as he watched the streets empty, and found himself a solitary ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... harsh enough for the soul that must belong to a gambler. He was content with little things and simple pleasures. The hush and quiet in the cool of the day after the blazing toil in the cotton field was to him an infinite satisfaction. He could sit for hours gazing at a solitary flower and philosophizing about the mysteries and riddles of being. A blue heron on a tiny crescent of sandy beach, a silvery splatter of flying fish, or a sunset of pearl and rose across the lagoon, could entrance ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... among his ancestors and kinsfolk near the old house at Schoenhausen, nor in the Imperial city where his work had been done; but in a solitary tomb at Friedrichsruh to which, with scanty state and hasty ceremony, his body ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... to the nature and force of its varying assault; in which struggle, if not always victorious, he had yet never been defeated. Often tempted to escape misery by death, he had hitherto stood firm. Some part of every solitary night was spent, I imagine, in fighting that or other evil suggestion. Doubtless, what kept him lord of himself through all the truth-aping delusions that usurped his consciousness, was his unyielding faith ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... Italian King, is sentenced to solitary confinement for life. While you read this he sits on a narrow plank in a cell not much bigger ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... unnecessary attentions to our person or dress—how will the ghosts, as it were, of these departed seasons, haunt and torture us! Though willing to give worlds to recall them—not only for the sake of our own souls, but for those of others—thousands of worlds cannot buy them. No, not one solitary five minutes. Happy is she who "wastes not," that she may "want ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... most beautiful, most touching. In his life Borrow had suffered much: a temperament such as his must needs suffer much—so shy it was, so proud, and yet yearning for a close sympathy such as no creature and only solitary communing with Nature can give. Under any circumstances, I say, Borrow would have known how sharp and cruel are the flints along the road—how tender are a poet’s feet; but his road at one time was rough indeed; not when he was with his gipsy friends (for a tent is freer than a roof, according ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... more sanguine, as those visions of fresh crowns and conquered kingdoms rose before him in his solitary cell, had even persuaded himself that the deed was already done. In the early days of December, he expressed a doubt whether his 14th November letter had reached the Duke, who by that time was probably in England. One would have thought the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... she rented, she grew into intimacy with a family belonging to that part of France. The intimacy began in her often meeting among the vineyards a pretty child, a girl with a most compassionate heart, who was never tired of listening to the solitary English lady's stories of her poor son and the cruel wars. The family were as gentle as the child, and at length she came to know them so well that she accepted their invitation to pass the last month of her residence abroad under their roof. ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... direction. Nor were these the only evidences of strife discernible. In many places—on the pavement of the street, in the churchyard, but above all, on the floor of the church itself, —the traces of blood were still distinctly visible. Beside the remains of the barricade there stood a solitary six-pounder, which had been taken and re-taken nine times during the struggle; and a sprinkling of what looked like a mixture of blood and brains still adhering to its carriage and breech, showed that it had never ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig |
