"Solitary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a walk side by side in a solitary path in the park and discussed the chances of their situation. M. de Saint-Maixent brought before the marchioness the enormous injury which this event would bring them. He then said that even supposing the news to be true, there were many rocks ahead to be weathered before ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... half-civilized tribes a higher type of initiatory ceremonies is found. The youth must perform a lonely vigil, going into the forest or some other solitary place, and there wait for the vision or revelation of a supernatural protector.[323] This procedure is connected with the advance of individualism, the old totemic or other relation being superseded by an individual relation to ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... an inch or two, to knock superfluous bits of wax off the candles, which were burning low, but instantaneously resumed his former position; and as he remembered to have heard, somewhere or other, that the human eye had an unfailing effect in controlling mad people, he kept his solitary organ of vision constantly fixed on Mr. Alexander Trott. That unfortunate individual stared at his companion in his turn, until his features grew more and more indistinct—his hair gradually less red—and the room more misty and obscure. Mr. Alexander ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... like his hopes. To and fro, to and fro, he went, his hands lightly clasped, his breath deeply and pleasurably taken. Victory walked with him; he marched to crowns and empires among shouting followers; glory was his dress. And presently again the shadows closed upon the solitary. Under the gilt of flame and candle-light, the stone walls of the apartment showed down bare and cold; behind the depicted triumph loomed up the actual failure: defeat, the long distress of the flight, exile, despair, broken followers, mourning faces, empty pockets, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... religious; but the Hawking Sopers were indeed a wild and rowdy crew, and it is said that the King's father had hunted and drunk with them until his estates were gambled away and his affairs decayed of neglect, and nothing was left at last but the solitary Barn which marked the northern boundary of his possessions. And here, when his father was dead, our young King sat on a tussock of hay with his golden crown on his head and his golden scepter in his hand, and ate bread and cheese thrice a day, throwing the rind to ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... tree-top from which they procure their twigs for nest-building. Often did I see birds hesitate above the opening and then pass on, apparently as though they had not struck it at just the right angle. On one occasion a solitary bird was left flying, and it took three or four trials either to make up its mind or to catch the trick of the descent. On dark or threatening or stormy days the birds would begin to assemble by mid-afternoon, and by four or five o'clock were all ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... full of shame at his own folly, and eagerness to retain the ground he had lost in his father's opinion, and, above all, to make him happy. His heart thrilled and glowed as he thought of giving his father real joy, and permanently brightening and enlivening that lonely, solitary life. Besides, who could so well keep the peace between him and his father, and save him by hints and by helpfulness from giving annoyance? He had already learnt to depend on her; she entered into all his interests, and was a most ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when she first read a chapter in the Bible, and then it was that he first opened out to her some of his ideas on religion; which were much clearer and brighter than either Mrs. Margaret's or her nephew's. How this poor and solitary old man had obtained these notions does not appear; he could not have told the process himself, though, as he afterwards told Tamar, all the rest he knew, had seemed to come to him, through the clearing and manifestation of one passage of Scripture, and this passage was ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... Esaias.' A writing of the second century had already witnessed to the same reading; but Jerome adds further that well-informed men had long ago removed the name of Esaias. Among all our MSS. of a thousand years old and upwards, there is not a solitary example containing the name of Esaias in the text referred to,—except the Sinaitic, to which a few of less than a thousand years old may be added.—Once more, Origen quotes John xiii. 10 six times; but only the Sinaitic and several ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... unexpected unanimous bird talk that died as suddenly and as irrelevantly away. A conservancy cart lumbered past creaking; the far shrill whistle of an awakening factory cut the air from Howrah; the first solitary foot smote through the dawn upon the pavement. The light showed grey beyond the scanty curtains. A noise of something being moved reverberated in the hospital below, and Arnold opened his eyes. They made him ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... inns; and, though I have more of them in the picture-gallery of my memory, I have done. I conjure up an ivy-covered dwelling, long roofed but low, and sheltered by a lofty hill. Its situation is quite solitary, and, save for the cry of the seagull, there reigns about it an unbroken silence. It is on the very highway of the world, but the road is noiseless, for it is the sea. From the windows, all day long, we ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... wanders abroad." Man and priest were weeping. The former in his fright and over the confusion and distress fallen on the household; the priest over the sudden and dreadful end of this child to whom the homeless one, the man devoted to the solitary life, had taken an unbounded affection as of a father. Great as was his terror, he forgot his own ills in the greater misfortune of the life-long friend. He remained bowed in prayer. "Namu Myo[u]ho[u] Renge Kyo[u]! Namu Myo[u]ho[u] Renge Kyo[u]! Oh! The wondrous ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... commands the Lake, with its little tufted Islands, "Remus Island" much famed among them, and "high beech-woods" on the farther side. The Lake is very pretty, all say; lying between you and the sunset;—with perhaps some other lakelet, or solitary pool in the wilderness, many miles away, "revealing itself as a cup of molten gold," at that interesting moment. What the Book-Collection was, in the interior, I know not except by ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... and the trees were sweet after their bath. And as the afternoon closed in I would sit on a gate in some unfrequented lane and watch the red fog darken over London town. I was happy then, as few lads are, I think. Those long silences, those solitary communings; were mind-building all the time. So, when I came away from home and settled in Chelsea, and heard men talk, I felt that I, too, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... eagle had fixed her nest, and seemed the undisputed mistress of a spot, to contest whose dominion neither man nor beast would venture across the gulfs that surround it, and which is further secured by the mist rising from the falls. This solitary bird could not escape the observation of the Indians, who made the eagle's nest a part of their description of the falls, which now proves to be correct in almost every particular, except that they did not do ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... upon his shoulders all the blame concerning Ethelyn, if blame there were. He would so like to think her innocent, and he tried so hard to do it, that he succeeded in part, though frequently as the days passed on, and he sat at his post in the House, listening to some tiresome speech, or took his solitary walk toward Arlington Heights, a pang of something like jealousy and dread that all had not been open and fair between himself and his wife cut like a knife through his heart, and almost stopped his breath. The short session was wearing to a close, and he was glad of it, for ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... the Good. It will make you welcome everywhere, and everywhere it will make you an instrument to good. The lantern of Diogenes is a poor guide when compared with the Light God hath set in the heavens; a Light which shines into the solitary cottage and the squalid alley, where the children of many vices are hourly exchanging deeds of kindness; a Light shining into the rooms of dingy warehousemen and thrifty clerks, whose hard labour and hoarded coins are for wife and child ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... students at the universities were expected to write in those days. In the great city school, as in the Devonshire vicarage, he lived in the imagination, inert of body and rapacious of intellect; but he was solitary no longer, having found his tongue and among his more intellectual schoolfellows an interested audience. While yet a boy, he would hold an audience spellbound by his eloquent declamation or the fervor of his argument till, as Lamb, who ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... reflections, and at this, the most striking of all the rules of the samurai aims. For seven consecutive days in the year, at least, each man or woman under the Rule must go right out of all the life of man into some wild and solitary place, must speak to no man or woman, and have no sort of intercourse with mankind. They must go bookless and weaponless, without pen or paper, or money. Provisions must be taken for the period of the journey, a rug or sleeping sack—for they must sleep ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the ancient prophecies and the stern commands of the Red Branch and of their King, owing to the great love which she bore to the maiden and the great compassion which grew upon her day by day, as she observed the life of the solitary girl and thought of the cruel law to which all her youth and beauty and wealth of sweet love beyond all the jewels of the world were thus barbarously sacrificed by the Ultonians in ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... said he, in bluff, hearty tones, as he took a chew of navy plug, and scanned the outlaw with his solitary eye. "Wot kin I ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... would be necessary to wage war against the bigoted professors who formed a power in his own empire. 'Impressed,' writes Professor Blochmann, 'with a favourable idea {156} of the value of his Hindu subjects, he had resolved when pensively sitting in the evenings on the solitary stone at Fatehpur-Sikri, to rule with an even hand all men in his dominions; but as the extreme views of the learned and the lawyers continually urged him to persecute instead of to heal, he instituted discussions, because, believing himself ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... his solitary meal added to Ree's anxiety, because of John's non-appearance, and presently he walked back along the road a considerable distance, whistling the call they had adopted years before. The darkness gave every object ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... might be the "kunnel"; still another, the "jedge." But there can be no other guv'nor save you on this car and trip. And George, of the Pullmans, is going to watch over you this night as a mother hen might watch over her solitary chick. The car is well filled and he is going to have a hard night of it; but he is going to take good care of you. He tells you so; and, before you are off the car, you are going to have good reason ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... chanson from those of his fellow-minstrels. It is not much of a song—a rather weak little trill, with a kind of drawl in the vocalization that forms its diagnostic feature. The persistency with which it is repeated on the solitary pine-clad mountain sides constitutes ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... another word, for we hurried off down the uneven track, sliding and slipping on the rain-soaked turf. Springing into our saddles we dashed down the gorge, through the grove, and so out on to the road in time to see the troop disappear in the distance, and to meet the solitary officer face ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rest, a solitary figure in the centre of the chapel, still holding the long whip firmly grasped in his right hand. Attention was riveted on him, and the singing of the hymn was a dismal failure. The young man stared straight before him, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... about the old castle. Sometimes it is a pack of hounds, that sweep along, and the whoops and halloos of the huntsmen, and the winding of horns and the galloping of horse, which is heard as if first more distant, and then close around you—and then anon it is a solitary huntsman, who asks if you can tell him which way the stag has gone. He is always dressed in green; but the fashion of his clothes is some five hundred years old. This is what we call Demon Meridianum—the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... be seen. Meanwhile, I'd advise you to establish that fact if you can possibly do so. And by the way: are you in the habit of indulging in these solitary debauches ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... judgment, so that I knew my Physician's face; wherefore casting mine eyes upon her somewhat stedfastly, I beheld my nurse Philosophy, in whose house I had remained from my youth, and I said: "O Mistress of all virtues, for what cause art thou come from heaven into this our solitary banishment? Art thou come to bear me company ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... at the palace. It has already been said that for may days after Dr Tempest's visit to Barchester the intercourse between the bishop and Mrs Proudie had not been of a pleasant nature. He had become so silent, so sullen, and so solitary in his ways, that even her courage had been almost cowed, and for a while she had condescended to use gentler measures, with the hope that she might thus bring her lord round to his usual state of active submission; or perhaps, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... impassioned sentiment for the past was only a refuge such as Byron might seek among the glories of by-gone ages or amid the solitary Alpine peaks, where it was possible to regain the strength spent in grappling with the forces of the actual world and return newly nerved to the battle. For fighting was Hazlitt's more proper element. He could hate with the same intensity that he loved, and his hatred was aroused most ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... statue in the middle of their circle of darkling woods, and listened again. But silence had returned to that silent place, and, after straining his ears for a considerable time, he could hear nothing but the solitary hoot of a distant departing train. Then he reminded himself how many nameless noises can be heard by the wakeful during the most ordinary night, and shrugging his shoulders, ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... questioned other Bacchantes about these things, and heard the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul confirmed. Hence, during many a solitary ride, while the cart rolled slowly along, she pondered over the thought that Juliane's soul had lived again in foolish Julie. How? Why? She did not rack her brains on those points. What had been a fancy, slowly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... setting the table for her solitary supper. She had been very lonely since Herbert went away. The days seemed doubly long. Most of all she missed him at mealtime. He kept her informed of all that was going on in the village, and when there was no news to tell he talked over their plans for the future. Life seemed very ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... extraordinarily low white mist, not three feet above the ground, drifted broodingly across the grass, and the trees rose ghostly out of that phantom sea. Great and shadowy and strange was the world that night, no one seemed abroad; I and my little cracked voice drifted solitary through the silent mysteries. Sometimes I argued as I have told, sometimes I tumbled along in moody vacuity, sometimes my ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... perceived he was in an extensive amphitheatre or opening of the trees, which he could not recollect ever having seen before, bounded at a short distance by what seemed a small lake, near the centre of which grew a large and solitary pine. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... and title of a novel by Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe is a shipwrecked sailor, who leads a solitary life for many years on a desert island, and relieves the tedium of life by ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... hackberry, the oaks, the linden, the locusts on the hill and the solitary old honey-locust down by the river's brink are as yet unresponsive to the smiles of spring. The plum, the crab apple, the hawthorn and the wild cherry are but just beginning to push green points between their bud scales. But the ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... had seen his confidence in his love for the stranger whom he thought his friend and his protector. In the pale and delicate dawn, shrouded in the mystery of night and day, enclosed between the clasping hands of the angels of darkness and of light, it had hung in the air above the solitary Julian, as he walked homeward after his vigil by the lifeless body of Valentine. With a passionate effort it had sought to draw him to a knowledge of the truth, that he might wake from the dream in which lay his insecurity, at last ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... speculation regarding the approximate condition of Mr. Chugg—would he be wholly or partially incapacitated for his job? Mrs. Dax, flirting a feather-duster in the neighborhood of Miss Carmichael in a futile effort to beguile her into giving a reason for her solitary journey across the desert, took a gloomy ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... tributary channels? That was the mysterious question as we stepped upon the shore now, to commence our land journey in search of the distant sources. We climbed the steep sandy bank, and sat down beneath a solitary sycamore. ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... earn. There, get you gone, if the atmosphere of a maiden's bed-chamber hurts your rustic modesty, and your Gods keep you, Deucalion, if that's the phrase, and if you think They can do it. Get you gone, man, and leave me solitary." ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... road; he could see it from the window of the nursery where he played, and he used to leave his play to watch it. Such glimpses of a happy home had streamed through its opening portals and fallen on the heart of the little solitary watcher like a benison. What hasty peeps he took at its homely brightness as the door opened and closed, and what long, long looks he bestowed upon it, when it stood open for hours together, as it did now in the fine ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... moral purpose. Whatever she may feel, and whatever estimable purposes may guide her, she has published many things which run side by side with her denunciation of her sister writers, and are as offensive as anything to be found in the work of any living woman. Take as a solitary ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... be to have him at Oxford. He means to come in time for dinner on the 14th, and go away on the 16th; but if he likes it, he will, I daresay, stop now and then on his way to town and back. Jem will not be back in town when he goes up for the Judicial Committee work, so he will be rather solitary there, won't he. I am not, however, sure about the number of weeks Jem must ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... attained the age of eight, was left alone in the forest for half a day with his face blackened. He was compelled to fast throughout the time, and he must behave like a brave man, showing no fear of the loneliness and silence. As he grew older these periods of solitary fasting were increased in length, and now, at eighteen, several boys in the Wyandot village had reached the last blackening and fasting. The black paint was spread over the neophyte's face, and he was led by his father far from the village ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... dead a week, the Senate besought Napoleon to give to France the security of a hereditary throne. Prefects, bishops, mayors, and councils with one voice repeated the official prayer. A resolution in favour of imperial rule was brought forward in the Tribunate, and passed, after a noble and solitary protest on the part of Carnot. A decree of the Senate embodied the terms of the new Constitution; and on the 18th of May, without waiting for the sanction of a national vote, Napoleon assumed the title of Emperor ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... whoever you are," said the voice. Accordingly he opened the door and entered, and this was what he saw. The room, like the rest of the house, had been stripped of everything, with the solitary exceptions of a box and a mattress, beside which were an empty bottle and a dirty glass. On the mattress sat the fair Edithia, /alias/ Mrs. d'Aubigne, /alias/ the Tiger, /alias/ Mrs. Quest, and such a sight as she presented George ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... to come across one of those solitary camps when out on a prolonged hunt, for the visitor was certain of a cordial welcome, and everything the generous men had was freely at your service. The crowning pleasure came at night, when stories were told under the silvery pines, with troops of stars overhead, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the Indian boat, and an Indian was about to put him to death when Smith saved him by braining the savage. Austill then rose, and snatching a war club from one of the Indians used that instead of his rifle. Eight of the savages were slain, and Dale found himself face to face with the solitary survivor, whom he recognized as a young Muscogee with whom he had been for years on terms of the most intimate friendship, and whom he loved, as he declared, almost as a brother. He lowered his ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... precipice to the apex of the hill now in full view, a strange sight there met our eyes—a sight so strange that we venture to say the reader no more anticipates it than we did, at the moment when we looked from the yawning precipice to what we expected to be a solitary mountain-top. "Pooh!" the reader will say, "it was an eagle looking at the sun, or a red-deer snuffing with his expanded nostrils the tainted air." We shake our heads. "Well, then, it was a waterspout—or, perhaps, a beautiful rainbow—or something electric, or a phenomenon of some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... pyramid of Volterra, huge and cloud-like, piled against the sky. The road, as is almost invariable in this district, keeps to the highest line of ridges, winding much, and following the dimplings of the earthy hills. Here and there a solitary castello, rusty with old age, and turned into a farm, juts into picturesqueness from some point of vantage on a mound surrounded with green tillage. But soon the dull and intolerable creta, ash-grey ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... series of "Sketches" upon the town, which have caused rather a sensation at Westminster. "Was there ever such an unmitigated mistake in any Cabinet as that man? He has proved himself weaker even than Mr. Walpole, and that was difficult." On every hand we hear it remarked that Mr. Bruce's solitary act of legislation has been the one relating to the London cabs, and even that is said to be an utter failure. It is true that, from no fault of the Home Secretary, but from political exigencies, Home Office Bills, being of a social ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... all very naive, and accords perfectly with the introductory paragraphs of the "Origin of Species;" it gives us the same picture of a solitary thinker, a poor, lonely, friendless student of nature, who had never so much as heard of Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, or Lamarck. Unfortunately, however, we cannot forget the description of the influences which, according to Mr. Grant Allen, did in reality surround Mr. Darwin's youth, and certainly ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... reached the cross-road down which Effie was to take her solitary way; for the bairns had gone on before. She stood for a moment trying to make sure of her voice, and while she lingered Mrs Nesbitt dropped a kiss, as tender as a mother's, on her brow, and said, "Good-night!" ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... had remained true, notwithstanding the obscurity into which she had withdrawn herself, and who, although they filled important positions at the new court, had retained their friendship for the solitary ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... continues:—"There is no appeal from this court!" (he forgot the court of a brighter world) "and a reversing the decision of the court below, I sentence the prisoner to four years' imprisonment with hard labour, two months' solitary confinement in each year, and thirty blows with the paddle, on the first day of each month until the expiration of the sentence." Such, reader, was Fuddle's merciful sentence upon one whose only crime was a love of freedom and justice. Nicholas bowed to the sentence; Mr. Grabguy expressed ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... practical girl, did not linger long on the optimistic prospect. For to-night at least, "telling" seemed a matter too dreadful to contemplate. Colonel Dalhousie was an irascible and solitary widower with one son whom he had once been proud of; and this son, having been strangely compelled to take a lady's word as to his own conduct, had been disgraced by that word, cast out with his father's curse ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... married, circumstances had separated her widely from her own family, in which she had never known either a brother or a sister; and the burden of her marriage with an old man had been brightened to her by the possession of an only child,—of one daughter, who had been the lamp of her life, the solitary delight of her heart, the single relief to the otherwise solitary tedium of her monotonous existence. She had, indeed attended to the religious training of her girl with constant care;—but the yearnings of her maternal heart had softened even her religion, so that the laws, and ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... Phoebus and St. Peter would be too plaintive to be fully characteristic of Milton whose genius lay rather in strength than in tenderness. Yet perhaps we love Lycidas all the more for giving us our almost solitary glimpse of a Milton in whom the affections are more than the will, and sorrow not sublimated into resolution. Its modesty, too, is astonishing. He had already written the Nativity Ode, Comus and Allegro and Penseroso, and yet he fancies himself still unripe ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... is a yawning gap, where one arch of the railway bridge used to be, with a solitary bent rail still lying across it. And, among the wreckage of the bridge below, lying on its side and more than half beneath the water, is the smashed and splintered ruin of a ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... and imprisoned land, is bursting down a steep slope in tremendous glaciers, bristling with ridges and spikes of ice and seamed by thousands of crevasses. Along the whole length of the coast we have seen no bare land or rock. Not as much as a solitary nunatak has appeared to relieve the surface of ice and snow. But the upward sweep of the ice-slopes towards the horizon and the ridges, terraces, and crevasses that appear as the ice approaches the sea tell of the hills ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... his castle of La Riviere, between Pontarlier and Joux, and shut himself up there for more than six weeks, without, however, giving up the attempt to collect soldiers. "Howbeit," says Commynes, "he made but little of it; he kept himself quite solitary, and he seemed to do it from sheer obstinacy more than anything else. His natural heat was so great that he used to drink no wine, generally took barley-water in the morning and ate preserved rose-leaves to keep himself cool; but sorrow changed his complexion so much that he was ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and the ploughed fields stood bare and brown in the autumnal sun—when the fig trees lost their leaves, and their white branches took on that peculiarly gaunt appearance which characterises them as soon as the wintry winds begin to blow—a solitary traveller plodded wearily across the Lombardy plains, asking, as he went, for the road that would lead him to the village ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... men who led a solitary life among the birds and four-footed animals of the great wild fen, and to be made the heroes of an ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... your letter concerning the cheating of Bourrienne at Hamburg. It will be important to throw light upon what he has done. Have the Jew, Gumprecht Mares, arrested, seize his papers, and place him in solitary confinement. Have some of the other principal agents of Bourrienne arrested, so as to discover his doings at Hamburg, and the embezzlements he has committed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... had an almost solitary day, except for meals. I like being here in a way; there is no strain about it. That is the best of blood-relationship; there is no need to entertain or to be entertained. My brother-in-law, Charles, is an ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... little party approached, they refused to complete the journey. "Iron Mountain!" they said, pointing northward along the trail—"Indian not go near; white man go!" The sight which presently met Everett's eyes repaid him well for his solitary tramp in the forest. He found himself face to face with a "mountain a hundred and fifty feet high, of solid ore, which looked as bright as a bar of iron just broken." Other explorations subsequently laid open the whole of the Minnesota fields, ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... of looking there," Poirot continued. "And he will be able, at his leisure, to come back and destroy this solitary ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... Olive could do many things with an independence that would have been impossible to a girl lively and beautiful Oftentimes Mrs. Rothesay trembled and murmured at days of solitary study in the British Museum, and in various picture-galleries; long lonely walks, sometimes in winter-time extending far into the dusk of evening. But Olive always answered, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Department of the Governor-General, as a matter of principle, does not allow accused persons to have any interviews whatever, I much regret my inability to procure for M. de Leval permission to visit Miss Cavell as long as she is in solitary confinement. ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... day's decline. We'll lift no more the shattered oar, No more unfurl the straining sail; With the blissful Lotos-eaters pale We will abide in the golden vale Of the Lotos-land, till the Lotos fail; We will not wander more. Hark! how sweet the horned ewes bleat On the solitary steeps, And the merry lizard leaps, And the foam-white waters pour; And the dark pine weeps, And the lithe vine creeps, And the heavy melon sleeps On the level of the shore: Oh! islanders of Ithaca, we ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... bitter experience showed that frequently, indeed generally, they travelled scarce a tottering stagger farther than they were precipitated, the wretched consolation afforded by a side glance at a more enlightened passion, solitary in its depth, was Rockney's. Others perchance might equal his love, none the wisdom of it; actually none the vigilant circumspection, the shaping forethought. That clear knowledge of the right thing for the country was grasped but by fits by others. Enough to profit them this ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... President and Mr. —— cut at the opening of your Exhibition! I am sorry for ——, for, although he has quite forgotten me since his aunt's book came out, he once stayed three weeks with us, and I liked him. Well, so many of his countrymen are over-good to me, that I may well forgive one solitary instance of forgetfulness! Make my love to all my dear friends at Boston and Cambridge. Tell Mrs. Sparks how dearly I should have liked to have been at her side on the Thursday. Tell Dr. Holmes ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... captivity; the gazelle may have been caught 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
... pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall tree that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the foot-prints of a girl. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and the trail ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... was running as true as on the day the Golden Eagle made her trial trip. The muffler was cut out and the effect of the wide-open exhaust on the Kroomen was magical. Within a second from the time that Harry threw in the switch and the gatling gun uproar of the exhaust made itself manifest, not a solitary one was to be seen. From the greenery of the jungle that rimmed the clearing, however, their frightened faces could be seen peering, like some strange sort of fruit among the tropical growth. Only old Sikaso ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... right, for just then the loud and shrill whistle of the engine was heard as it started again, after setting down one solitary little passenger in the shape of Fred Morris, who looked sadly disappointed to find no one there to receive him but Jem Barnes, the porter, who stared very hard at the young stranger ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... revolution. Now let us look back from this remote point. What do we see? One planet only, Uranus, is visible to the unaided eye; the giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, have disappeared, and the Sun itself is now only a star; practically no heat, no light, all is darkness in this solitary world; the Sun is 1000 times smaller than we see it from the earth, and gives, therefore, only one-thousandth part of its heat and light. Thus far have we gone, and, standing there at the enormous ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... to spend a few of the summer days with a relative in the country, some miles from her home, if home it could be called. One evening, towards sunset, she went out for a solitary walk. Passing from the little garden gate, she went along a bare country road for some distance, and then, turning aside by a footpath through a thicket of low trees, she came out in a lonely little churchyard on the hill-side. Hardly knowing whether or not she had ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... him when you get him into the boat. Fishing for sea-trout with the fly is, we consider, the most exciting of all kinds of fishing—that is, if the fish run to a fair average weight. But we are sorry to say that lochs where it is to be enjoyed are, with the solitary exception of Loch Lomond, usually far out of ordinary reach,—and in the case of Loch Lomond, it is only habitues who usually come much speed on it; but once the angler gets a fair day there, he finds his way back often. True, there are some excellent sea-trout lochs ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... sign she gave was by depositing a wreath on the empty grave in the English cemetery, a wreath which bore the solitary word, "Remembrance." ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... that it was the key that admitted him into this wonderful world. It did not indeed destroy his relish for the outer world of nature, for at all hours of the day, when it was possible to slip out of doors, he went his solitary way, looking, looking; until every tree and flower-border and thicket of the small domain became so sharply imprinted upon the mind that, years after, he could walk in memory through the sunny garden, and recall the minutest details with ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... thirty feet out of the bay; it is twice an island and twice a peninsula in the course of twenty-four hours. The only approach is at low water, by driving or walking across the sands. When, however, one arrives within a few yards of the solitary gate to the "town," walking or driving has to be abandoned, and here the commercial industries of the inhabitants commence. A number of individuals, half sailors and half fishermen, are standing ready to carry ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... Ferrara rises solitary in the midst of a flat country more rich than picturesque. When one enters it by the broad street which leads to the square, the aspect of the city is imposing and monumental. A palace with a grand staircase occupies a corner of this vast square; it might be a court-house or a town hall, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... would have been speedily made public; for the natural desire of speaking evil of our neighbour could in his case have been checked by no feelings of sympathy for a being so unsocial. On one account alone he fell somewhat under suspicion. As he made free use of his pencil in his solitary walks, and had drawn several views of the harbour, in which the signal tower, and even the four-gun battery, were introduced, some zealous friends of the public sent abroad a whisper, that this mysterious stranger must certainly be a French spy. The Sheriff paid his respects to Mr. Lovel accordingly; ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... leisure for these and many other reflections during my journey to Ingolstadt, which was long and fatiguing. At length the high white steeple of the town met my eyes. I alighted and was conducted to my solitary apartment to spend the ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... show, Ma'am," he replied. "Didn't see a solitary one. I heard some partridges, but I didn't mean to have room in my bag ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... looked for it through the large astronomical telescope, when I plainly saw it. But I was immediately convinced that it was not to announce the arrival of ships from England; for I could see nobody near the flagstaff except one solitary being, who kept strolling around, unmoved by what he saw. I well knew how different an effect the sight of ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... waiting. Then the swinging doors revolve and three bundles of fur mince in. The theatre comes afterward; then a table at the Midnight Frolic—of course, mother will be along there, but she will serve only to make things more secretive and brilliant as she sits in solitary state at the deserted table and thinks such entertainments as this are not half so bad as they are painted, only rather wearying. But the P. D. is in love again... it was odd, wasn't it?—that though there was so much room left ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... her waking thoughts. I would have her think every moment lost that is not passed with me: sing to me, read to me, play to me when I pleased: no joy so great as in obeying me. When I should be inclined to love, overwhelm me with it; when to be serious or solitary, if apprehensive of intrusion, retiring at a nod; approaching me only if I smiled encouragement: steal into my presence with silence; out of it, if not noticed, on tiptoe. Be a lady easy to all my pleasures, and valuing those most who most contributed to them; ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... then, that suddenly strengthened this solitary link so that the chain tautened and he felt the pull of it? Henriot could not say. He came back with the rush of a descending drop to the realisation—dimly, vaguely, as from great distance—that he was with these two, now at this moment, in the Wadi Hof, and that the cold of dawn ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... on a scale grand enough to be imposing, nor with any picturesqueness of form to relieve its sterility. One can understand the silence and sternness of the Norwegians, when he has travelled this road. But I would not wish my worst enemy to spend more than one summer as a solitary herdsman on these hills. Let any disciple of Zimmerman try the effect of such a solitude. The statistics of insanity in Norway exhibit some of its effects, and that which is most common is most destructive. There never was a greater humbug than the praise of solitude: it is the fruitful mother ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... that He will, in His grace, soften thy heart toward me, and that thou mayest speak to me. Or, if thou be dumb, inform me by a sign, that I may give up hope of thy speaking. I also beg of God that He will bless thee with a son that may inherit my kingdom after me; for I am solitary, having none to be my heir, and my age hath become great. I conjure thee, then, by Allah, if thou love me, that thou return me a reply." And upon this, the damsel hung her head toward the ground, meditating. Then she raised her head, and smiled in the face of ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... master in the United States over his slaves." Subsequently the management of the Society itself recognized the force of this remark as a quotation from the eighty-second report will show: "It was this ill-omened utterance of a solitary member of the Society, who appears to have taken very little if any part in its subsequent proceedings, that afterward gave the impracticable abolitionists a text for the most vituperative and persistent assaults upon the Society ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... mere; —s enfants, little children. sincre, sincere, faithful. Sion, Zion. sitt, so soon, so quickly. soeur, f., sister. soin, m., care, pains; —s, attentions; avoir — de, to be sure to. soleil, m., sun. solennel, solemn. solennit, f., solemn feast. solitaire, solitary, in solitude. sombre, dark, gloomy. sommeil, m., sleep. sommeiller, to sleep. son, m., sound. son, sa, ses, his, her, its. songe, m., dream. songer , to think of. sort, m., fate. sortir, to go out, come (on the stage). soudain, sudden, suddenly. souffle, m., breath. souffler, to blow, ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... high talent, policy, and wit, had nothing about him at all of the pomposity of his vehicle; and at the moment which we refer to, namely, about two hours after nightfall, tired with his long journey, and seated with solitary thought, he had drawn a fur-cap lightly over his head, and, leaning back in the carriage, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... upper floor. There was no window at the front of the upper passage, and the most available position from which to watch the movements of the crowd below was the front window of the cell occupied by the solitary prisoner. ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... description of the Island of Tristan d'Acunha, states that the animals found on this solitary spot were so tame, that it was necessary to clear a path through the birds which were reposing on the rocks, by kicking them aside. One species of seal did not move at all when struck or pelted, and at length some of the company amused ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... vitalities of the locomotive having been restored, the train rolled on, and Lorrimer took to calculating the chances of fulfilling his appointment that evening. He at length abandoned the hope, and resigned himself to the afflicting prospect of a solitary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... with her presence comparable only to the delight which the power and spiritual essence of Nature inspires in all but the dullest minds. I know I cannot hope to convey this in words. It means little if I say I thought of all quiet lovely solitary things when I looked into her calm eyes,—that when she moved it was like clear springs renewed by flowing, that she seemed the perfect flowering of a day in June, for these are phrases. Does Nature know her wonders when she shines in her strength? Does a woman know the infinite meanings her ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... Deity is common to several. We avoid the word "confused," lest we take away from the Persons the order of their nature. Hence Ambrose says (De Fide i): "What is one is not confused; and there is no multiplicity where there is no difference." The word "solitary" is also to be avoided, lest we take away the society of the three persons; for, as Hilary says (De Trin. iv), "We confess neither a solitary nor ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... 1878-79 Mrs. Ballinger gave a luncheon in honor of Mrs. McLane, who had arrived in San Francisco the day before after a long visit in Europe. The city was growing toward the west, but Ballinger House still looked like an outpost on its solitary hill and was almost surrounded by a grove of ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... The occasion was the morning of the auction of old MacManaway's property. The place was the yard behind the farmhouse in which MacManaway had lived, a solitary man, without wife or child, for fifty years. Dan Gallaher held the hames of a set of harness in his hand as he spoke and critically examined the leather of the traces. It was good leather, sound and well preserved. ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... no difficult thing in the early and solitary ages of the world, while the chief employment of men was that of attending flocks and herds, for a banditti of ruffians to overrun a country, and lay it under contributions. Their power being thus established, the chief of the band contrived to ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... passed before their eyes. The gathering of armed knights for war or revelry; the rejoicings for the birth of an heir, or the lamentations for the death of the stern gray-headed lord; the bridal of one lovely daughter of the house of Lomervo, or the solitary departure of the mail-clad lover of another for the Crusades. But, it is said, they saw much more than all this: according to popular rumour, these calm deep waters are the cold and mute depositories of frightfully tragic secrets. ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... the settlement, and rode back by moonlight. We put our horses away, and entered the house. It was then half-past ten o'clock, and we found Christopher Burley in solitary possession of the sitting room, hugging the stove closely and reading an old newspaper. Every one else, he informed us, had turned in for the night, Captain Rudstone having left only a few ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... asleep upon his truck on the platform, and there was one solitary young female sitting upon a bench against the wall, with her boxes and bundles gathered round her, and an umbrella and a pair of clogs ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... not a solitary proof of the importance of the naval states of Italy. That they had been able to act effectively in the Levant may have been in some measure due to the weakening of the Mohammedans by the disintegration of the Seljukian power, the movements of the Moguls, and the confusion consequent on ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... retrieve his broken fortunes by the plunder of travellers! Indeed, when she considered all the circumstances of his situation—in an armed, and almost inaccessible castle, retired far among the recesses of wild and solitary mountains, along whose distant skirts were scattered towns, and cities, whither wealthy travellers were continually passing—this appeared to be the situation of all others most suited for the success ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... burst into hysterical sobbing. Julian, in his inability to imagine so much emotion—or at least the exhibition of it—in Ethelberta, gently drew Picotee further forward by the hand he held, and utilized the solitary spot of light from the mirror by making it fall upon her face. Recognizing the childish features, he at once, with an exclamation, dropped her hand and started back. Being in point of fact a complete bundle of nerves and nothing else, his thin figure ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... "he was so mortified and angry that from that day to this the wolverine has always been a sulking, solitary animal, and playing all the mean tricks he can on all kinds of animals as though he had a spite against them. He now has not one friend who ever cares for him, unless it is his ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... Mostyn took long solitary walks. His habit of morbid introspection had grown and become a fixed feature of his life. Even while occupied with business his secret self stood invisible at his elbow whispering, ever whispering things alien from material ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... 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 to lie ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... suffering in order that they might be saved. Do you think they would find heaven to be real heaven if they knew he was burning? And don't you think a poet could make some interesting talk between this solitary soul predestined to hell, and the ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson |
