"Waning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... house in the light of the waning day - A shower of rice on the steps, and the shreds of a bride's bouquet. And then she drew the shade, to shut out the growing gloom, But she shut it into her heart instead. (Was that a voice in ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... The waning of the moon brought new songsters, with many a nightingale among them. A low bush near the plain was vocal during the full moon with the sweet but disconnected music of the yellow-breasted chat. The forest rang again and again with a wild, torrential strain of music that seemed ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... looked down on them from the summit of the knoll, which he had climbed on its westward side; a tradesman to all appearance, clad in a dusty, ill-fitting suit. So far as they could judge—for he stood with the waning light at his back—he was not ill-featured; but, by his manner of mopping his brow, he was most ungracefully hot, and Molly declared ever afterwards that his thick worsted stockings, seen against the ball of ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... were passing slowly. Bertram's wound did not heal, and his strength grew less. The unseen powers that throng the air and watch our ways arranged about him the phantasmagoria of dissolution. It was the waning of the moon. A tender mist, which had long veiled a mountain crest, now unfolded its depths and was wafted away. A star shot across the welkin and was no more seen. Summer blossoms faded with the dying season. The music of the pine-boughs had a more melancholy cadence, and ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... The daylight is waning, the evening is here, The sun will soon set, the stars will appear. Singing, dancing, All hearts entrancing, We wait for the dawn of ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... number, probably a considerable majority, do not share these views. The views of the latter are almost identical with those of the American and English unions; but at present the new anarchists are in the saddle, although their power appears to be waning. ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... age, vigor, and nutrition of the patient attacked. No other disease has such a brutal and inveterate habit of killing the weaklings. The half-stifled baby in the tenement, the underfed, overworked laboring man, the old man with rigid arteries and stiffening muscles or waning life vigor, the chronic sufferer from malnutrition, alcoholism, Bright's disease, heart disease—these ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... different belief—we, who regard the democratic movement, not only as a degenerating form of political organization, but as equivalent to a degenerating, a waning type of man, as involving his mediocrising and depreciation: where have WE to fix our hopes? In NEW PHILOSOPHERS—there is no other alternative: in minds strong and original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvalue and invert "eternal valuations"; ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of telling a story of Handel, which I, at least, have never seen in print. When Handel was blind he composed his "Samson," in which there is that most touching of all songs, specially to any one whose powers of sight are waning—"Total Eclipse." Mr. Beard was the great tenor singer of the day, who was to sing this song. Handel sent for him, "Mr. Beard," he said, "I cannot sing it as it should be sung, but I can tell you how it ought to be sung." And then he sang it, with what strange pathos ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... her, and carried her tenderly into his little bower, where he laid her down among the flowers to breathe away the few short moments of her waning life. Seeming to be conscious at once of what was before her, she had made Tony understand by signs and one or two faintly gasped words that she wanted me; and Jim, who had as usual stopped in on his way from school, ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... and lassies as hailed him in the waning light he replied gruffly, explaining that he had 'a sair hoast,' that is, a bad cough, from which he had observed that young Bower was suffering. He was soon outside of the village, and walking at top speed towards the station. Several times he paused, in shadowy corners of the ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... now I am content to be a humble member of the company who have agreed in their hundreds to aid in my life's work. I am but an instrument to be laid aside when my weary day is over and my Master's behests fulfilled. I see light spreading, darkness waning, kindness growing warmer, purity and sobriety become the rule in quarters where they were unknown; and I am thankful—not proud, only thankful—to have helped in a work which, I believe, is of God. We are now near the attainment of a long dream of mine, ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... was after midnight. The waning moon was rising. They could tell the light through the trees. Cadman had smoked again, but Skag ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... rise, Spread their fair blossoms, and perfume the skies; Till canker taints the vegetable blood, Mines round the bark, and feeds upon the wood. 170 So, years successive, from perennial roots The wire or bulb with lessen'd vigour shoots; Till curled leaves, or barren flowers, betray A waning lineage, verging to decay; Or till, amended by connubial powers, Rise ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... overtake those who have taken birth among the intermediate orders, ascertaining the diverse declarations of the Vedas, the courses of seasons, the fading of years, of months, of fortnights, and of days, beholding directly the waxing and the waning of the Moon, seeing the rising and the ebbing of the seas, and the diminution of wealth and its increase once more, and the separation of united objects, the lapse of Yugas, the destruction of mountains, the drying up of rivers, the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... enemy was broken and worn with the guard that the Sword of Light had put against it. And now he made a strong attack. As the light was leaving the sky and as the darkness was coming down he saw that the strength was waning in the King of the Land of Mist. The sword in his hand was more worn and more broken. At last the blade was only a span from the hilt. As he drew back to the gate of the fourth courtyard the King of Ireland's ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... or without miracles, they have never answered the simple arguments advanced by Jean Meslier; although they claim to hold the keys of Paradise, and bind on earth the souls that are to be bound in heaven, yet year by year their waning power refutes their senseless boast; although they boldly assert the dogma of popish infallibility, yet the loss of the temporal power once wielded by Rome, and the death of each succeeding pontiff, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... but she told Renard that her sister trembled as she spoke, and well, Renard said, he understood her agitation; she was the hope of the {p.059} heretics, and the heretics were raising their heads; the Papists, they said, had had their day, but it was waning; if Elizabeth ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... you should have carried her off then and there; she would have been truly grateful for the rest of her life, but she would have died sooner than open her lips. He was hurt—reckless—almost savage. He thought her sullen. "Once more, Lucy," he said, and his eye glared fiercely in the waning light—"once more, will you give me one word, or never set eyes on me again?" Her lip never moved. "I give you till we pass that tree"—he looked dangerous now—"and then"—he swore a great oath—"I leave you for ever!" Lucy thought the ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... comfort, too, in what you tell me of that religious perversity of Mademoiselle Chalet which so chafes you. I have never ceased to believe that most of the Romish traditions are of the Devil; but with waning years I have learned that the Divine mysteries are beyond our comprehension, and that we cannot map out His purposes by any human chart. The pure faith of your child, joined to her buoyant elasticity,—I freely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... arrangements of the various clans under their respective banners, for the purpose of getting into the order of march, was in itself a gay and lively spectacle. They had no tents to striket having generally, and by choice, slept upon the open field, although the autumn was now waning and the nights began to be frosty. For a little space, while they were getting into order, there was exhibited a changing, fluctuating, and confused appearance of waving tartans and floating plumes, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... need'st not blush, young Prince, to have received A guest like me; neither my arrow swerved, 510 Nor labour'd I long time to draw the bow; My strength is unimpair'd, not such as these In scorn affirm it. But the waning day Calls us to supper, after which succeeds[102] Jocund variety, the song, the harp, With all that heightens and adorns the feast. He said, and with his brows gave him the sign. At once the son of the illustrious Chief Slung his keen ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... on that mystery the rest of the night—what was left of it, for it was waning fast. It had to remain a present mystery, for all we could get from the conductor in answer to our hails was something that sounded, through the clatter of the wheels, like ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... around the station when the boys got there, as the summer season was fast waning, so that Bert and Freddie had hard work to get a place near the platform ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... their horses above, bringing only their arms, ammunition, and some food. Waiting for midnight to come so that their pursuers might not discover their intention, they seized their poles and, under the waning moon, cast off, and were soon on the tempestuous tide, rushing through the yawning chasm. "Through the long night they clung to the raft as it dashed against half-concealed rocks, or whirled about like a plaything in some eddy." When daylight ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the factories are allowed to slacken work. The sun, a ball of glowing fire, is slowly sinking to westward over the slopes of Aegaleos; the rock of the Acropolis is glowing as if in flame; intense purple tints are creeping over all the landscape. The day is waning, and all Athenians who can possibly find leisure are heading towards the suburbs for a walk, a talk, and refreshment of soul and body ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... the security of her sylvan seclusion and the promptings of her still healthy, girlish blood, and only came back to cake and tea and her new hat, which she had prudently hung up in the summer-house, as the afternoon was waning. When they returned to the house, they found that Mr. Windibrook had gone out with his visitor, and Cissy was spared the advertisement of a boisterous escort home, which he generally insisted upon. She gayly took leave of the infant ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... terms with, philosophy, culture, and every serious thing on earth. It will be remembered that, at the meetings held by scholars, as soon as each individual has had his say in his own particular department of knowledge, signs of fatigue, of a desire for distraction at any price, of waning memory, and of incoherent experiences of life, begin to be noticeable. While listening to Strauss discussing any worldly question, be it marriage, the war, or capital punishment, we are startled by his complete lack of anything like first-hand experience, or of ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... subdues man's breath Lips close and heart subsides; and closing, shone Sunlike with many a Nereid's hair, and moved Round many a trembling mouth of doubtful gods, Risen out of sunless and sonorous gulfs Through waning water and into shallow light, That watched us; and when flying the dove was snared As with men's hands, but we shot after and sped Clear through the irremeable Symplegades; And chiefliest when hoar beach and herbless cliff Stood out ahead from Colchis, and we heard Clefts hoarse with wind, ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... instance, a root nak, expressive of perishing or destruction. We have it in nak, night; Latin nox, Greek nux, meaning originally the waning, the disappearing, the death of day. We have the same root in composition, as, for instance, jva-nak, life-destroying; and by means of suffixes Greek has formed from it nek-ros, adead body, nek-us, dead, and nek-u-es ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... own caution, and the mercy of Providence that had kept him away from the Gap, he had had his escape from death that day. He would tempt that Providence no more, even by climbing back to his horse in the waning light, and it was not until dusk had fallen that he was leading the beast down the spur and into a ravine that sank to the road. There he waited an hour, and when another horseman passed he still waited a while. Cautiously ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... So Euphemia went back to coal again with a sigh. Possibly if Euphemia had been surrounded by the wealth she deserves this trouble would not have arisen. A silent servant, bearing the due dose of fresh fuel, would have come gliding from a mysterious Beneath, restored the waning animation of the grate, and vanished noiselessly again. But this was beyond the range of Euphemia's possibilities. And so we are face to face with this problem of the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... cheer my waning age, Sweet vision, waited for so long! Dove that wouldst seek the poet's cage, Lured by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... grey head had delayed it too long. The practice of the duel begot the peculiar animal logic of the nobler savage, which tends to magnify an offence in the ratio of our vanity, and hunger for a blood that is not demanded by the appetite. Moreover, a waning practice, in disfavour with the new generation, will be commended to the conservative barbarian, as partaking of the wisdom of his fathers. Further, too, we may have grown slothful, fallen to moodiness, done excess of service to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not occur to any person present that this wedding was an important, far-reaching event to any save the principals; but to Essie Tisdale and to Dr. Harpe it was a turning point in their careers. It meant waning triumphs to the merry little belle of Crowheart, while it spread a fallow field before Dr. Harpe the planting of which in deeds of good or evil was as surely in her hands as is the seed the farmer sows for his ultimate harvest. Which it was to be, can be surmised ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... negligently upon the horse's neck, his left hand shielding his eyes as he looked; and to the posture, somehow, the whole landscape gradually changed its aspect, seemed to take on an air subtly theatrical, the waning sunlight like calcium, the rocks like cardboard, the trees painted. "Where, oh, where have I seen that before?" murmured Charles-Norton, intrigued in the midst of ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... prophetic fire. And what could painter's skill compared to these? What palette ever held the flaming tints That on these leafy hieroglyphs foretell How set the ebbing currents of the year? What poet's page was ever like to this, Or told the lesson of life's waning days More forcibly, with more of natural truth, Than yon red maples, or these poplars, white As the pale shroud that wraps some human corse? And then, again, the spirit of a King, Clothed with that majesty most monarchs lack, Might fit old Autumn for his royal rule: For here is kingly ermine, ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... resounded with the Marseillaise and echoed with the fierce cry, "A Berlin! A Berlin!" That confidence had all passed, I heard the Marseillaise sung only once, and that in disheartened perfunctory fashion, perhaps by order of the authorities in a futile attempt to stimulate courage that was waning. Rage and mortification over the fast-accumulating German successes possessed the hearts of men. In the squares companies of civilians were industriously drilling, often in the public places men wearing hospital badges extended ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... The century was waning fast, As through a wintry waste there passed A man, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, A banner with the strange device, Excel ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... of the world has ever known, was not obtained through fanning its passions. That popularity, though brilliant, is always ephemeral. The passions of a mob will invariably turn against those who have helped to rouse them. Marat did not live to see the waning of his star; Danton was dragged to the guillotine by those whom he had taught to look upon that instrument of death as the only possible and unanswerable political argument; Robespierre succumbed to the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the hunting dog, I went on with my business in my dreams; till my legs jerked and woke me, to see a waning moon peering in from the west, through the hole that served the hut for a chimney, and I rose to go back to Billy Jones. For I dreamed there was a gang of men in a cellar under the very hut I slept in, with a business-like row of wolf-bait bottles at their feet, where they sat squabbling ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... omnipotent hand, were sprinkled with beams from thy baptismal font. At thy golden urn pale Luna comes to fill her silver horn, and rounding thereat Saturn bathes his sky girt rings, Jupiter lights his waning moons, and Venus dips her queenly robes anew. Thy fountains are shoreless as the ocean of heavenly love; thy centre is everywhere, and thy boundary no power has marked. Thy beams gild the illimitable fields of space, and gladden the farthest verge of the universe. The glories ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... in one common worship, inasmuch as it lifts the hearts of both to the God who has created the sun. The highest festival of the year among the Northern Heathens and Christians occurs also at the season in which the sun, as it were, is born anew to the earth, and his strength is converted from waning to waxing. With the greatest cordiality is this festival celebrated in the Scandinavian countries. Not alone in the houses of the wealthy blaze up fires of joy, and are heard the joyful cries of children; from the humblest cottages also resounds ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... breast. His must have been a powerful, athletic frame in his manhood, for when I saw him he was over seven feet high, and though feeble and tottering, his frame was unbent, and his eye was blue and glittering, with a soul his waning life could not subdue. His features, as well as complexion, were totally unlike the rest of the tribe. His forehead was broad and high, his chin wide and prominent, his lips full, with a peculiar cast about ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... required to render an account of his long administration. The blow fell suddenly, a few weeks after his appointment as justiciar of Ireland. It was precipitated by one of those fits of passion to which the king was prone; but the influence of Hubert had been for some time waning before that of Peter des Roches and his nephew Peter des Rievaux. Some colour was given to their attacks by Hubert's injudicious plea that he held a charter from King John which exempted him from any liability to produce accounts. But the other charges, far less plausible than ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... was distracted. He had hurt the one creature for whose future greatness he had sacrificed his waning strength. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lov'd thee for thy gifts divine, In the December of thy beauties waning, Will still admire with joy those lovely eine, That now behold me with their beauties baning. Though Januarie will never come againe, Yet Aprill yeres will come in ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... Oh, that it were another document! he whispered to himself; and, as it was, he felt it was the sweetest assurance that his highest wish would be fulfilled. Thus it remained in his hands, thus he continued to press it to his heart, although disfigured by a third name subscribed to it. The waning moon rose up over the wood. The warmth of the night drew Edward out into the free air. He wandered this way and that way; he was at once the most restless and the happiest of mortals. He strayed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... pillars of the portico—on swiftly by it, lest thy heart faileth and thou diest. Having passed this temple, take the winding road at its rear. This will bring thee to where three roads meet, and there thou wilt see, by the light of the waning moon and the flickering stars, an altar, and, rising above it, the three-figured statue of the Triple Goddess. She, as Hecate, holding in her hands the keys of hell and of death, facing the pit in which the altar is reared for to-night's incantations ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... million of thanks, and for the repairs of your coach, which I trust will contribute to your safety: but I will swallow my apprehensions, for I doubt I have tormented you with them. Yet do not wonder, that after a year's absence, my affection, instead of waning, is increased. Can I help feeling the infinite obligation I have to you both, for quitting Italy that you love, to humour Methusalem?—a Methusalem that is neither king nor priest, to reward and bless you; and whom you condescend to please, because ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... instead of dictator on the 25th of the intercalary month(12) (702)—a subterfuge, which admitted an appellation labouring under a double incongruity(13) for the mere purpose of avoiding one which expressed the simple fact, and which vividly reminds us of the sagacious resolution of the waning patriciate to concede to the plebeians not the consulship, but only ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the "Wanderer" chiefly because it is the only one of our Butterflies that migrates like the birds. In the late summer it gathers in great swarms when the bright days are waning, and flies away to warmer lands. I have often seen it going, yet I do not remember that I ever saw it come back in the springtime; but it comes, though not in great flocks like ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... summons forth a rounded orb, clad in full effulgence, and commits to it the regency when the sun retires. Lastly, a slender, waning crescent appears nightly, like an aged man, ready to descend into ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... wandered and the yellow page faded to a glimmer amid pale spots of sunshine waning when some slow cloud drifted across the sun. Again my eyes returned to the printed page, and again thought parted from its moorings, a derelict upon the tide of memory. Far in the forest I heard the white-throat's call with the endless, sad refrain, "Weep-wee-p! Dorothy, Dorothy, Dorothy!" Though ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... "And all her grey brood banished from the soul; Life, like the earth, is now a rounded whole, The orb of man's dominion. Live to-day." And every sense in me leapt to obey, Seeing the routed phantoms backward roll; But from their waning throng a whisper stole, And touched ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... rode at dusk, with his comrade Dunn To the hut at the Stockman's Ford, In the waning light of the sinking sun They peered with a fierce accord. They were outlaws both — and on each man's head ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... "great expectations," and flattered by the attentions which strangely enough began to be extended toward him by some of the "best men"—who also were stockholders in the new sugar-refining process—that Leonhard took a room at the Granby House, and began to manifest a waning interest in his work as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... approaching Vermilion, the banks of the river constantly decreasing in height as we descended, until they became quite low. Beneath a waning moon in the south, and an exquisite array of gold and scarlet clouds in the east, which dyed the whole river a delicate red, we floated down to the hamlet of Vermilion. The place proved to be a rather extensive settlement, with yellow wheat-fields and much cattle, for it is a fine hay country. The ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... tomb And mocks the mutiny of Memory's gloom. Oh! who can feel the crimson ecstasy That soothes with bickering jar the Glorious Tree? O'er the high rock the foam of gladness throws, While star-beams lull Vesuvius to repose: Girds the white spray, and in the blue lagoon, Weeps like a walrus o'er the waning moon? Who can declare?—not thou, pervading boy Whom pibrochs pierce not, crystals cannot cloy;— Not thou soft Architect of silvery gleams, Whose soul would simmer in Hesperian streams, Th' exhaustless fire—the bosom's azure bliss, That hurtles, life-like, o'er a scene like this;— Defies the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... now relinquish my pen, as the time allotted for correspondence is fast waning to its close, and tea-time is approaching. Pray give my kindest remembrance to all my numerous friends and relatives, and accept my fondest love and affection for yourselves, and the various other ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... either from having a movement of rotation on their own axis, or because they are occasionally eclipsed by a non-luminous satellite revolving around them. It is clear, that while the light is waxing or waning, it comes from a part only of the star's disk; consequently, the neutralisation of rays, which takes place when they depart from the whole surface at once, cannot then occur; and from the observations on the portion of light thus transmitted, and which is found to remain white under all ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... Soliciting with tears that He, who is, Vouchsafe him to us. Though Sapia nam'd In sapience I excell'd not, gladder far Of others' hurt, than of the good befell me. That thou mayst own I now deceive thee not, Hear, if my folly were not as I speak it. When now my years slop'd waning down the arch, It so bechanc'd, my fellow citizens Near Colle met their enemies in the field, And I pray'd God to grant what He had will'd. There were they vanquish'd, and betook themselves Unto the bitter passages of flight. I mark'd the hunt, and waxing ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... maker, how those Harmony rooters did scream. Some of the more irresponsible took to dancing like idiots, clasped in each other's arms. In fact, every known device for "rattling" a pitcher was resorted to, of course legitimately, in order to further their waning cause. ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... it had been. Was it cooling? I asked myself. And what was cooling it? It hardly seemed possible, when I looked back to the wild passion with which he had proposed to me on the garden bench, that John's love was waning. But I kept noticing different little things. One day in the spring-time I saw John getting out a lot of fishing tackle from a box and fitting it together. I asked him what he was going to do, and he said that he was going to fish. I went to my room and had a good cry. It seemed dreadful that ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... these superstitions are suggestive of that which Tylor calls 'one of the most instructive astrological doctrines'—namely, that of the 'sympathy of growing and declining nature with the waxing and waning moon.' Tylor says that a classical precept was to set eggs under the hen at new moon, and that a Lithuanian precept was to wean boys on a waxing and girls on a waning moon—in order to make the boys strong and the girls delicate. ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... for Kane had slept the early part of the night, waiting for moonrise before starting on his expedition. The air was tingling with windless cold, and ghostly white with the light of a crooked, waning moon. Suddenly, without a sound, the dog crept close against Kane's legs. Kane felt him tremble. Looking up sharply, his eyes fell on a tall, gray form, sitting erect on the tip of a naked point, not a hundred yards away, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... year are waning, and the setting sun casts a ruddy but not warming light upon two figures under the arch of the side door; while one of these figures locks the door, the other, who seems to have a music book under his arm, comes out, with a strange, screwy motion, as though through an opening ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... absolute mistress of Crome and her husband. An extraordinary reformation made itself apparent in Sir Ferdinando's character. He grew regular and economical in his habits; he even became temperate, rarely drinking more than a bottle and a half of port at a sitting. The waning fortune of the Lapiths began once more to wax, and that in despite of the hard times (for Sir Ferdinando married in 1809 in the height of the Napoleonic Wars). A prosperous and dignified old age, cheered by the spectacle of his children's growth ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... becoming exhausted. Enough, however, remained to sustain a very vigorous fire during the period of the passage, and as the cover of darkness was desired the delay was not without its advantages, for the waning moon grew daily less and rose an hour later each succeeding night. On the 23d notice was given to the ships that the attempt to pass would be made that night, and that, as half-past three was the hour of moon-rise, the signal, two red ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... though red thy stream comes down Though bleak th' encircling hills appear— Though field be bare, and forest brown, And winter rule the waning year— Unmoved I see each charm decay, Unmourn'd the sweets of autumn die; And fading flower and leafless spray Court all ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... flame he waded to the inner rim of the colossal ring. Below him hung the needle, a mere straight line of white fire, a hundred feet in length. Eye-dazzling radiance scintillated along it, waxing and waning with a curious throbbing rhythm. The needle vibrated a little, but it pointed directly at the red point of Mars, now almost ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the adventurous boy of the coast, in whose heart the wild religion of nature swells till the strait swathings of Puritanism are burst; Dr. Hopkins, the conscientious minister come upon a time when the social prestige of the clergy is waning, and whose independence will test the voluntary system of ministerial support; Simeon Brown, the man of theological dialectics, in whom the utmost perfection of creed is shown to be not inconsistent with the most contradictory ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... ground was soft. Afterwards when they reached the open country, where the grass had been burnt off and had only just begun to spring again, this became more difficult, and at length, in that light, impossible. Here they wasted a long time, searching for the hoof-marks by the rays of the waning moon, only to lose them again so ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... crowd was gradually diminishing. The daylight was waning, and a continued sound of closing gates announced the retreat of the gay ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... about and try Salerno again. What could you do in an open felucca with the green water running over? You did your best. Five hours out of that pitch black night you beat up, first trying one harbour and then the other. Amalfi gave in first, just as the waning moon rose, and you got under the ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... beasts I'd find of every kind, but never the one I sought. Never a track in the white ice-pack that humped and heaved and flawed, Till I came to think: "Why, strike me pink! if the creature ain't a fraud." And then one night in the waning light, as I hurried home to sup, I hears a roar by the cabin door, and a great white hulk heaves up. So my rifle flashed, and a bullet crashed; dead, dead as a stone fell he, And I gave a cheer, for there in his ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... steely in the waning daylight. Snow had fallen. Only a slight fall for the region, but it had covered everything to the depth of nearly a foot. The whole aspect of the world had changed. The dark, forbidding gorge of the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... oar-blade. I was almost wild with excitement. I called upon the boys, with every entreaty I could think of, to pull harder; urging on Alfred, who was evidently the weakest oar, and whose strength seemed waning. ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the subject in hand, I wish to reply to some remarks of the previous speaker, lest I forget them—they are of so little weight. He finished by saying that my prestige was waning. If he were right, I should feel like saying "Thank God," for prestige is a very burdensome affair. One suffers under its weight, and quickly gets tired of it. I do not care a farthing for it. When I was very much younger, about as old as the previous ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... invalid, too, received much of his care and attention, while many delicacies, which he had never taken pains to procure for himself, found their way to his table to help sustain his waning strength. ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... lips that made it: the encouragement to 'patient continuance in well doing,' 'till the day break, and the shadows flee away.' And there, on the other hand, was the substituted light of earth's wisdom and inventions, dominant yet, but waning, and soon to be ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Sleep! the waning daylight dies; Sleep! the stars dream in the skies; Daisies long have closed their eyes; Lullaby! Calm, how calm ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... wide branches of an aged apple-tree, feathered thickly with pearly petals, which the wind tossed hither and thither and drifted over the bermuda, as restless tides strew pink-chambered shells on sloping strands; and down through the flowery limbs streamed the waning March sun, throwing grotesque shadows on the sward and golden ripples over the face and figure of the young lounger. A few yards distant a row of whitewashed bee-hives extended along the western side of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... waning soup, he wrote and sent off six notes before he touched his dinner. Three were City; three West-End. The City letters were to Cornhill, Ludgate-hill, and Farringdon Street. The West-End letters were to Great ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... Life's waning hours, like the Sybil's page, As they lessen, in value rise; Oh, then rouse thee, and live nor deem that man's age Stands in the length of his Pilgrimage, But in days that ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... more qualm than she would have felt if Miss Franklin had never condescended to trade, but had remained within the bounds of poor gentility by laboriously keeping up her halting classical music and waning foreign languages, and by continuing a finishing governess to the day of her death—or rather till she was superannuated, and had to retire to a ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... the science of Love, and has been led to see beautiful things in their due order and rank, when he comes toward the end of his discipline, will suddenly catch sight of a wondrous thing, beautiful with the absolute Beauty ... he will see a Beauty eternal, not growing or decaying, not waxing or waning, nor will it be fair here and foul there ... as if fair to some and foul to others ... but Beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting; which lending of its virtue to all beautiful things that we see born to decay, itself suffers neither increase nor diminution, nor any ...
— Progress and History • Various
... Fainting in the sultry ray, Cry against thee to the Master As thou dream'st the hours away Waken! patient angels bearing Home Earth's harvest, grieving see One by one the bright hours waning, And no ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... 4th. Public interest in the abortive attempt to reinstate Dom Corria De Sylva as President was waning rapidly when it was fanned into fresh activity by news that reached this port to-day. It appears that on the 31st ulto. a daring effort was made to free De Sylva, who, with certain other ministers expelled by the successful revolution of two years ago, is a prisoner on the island of ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... it be not, O my God with thee?" To one of the group of tearful and venerating friends standing around her, she said, "Do not, my good friend, ask for me one day more, or one pang less." Without any decay of her faculties or waning of her moral force, bearing her sufferings with invincible patience and sweetness, maintaining a dignity of thought and speech comparable with that of the last conversation of Socrates, but with the triumph of a perfect Christian faith, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... is not this rushing at once in medias res? It is; there's no paltry subterfuge about it—no unnecessary wearing out of "the waning moon they met by"—"the stars that gazed upon their joy"—"the whispering gales that breathed in zephyr's softest sighs"—their "lover's perjuries to the distracted trees they wouldn't allow to go to sleep." In short, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... peasants fell off from their ranks to sleep, and die in the rain-soaked moor, or to seek some house by the wayside wherein to hide till daybreak. One by one at first, then in gradually increasing numbers, at every shelter that was seen, whole troops left the waning squadrons, and rushed to hide themselves from the ferocity of the tempest. To right and left nought could be descried but the broad expanse of the moor, and the figures of their fellow-rebels, seen dimly through the murky night, plodding onwards through the sinking moss. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of achieving American independence. He never quite deserted the patriot cause; and now, at this critical moment, instead of pressing on to Philadelphia, he retired his main army, leaving only some Hessian outposts at Trenton and Bordentown. This arrangement enabled Washington to revive the waning enthusiasm of the country by executing one of the most daring and brilliant strokes of the war. Amidst the snow and sleet of a bitter December night, he ferried his forlorn little force through the floating ice of the Delaware, ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... the fleecy clouds floating in the azure sky, as he bids farewell for a time to scenes of life and happiness, rejoicing in the light and warmth of his all-cheering beams. With the advent of night they beheld the Moon, now increasing, now waning, pursue her irregular path, also to disappear in the west; whilst, like the bands of an army marshalled in loose array, the constellations of glittering stars, with stately motion, traversed their nocturnal arcs, circling ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... December was waning when she came to Seattle. In the following weeks her only contact with the past, beyond the mill of her own thoughts, was an item in the Seattle Times touching upon certain litigation in which Fyfe was involved. Briefly, Monohan, under the firm name of the Abbey-Monohan ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... idle holiday; they will be a place of pilgrimage and a shrine of prayer. I well remember—I can never forget—a journey I made in the company of a French staff officer over the country that lies between Paris and the river Aisne. We came out on a wide rolling plain, and in the waning light of a winter's day we suddenly saw among the stubble and between the oat-ricks, far as the eye could reach, thousands of little tricolour flags fluttering in the breeze. By each flag was a wooden cross. By each cross was a soldier's kepi, and sometimes ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... the warm moist climate of most of the Carboniferous period was replaced by severe conditions, culminating in an Ice Age which spread from the Southern Hemisphere throughout the world. With this was associated a waning of the Carboniferous flora, and the appearance of a new one, consisting of ferns, conifers, ginkgos, and cycads, which persisted until near the end of the Mesozoic era. The Permian Ice Age lasted for ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... the bag in my left hand, softly closed the door and stepped out into the night. In the shed beside the garden-gate the gardener had left his wheelbarrow. I fetched it out, set Lydia on the top of it, and wheeled her off towards Woeful Ness. There was just the rim of a waning moon to light me, but I knew every inch ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... my eyes reverted to that exquisite face. She sat silent, her eyes fixed on the waning flecks of color in the ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... succeeded immediately, and gained for her nephew the cardinal's hat. In 1717 was born to her the afterward famous d'Alembert, whom she left upon the steps of the church Saint-Jean-le-Rond; afterward, when he had become eminent and her power was waning, she unsuccessfully used every means at her command to gain his favor and recognition; the father of that child was the ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... their pikes, as they rested them from time to time upon the pavement, or paused to interchange a word, alone broke the silence of the still sleeping town—sleeping, to awake shortly like a tiger thirsty for blood. The light of a waning moon showed indistinctly the dark mass in the centre of the market-place—the stage upon which the frightful tragedy was about to be enacted—when one of the sentinels all at once turning his head in that direction, descried a dark form creeping around ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... a rich golden haze upon the landscape, and as my own spirits rose amid the voluptuous atmosphere, she pointed to the waning planet, discernible like a faint gash in the welkin, and wondered how long it would be before the leaves would fall. Strange girl! did she mean to rebuke my joyous mood, as if we had no right to be happy while Nature, withering in her pomp, and the sickly moon, wasting in ...
— The Man In The Reservoir • Charles Fenno Hoffman
... deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, * * * * * It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... the moon; "I am waning, and the lamps have never shone for me, but I have shone for the lamps."* So the moon went behind the clouds again, for it would not be plagued. A drop of rain then fell straight down on the lamp's cowl, it was like a drop of water from ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... at the window, was unceremoniously pushed through by his comrades. He fell across the gunwale of the boat and was shoved overboard by Duff, while Ralph, seizing an oar, placed an end against the schooner's stern-post and threw all his waning strength upon it, sending the yawl out from under ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... now waning fast On Sona's pleasant shore they passed. Then, when the dawn began to break, To Rama thus the hermit spake: "The light of dawn is breaking clear, The hour of morning rites is near. Rise, Rama, rise, dear son, I pray, And make thee ready for ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... of the summer-day is past, when all Nature slumbers, and when the ancients feared to sing, lest the great god Pan should be awakened. Soft changes, the gradual shifting of every shadow on every leaf, begin to show the waning hours. Ineffectual thunder-storms have gathered and gone by, hopelessly defeated. The floating-bridge is trembling and resounding beneath the pressure of one heavy wagon, and the quiet fishermen change their places to avoid the tiny ripple that glides stealthily to their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... the full, Like the sun ascending the heavens, Like the everlasting southern hills, Never waning, never falling, Like ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... these auguries were taken usually upon an eminence: after the month of March they were prohibited in consequence of the moulting season having commenced; nor were they permitted at the waning of the moon, nor at any time in the afternoon, or when the air was the least ruffled by winds or clouds. The feeding of the sacred chickens, and the manner of their taking the corn that was offered to them, was the most common method of taking the augury. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... of the charms of Africa is the long settled periods of pure unclouded sky, in which the sun rises and sets with no flaming splashes of vivid colours, but by gentle, imperceptible gradations of pure light, waning or waxing. And as for rain, when it is once over it is thoroughly over (at this season, at any rate). This night the darkness was soon lit up by a flaming farm. All desperately hungry, when it was announced that an extra ration of raw meat was to be served out. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... head on my hands, thinking—the world about me in ruins, never to be built up. Then I went up to my room, paused at the wardrobe, changed my black coat to that in which I had arrived, and went softly down-stairs again. The waning moon had just risen late, and threw a weird light over the ranges of buildings, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... to again, and walking slowly back, resumed her seat on the couch. Margaret came to her from the other side of the bed, where she had been working by the window, for the last quarter of an hour, for the sake of the waning light. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... image of quiet Prue, and the trowsers, as the back-ground in the pictures of the gay figures I passed, making each, by contrast, fairer. I should have been wondering what to say and do at the dinner. I should surely have been very warm, and yet not have enjoyed the rich, waning sunlight. Need I tell you that I should not have stopped for apples, but instead of economically tumbling into the street with apples and apple-women, whereby I merely rent my trowsers across the knee, in a manner that Prue can readily, and at little cost, repair. I should, beyond ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... watches, and put them back again without remark to resume the interrupted contemplation of Fifth Avenue in the waning light of a drab, drizzly day. A man in a shiny "slicker" was pushing a sweep and shovel in the centre of the thoroughfare. They wondered how long it would be ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... the moon is waning," she answered in a low voice. "The moon is waning. Yet he promised to be here when the nights are light and the water covers the sandbanks as far as ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... the strictly intellectual type will remain unaffected; possibly there will be a new development of the musico-dramatic. It has been suggested that musical comedy is waning, and the period has been reached when the average piece of this class spells failure. There is, of course, nothing in the work of Isadora Duncan which limits it to one principal, and naught to prevent the combination of singing and dancing. Off-hand it seems rash to suggest that spoken dialogue ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... that a month had already passed since Loveday had been the excitement of society, and that this conversation between the eccentric Mr. Constantine and the charming Miss Le Pettit was almost the last flickering of interest in her fate. The life of one moon had been enough to see the waxing and waning of what Mr. Constantine had surprisingly ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... seems to me that the worst errors of Calvinism and Evangelicalism in this regard have lain in a tendency to theological formalism and a failure to keep in touch with real life. In consequence, those who most deplore our waning sense of sin try us by a perverted or antiquated standard, and fasten often on changes of sentiment and habit which are by no means necessarily or largely sinful. They are least conscious of the want of a sense of sin, in modern society, where that ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... not erected without consideration. A palaver which lasted from the full of one moon to the waning of the next, sacrifices of goats and sprinkling of blood, divinations, incantations, readings of devil marks on sandy foreshores; all right and proper ceremonies were gone through before there came a night of bright moonlight when the whole Ochori nation went forth and planted ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace |
