"Upas" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Harvey had not heard her spoken of before, as connected with the report of his intemperance, he knew very well that Mr. Query's "friendly investigations" had been the sole cause of his loss of practice. However, to go to the roots of this Upas tree of scandal, he resolved to pay an immediate ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... the question of the drunkard, for the drink difficulty lies at the root of everything. Nine-tenths of our poverty, squalor, vice, and crime spring from this poisonous tap-root. Many of our social evils, which overshadow the land like so many upas trees, would dwindle away and die if they were not constantly watered with strong drink. There is universal agreement on that point; in fact, the agreement as to the evils of intemperance is almost as universal as the conviction that politicians ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... the Occident and the thrones of the Orient are beginning to totter before the might of democracy; because science is marching on to triumph after triumph, and no Spanish Inquisition or English Court of High Commission longer casts its upas-shadow athwart the hearts of men, the great world is "growing nobler and better," I hereby tender my services to pilot them through that Perdition which does not hover indeterminate in the inane limboes of dogmatic theology, but hath a well-defined latitude ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Garden," a poem by Dr. Darwin; chiefly remembered for Mr. Gladstone's favourite "Upas-tree," a plant which has not, and never had, any existence except in the fancy of some traveller, who hoaxed the too-scientific poet with the story, which, years afterwards, hoaxed the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... lurking under the rich, glossy leaves of the orange groves; who look with disgust and loathing at the exaggerated proportions and venomous nature of all creeping things; who find the succulence of the fruit unpleasant to the taste, and the flowers, though fair to the eye, deadly as the upas tree to all other sense;—for whom it is no compensation to feel, with the first breath of morning air, the dull, leaden weight of life lifted, or no happiness to watch the sea heaving and palpitating with delight under the rays ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... according as matadors of the Exchange pull the wires behind the scenes. Not the State has the Exchange, but the Exchange has the State in its power. Will he, nill he, a Minister is often forced to water the upas tree, which he might prefer to tear up by the roots, but that he now must ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... steamboat, the box cars of the railroad, the pit of the theatre and the gallery of the church, were the locations accorded him. The church lent its influence to the rancor and bitterness of a prejudice as deadly as the sap of the Upas. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... the promising and ardent men sinking one after another in a deadly torpor, wrapped up in self-contemplation, dead to their Redeemer, and useless to His Church, under the baneful breath of this accursed upas tree. I say accursed, because I believe that St. Paul would use the same language to Oxford as he did to the Galatian Church, "I would they were even cut off which trouble you"; accursed, because I believe that the curse of God will fall on it He has denounced it on the Papal hereby, and he is ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... quiet place, a favoured clime, where the traveller or settler could find good shooting, cheap labour, and cheap living. No enemy threatened its rest, and the natives were respectful and peaceful in their behaviour. But it was in those days that the native difficulty, that Upas tree that now overshadows and poisons the whole land, took root; for slowly, from all parts, all through that quiet time, by ones, by tens, by hundreds, refugees were flowing in, and asking and receiving land to settle ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... Nuremberg, Linda stood looking at the archway for more than half an hour, considering the circumstances of her life, and planning, if it might be possible to plan, some future scheme of existence. To live under the upas-tree of Peter Steinmarc's courtship would be impossible to her. But how should she avoid it? As she thought of this, her eyes were continually fixed on the low archway. Why did not he come out from it and give her some counsel as to the future? There she stood ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... one into the garden—in search of roses or dahlias or upas-trees or something of the sort, of course—and thereby causing one to encounter the most unlikely people, and really, quite the last person one would have thought of meeting, as all frequenters of house-party junketings will ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... obscure puritanic minister who never read text or notes of a play-wright, whenever he explored into a "thousand notable secrets" with which he has polluted the pages of Shakspeare! The marvellous narrative of the upas-tree of Java, which Darwin adopted in his plan of "enlisting imagination under the banner of science," appears to have been another forgery which amused our "Puck." It was first given in the London Magazine, as an extract from a Dutch traveller, but ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and all that he had done, if man were only something more than man, if devil's luck and devil's power would come to his whistle, if the seed of his nature could defy the iron stricture of the flesh, reaching its height, shooting up into a terrible upas-tree—so for the moment Baldry saw himself. Into his voice came a deep and sonorous note, his black eyes glowed; he began to gesture with his hand, stately as a Spaniard. And then, chancing to glance towards the head ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... where the Copper head sleeps, Where the waters are stagnant, the white vapor creeps, Where the musk of Magnolia hangs thick in the air, And the lilies' phylacteries broaden in prayer; There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death, Though the mist is miasm, the Upas tree's breath, Though no echo awakes to the cooing of doves,— There is peace: yes, the ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... almost sadly spoken words fell upon his hearer's ears like so many snowflakes. Instinctively they shrank back from the beautiful bush as though it had been the fabled Upas. They had begun to fear now for the first time. But there was one among them, a young fellow of twenty-two, named Martin Caine, who was already known as one of the most daring and far-sighted of the rising generation of chemical investigators, ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... spoiled his daughter's life. Such a thought had never entered his head. He was one of those delightful, irresponsible, erratic persons whose heads thoughts of this kind do not enter, and who are about as deadly to those whose lives are bound up with theirs as a Upas tree. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... meaning of the "mystic" idea in its highest form also, without injury to men's work as members of families, as citizens, as practical men of the world; and so to conquer at last that Manichaean hatred of marriage and parentage, which from the first to the sixteenth century shed its Upas shade ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... trouble you, Daisy?" - and each time I answered him, "I do not believe it, papa." Neither did I; but at the same time a dreadful shadow of possibility came over my spirit. I could not get from under it, and my soul fainted, as those were said to do who lay down for shelter under the upas tree. A poison as of death seemed to distil upon me from that shadow. Not let it trouble me? It was a man's question, I suppose, put with a man's powerlessness to read a woman's mind; even though the man ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... from the pines, and healing from the grass, And carry down my current as I go Not common stones but precious gems to show; And tears (the holy water from sad eyes) Back to God's sea, from which all rivers rise Let me convey, not blood from wounded hearts, Nor poison which the upas tree imparts. When over flowery vales I leap with joy, Let me not devastate them, nor destroy, But rather leave them fairer to the sight; Mine be the lot to comfort and delight. And if down awful chasms I needs must leap Let me not murmur ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... themselves particular vows, and the monks are required to deliver sermons and explain the sacred texts in the upas'rayas (separate buildings for monks like the Buddhist viharas). The principle of extreme carefulness not to destroy any living being has been in monastic life carried out to its very last consequences, ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta |
