"Chasm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... naked precipices rose sheer up for a thousand feet or more, converging upon each other so as to leave a very narrow slit of daylight above us, which was further reduced by the feathery fringe of palm trees and aloes which hung over each lip of the chasm. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... respect so was Redwood. The gap opened again, the foot grew to a yard, and the yard to half a dozen, and the half-dozen to— At last! It was but two hundred yards from home when Redwood's stride once more lengthened out, and a new shout told us all that the chasm was once more being filled up, inch by inch and foot by foot. Tempest heard the shout and knew what it meant. He, too, lengthened his stride, and seemed as if he was going to answer rush for rush. But ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... last eclipse is a period of relative silence. But his mind was not inactive. He did not cease thinking upon the deep theoretical distinctions that were separating him by a steadily widening chasm from the most powerful faction in Congress. In fact, his mental powers were, if anything, more keen than ever before. Probably, it was the very clearness of the mental vision that enfeebled him when it came to action. He saw his difficulties with such crushing certainty. During this trying ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... zealously continued his exercises, particularly those in horsemanship. Like that of all Circassian youth it was his ambition not only to sit his horse a perfect centaur, to dash at full speed up steeps and down precipices, to leap the chasm and to swim the torrent; but also on the gallop to discharge his weapons, in an instant unslinging his gun from behind his back, and as quickly returning it to its place; to hang suspended from the side of the horse so as to avoid the aim of an ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... Chet found; the wall of this great throat had not hardened without showing signs of its tortured coughing. But Chet learned to judge distance, and he found that a fifty-foot chasm was a trifle to be crossed in one leap; huge boulders, whose molten sides had frozen as they ran and dripped, could be surmounted by the spring of his leg muscles that could throw him incredibly through the air. And always he went downward toward the place where ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... poverty can shake. Exalted high 20 In garret vile he lives; with remnants hung Of tapestry. But oh! precarious state Of this vain transient world! all-powerful Time, What dost thou not subdue? See what a chasm Gapes wide, tremendous! see where Saul, enraged, High on his throne, encompass'd by his guards, With levell'd spear, and arm extended, sits, Ready to pierce old Jesse's valiant son, Spoil'd of his nose!—around in tottering ranks, On shelves pulverulent, majestic ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... more than that; it is the old difficulty of walking by faith where there is nothing visible to walk upon: we lack faith in the efficiency of the biologic laws, or any mundane forces, to bridge the tremendous chasm that separates man from even the highest of the lower orders. His radical unlikeness to all the forms below him, as if he moved in a world apart, into which they could never enter, as in a sense he does, is where the difficulty lies. Moreover, evolution balks us ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... unknown, was navigated for five hundred miles, opening a route of travel which has since been extensively used. Beyond the point reached by the steamer the course of the river is for several hundreds of miles through the "Great Canon," as it is called, a chasm worn by the stream in the table lands of the "Colorado Plateau." This canon has nearly vertical banks, and is nowhere less than three thousand feet deep; in some places six thousand feet, or more ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... suggest some terrible sort of place. Presently she saw the girls ahead, as they reached a particular point, diverge sharply to the right with little cries and exclamations; and when she advanced, she found herself on the edge of a chasm deeper and darker than any of those which they had passed. It cut the cliff from its highest point to the sea-level; and the wall-like sides receded toward their base, leaving vaulted hollows beneath, into which the eye could not penetrate. Only the ear caught the sound ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... the echoes of Evan's last appeal rang and died in the universal uproar, the fiery vault over his head opened down the middle, and, reeling back in two great golden billows, hung on each side as huge and harmless as two sloping hills lie on each side of a valley. Down the centre of this trough, or chasm, a little path ran, cleared of all but ashes, and down this little path was walking a little old man singing as if he were alone ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... and Nic stood watching for some minutes, breathing the moist air, while the spray began to gather upon his garments, and the deep musical boom reverberated from the rocky sides of the chasm. ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... vote?" challenged Stoddard, trying to spur him to the leap, but Rimrock had sensed the chasm. ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... out all my oil, lad; that is the only harm you will do, and certainly little good. I cannot replenish the oil when it's burned out, and I've been very careful, holding it for only such occasions as when we came here across the chasm." ...
— A Desperate Chance - The Wizard Tramp's Revelation, A Thrilling Narrative • Old Sleuth (Harlan P. Halsey)
... is developed, while the muscles are allowed to grow flabby and atrophied, that the deplored chasm between knowing and doing is so often fatal to the practical effectiveness of mental and moral culture. The great increase of city and sedentary life has been far too sudden for the human body—which was developed by hunting, war, agriculture, and manifold industries now given ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... were almost up with them the robbers tossed everything down this great canyon in the earth. There was no way to get into it, and though they tried lowering men with ropes, they couldn't find a solitary gold piece. As far as any one knows it is all at the bottom of the chasm now." ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... Duncan threatens, that time will tend to turn him away from me, it's something that I'm going to fight tooth and nail. And I've seen no sign of it, as yet. With every month and every year that's added to his age he grows more companionable, more able to bridge the chasm between two human souls. We have more interests in common, more things to talk about. And day by day Dinkie is reaching up to my clumsily mature way of looking at life. He can come to me with his problems, knowing I'll always give him a hearing, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... cross, and all looked on with awe while half a dozen peasants with their axes cut a large hole in the ice. "And now the priest's voice is heard, deep and sonorous, as he pronounces the words of doom. Alas for the poor sprites! Into that yawning chasm they must leap, and sink deep, deep below the surface ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... to mutter something smart and saucy about Kate; but a better and more charitable thought checked the speech, and I felt that I had asked too much of her when I required her to jump four feet, over a chasm of such depth as that which gaped between the steamer and the building. I suppose I forgot, in my enthusiasm for her safety, that girls are not used to climbing trees, and promenading on the roofs of barns. With my second thought ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... precipice 2,500 feet in depth, it is correct to be frightened, and a fashion of holding the breath and shutting the eyes prevails, but my fears were reserved for the crossing of a trestle bridge over a very deep chasm, which is itself approached by a sharp curve. This bridge appeared to be overlapped by the cars so as to produce the effect of looking down directly into a wild gulch, with a torrent raging along it at ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... along by the wind Parivaha, and identified with the Mandakini, or Milky Way. Its second course is through the earth; but the weight of its descent was borne by [S']iva's head, whence, after wandering among the tresses of his hair, it descended through a chasm in the Himalayas. Its third course is through Patala, or the lower regions, the residence of the Daityas and Nagas, and not to be confounded with Naraka, 'hell,' 'the place ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... a chasm in the history of women, until the time of the patriarch Abraham. They then begin to be introduced into the sacred story. Several of their actions are recorded. The laws, customs, and usages, by which they ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... place which he assumed to mark the center of the labyrinth; in the wicked, black eyes of the Eurasian. He realized that between the abstraction of silver spoons and deliberate, organized money-making at the expense of society, a great chasm yawned; that there may ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... scenery, or rich magnificence of nature, with a happier pen than when he records the walk to the cottage at Claremont, the grandeur and majesty of the scene at Blenheim, or Stowe, Persfield, Wotton in the vale of Aylesbury—the rugged, savage, and craggy points of Middleton Dale, "a chasm rent in the mountain by some convulsion of nature, beyond the memory of man, or perhaps before the island was peopled," with its many rills, springs, rivulets, and water-falls—the vast cliffs of rocks at Matlock, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... a church to live with; a church to be proud of. Those who miss what we are privileged to enjoy are missing something from the fulness of life. We have not broken with the historic continuity of the Christian faith: there is no chasm, filled with wreckage, between us and the fathers of the church. Above all we have enshrined our beliefs in a marvellous liturgy, which is ever old and ever new, and which had the good fortune to be put into English at a day when the force of expression in our Mother tongue was peculiarly ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... lies the whole key of the place of ugliness in aesthetics. We like to see a crag jut out in shameless decision from the cliff, we like to see the red pines stand up hardily upon a high cliff, we like to see a chasm cloven from end to end of a mountain. With equally noble enthusiasm we like to see a nose jut out decisively, we like to see the red hair of a friend stand up hardily in bristles upon his head, we like to ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... the Indian boy, clutching him by the arm. "You remember that after our fight with the Woongas and our escape from the chasm we fled to the south, and that the next day, while you were away from camp hunting for some animal that would give us fat for Mukoki's wound, you discovered a trail. You told us that you followed the sledge tracks, and that after a time the party ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... long withstood The winter's fury, and encroaching frosts, By time subdued (what will not time subdue!), A horrid chasm disclosed. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... his manner, rather than his words, wiped out that chasm of time that had been placed between them. It was as if she had talked with him yesterday. She felt hideously familiar with him—on the same mental ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... woodsmen again started out into the trackless waste, and labored desperately onward, mile after mile, through the impeding snow; sometimes taken to the armpits in its gathering drifts, and sometimes thrown at full length beneath its submerging depths by stepping into some hole or chasm it had concealed from their sight. And thus resolutely did they beat and buffet their rough way through the perplexed and roaring wilderness, and thus stoutly did they bear up against the constantly thickening ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... there came little happiness, either for Rimrock or yet for her. They looked at each other across a chasm of differences where any chance word might offend. He had alluded at one time to the fact that she was deaf and she had avoided his presence for days. And she had a way, when his breath smelled of drink, of drawing her head away. ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle, Point of the universe, dread seat of Dis, The traitor is eternally consum'd." I thus: "Instructor, clearly thy discourse Proceeds, distinguishing the hideous chasm And its inhabitants with skill exact. But tell me this: they of the dull, fat pool, Whom the rain beats, or whom the tempest drives, Or who with tongues so fierce conflicting meet, Wherefore within the city fire-illum'd Are not these punish'd, if God's wrath be on them? And ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Venice lies,— A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls, Which her hoary sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves. Lo! the sun upsprings behind, Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined On the level quivering line Of the waters crystalline; And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies; As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise As ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... had sought to let us know how welcome we were. And now we left the fertile plain and well-watered land which lay all along the river-bed to climb steep, stony roads, and follow narrow footpaths, where the difficulty of its broad load made my donkey step gingerly as near to the chasm's edge as she could secure a foothold, and I dug my knees into the soft bed-bag and longed for something on which I could get a grip. How pleasant and easy such journeying became before the end of that autumn's wandering, and how familiar the life of the ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... This chasm is now quite filled up. The terrace extending from Grinfield-street to Miss Mason's house is threaded with passages, vaults, and excavations. At the northern corner there is a tunnel eight feet high, and as many wide, which runs up from what was once an orchard and garden, to ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... mind refused to work; he asked himself, horrified, whether this was still life, dared call itself life; Nature's glorious structure seemed to him ravaged like a wall rent by a storm, the speaking mouth of all these people struck him as nothing but a chasm convulsively and repellently opening and shutting, darkness invaded his spirit, he burned with a feeling of shame, he felt ashamed in the name of the nameless God, ashamed that his body was molded like that ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... have come to pass. You may now go by a luxurious Santa Fe train direct to the south rim of the greatest chasm of the series, the Grand Canyon, and stop there in a beautiful hotel surrounded by every comfort, yet when we were making the first map no railway short of Denver existed and there was but one line across the Rocky ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Sometimes they skirted a little cove where, hundreds of feet below, the fishermen sat before their tiny huts busily mending their nets. From that distance the boats drawn upon the sheltered beach seemed like mere toys. Then they would span a chasm on a narrow stone bridge, or plunge through an arch dividing the solid mountain. But ever the road returned in a brief space to the edge of the sea-cliff, and everywhere it was solid as the hills themselves, and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... was desperate. Robert exchanged a despairing look with Cyril. Anthea detached a pin from her waistband, a pin whose withdrawal left a gaping chasm between skirt and bodice, and handed it furtively to Robert—with a grimace of the darkest and deepest meaning. Robert slipped away to the road. There, sure enough, stood a bicycle—a beautiful new one. Of course Robert understood ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... in the canyon? How did they know it when they found it? Did Frank ever do any mining? What was placer mining?" And on and on, only the intermittently returning fear of the trail silencing him until Frank ordered him to dismount in a narrow chasm within sight ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... inventory of people and things. He remarked, for instance, that Palford's manner of speaking to a servant was totally different from the manner he used in addressing himself. It was courteous, but remote, as though he spoke across an accepted chasm to beings of another race. There was no hint of incivility in it, but also no hint of any possibility that it could occur to the person addressed to hesitate or resent. It was a subtle thing, and Tembarom wondered how ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... looked at the dark chasm below him with hesitation, then he murmured to himself, "If I break my other leg, I must get ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... meeting; immediately at the foot of the mountain is the well of Agutifa, and from hence probably the most imposing view of these heights will be seen. To the south, the mountain path of Niffdah presents its black, overhanging peaks, the deep chasm round which, the path winds, bearing a most cavern-like appearance; a little to the west, the camel path, called El Nishka, appears scarcely less difficult and precipitous; the more southern crags close in the landscape, while the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... reeled and his sight grew dim; but not before he reached his goal and a quick hand shot out to seize the knife that now lay within reach as the two bodies tottered perilously upon the brink of the chasm. ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... adapt itself to the tortuous course of little wounds, it would be cooled and inert before it could have destroyed the lower portions of them. If it were of sufficient substance long to retain the heat, it would make a large and fearful chasm, and probably interfere with the future usefulness of the animal. The result of the cases in which the cautery has been used proves that in too many instances it is an inefficient protection. The rabid dog in Park Lane has already been mentioned. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... between pancakes and truffles: an eternal, fixed, abysmal canyon. It is like the chasm between beds and hammocks. It is not to be denied and not to be traversed; for if pancakes with syrup are a necessary of life, then truffles with anything must be, by the very nature of things, a supreme ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... the earliest settlers at rest there beneath the sod. This was the last indication of the presence of the town, the final impression to carry away into the wide country, where the road ran through field and forest. As they sped along, they plunged into a chasm of blackness, caused by the trees on both sides of the road which appeared to be constantly closing upon them. In the darkness of that stygian tunnel, dashing blindly through threatening obscurity, she yet felt no terrors, for a band of steel seemed to hold her ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... it seemed that we could not go farther without rest. Sometimes we hung on the edge of a chasm in whose fathomless shadow were buried a forest and a stream, both of which sent upward to us a fragrant and melodious greeting; sometimes we rested under a mighty mountain, whose adamantine brow scowled upon us, and we were glad when we once more resumed the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... after a couple of tries, during which the noise made was such as would have certainly aroused attention had anyone been at hand, I succeeded in fixing one of the iron hooks attached to the rope to the ledge of the window. Then, after a strain to test the rope, I let myself swing across the chasm, and found foothold on the opposite ledge. Once there matters were easy, and in a trice I had ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... and was gladly closing the slight cover to the opening, when he felt it drawn from his hand by the beast, whose shaggy form immediately darkened the passage. They were now in a straight and long gallery, in a chasm of the rocks, where retreat without encountering the animal was impossible. Making the best of the circumstances, the young man pressed forward, keeping as close as possible to his conductor. The bear growled frequently at his heels, and once or twice its enormous paws ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... train was lost in the blue sky, the special car bearing the candidate whirled off in another direction, deep into the wonderland of the mountains. Now white peaks were on one side and mighty chasms on the other; then both chasm and peak were lost behind them, and they shot through an irrigated valley, brown with the harvest, neat villages snuggling in the centre. But always, whether near or far, the mountains were around them, blue on the middle slopes, white at the crests, ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... she saw the chasm, and the nearness of the edge. She bore it until the pipe was drawing well. Then: "Oh, Jim," she said, "I am so sorry; but I am afraid I am becoming dizzy. I feel as though I must fall over." She ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... daughter's hand. In the time of Edward III. this "Castle of the Peak" reverted to the Crown, but now it is held by the Duke of Devonshire. Under the hill on which the ruins stand is the "Cavern of the Peak," with a fine entrance in a gloomy recess formed by a chasm in the rocks. This entrance makes a Gothic arch over one thousand feet wide, above which the rock towers nearly three hundred feet, and it is chequered with colored stones. Within is a vast flat-roofed ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... inspiration of the poet, the instinct of the hero, the enthusiasm of the prophet." Such is the first act of knowing, and in this first act the mind passes from idea to being without ever suspecting the depth of the chasm it has passed. It passes by means of the power which is in it, and is not astonished at what it has done. It is subsequently astonished when by reflection it returns to the analysis of the results, and, by the aid of the liberty with which ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... round the seething pool. The flying spray was frozen in the air; and it filled the masts with snow, and pattered like heavy hail upon the deck. The light of the sun seemed shut out, and darkness closed around. A dismal chasm yawned deep before them, and in the gray gloom the ship's crew saw many wondrous things. Great sea-monsters swam among the rocks, and seemed not to heed the uproar above them. Lovely mermaids sat in their green-and-purple ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... the dash and babble of a stream whose course we followed, increasing in volume as we progressed, came to our ears like the 'sound of many waters.' We crossed this stream a hundred times, at least, in our journey. Sometimes it murmured and fretted in a chasm far below us; again, it spread itself out in our very path, or danced merrily at our side, until it seemed to plunge into some distant abyss with the roar ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... next morning till ten o'clock, when I found the sun shining full into the room. I accordingly dressed myself partially, and I say partially—for I was rather surprised to find an unexpected chasm in my wardrobe; neither my hat, coat, nor waistcoat being forthcoming. But I immediately made myself easy, by supposing that my kind companion had brought them to be brushed. Yet I relapsed into something more than surprise when I saw my fellow-traveler's redoubtable jacket ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... Hilton Seminary," Katherine replied, as she frankly gave him her hand, her color deepening as she did so. "I played truant from school for several months, as you know, and am now trying to bridge the chasm." ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... several of which I had seen nowhere else, and every now and then the wind wafted a little of the condensed vapor over it, and kept the soil in a state of moisture, which caused a sward of grass, growing as green as on an English lawn. I selected a spot—not too near the chasm, for there the constant deposition of the moisture nourished numbers of polypi of a mushroom shape and fleshy consistence, but somewhat back—and made a little garden. I there planted about a hundred peach and apricot stones, and a quantity ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... down the creek to the gorge, or who turned aside from the stealthy pursuit of the eagle's flight to learn what this muffled roar might signify, looked upon the remains of the council fire's circle of stone seats above the cataract, and down into the chasm of mist and foam underneath, with no knowledge that they were a part of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... discovered, contribute only obscurity to what is in no need of additional difficulty. Of Spinoza's private history, on the contrary, rich as it must have been, and abundant traces of it as must be extant somewhere in his own and his friends' correspondence, we know only enough to feel how vast a chasm remains to be filled. It is not often that any man in this world lives a life so well worth writing as Spinoza lived; not for striking incidents or large events connected with it; but because (and no sympathy ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... us three hours hard walking. The river is now very narrow and rapid, not above twelve feet across; it is a succession of waterfalls every three or four yards. After this our road was intricate, winding, and bad. We had to ascend a high chasm formed in the rock, which was effected by ladders from one shelf to another. Arrived at the foot of Bukit Pandang, where we found huts, and occupied them for the night. We have been ascending the whole of this day. Very cold and rainy. At night we were glad to make large fires and use our blankets ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... even look up as he spoke, and Skinner felt that somehow a chasm of antagonism had yawned between him and the boss, that their relations had suddenly ceased to be harmonious, that they were no longer pulling together, working against a common competitor, but were scheming against ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... unobstructed view. A roar of rushing waters had prepared Hare, but the river that he saw appalled him. It was red and swift; it slid onward like an enormous slippery snake; its constricted head raised a crest of leaping waves, and disappeared in a dark chasm, whence came ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... them to pass only one at a time: they proceeded with caution, not knowing sometimes in the dark whether they were placing their feet on the ice or into a chasm; for there were places where they were obliged to clear large fissures, and jump from one piece to another, at the risk of falling between them and disappearing forever. The first hesitated, but those who were behind kept calling to them to make ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... single chance. Whereas a man might have missed love and still have retained life, with a woman love and life were interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her own girlhood, ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... no doubt, it was idle for either Holland or England, at that day, to talk of a reconciliation with Rome. A step had separated them, but it was a step from a precipice. No human power could bridge the chasm. The steep contrast between the league and the counter-league, between the systems of Philip and Mucio, and that of Elizabeth and Olden-Barneveld, ran through the whole world of thought, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... parcel of carpenters' tools and cooking utensils, a little bedding, and about four hundred gallons of whiskey. No one who has not seen the sordidness, misery, and apparent hopelessness of the life of the "poor whites" even today, in the Kentucky and southern Indiana hills, can fully comprehend the chasm which separated the boy Lincoln from every sort ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... its fortifications, like those of the city, much neglected, and partly ruinous. For centuries, clearly, they had been of no account! It had great and strong gates, with something like a drawbridge to them over a rocky chasm; but they stood open, and it was hard to believe that water had ever occupied the hollow before them. All was so still that sleep seemed to interpenetrate the structure, causing the very moonlight to look discordantly awake. I must either ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... you realize that the thing is actually moving, that the bosses on the belt have managed to find a grip on the slime—and presently you come to the brink of what appears, to your exaggerated sense of perception, a bottomless chasm, with distant steep banks on the farther side that look unattainable and insurmountable. It is an old German trench which the rains have worn and widened. You brace yourself, you grip desperately a pair of brass ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the operation Jack L'Estrange lay hovering on the brink of the great chasm. Then he began to mend ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... hand, and of incurring suspicion upon the other, he was somewhat at a loss how to proceed, when the adroit interference of Concini, who deprecated the coalition of the Princes as much as the ministers themselves, furnished fresh fuel to the expiring flame, and widened the chasm between them more hopelessly than ever; and that, moreover, with such dexterity, that M. de Bouillon never suspected what friendly hand had come to his aid; although the Italian favourite did not fail to propitiate the haughty Duke by every means in his power, and so thoroughly ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... narrow trail was a mere ledge carved out from the perpendicular walls of the cliffs, which arose on the left, a sheer precipice hundreds of feet above him, and fell away to the right in a yawning chasm, black, and deep and unexplored. But the sure-footed cayuse stepped gingerly and knowingly, neither halting nor stumbling, and his wise little rider let the animal pick its own way, knowing well that a horse's senses in the dark are more acute than a human's. Presently from far across the ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... I rode up with Simms' party, we met two old trappers who were coming down. They had passed Old Grizzly Slide yesterday, and they said there must have been an awful thaw going on under the surface-ice of the Slide, as the yawning chasm where you discovered the crevice the other day was frightful. It made even their courageous spirits tremble at sight of it. But they turned again and rode up with us, as they said they could be useful to Bill. They are up on Top Notch now, scouting for the ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... history as well as in modern politics, and few lists would precisely duplicate each other. So the only thing which would seriously afflict the editor with a sense of having made a bad blunder would be, if some one should detect a really gaping chasm, a neglect to treat somewhere among the lives some important item of our national history falling within the period which the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... preceding generations, which had to do without them; but you must not forget that this whole fairyland once lay buried under mountains of prejudice, and that the blood and sweat and arduous labour of innumerable followers of our science were all necessary to lift up that world from the chasm into which it had sunk. We grant that philology is not the creator of this world, not the composer of that immortal music; but is it not a merit, and a great merit, to be a mere virtuoso, and let the world for ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... I knew the irresistible effect upon nervous temperaments of this magnetic attraction toward an abyss. I seized her by the arm, the suddenness of the movement made her drop her staff and flowers, which fell into the depths of the chasm. ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... Quebec.....Nothing was wanting to make my impressions of Quebec perfect, but a little more time to widen, deepen and strengthen the friendships made; alas! to be severed (for a time) so soon. I went expecting to see a city perched on a rock and inhabited by the descendants of a conquered race with a chasm between them and every Englishman in the Dominion. In place of this, I found the city more picturesque, more odd, more grand, than I had ever imagined, and peopled by a race who, if conquered in 1759, have had sweet revenge ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... not so easily lost. It dropped over the sheer walls of the chasm, three hundred feet down, and refused to be drowned out by the rush and roar of the waters, as they leaped over the boulders, until it had accomplished its mission. For here in Prather's Mill Road burned the slow fires that kept the Government officials in Atlanta at a white ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... not need to know how simple a thing will lead to infinite anchorage? Who does not need to know that just the tiny threads of love and faith will draw greater cords and greater, stronger ropes until at last the chasm between man and God on the journey is bridged, and we may be anchored to him forever. This indeed is good script for ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... side of the room. "Bet she don't put on no airs about me just the same." She looked at the small bookcase below the mantel in a perfect rage of envy. Elizabeth was surrounded by the things which befitted Elizabeth, and Sadie realized as she had never done in their childhood the chasm which separated them, and knew nothing of the anguish of the young wife as she laboured with the disfigured pies, nor that Elizabeth thought of the look of love she had seen Sadie receive with something very ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... flying out, shrieking, but Satan brushed them back, paying no attention to our begging and crying and imploring; and in the midst of the howling of the wind and volleying of the thunder the magazine blew up, the earthquake rent the ground wide, and the castle's wreck and ruin tumbled into the chasm, which swallowed it from sight, and closed upon it, with all that innocent life, not one of the five hundred poor creatures escaping. Our hearts were broken; we could not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gaps in his life which could never be filled. Felton was the first to go, and he was very deeply mourned by Longfellow, who felt "as if the world were reeling and sinking under his feet." His death made, as his friend expressed it, "a chasm which not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a tendency to fill up." Hawthorne and Agassiz followed soon after Felton; and later Charles Sumner, most deeply mourned of all. He said, in allusion to these friends, in one of his most ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... standpoint of three-years-old is quite different from that of fourteen-going-on-fifteen. Missy now felt almost grown-up; it had been eons since SHE was a baby, and three; even thirteen lay back across a chasm so wide her thoughts rarely tried to bridge it. Besides, her thoughts were kept too busy with the present. Every day the world was presenting itself as a more bewitching place. Cherryvale had always been a thrilling place to live in; but this was the summer which, surely, would ever stand ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... . ." Michael stopped. His mind was suddenly filled with new thoughts. Abdul's suggestion had opened up a deep chasm of ugly suspicions; his whole being seemed to have ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... did your clouds retain For peasants' fields their floods of hoarded rain? O pitiless earth! why open no abyss To bury in its chasm a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... old shipwrecked days there was an hour When in the firelight steadily aglow, Joined slackly, we beheld the red chasm grow Among the clicking coals. Our library-bower That eve was left to us: and hushed we sat As lovers to whom Time is whispering. From sudden-opened doors we heard them sing: The nodding elders mixed good wine with chat. Well knew we that Life's greatest ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Before he gets a situation; Must begin at the creation, When the world was in formation, And come down to its cremation, In the final consummation Of the old world's final spasm: He must study protoplasm, And bridge over every chasm In the origin of species, Ere the monkey wore the breeches, Or the Simian tribe began To ascend ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... his son's life had been sacrificed to so paltry an ambition, so sordid a passion, so vile and grovelling a desire! He took the boy on his knee, and kissed him tenderly. His thoughts bridged over a chasm of five-and-twenty years as his lips pressed that fair young brow; and it was his own son—the son whom he had disowned—whose soft hair was mingling itself now with the grey bristles on his ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... show that many things are merely imaginative. A large portion of the contradictions we meet in our cases is explicable by the fact that one man is the victim of his fancies and the other is not. The great number of such fancies is evinced by the circumstance that there can nowhere be found a chasm or boundary between the simplest fancies of the normal individual and the impossible imaginings of the lunatic. Every man imagines frequently the appearance of an absent friend, of a landscape he has once seen. The painter draws even the features of an absent model; the practiced ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... said he, "as Nanahboozhoo was traveling on one of his long journeys he visited a land of great high mountains. One day as he was passing a great chasm in the mountains he saw some blue smoke slowly coming up out of it. This excited his curiosity and he went to see what caused it. As he drew near to it he was very much pleased with its odor. On further ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... The natives of Chili, we were told, often catch the puma with the lasso. They also hunt it with dogs, and shoot it when it climbs up trees. When we came to the bridge of hide-rope it looked more rickety and impassable than ever. Just fancy a few rotten-looking strips of leather slung across a chasm some thousand ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... stood, measuring the distance with his eye. Then going backward a few steps, he suddenly ran forward with all the speed at his command, and, concentrating all his strength, made such a leap that he cleared the chasm by ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... stopping to make another fire, he plodded along the bank until the afternoon was almost spent. There were a good many fallen trees, as he discovered to his cost, since each one had to be painfully clambered over, but none of them spanned the chasm. Then, as his foot was becoming very sore, he decided to camp where a big cedar lay across a little ravine that rent the bank. It promised to afford him a partial shelter. He had no axe, but he tore off an armful or two of the thinner branches, with the ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... new and melancholy chasm in what is now the brief list of my naval friends and former associates. War, disease, and the casualties of a hazardous profession have made fearful inroads in the limited number; while the places of the dead are supplied by names that to me are those of strangers. With the consequences of these ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... explore it, both from above and from its mouth, and the wonders of the "Grand Canon" were as yet unknown to the world. I did not realize that, as we steamed along between those high perpendicular walls of rock, we were really seeing the lower end of that great chasm which now, thirty years later, has become one of the most famous resorts of this country and, in fact, ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... she harmonized herself with her surroundings, it flashed on him that, to need such adroit handling, the situation must indeed be desperate. She was on the edge of something—that was the impression left with him. He seemed to see her poised on the brink of a chasm, with one graceful foot advanced to assert her unconsciousness that the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Avon a shambles and transformed its fair name into a by-word, to be spoken only in hushed whispers when one's thought dwells for a moment upon the madness of the carnal mind that has once tasted blood. The man-cleft chasm between labor and capital, that still unbridged void which separates master and servant, and which a money-drunk class insolently calls God-made, grows wider with each roar of musketry aimed by a frenzied militia ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to condescend to become my wife? I hope so—hope that the Emperor's favor exalts me a little, so that the chasm which separates us is not too great for you to cross, for you to carry in your bosom a strong heart and a true love. About all these things I must speak with you, sweetest Princess, for here we must be cautious. Only see with what earnest looks the Electress is already regarding ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... for three men and one girl with grey eyes and a sweet body that was like a song, a girl who had awakened the old, dormant good in him and then had driven him so deep into the black chasm that no ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... single word from Heyward calmed them, with the assurance it was only their attendant, Chingachgook, who, lifting another blanket, discovered that the cavern had two outlets. Then, holding the brand, he crossed a deep, narrow chasm in the rocks which ran at right angles with the passage they were in, but which, unlike that, was open to the heavens, and entered another cave, answering to the description of the first, in ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... beautiful place!" she cried, as they found themselves on top of a high hill looking down into a rocky chasm. ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... honourable, and, doubtless, more grateful to you than any station within the competence of the chief magistrate, yet, for myself, and for the substantial service of the public, I feel most sensibly the loss we sustain of your aid in our new administration. It leaves a chasm in my arrangements which cannot be adequately filled up. I had endeavoured to compose an administration whose talents, integrity, names, and dispositions should at once inspire unbounded confidence in ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... in 1702, Anne, the second daughter of James, ascended the throne. Had she refused the succession, there would have been a furious war between the Jacobites and the Hanoverians. In 1714, Anne died childless, but her reign had bridged the chasm between the experiment of William and Mary and the house of Hanover. In default of direct heirs to Queen Anne, the succession was in this Hanoverian house; represented in the person of the Electress Sophia, the granddaughter of James I., through his daughter, Elizabeth ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... pursue the path without fear. But this path ended several feet from the commencement of the shelf. Across the gap had lain a fallen tree, with boughs affording such a screen and railing on the outward side as might at once conceal the gulf below, and afford assistance in crossing the chasm. But in crossing this tree Eveena's footsteps had displaced it, and it had so given way as not only to be unavailable, but a serious obstacle to my passage. Had I had time to go round, I might have been able to ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... that existence, of how he had risen, dressed, eaten, worked, exercised, and slept under orders. He described to her the cells, four by seven by seven, barred, built in tiers, faced by narrow iron balconies, each containing a stool, a chair, a shelf, a bunk. In his effort to show her the chasm that separated him from her he did not spare himself at all. Dryly and in clean-cut strokes he showed her the sordidness of which he had been the victim and left her to judge for herself of its evil effect on ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... sombre and mordant author of the "Maximes," but a complete apprehension of the character of La Rochefoucauld requires the story of his adventures to be at least briefly indicated. A chasm divides his early from his late history, and this chasm is bridged over in a very shadowy way by such records as we possess of his retirement after ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... phrase, the room swam around Mr. Fielding for an instant When he recovered he could only sit and gaze at the beautiful woman before him. The details of village life, in Vermont had not educated him up to exigencies of this sort. A fearful chasm seemed to have opened under his feet, and he began to comprehend dimly that there were other lives than his own and that of his estimable but commonplace wife being daily lived out ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... other productions of the ocean, of vast dimensions, of every possible form, and of the most brilliant colours. In some places the depth, Mr Hooker said, was fifty feet, and in others twenty, for the bottom was very uneven. Here appeared some deep chasm, here a hill rose up, there a valley was seen, here rocks of every possible shape, the whole covered with a forest of living vegetables, as I may ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... depart straightway.' And so it was. But there came a morning when St. Francis made him no answer, and, contrary to St. Francis's desire, but with the very best of intentions, dear little brother Leo crossed the bridge over the chasm, which you may see to this day, and entered into St. Francis's cell. There he found him in ecstasy, saying, 'Who art Thou, O most sweet, my God? What am I, most vile worm, and Thine unprofitable servant?' Again and again brother Leo heard him repeat these words, and wondering ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... the false religiousness which was represented by the papacy. On the one side was humility, on the other, pride; poverty was shown in contrast with wealth; meekness was placed over and against arrogance, etc. At a glance the people saw the chasm that yawned between the preaching and practise of Jesus and that of His pretended representative and vicar, and they verified the pictures showing the Pope in various attitudes from their own experience. These cartoons became very popular, and have ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... geological monuments referring to very distant periods of time. We often behold, at one glance, the effects of causes which have acted at times incalculably remote, and yet there may be no striking circumstances to mark the occurrence of a great chasm in the chronological series of Nature's archives. In the vast interval of time which may really have elapsed between the results of operations thus compared, the physical condition of the earth may, by slow and insensible modifications, have become entirely altered; one or ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... consent at last. The climb begins and steadily increases in difficulty. A gulf of 5,000 feet in depth. A night's lodging in a granite crevice. Rocks of many tons strike near. The galling pain of heavy burdens. A profound chasm is crossed on a rope. Exhilaration of utmost peril. A small bush ensures salvation. A welcome stretch of trees and flowers. A spire, all but perpendicular, of rock and ice is surmounted, and at last is reached the crest ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... of this ridge of granite is a deep, narrow chasm, running a mile and a half or two miles parallel with the road, and veiled by the darkest and most solemn shadows of the primeval forest. Here scream the jays and the eagles, and fish-hawks make their nests undisturbed; and the tide rises ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... now ascended the river, in a canoe, to the foot of the mountain ridge of Lewiston, which, stretching on the right hand and on the left, forms the acclivity of a vast plateau, rent with the mighty chasm, along which, from this point to the cataract, seven miles above, rush, with the fury of an Alpine torrent, the gathered waters of four inland oceans. To urge the canoe farther was impossible. He landed, with his companions, on the west bank, near the foot of that part of the ridge ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... inane and unanswerable argument Benjamin made no reply, and from that time on a chasm began to widen between them. He wondered what possible fascination she had ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... but bring no stealthy footstep to the door, no muffled voice making respectful application for his Kam. From nine to ten breakfast will fill the breach, and you may allow another hour for the butler's account and the godown; but there is still a yawning chasm of at least two hours between eleven and tiffin. I cannot bridge it. Imagination strikes work. The joyful sound of the Borah's voice brings promise of relief; but no! for what interest can there be in the Borah if you have no Dirzee? In the spirit ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... soon as dynamical views prove insufficient where the specific properties and heterogeneous nature of matter come into play; it is to be feared that, by persisting in the pursuit of laws, we may find our course suddenly arrested by an impassible chasm. The principle of unity is lost sight of, and the guiding clew is rent asunder whenever any specific and peculiar kind of action manifests itself amid the active forces of nature. The law of equivalents and the numerical proportions of composition, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... and calmly jogging on our way, we suddenly came upon the verge of a tremendous chasm, which, opening at our feet, divided the barren ground on which we stood, from a lovely sunlit plain of many miles in extent. Winding our way down, we entered the Almannagya by a narrow fissure. The path leads for nearly a mile, the rocks rising as perpendicular walls on either side from ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... second. A pair of "silver cupids, nicely poised on their brands," support a wood fire, which it is an occupation to keep from extinguishing; and all the illusion of a gay orange-grove pourtrayed on the tapestry at my feet, is dissipated by a villainous chasm of about half an inch between the floor and the skirting-boards. Then we have so many corresponding windows, supernumerary doors, "and passages that lead to nothing," that all our English ingenuity in comfortable arrangement is baffled.—When the cold first became so insupportable, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... they are few; the breeze rallies the loose-flowing strands and they make merry and are glad together. He can see the pure bosom, lightly robed, that swells with buoyant life. She is nearer to him now, and the face swims in upon him across the chasm of long silent years, the same pure face, still bright with tender love. She is now beside the spring—for thither was she bent—and the overflowing pail is ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... appearance, more liberal attitude towards modern ideas of progress has raised the hopes of many in the Roman Church whose minds and consciences are troubled by the ever-widening chasm which separates traditional dogma from secular knowledge. While dogma was stationary—immobilis et irreformabilis—there seemed to be no prospect except that the progress of human knowledge would leave ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... smallest provincial burgher is often only the difference between a truth that can sometimes express itself and a truth that can never crystallise into form. The difference is considerable—a gap, but not a chasm. The higher our thoughts ascend, the vainer and the more arbitrary seems the distinction between him who is thinking always and him who thinks not yet. The little burgher is full of prejudice and of passions at which we smile; his ideas are small and petty, and sometimes contemptible ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Ellen had not gone very far—Donkey Street was not five miles from Ansdore, though in a different parish and a different county. But the chasm between them was enormous—it was queer to think that a mere change of roof-tree could make such a difference. No doubt the reason was that with Ellen it had involved an entire change of habit. While she lived with Joanna she had been bound ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... the West you can drop a plumb line six thousand feet before it will reach the bosom of the current; and you can only gain the water level by turning backward for scores of miles and winding laboriously down some subsidiary canon, itself a chasm of ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... pithead seemed terrible in their never-ending revolutions, as they flew round to bring up the loads of coal. The big yawning chasm, with the swinging steel rope, running away down into the great black hole, was awesome to look at, as the rope wriggled and swayed with its sinister movements; and the roar and whir of wheels, when the tables started, bewildered them. These crashed ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... Philosopher, and Friend[1274].' I shall, therefore, not say one word of my own, but adopt those of an eminent friend[1275], which he uttered with an abrupt felicity, superior to all studied compositions:—'He has made a chasm, which not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a tendency to fill up. Johnson is dead. Let us go to the next best:—there is nobody; no man can be said to put you in mind ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... was driven from that island by the water-gods she made three long steps in the soft crust before undertaking the final leap that landed her on the slope of Kilauea. Each of these pits would hold a hotel. Another chasm was made by pulling a monster turtle out of his lair, while he slept, with the intent of eating him. This pit is thousands of cubic yards in extent, and the turtle may be seen on a neighboring mountain, turned to stone by the curses of the chief from whom he tried ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... plague-pit, which lay about a quarter of a mile distant, in a line with the church of All-Hallows-in-the-Wall, and he accordingly proceeded in that direction. The pit which he was about to visit was about forty feet long, twenty wide, and the like number deep. Into this tremendous chasm the dead were promiscuously thrown, without regard to sex or condition, generally stripped of their clothing, and covered with a slight layer ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... how near we may stand to the brink and look far away beyond the chasm. Years afterwards they remembered this conversation, and it is possible that Jack Meredith wondered then what instinct it was that made him change the direction ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... conceivable lies between two contradictory extremes," Sir William Hamilton defended with his wide learning those theories of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned, the Knowable and Unknowable, which banish religion from the realm of reason and knowledge to that of faith, and cleave an impassable chasm between the human and the divine intelligence. From this unfavorable ground his orthodox followers, Mansel and Mozley, defended with ability but poor success their Christianity against Herbert Spencer and his disciples, who also accepted the same theories, but followed ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... asking: "Well, mother, am I white? Are you white?" She answered tremblingly: "No, I am not white, but you—your father is one of the greatest men in the country—the best blood of the South is in you—" This suddenly opened up in my heart a fresh chasm of misgiving and fear, and I almost fiercely demanded: "Who is my father? Where is he?" She stroked my hair and said: "I'll tell you about him some day." I sobbed: "I want to know now." She answered: "No, ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... now. It had gradually become the custom of the Baronne de Vibray, when she was dining out, to entrust Therese to Etienne Rambert's care, and the young girl and the old man got on together perfectly. Their hearts had met across the awful chasm that fate had tried ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... Husband's Inlet looked as if it was frozen over at the farther end, and Penguin Inlet seemed quite choked up with huge hummocks and blocks of ice. Tom therefore decided not to attempt the passage of Icy Reach, for fear of being stopped, but to go round Saumarez Island to Port Grappler by way of Chasm Reach, rather a longer route. It was a happy decision; for nothing could exceed the weird impressive splendour of this portion of the Straits. We were passing through a deep gloomy mountain gorge, with high perpendicular cliffs on either side. Below, all was wrapped in ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... deserves your utmost gratitude, with those cheerful instances of duty and obedience which have hitherto been so acceptable to them, and praise-worthy in you! And may you, when a suitable proposal shall offer, fill up more worthily that chasm, which the loss they have sustained in me has ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... less definite though more radiant; some sign of delight from her lips, her eyes, her brow, her springing step, dancing curls, or supple arms. The youth on the roof's edge deepened his frown. At a point on the stage where its sheer, naked sides spanned the narrow chasm through which the waters swept between boat and wharf, her feet strayed too near one perilous edge, and just then her eyes went up to him. The two glances had barely met when she tripped and staggered. With a dozen others aboard and ashore, he gave a start. She sent him a look of terror, then turned ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... good as without hope and without fear; a gloomily serious, silent, and sad old man, gazing into the final chasm of things in mute dialogue with "Death, Judgment, and Eternity" (dialogue mute on both sides), not caring to discourse with poor articulate speaking mortals, on their sorts of topics—disgusted with ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... have incurred as a result of their disastrous speculation. He felt so depressed that he did what most other Englishmen would have done in his place—took a long walk. He stood on the bridge over the Ottawa River and gazed for a while at the Chaudiere Falls, watching the mist rising from the chasm into which the waters plunged. Then he walked along the other side of the river, among big saw-mills and huge interminable piles of lumber, with their grateful piny smell. By-and-by he found himself in the country, and then ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... heavy lid, sliding it to one side. How deep was the black chasm beneath he could not even guess. Doubtless it led into a coal bunker, or it might open over a pit of great depth. There was no way to discover other than to plumb the abyss with his body. Above was ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... which the prisoners were conducted. The moon then rising, they continued their journey, and at length, perched on a rocky height, the grey walls of the old Castle of Schweinsburg rose before them. A steep pathway led them up to a bridge thrown across a deep chasm, which almost completely surrounded the building, and had rendered it impregnable to the assaults of foes armed only with the engines of ancient warfare. In the court-yard the Baron ordered them to dismount; and four armed men conducted them up a winding staircase to a room at the ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... classes for the upper, which has been a thousand times detrimental to human progress. The little group of people had their own church, their own society. Those who had a fellow-feeling for them had much influence directly, but not in bridging over the chasm between them and the feudal lord. Feudalism gave every man a place, but developed the inequalities of humanity to such an extent that it could not be lasting as a system. Society became irregular, in which extreme aristocracy was divorced from extreme democracy. Relief came slowly, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... peals of demon-like laughter. Here it was believed that Venus held her court; "and there were not a few who declared that they had seen fair forms of female beauty beckoning them from the mouth of the chasm." [16] Tannhauser was a Frankish knight and famous minnesinger, who, travelling at twilight past the Horselberg, "saw a white glimmering figure of matchless beauty standing before him and beckoning him to her." Leaving his horse, he went ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... Jim, "be mighty careful how you step, boys. Get down on your hands and knees and creep up here to the edge of the awful chasm. Now, hold the lanterns down, so we can all of ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... health. Again, they might be alarmed at missing him from the veranda; perhaps he had better have remained there; perhaps he ought to tell them that he had concluded to take their advice and lie down. He tried to rise, but the deep blue chasm before the window seemed to be swelling up to meet him, the bed slowly sinking into its oblivious profundity. He knew ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... man who had only his labor to sell; to those on top, the exploiters, it appeared very differently, of course—there were few of them, and they could combine and dominate, and their power would be unbreakable. And so all over the world two classes were forming, with an unbridged chasm between them—the capitalist class, with its enormous fortunes, and the proletariat, bound into slavery by unseen chains. The latter were a thousand to one in numbers, but they were ignorant and helpless, and they would remain at the mercy of their ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... lay the far-extended camp of Montcalm, stretching from the St. Charles, beneath the city walls, to the chasm and cataract of the Montmorenci. From the cataract to the river of Beauport, its front was covered by earthworks along the brink of abrupt and lofty heights; and from the river of Beauport to the St. Charles, by broad flats of mud swept by ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... stepped forward to inspect the fern more closely, she put her foot on a rotten branch of the oak-tree, which had become broken off from its parent stem and lay stretched across the dell, forming a sort of frail bridge over the prickly chasm below up to the higher ground on which ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... with, in. abaisser, to lower, abase; s'—, to bow down. abandonner, to abandon, deliver up, forsake. abattre, to beat down. abme, m., abyss, chasm. abolir, to abolish, wipe out. abondance, f., abundance. abri, m., shelter; mettre l'—, to shield. absolu, absolute. abuser, to deceive. accabler, to overwhelm, crush. accepter, to accept; ne pas —, to decline. accompagner, to accompany. accord, m., ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... mail or by a messenger-boy. The secret of power in doing good is personal contact. Our incarnate "Elder Brother" went in person to the sick chamber. He anointed with His own hand the eyes of the blind man and He touched the loathsome leper into health. The portentous chasm between wealth and poverty must be bridged by a span of personal kindness over which the footsteps must turn in only one direction. The personal contact of self sacrificing benevolence with darkness, filth and misery—that ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... glare, which stretched right and left as far as the eye could see. We broke off the road into a morass of mud, as one might cross fields when he had lost his way, and plunged on till the commanding officer said, "We go in here!" and we descended into a black chasm in the earth. The wonder was that any ditch could be cut in soil which the rains had turned into syrup. Mud oozed from the sandbags, through the wire netting, and between the wooden supports which held the walls in place. It was just ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... temperature is eighty degrees in summer and thirty in winter; hence it is a favorite resort. There is a sanitarium here, called "The Eden." The mountain views prove a great attraction; the Kanchanjanga range is seen beyond the intervening mountains, with a vast chasm ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... a deep cleft or gorge in the mountains, the scenery of which is of the wildest and ruggedest character. For a mile or more there is barely room for the road and the creek at the bottom of the chasm. On either hand the mountains, interrupted by shelving, overhanging precipices, rise abruptly to a great height. About half a century ago a pious Scotch family, just arrived in this country, came through this gorge. One of the little boys, gazing upon the terrible desolation of the scene, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs |
