"Abyss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that millions, I say deliberately, millions, in every civilised land are waiting for the message that will save them from the hideous abyss of materialism into which modern money-worship is driving them headlong, and many of the leaders of the new Social Movements have already discovered that Vedanta in its highest form can alone spiritualise ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... stands, And Milo-like surveys his arms and hands, Then sighing thus, 'And am I now threescore? And why ye gods should two and two make four?' He said, and climbed a stranded lighter's height. Shot to the black abyss, and ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... The Socialist saw millions of tons of goods being loaded into steamships and sent to Europe to be destroyed in war; he saw the workers of Europe becoming enslaved by a bonded debt to a class of parasites in America, he saw America being drawn closer and closer to the abyss of the strife. The Socialist loved no part of this process. He clamoured for an embargo—not merely on munitions, but on food and everything, until the war-lords of Europe came to their senses. He urged the workers to strike, and thus force the politicians to declare ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... needing to poison the future by an endless remorse. Tell me rather to forgive and to forget, speak not of hatred and revenge; show me one ray of hope amid the darkness that surrounds me; hold up my wavering feet, and push me not into the abyss." ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and grotesque vision, or waking-dream, that she had dreamt a few nights before: of a vast abyss, black and silent, which had to be filled up to the top with the bodies of women, hurled down to the depths of the pit of darkness, in order that the survivors might, at last, walk over in safety. Human bodies take but little room, and the abyss seemed ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... exquisitely clear that, although it was of great depth, the eye could discern each pebble at the bottom. Eddying round this reservoir, the brook found its way as if over a broken part of the ledge, and formed a second fall, which seemed to seek the very abyss; then, wheeling out beneath from among the smooth dark rocks which it had polished for ages, it wandered murmuring down the glen, forming the stream up which Waverley had just ascended. [Footnote: See Note 24.] The borders of this romantic ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... their ministers to office according to propriety, and dismissed them in the same way, and hence there was that rule. But now-a-days, princes bring their ministers forward as if they were going to take them on their knees, and send them away as if they would cast them into an abyss. If they do not treat them as their greatest enemies, it is well.— How can you expect the ancient practice to be observed in such circumstances [1]?' These instances may suffice to illustrate the character of Tsze-sze, ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... in our ear, "Who art thou that judgest another?" and warning us of the presence in our own heart of a sympathy, which we could not deny, with the sadly questionable hero of the German epic, Reynard the Fox. With our vulpine friend, we were on the edge of the very same abyss, if, indeed, we were not rolling in the depth of it. By what sophistry could we justify ourselves, if not by the very same which we had just been so eagerly condemning? And our conscience whispered to us that we had been swift to ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... told that the gods of the heathen were stone and brass, but stone and brass have never endured with the long endurance of the China Shepherdess. The Catholic Church and the Ideal Shepherd are indeed almost the only things that have bridged the abyss between the ancient world and the modern. Yet, as we say, the world does not like to be reminded ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... they were in the Rue de la Paix, after walking two blocks in contemplative silence, "my peace of mind is poised at the brink of an abyss. I have a feeling that I am about to ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... itself over the pool, forming a fork with its boughs at a short distance from the rock. Miss Susannah often sat on the rock, with her feet resting on this tree; in time, she made her seat on the tree itself, with her feet hanging over the abyss; and at length, she accustomed herself to lie along upon its trunk, with her side on the mossy bole of the fork, and an arm round one of the branches. From this position a portion of the sky and the woods was reflected ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... I exclaimed in agony, "what you forewarned me of has proved but too true. Fatal curiosity," added I, "insatiable desire of riches, into what an abyss of miseries have they cast me! I am now sensible what a misfortune I have brought upon myself; but you, dear brother," cried I, addressing myself to the dervish, "who are so charitable and good, among the many wonderful secrets ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... sometimes quote Scripture and counterfeit good," replied the mystic. "Why should not angels sometimes come to show us the black abyss of evil on whose brink we stand. If that man had not tried to stop ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... Their road had been cut out on the side of the mountain, and the path had been cleared away here many feet above the buried road; and as they wound along the slope they could look up at the stupendous heights above them, and down at the abyss beneath them, whose white snow-covering was marked at the bottom by the black line of the roaring torrent. The smooth slope of snow ran down as far as the eye could reach at a steep angle, filling up all crevices, with here and there a projecting rock or ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... feelings resis[t]lessly impelled me. I believe it was that coming out with a determination not to be repulsed I went right forward to my object without well weighing his replies: I was led by passion and drew him with frantic heedlessness into the abyss that he so fearfully avoided—I replied to his terrific words: "You fill me with affright it is true, dearest father, but you only confirm my resolution to put an end to this state of doubt. I will not be put off thus: do you think that I can live thus fearfully from day to day—the sword in my ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... that other men with wives Have fall'n already in the old abyss, Have let their women ruin all their lives And ordered new atrocities like this. President WILSON will have missed success If other men determine how ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... rush of snow we had leapt back behind our protecting peak and, lying at full length upon the ground, gripped it and clung there, fearing lest the wind should whirl us to the abyss. Long ago our tent had gone like a dead leaf in an autumn gale, and at times it seemed as if ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... in a meadow, attended by the ocean-nymphs, she saw to her surprise a beautiful narcissus, from the stem of which sprang forth a hundred blossoms. Drawing near to examine this lovely flower, whose exquisite scent perfumed the air, she stooped down to gather it, suspecting no evil, when a yawning abyss opened at her feet, and Aides, the grim ruler of the lower world, appeared from its depths, seated in his dazzling chariot drawn by four black horses. Regardless of her tears and the shrieks of her female attendants, Aides seized the terrified maiden, and bore her away to ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... enchanted castle, and saw the mountains around begin to stand on their heads, while the red-tiled roofs of Ilsenburg were dancing, and green trees flew through the air, until all was green and blue before my eyes, and I, overcome by giddiness, would assuredly have fallen into the abyss, had I not, in the dire need of my soul, clung fast to the iron cross. No one who reflects on the critically ticklish situation in which I was then placed can possibly find fault with me ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a broad way which could be traversed dry shod. Through their translucency, as behind thick glass, were seen marine monsters twisting and squirming, terrified at being surprised by daylight in the mysterious depths of the abyss. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... made its slow progress along the road that skirts the gorge, they seemed to plunge deeper and deeper into the fog. A white darkness, as though of impenetrable yet glimmering cloud, above and around them; a white abyss beneath them; and issuing from it the thunderous voice of wild waters, dim first and distant, but growing steadily ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Breaks down their Ranks, and Thunders, as he Flies, Arms in his Hands, and Terrour in his Eyes. O'er Heav'ns wide Arch the routed Squadrons Rore, And transfix d Angels groan upon the Diamond-Floor. Then, wheeling from Olympus Snowy top, Thro' the scorch'd Air the giddy Leaders drop Down to th' Abyss of their allotted Hell, And gaze on the lost Skies from whence ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... Westwick had thought of them—she who had rebuked him the last time he had spoken slightingly of his brother in her presence! A sudden fear and doubt of herself, startled her physically as well as morally. She turned from the shadowy abyss of the dark water as if the mystery and the gloom of it had been answerable for the emotions which had taken her by surprise. Abruptly closing the window, she threw aside her shawl, and lit the candles on the mantelpiece, impelled by a sudden craving for light in the solitude ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... the Pyramids, and rendering more shadowy the names and memories of heroes,—obliterating even its own ruin;—set aside this oblivion of Time, still there would be hieroglyphics,—still to us all that comes from this abyss of Time behind us, or from the abyss of Space around us, must be but dim and evanescent imagery and empty reverberation of sound, except as, becoming a part of our own life, by a new birth, it receives shape and significance. Nothing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... and then we'll scud straight toward home. And beside, we rock more, going in this direction. I wish it would blow harder, and make more swell! You know now, Mr. Piscator, how a wild swan feels when he sits on the water and is buoyed up on the heaving wave, and in a breath sinks into the black abyss. If I were a wild swan I would go to sleep and let the winds blow and the waters heave! How the boat careens over and plunges down when the blast whistles against the masts! Drive on! Drive on! my light gallant bark! Oh, my master! shall I sing you a song? a little ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... down the room distractedly, momentarily expecting her reappearance. Only a short half-hour ago, with Doris' head upon his breast, he had felt supremely happy; now he was plunged into an abyss of utter wretchedness. What were the contents of that brief note which had affected her so powerfully? Why should she secrete it with such care unless it conveyed a lover's assurance? His foot came into contact with a chair, and he ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... went black and she felt herself sinking into a bottomless abyss. With maniac energy she tore his hands from her throat and the warm blood streamed from the ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... murmur to each other across that little abyss. He flung himself against the barriers like a madman. But his hands were futile against the tangle of joists and ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... forward, in time and space; to focus all this about his own momentary personality; and then, drawing the ground from under his feet, as if by some cataclysm of nature, to plunge him into the unfathomable abyss sown with enormous suns and systems, and among the inconceivable numbers and magnitudes and velocities of the heavenly bodies. So that he concludes by striking into us some sense of that disproportion of things ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... senseless idolaters, and ere they could effect their wickedness he swept them from the earth and destroyed them. For the earth opened and swallowed them up, and so many of the people of Teamhrach as were consenting thereto; and the abyss opened its mouth and devoured them, even alive. And they who remained, and all the dwellers of that land seeing or hearing of these things, feared with mighty fear; and, lest they should be punished ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... was afraid. The slope from her little goloshes to the bottom of the ice hill seemed to her a terrible, immensely deep abyss. Her spirit failed her, and she held her breath as she looked down, when I merely suggested her getting into the sledge, but what would it be if she were to risk flying into the abyss! She would die, she would go out ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... ruin, arrest the depreciation of our national currency, and restore the public credit. We are upon the verge of ruin. We are hanging over the gulf of an irredeemable paper system, and its spectral shade, repudiation, is seen dimly in the dark abyss. The present Congress may save us; but what of the next? Would they, if they could? Who can answer? Can they, if they would? No! no! It will then be too late. Never did any representative assembly encounter so fearful ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... did not reach its destination till too late, and Helen was mercifully saved from the fate which, in her wicked despair, she was ready to rush upon. Twenty-four hours after her return to England she saw the horrible abyss upon which she had stood, and thanked God from the bottom of her heart that she had been rescued, in spite of herself, from so dreadful a deed. But the letter had been written, and was in Lucien D'Arblet's possession. Later on she learnt, by ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... bowed before the Throne, veiled in their golden hair; Four white wings lessened swiftly down the dark abyss of air. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... dashed his head against the knotted trunk of the tree by which he stood and howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast, as he besought her ghost to haunt him. "Be with me always—take any form!" he cried. "Only do not leave me in this abyss, where ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... gorge, formed by almost perpendicular walls of rock. This made me think of a similar narrow gorge which, during my journey, I had passed through at peril of my life. Upon a jutting rock a hundred yards high above the abyss, I saw a man and woman standing, shoulder to shoulder, both covering their eyes with their hands. They step forward and I see them plunge downwards together, and hear their bodies falling to destruction. Screaming wildly I awoke. Since ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... What Euphrates, what lightfoot Euripus, May now allay the fury of that heat, Which, raging in my entrails, eats me up? You ghastly devils of the ninefold Styx, You damned ghosts of joyless Acheron, You mournful souls, vexed in Abyss' vaults, You coalblack devils of Avernus' pond, Come, with your fleshhooks rent my famished arms, These arms that have sustained their master's life. Come, with your razors rip my bowels up, With your sharp fireforks crack my ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... dead and turning to dust, or had they lived and grown and died here in this subterranean world under a false sky, just like inhabitants of the upper earth? Until the present time we had seen alive only marine monsters and fishes. Might not some living man, some native of the abyss, be yet a wanderer below ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... into the desert. 30 And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered into him. 31 And they entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss. 32 Now there was there a herd of many swine feeding on the mountain: and they entreated him that he would give them leave to enter into them. And he gave them leave. 33 And the demons came out from the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd rushed down the ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... or to which it is referred on the particular occasion, be chiefly composed of things which can see, as in the case of a blind man, or a blind horse; or unless it is supposed for any reason that it ought to see; as in saying of a man, that he rushed blindly into an abyss, or of philosophers or the clergy that the greater part of them are blind guides. The names called privative, therefore, connote two things; the absence of certain attributes, and the presence of others, from which the presence also of the former might naturally ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... of the block of buildings loomed in silhouette; the squares of the windows were ranks of luminous blue against the dark. Dust motes danced in shafts of sunlight. Far above, the roof was dimly visible, a spidery tangle of trusswork. And below was the abyss. ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... is not much, and we are yet terribly behindhand, especially as regards secondary teaching, which is considered less important than primary teaching.[255] But we are scrambling out of an abyss of ignorance, and it is something to have the desire to get out of it. We must remember that Germany has not always been in its present plethoric state of musical prosperity. The great choral societies only date from the end of the eighteenth century. Germany ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... doing there is a deep gulf. Into that abyss the happiness of many a man slips, and is lost. There is no peace, no real and lasting felicity for a human life until the gulf is closed, and the continent of conduct meets the continent of creed, edge to edge, lip ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... the lowest beggar are counted in heaven, compensated amid the music of angels' harps—but thy sighs, thy despair, fall into the bottomless abyss, and Satan gathers them together, and joyfully adds them to the pile of his own lies and delusions—and the Lord will deny and disown them, as they have denied ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... you return to Paris to-morrow? . . . to be the Chevalier du Cevennes till the end? Ah well!" How often man over-reaches himself in the gratification of an ignoble revenge! "We all have our pastimes," went on the marquis, deepening the abyss into which he was finally to fall. "You were mine. I had intended to send you about some years ago; but I was lonely, and there was something in your spirit which amused me. You tickled my fancy. But now, I am weary; the pastime palls; you ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... his head in salute, stood for a moment as though lost in thought, then, turning suddenly, walked with a steady step to the edge of the abyss and leapt. For an instant the sunlight shone on his white and fluttering robe, then from the depths of that darksome place floated up the sound of a heavy ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... dark bed; and uttered a dismal groan, and thought of the three inexorable fates, Carny, Nutter, and Dyle, who at that moment held among them the measure, and the thread, and the shears of his destiny: and standing desperately in the dark at the verge of the abyss, he mentally hurled the three ugly spirits together into his bag, and flung them whirling through the mirk into the lake that burns with fire ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Lady's assistance." So they reached at last the great crevasse. My father and one of the Englishmen got over without difficulty; but the other Englishman slipped; his footing failed him; and he was sinking, sinking, down, down, down, slipping quickly into the deep dark green abyss below. My uncle stretched out his hand over the edge: the Englishman caught it; and then my uncle missed his foothold, they both fell together and were lost to sight at once completely, in the invisible ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... then-known instruments of war. Day and night, without a moment's intermission, the besiegers, like incarnate fiends, plied their works. The Tartars, as ever, were victorious, and Kief, with all its thronging population and all its treasures of wealth, architecture and art, sank in an abyss of flame and blood. It sank to rise no more. Though it has since been partially rebuilt, this ancient capital of the grand princes of Russia, even now presents but the shadow of ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... existed; yon bright sky Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above. What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed? Was it the water's fathomless abyss? There was not death—yet was there nought immortal, There was no confine betwixt day and night; The only One breathed breathless by itself, Other than It there nothing since has been. Darkness ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... those worn by the monks of Cologne; but he finds that they are crushing weights of gilded lead—splendid semblance and agonizing, destroying reality. Again, when the two poets, Dante and Virgil, came to the Abyss of Evil-pits (Malebolge), down which the crimson stream of Phlegethon leaps in "a Niagara of blood," he is on the edge of the Circle of Fraud in all its varieties, down which they are to be carried on the back of Geryon, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... oppressively in Lygia's hands and temples. A feeling seized her that she was flying into some abyss, and that Vinicius, who before had seemed so near and so trustworthy, instead of saving was drawing her toward it. And she felt sorry for him. She began again to dread the feast and him and herself. Some voice, like that of Pomponia, was calling ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... multitude of pictures crowded upon the eyes. In an archway groups of young first communicants were forming; they were on their way to the cathedral. Their white veils against the gloom of the recessed archways were like sunlit clouds caught in an abyss. Priests in gorgeous vestments were walking quickly through the streets. All the peasants were going also toward the cathedral. A group stopped, as did we, to turn into a side-street. For there was a picture we should not see later on. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... in the year 1738, a man named George Manley was hanged for murder, and just before his execution he delivered an address to the crowd, as follows: "My friends, you assemble to see—what? A man leap into the abyss of death! Look, and you will see me go with as much courage as Curtius, when he leaped into the gulf to save his country from destruction. What will you say of me? You say that no man, without ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... and descended the stairs. Elias looked at him with an indescribable expression. If you had seen him, you would have thought that all his life was concentrated in his eyes. The yellow man looked down into the abyss ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... then. There was only the narrow footpath of the trapper and the fisherman close down to the water; and when the rocks broke off in sheer precipice, an unsteady bridge of poles and willows spanned the abyss. A 'Jacob's ladder' a hundred feet above a roaring whirlpool without {20} handhold on either side was one thing for the Indian moccasin and quite another thing for the miner's hobnailed boot. The men used to strip at these ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... is the power of creation and formation.... Matter unintelligent and self-formed is nothing, and realizes existence only through the operation of the idea which gives it its form. Aristotle begins by rejecting all this phantasmagory of eternal and creative ideas. He fills the abyss between matter and spirit. God, pure thought and being preeminent, brings all into existence by his power of attraction which gives to all activity ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... consciousness, intelligence, and activity of God. What we call sin is as much a form of God's activity as what we call virtue. In other words, there is no such thing as free agency in man, no such thing as sin or responsibility. When a man dies he sinks into the abyss of being as a drop of water is lost in the ocean. (6.) Man is the highest form of God's existence. God is incarnate in the human race. Strauss says, that what the Church teaches of Christ is not true of any individual man, but is true of mankind. Or, as Feuerbach more concisely ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... was half over they sent for her and asked her to remove him. The head master confessed that the case was beyond him. On the surface the boy was one of the most charming in the whole school, but his heart was an abyss of the most appalling blackness. Mrs. Payne entreated him to tell her the worst. He hedged, said that it wasn't just one thing that was wrong, but everything—everything. She asked him if he had ever known a case that resembled Arthur's. No, he thanked Heaven that he hadn't. Could ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... bridge. Not far above the bridge, a considerable river emptied itself into the gorge in a mirrorlike ribbon. Kirby could not hear the torrent fall—or rather could not hear it strike any solid bottom. But from somewhere in the unlighted, unfathomed depths of the abyss rose strange ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... before the truth burst upon them. They were nearing, at what seemed express speed, a whirling, roaring mass of waters that shouted at them like some animal calling for its prey. The boys' cheeks blanched as they realized that nothing but a miracle could save them from being sucked into this watery abyss. ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... growing state; On him, their second providence, they hung, Their law his eye, their oracle his tongue. He from the wondering furrow called the food, Taught to command the fire, control the flood, Draw forth the monsters of the abyss profound, Or fetch the aerial eagle to the ground. Till drooping, sickening, dying they began Whom they revered as God to mourn as man: Then, looking up, from sire to sire, explored One great first Father, and that first adored. Or plain tradition ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... progress on the ridge at all, and on one of those days the clouds from the coast poured over so densely and enveloped us so completely that it was impossible to see far enough ahead to lay out a course wisely. On that day we toppled over into the abyss a mass of ice, as big as a two-story house, that must have weighed hundreds of tons. It was poised upon two points of another ice mass and held upright by a flying buttress of wind-hardened snow. Three or four blows from Karstens's axe sent ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... been called an intellectual bacchanalia, and when we examine the features of the bacchantes they become distorted like those of the suitors in Homer, who anticipated their fall; for this society, this Church, these cities and states—in fine, this culture in its entirety—toppled over into the abyss which was yawning for it. The reflection that men like Copernicus, Michael Angelo, and Bramante, Alexander VI and Caesar Borgia could live in Rome at one and the same time ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... safe! Around her were the walls of the ancient castle—walls that seemed almost part of the solid rock itself standing betwixt her and that horrible abyss below! . . . Her limbs gave way suddenly and she toppled over in a dead faint, lying in a little crumpled heap at ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... the bridge. Dock was disappointed, and began to climb the rocks to readjust the plank. As he ascended, he discovered Mr. Fairfield, just stepping on the bridge. He shouted, but it was too late; the end of the plank slipped off, the old man danced upon nothing, and sank in the abyss below. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... three days now the ghoulish clamour of a lammergeier had seldom ceased. And now, as McKay peered down, two stein-adlers came flapping to the shelf on which hung something that seemed to flutter at times like a shred of cloth stirred by the abyss winds. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... been death to many men And made him friends of mountains: with the stars And the quick spirit of the universe He held his dialogues; and they did teach To him the magic of their mysteries; To him the book of night was opened wide, And voices from the deep abyss revealed A marvel and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... often a mystery why it should be that day of all days—when the innocent, and gay, and confident young creature finds herself in sudden trouble. The film on which she lightly trod has burst and she is in an abyss. It seems a mere trifle that plunged her there. Her friend did not come when she looked for him, or he is gone somewhere, or he has said something that she did not expect. Some such trifle reveals to her ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... I had gratified the first feelings of curiosity I descended, and each man ascended in turn, for I would only allow one at a time to mount the unstable and precarious slab, which it seemed a breath would hurl into the abyss below. We mounted the barometer in the snow of the summit, and, fixing a ramrod in a crevice, unfurled the national flag, to wave in the breeze, where never flag waved before. During our morning's ascent, we met no sign ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... whom they were addressed. The old companions of the glory of their chief exclaimed with one voice, "Paris! Paris!" But, fortunately, during the night, the Generals having deliberated with each other saw the frightful abyss into which they were about to precipitate France. They therefore resolved to intimate in discreet terms to the Emperor that they would not expose Paris to destruction, so that on the 3d of April, prudent ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... was to leap the creek, afterwards ascertained to be twenty-two feet wide and twenty deep. Determined never to fall alive into the hands of the Indians, he made a mighty effort, sprang across the abyss of waters and stood rifle in hand upon the opposite bank. As quick as lightning, he proceeded to load his rifle. A large Indian, who had been foremost in pursuit, came to the opposite bank, and after magnanimously doing justice to the captain by exclaiming "Blady ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... whirlpool, a constant support while she and Victor were one at heart. The sense of her standing alone made her sway; and a thought of differences with him caused frightful apprehensions of the abyss. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... grasped thy jewelled dagger which lay upon the table, and held it with outstretched hand towards the ground, and with upturned gaze and frightful calm she seemed to plead an answer from the goddess. Then fell I into a deep swoon, and in vision seemed to fall from dark abyss to dark abyss, until my soul was torn asunder, and its portions rent again and dissolved into nothingness, and for ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... blissful conjunction of every part of their naked bodies, clasped Laura round the neck and imprinted burning kisses upon her lovely lips, while his rampant steed plunged violently backwards and forwards in the abyss of pleasure and his charming buttocks bounded and quivered with the excess of wanton delight. Greatly interested in watching the delightful encounter, I endeavoured to promote their enjoyment by tickling and playing with them in the most ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous
... its remorse—remorse such as Inger had never felt. Grief became her predominating feeling. She thought that for her the gates of mercy would never open, and as in deep contrition and self-abasement she thought thus, a ray of brightness penetrated into the dismal abyss—a ray more vivid and glorious than the sunbeams which thaw the snow figures that the children make in their gardens. And this ray, more quickly than the snow-flake that falls upon a child's warm mouth can be melted into a drop of water, caused Inger's petrified figure to evaporate, and a little ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... infer that Shakib was not open to reason on the subject. He would draw his friend away from the verge of the abyss at any cost. "And this," continues he, "did not require much effort. For Khalid like myself is constitutionally incapable of denying God. We are from the land in which God has always spoken ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... that which relates to marriage was the least progressive. But this was the observation of a young man; and with him, as with so many others, this thought, like a pebble flung into the bosom of a lake, was lost in the abyss of his tumultuous thoughts. Nevertheless, in spite of himself the author was compelled to investigate, and eventually there was gathered within his mind, little by little, a swarm of conclusions, more or less just, on the subject of married life. Works like the present ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... unblushingly subscribed to proclamations placing them on an equality with the men of the Revolution of 1793." The Moniteur, Napoleon's Parisian organ, said in August, 1809, after the conclusion of the war, "The mighty hand of Napoleon has snatched Germany from the revolutionary abyss about ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... while below there poured from the bar a long cascade, a very Niagara of golden mist and rain, as if the flood-gates of some celestial dam had suddenly given way, and all the precious stuff were escaping in a cataract through the rift, in one gigantic plunge, to be lost for ever in some bottomless abyss. ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... the poet understood,—a really marvelous occurrence, because poets, who understand everything else and can tell you why the condor flies so high, who soar to the skies and descend into the abyss and penetrate the secret thoughts of all created things, are not capable of realizing that there are times when their works do not please those who hear them. Our young man, whom we will call Inocencio, ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... the reader know of your doing so. Give a general idea of the size of the bridge: You need not give measurements; try rather to make the reader feel the size from the comparisons that you use. Describe the banks at each end of the bridge, and the effect of the water or the abyss between. How is the bridge supported? Try to make the reader feel its solidity and safety. Is it clumsy or graceful? Why? Give any interesting details in its appearance. What conveyances or persons are passing over it? How does the ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... speaks perfect English—without a trace of accent. After we had talked a few moments, I noted the difference between Teuton and Latin, the vast abyss which separates the polite and courteous Spaniard, thinking of others, anxious to be hospitable, and the rough, conceited, aggressive Junker of Germany. How often have I found that we ourselves, although good hearted and easy going, in comparison with our friends in South ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... perch above the abyss, the officer lowered his field glasses and turned his face. Then he rose and moved over to where she was sitting. She stood ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... heart. It is more like an artistic inspiration, one of those things that lie among the pleasant impulses of life. Right in the foreground I see the great groaning cycle of humanity being flung from the everlasting wheels into the bottomless abyss. I cannot take my eyes from the ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... see mountains. There were none. What they saw was really a break in the level plateau. From where they stood they looked almost straight down into the abyss for something more than a mile. Gazing straight ahead they saw to the other side of the chasm twelve miles away. To the right and to the left their gaze reached more than twenty miles in ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... of the church and state, I have considered the former as subservient only, and relative, to the latter; a salutary maxim, if in fact, as well as in narrative, it had ever been held sacred. The Oriental philosophy of the Gnostics, the dark abyss of predestination and grace, and the strange transformation of the Eucharist from the sign to the substance of Christ's body, [1] I have purposely abandoned to the curiosity of speculative divines. But I have reviewed, with diligence and pleasure, the objects ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... and stole a look at the young farmer, but was satisfied he "meant nothing." The self-seeker will walk into the very abyss protesting himself a practical man, and counting him unpractical who will not with him "jump the life to come." Himself, he neither measures the width ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... elsewhere with respect to our communications with the dead, namely, that it is natural that we should remain at home, in our own world, as long as we can, as long as we are not violently driven from it by a series of irresistible and incontrovertible proofs coming from the neighbouring abyss. The survival of a spirit is no more improbable than the prodigious faculties which we are obliged to attribute to the mediums if we deny them to the dead. But the existence of mediums is beyond dispute, whereas that of spirits is not; and it is therefore for the spirits or for those who make use ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... embrace—the yearning Sea,— Is shackled by my smiling and implores My chaster, colder kiss and mounts to me. With pearls of white enchantment I bestrew The happy realms where lovers hunt their bliss; My ray is pale as frost and soft as dew; My path is woven in snow through the abyss. ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... pardoned and will be saved finally, because here salvation is not exclusively based on the sure and immovable grace and promises of God, but, at least in part, on man's own doubtful conduct—a rotten plank which can serve neither foot for safely crossing the great abyss of sin and death. Only when presented and taught in strict adherence to the Bible is the doctrine of election and grace fully qualified to engender divine certainty of our present adoption and final salvation ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... hopelessly to flee from some menacing evil, and this dream-experience, it may be presumed, frequently comes from a feeling of strain in the muscles, due to an awkward disposition of the limbs during sleep. The common dream-illusion of falling down a vast abyss is plausibly referred by Wundt to an involuntary extension of the foot of ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... days and three nights Florea did not stop; his horse flew like a ghost over the mountains and valleys till it reached the frontiers of the empire. But all around the emperor's dominions ran a deep gulf, and across this abyss there was only a single bridge. Here Florea halted to look back and bid farewell ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... could ever be weak enough, or vile enough, to sink into that dread abyss, whereto some women have gone down for the love of man, was not within the compass of her thought. But she knew that no day in her life was sinless now; that no pure and innocent joys were left to her; that her every thought of George Fairfax was ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... old; pity that the worthless straws only should float, while treasures, compared with which all the mines of Golconda and Mexico were but straws, should be absorbed by some unknown gulf into some unknown abyss. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... he was weeping even over those stars, which were shining to him from the abyss of space, and "he was not ashamed of that ecstasy." There seemed to be threads from all those innumerable worlds of God, linking his soul to them, and it was trembling all over "in contact with other worlds." He longed to forgive ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... bewildering rapidity with which they spin around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shoot forth, a foul, phosphorescent iridescence, as of accumulated corruption, streaming in a flood of loathsome radiance along the black walls, and far away down into the inmost mist—veiled recesses of the abyss! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... dread hereafter never entered, had encased his spiritual being in a sort of brazen armor, through which no ordinary blow of conscience could penetrate. Still he had fearful glimpses of recent events, and his soul, hanging as it was over the abyss of eternity, was troubled. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... incoherent violence. To these simple observers such conduct was entirely incomprehensible; but we may easily suppose that at this moment the unfortunate man first realized the fearful nature of the circumstances which surrounded him, and perceived the abyss which had yawned so suddenly at his feet. And no wonder that he shrank back from the prospect, overwhelmed for the moment with consternation and despair,—not the prospect of death, but of a degradation far worse to the proud spirit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... with smiling radiance, Through orifice, through rift and aperture, Invades the storm, and dissipates the clouds, Which scatter, cowering and ephemeral, Hugging the cliffs, and o'er the dire abyss Hover, in fleecy, ever changing form, And in a transient season disappear; Vanish, as man must ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... chamber, and embraces her with frantic passion, she pushes him backwards towards the balcony, and throws him over the parapet into the abyss, from whence his mutilated remains are dragged by his companions. They at once arm themselves against the presumed treachery, and call for vengeance; tumult and confusion fill the courtyard: the interrupted wedding feast threatens to end in a night of slaughter. The venerable head of the house ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... continued Huldbrand, 'my horse dashed itself against the trees, reared and again rushed madly forward. Onward we flew, until at length I saw before me a dark abyss. Yet still I found it impossible to pull up ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... mythology. In Greece, as to heaven, there was a universal agreement that it was situated above the blue sky; but as to hell, much difference of opinion prevailed. There were many who thought that it was a deep abyss in the interior of the earth, to which certain passages, such as the Acherusian cave in Bithynia, led. But those who with Anaximenes considered the earth to be like a broad leaf floating in the air, and who accepted ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the foot of the altar, which cannot fail to be heard. As our Lord, who was pleased to show Peter where to cast his nets, in order to have an abundant draught of fish, teaches us also how we shall escape from the abyss of calamity into which our sins, perhaps, have thrown us.... Although I, who, at present, am the Vicar of Christ, may not, one of my successors will, see Rome, which is our city, restored to its pristine state, tranquil ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... that ultimately God would resume the supreme control He had temporarily abandoned, while the Power of darkness would be bound and cast into the abyss. If, however, we must think of Him as omnipresent and for that reason directly and uninterruptedly cognisant of all, then the plain man can only ask himself with a deepening wonder why an all-good and unimaginably ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... entity. Crowned with free will, walking on the crest of the world, enfeoffed with individual faculties, served by vassal nature with tributes of various joy, he cannot bear the thought of losing himself, of sliding into the general abyss of matter. His interior consciousness is permeated with a self preserving instinct, and shudders at every glimpse of danger or hint of death. The soul, pervaded with a guardian instinct of life, and seeing death's steady approach to destroy the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... am! Deodati will discover that I owe him ten thousand crowns. He will appeal to the courts of justice, and I will be condemned as a rogue; they will discover that I have spent more than I possessed. Outraged, despised, mocked, shall I fall forever into the abyss of misery and infamy? No, no; let him die! His death alone can save me. If he perishes as I have planned, I no longer owe him the ten thousand crowns; Mary becomes my wife, and I am master of her dowry. In that case I am still the powerful, honored chief of the house of Buonvisi! ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... Theseus. A ballet-girl, as Ariadne the second, climbed the rocks of the Island of Naxos, reaching the highest peak to catch the last glimpse of the vanishing vessel. The third Ariadne was a most lifelike lay figure, which, on a given signal, was hurled from the cliff, and seen to fall into the abyss below. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... barbarism, than having committed one, to envy those who had not. These things I speak and confess to Thee, my God; for which I had praise from them, whom I then thought it all virtue to please. For I saw not the abyss of vileness, wherein I was cast away from Thine eyes. Before them what more foul than I was already, displeasing even such as myself? with innumerable lies deceiving my tutor, my masters, my parents, from love of play, eagerness to ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... others by every means in their power, who soiled and spoiled every thing about them, who ate rich, dainty, and sweet viands, broke china, and flung to the dogs food which would have been a tidbit to this lad. If I had rescued him from the abyss, and had taken him to that nice place, then he must acquire those views which prevailed in the life of that nice place; but by these views, he understood that in that fine place he must so live that he should not toil, but eat and drink luxuriously, and lead a joyous life. It is ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... was the young man's only reply; while his convulsed features and the deep wrinkles that chased each other across his manly brow, revealed the abyss of arithmetical agony into which one chance question had ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... professed a worship, they said, for that gold that had cost him so much; and he would never give the hand of his daughter to a man who had no money. This last comment was useless. Above my actions, my thoughts, my hopes, higher than all, soars my pride. Instantly I saw an abyss opening between me and her whom I love more than my life, but less than my dignity. When a man's name is Genost de Tregars, he must support his wife, were it by breaking stones. And the thought that I owed my fortune to the woman I married would ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... At last, after we had overcome a thousand difficulties and dangers, we reached the open sea, and the regular wave—a real movable mountain—lifted up, without any sudden shock, our frail boat almost to the skies, and then in the same quiet manner let it sink into an abyss, from which it was again raised to the top of a liquid mountain. These large waves, which follow each other usually from interval to interval very regularly, cause no danger to a good pilot, who takes ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... began with the Thrales, Where I met with great talents 'mongst females and males, But the best thing it gave me from that time to this, Was the freedom it gave me to sound the abyss, At my ease and my leisure, of Johnson's great mind, Where new treasures unnumber'd I ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the wind, gathering itself into a furious blast, caught him and hurled him against the rocky wall. He recoiled with a sharp cry of pain, and next moment would have fallen into the abyss beneath, had not Jeffreys' strong arm caught him and held him. His legs were actually off the ledge, and for a moment it seemed as if both he and his protector were doomed. But with a tremendous effort the prostrate Jeffreys swung him ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... abstract schemes for the improvement of the race in general. He was a man of peace and wished all others to be at peace; the confusion and irritation that accompanies reform was most disagreeable to him. Many a Harvard student who trembled on the brink of an abyss, far from home and left to his own devices, afterwards looked back to Doctor Peabody's helping hand as to the hand of a beneficent providence held out to save him from destruction; and those whom he was unable to save thought of ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... who will do it. There is very great need here for somebody to help these poor Indians, being as they are, in great want and more than miserable, because they do not know how to ask for justice. They have been so intimidated and thrust down into the very abyss that they dare not complain. I do not find a single man who will take pity on them: but on the contrary, every on persecutes, terrorizes, and despises them. And I am sure God will execute justice and exact vengeance for all this. It would ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... every foreign region of the globe the title of American citizen is held in the highest respect, and when pronounced in a foreign land it causes the hearts of our countrymen to swell with honest pride. Surely when we reach the brink of the yawning abyss we shall recoil with horror from the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... thought, from Heraclitus down to Hegel. There was something in him of the Quietist also; and in his worship of Nothing he may be said to have in some measure anticipated those strange dreamers of mediaeval days who, like Tauler and Master Eckhart, adored the purum nihil and the Abyss. The great middle classes of this country, to whom, as we all know, our prosperity, if not our civilisation, is entirely due, may shrug their shoulders over all this and ask, with a certain amount of reason, what is the identity of contraries ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... with emotion; thus to see space annihilated, and the furthest corners of the earth drawn together, fills one with admiration for this amazing human nature, more potent than the whole material creation by which it is surrounded, even than the three thousand miles of that Atlantic abyss. These manifestations of the power of man's intellect seem to me to cry aloud to him to "stand in awe [of his own nature] and sin not." And yet these victories over matter are nothing compared to the achievements of human souls, with their powers of faith, of love, and of endurance. I will not, however, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... flower-lit green gave to the wind The mystery that made sweet The earth forever,—strange and undefined As life, as God, as this thy song complete That holds with me twin memories Of time ere men, And ere our ways Lay sundered with the abyss of ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... undisturbed! He dressed himself and stole out softly. This time the tide was in, so he crossed the dunes and struck the shore on the further side of the quicksand. There, oh, horror of horrors! he saw his own footprints dying into the abyss! ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... stirring of quickened religious life must needs have in it bitter penitence and pain at the discovery flashed upon us of the wretched deadness of our past—and, as we gaze like some wakened sleepwalker into the abyss where another step might have smashed us to atoms, a shuddering terror seizes us that must cry, 'Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe.' And every such stirring of quickened life will have in it, too, desire for more of His grace, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the perfect knowledge of the other world, called the microcosm, which is man. And at some hours of the day apply thy mind to the study of the Holy Scriptures; first in Greek, the New Testament, with the Epistles of the Apostles; and then the Old Testament in Hebrew. In brief, let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge; for from henceforward, as thou growest great and becomest a man, thou must part from this tranquillity and rest of study, thou must learn chivalry, warfare, and the exercises of the field, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... both in Europe and in our own country. Prostration of credit, financial disaster, widespread distress among all classes of the community, would form the closing scenes in our career of gratuitous folly and national dishonor. And from such an abyss of sorrow and humiliation, it would be a painful and toilsome effort to regain as sound a position in our finances as we are asked voluntarily ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... these considerations from indifference and indolence, which, in some sort, bring us on to resolution. It often befalls me to imagine and expect mortal dangers with a kind of delight: I stupidly plunge myself headlong into death, without considering or taking a view of it, as into a deep and obscure abyss which swallows me up at one leap, and involves me in an instant in a profound sleep, without any sense of pain. And in these short and violent deaths, the consequence that I foresee administers more consolation to me than the effect does fear. They say, that as life is not better for being ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... land, out of which flowed a river of water from a spring that never ran dry. As the water in its onward course met the bitter blasts of wind from the yawning gulf, it hardened into great blocks of ice, which rolled far down into the abyss with a thunderous roar and piled themselves one on another until they ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... near. I rather imagined France would have instigated or winked at Spain's beginning with us. Here is a solution of the Americans declaring themselves independent. Oh! the folly, the madness, the guilt of having plunged us into this abyss! Were we and a few more endued with any uncommon penetration? No: they who did not see as far, would not. I am impatient to hear the complexion of to-day. I suppose it will, on the part of administration, have been a wretched farce of fear, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... if you press me further, I will say A word to madden you.—Stand still! You stray Around the margin of a precipice. I know what pleasure 'tis to pluck the flowers That hang above destruction, and to gaze Into the dread abyss, to see such things As may be safely seen. Tis perilous: The eye grows dizzy as we gaze below, And a wild wish possesses us to spring Into the vacant air. Beware, beware! Lest this unholy fascination grow Too strong ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... the queen always firm; or, if she ever trembled, it was at the want of firmness in others. She had made up her mind for the worst long before. She often said to me, in those revolutionary nights when we sat listening for the sound of the cannon or the tocsin from Paris—'France is an abyss, in which the throne must sink. But sovereigns may be undone—they must not be disgraced.' The world never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... indecent passages! 'Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?' shouts Amos. 'I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things,' thunders Isaiah. 'This,' says Coleridge, 'is the deep abyss of the mystery of God.' Ay, and the profound of the mystery of genius also! Evil is part of the economy of genius, as it is part of the economy of Deity. Gentle reviewers endeavor to find excuses for the freedoms of geniuses. 'It is to prove that they were above conventionalities.' ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... other hand, if the blind acceptance of authority appears to him in its true colours, as mere private judgment in excelsis, and if he have the courage to stand alone, face to face with the abyss of the eternal and unknowable, let him be content, once for all, not only to renounce the good things promised by "Infallibility," but even to bear the bad things which it prophesies; content to follow reason and fact in singleness and honesty of purpose, wherever they may lead, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... wound would not heal, for which the weather was blamed, and the constant friction he gave it, until his two doctors advised he should not race about so much; and so it came about that November was well on its way before the arm was well, and Inna saw that abyss of mystery, the Black Hole. Very like a lake, with an unfathomable hole in the centre—or said to be unfathomable, because it had been sounded by the villagers and no bottom found—over-spanned by a bridge, ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield |
