"Desert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sleep beside her husband. An hour before he had waked, and, lying quietly by her, thinking no doubt of the woman for whom he was going to desert her, he had by chance touched her hand as it lay on the counterpane, with the shabby black rosary in it, ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... while attempting to save themselves from the common conflagration. On the 22d of January, 1794, he wrote to the Committee of Public Safety of the National Convention: "Citizen Representatives!—A country of sixty leagues extent, I have the happiness to inform you, is now a perfect desert; not a dwelling, not a bush, but is reduced to ashes; and of one hundred and eighty thousand worthless inhabitants, not a soul breathes any longer. Men and women, old men and children, have all experienced the national ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... mind me Of the happy days gone over! Love was then behind me, Before me, and around; Then, light as air, I leapt, A laughing little rover, Now dull and heavy-stepped I pace this desert ground. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... again 'love' and 'darling,' and I care not where we are!" she answered, in tones of passionate entreaty. "Oh, Hartley, my dear, dear husband! A desert island, with you, would be a paradise; a paradise, without you, a weary desert! Say the words again. Call me 'darling!'" And she let her head fall ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... the army would therefore be suicidal. The Army would gain a few thousand men, but its operations would be embarrassed, if not stopped altogether, by a want of supplies. This condition of affairs reminded one of the singular paucity of mechanical skill among the Bedouins of the desert, which renders the life of a blacksmith sacred. No matter how bitter the feud between tribes, no one will kill the other's workers of iron, and instances are told of warriors saving their lives at critical periods by falling on their ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... through the South Seas to the East Indies, and from there to Bombay, and then to Hong Kong, and to Mauritious, from the beaches of which came the marvelous sea shells that Sarah Macomber had in the box in her parlor closet. They voyaged through the Arabian Sea, with the parched desert shores shimmering in the white hot sun. They turned north, saw the sperm whales and the great squid and the floating bergs.... And at last they drifted back to Bayport and the captain ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... glimmer through the familiar walls of the room, and outlandish figures thrust themselves almost within the sacred precincts of the hearth. Small as my chamber is, it has space enough to contain the ocean-like circumference of an Arabian desert, its parched sands tracked by the long line of a caravan with the camels patiently journeying through the heavy sunshine. Though my ceiling be not lofty, yet I can pile up the mountains of Central Asia beneath it till their summits shine far above the clouds of the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Indians sat on their panting horses, motionless, stolidly facing the curious gaze of the crowd; or rather they looked through the crowd, as the lion, with the high breeding of the desert, looks through and beyond the faces that stare and gape before the bars of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... or horseback from as far away as the State of Kansas, where the nearest railway connection was eastward, or from California, via Yuma and Ehrenberg on the Colorado River. Stages and freight teams made regular trips across the arid desert to Ehrenberg. The first settlers of this region came from California in search of gold. They first found it in the sands of the Hassayampa, which is born of mighty Mount Union, the mother of four living streams. From its ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... The strollers' band is often of uncertain strength. For when the travelling company meets with misadventure, the orchestra are usually the first to prove unfaithful. They are the Swiss of the troop. The receipts fail, and the musicians desert. They carry their gifts elsewhere, and seek independent markets. The fairs, the racecourses, the country inn-doors, attract the fiddler, and he strolls on his own account, when the payment of salaries is suspended. A ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... to speak to you alone, Judy," she whispered. "It's about the noises and the ghosts. The babes are scared blue, threatening to desert the camp. Get outside the door and we can vanish for a few minutes before study hour." They waited at the foot of the stairs until Janet and Winifred ascended, then Judith nearly fell over Jane as they both tried to go through the door at once, but the escape ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... corner of the earth, and feeding there their fire of signal. The next moment a hail reached me from the boat; and bursting through the bushes and the rising sea-fowl, I said farewell (I trust for ever) to that desert isle. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the captain decisively; "I doubt very much whether there are any sheltered spots inland. To me it seems as if the whole of the interior is one icy desert. Look at that gully, Handscombe, there to the right. A regular alpine glacier running nearly down ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... and bids him farewell. He asks her for some token whereby he may say that he had been with her; and she bestows on him a prophetic tongue that cannot lie, and leaves him with a promise to meet him again on Huntley Banks. Here both the old ballads and the older romance desert us; but if we may trust Sir Walter Scott's report of the tradition current in the neighbourhood, Thomas was under an obligation to return to Fairyland whenever he was summoned. "Accordingly, while Thomas was making merry with his friends in the tower ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... her lover's ardour, she chose to count his silence as still another offence. He was neglecting her, and she would not stand it. Like a flash of inspiration it darted into her head that she would free herself from this entanglement while there was still time. It would seem unwomanly to desert a man in the hour of misfortune, but she would act at once, and not wait until the worst happened. She would tell her mother that she was not happy; and though Mrs Rendell might disapprove her past promise, she would never persuade her to keep it in the circumstances. ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... men in the United States, entitled to be naturalized, become citizens while you can—let nothing delay you for an hour—let no hindrance, short of mortal disease, banish you from the ballot-box. To those who are citizens, we say, vote your principles, whatever they may be—never desert them—do not be wheedled or terrified—but vote quietly, and unobtrusively. Leave to others the noisy warfare of words. Let your opinions be proved by your deliberate and determined action. We recommend ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... and jacket, with her mittens dangling from a red tape on each side, she flew out and down the long, rickety stairs which a former senator from Nevada had built up the mountain's side, when he planned for his home a magnificent view of the mountains and desert off toward ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... volunteering brought into existence "bounty-jumping," a new crime analogous to that of "repeating" at elections. A man would enlist and receive the bounty, frequently several hundred dollars, but varying somewhat in different places and periods. He would take an early opportunity to desert, as he had intended to do from the first. Changing his name, he would go to some new locality and enlist again, repeating the fraud as often as he could escape detection. The urgency to get recruits and forward them at once to the field, and the wide country which was open to recruiting, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... that the saint exists (or does not exist and so on) after death is a jungle, a desert, a puppet show, a writhing, an entanglement and brings with it sorrow, anger, wrangling and agony. It does not conduce to distaste for the world, to the absence of passion, to the cessation of evil, to peace, to knowledge, to perfect enlightenment, to nirvana. Perceiving this objection, I have ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... "I want to be one of the big and active men of the world, who do big things. I want to map out the wilderness. I want to dam the raging flood and drive the new railroad across the desert. I want to construct. I want to work day and night when the big deeds are to be done. That's why I wouldn't care for the Army or Navy; it's ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... you get here," he said, "but it's like climbing over a mile of garbage to get out of one's front door. No European city would endure being isolated by such a desert of squalor ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... impossible to disguise himself. He would be foolish to make the attempt. His bowed legs, the scar running from chin to temple, his very gait made disguise impossible. To those who did not know him he would be an "old-timer" in from the desert. To those who did know him . . . Well, they were not many nor over-anxious to advertise ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... did promise not to bother me—just to desert me, you see, so I could get a divorce in a year. I thought I'd come and live with Kate till the year was up, and then get a divorce, and go back home to work. My father left me enough to squeak ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... St. Antony, who would listen to nothing. "They are called harpies, and they are the most obscene animals in creation. One day as I was having supper in the desert with the Abbot St. Paul, I placed the table outside my cabin under an old sycamore tree. The harpies came and sat in its branches; they deafened us with their shrill cries and cast their excrement over all our food. The clamour of the monsters prevented ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... have contrived to inflict upon most countries within the tourist's reach all the modern conveniences by which he lives and thrives. So soon as civilising missions and missionaries have pegged out their claims, even the desert is deemed incomplete without a modern hotel or two, fitted with electric light, monstrous tariff, and served by a crowd of debased guides. In the wake of these improvements the tourist follows, finds all the essentials of the life he left ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... interesting romance published by his old secretary Weber,—one of the best of all the English verse romances and the first English poem to show a really English patriotism,—he owed nothing but suggestion. The duel at the Diamond in the Desert is admittedly one of the happiest things of the kind by a master in that kind, and if the adventures in the chapel of Engedi are both a little farcical and a little 'apropos of nothing in particular,' the story nowhere else ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... the guards with the Indian women, and in one disturbance three Indians were killed and several wounded. In 1781 the padre feared another uprising, owing to incitements of the Colorado River Indians, who came here across the desert and sought to arouse the local Indians ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... quite so easily, as to feel happy in the presence of such men as Collot d'Herbois, or Marat in his day—men who had become brute beats, more ferocious far than any wild animal, more scientifically cruel than any feline prowler in jungle or desert. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... true to the Borgias, as is shown by this letter, until his death, which occurred in Rome, August 2, 1515. Vannozza, of a truth, had seen many of the former friends, flatterers, and parasites of her house desert it; but a number, among whom were several important personages, remained true. She, as mother of the Duchess of Ferrara, was still able to exert some influence; she was living a respectable life, in comfortable circumstances, as ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... marvelous sight. Prone to strange tasks indeed is the hand of Nature which has fashioned these grotesque, clumsy, lifeless looking plants to accumulate nourishment and moisture for months from the niggardly desert sands, and to mature for a few hours' existence only these marvelously fashioned flowers which collapse with the first rays of the heat-giving sunshine. C. flagelliformis, and C. speciosissimus, two very gorgeous flowered ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... ways, even the Cochenill is to a great extent superseded by aniline dyes, but in regard to one production, indispensable to a great extent, we are entirely dependent on some insects of this family; it is the Shellac, lately also found in the desert regions around the Gila and Colorado on the Larrea Mexicana. You will remember that excellent treatise on this variety of Shellac, written by Professor J.M. Stillman at Berkeley, on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... spirit. But Mr. Glascock at last prevailed, and the two men started together up the mountain. When the permission has been once obtained the walker may be sure that his guide and shepherd will not desert him. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... to the day, Pledge began to work, and Templeton put down the Bishop's scholarship to him, without further parley. Only two men were against him—Cartwright, who, fine fellow as he was, could not desert the cricket field and gymnasium even in the throes of an examination, and Freckleton, the hermit, whom half of Templeton didn't know by sight, and the other half put down as a harmless lunatic, who divided his time between theological exercises and plodding, ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... with pride, and Ekalavya, the son of the ruler of the Nishadas, and the Kalingas and the Magadhas, and the Gandharas and the king of Kasi, and many rulers assembled together in the midst of the desert, many heroes belonging to the East and the South, and many kings of the mountainous regionsalas, how could he remain indifferent to such a calamity as the curse denounced by the Rishis? Thyself, Narada, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... is supporting Christ Crucified in His arms, surrounded by a multitude of angels, while S. Donatus and S. Bernard are kneeling below. In the church and in other parts of the Sasso della Vernia, likewise, he made many panels, which have been well preserved in that desert place, where no painting could have remained fresh for even a few years. The same Andrea wrought all the figures in glazed terra-cotta which are in the Loggia of the Hospital of S. Paolo in Florence, and which are passing good; and ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... the shatranj, or chess-board, become fazzin, or queens; that is, they get rank, or become better than they were; and the piyadah, or pawns, of the pilgrimage—that is, our foot-pilgrims—have crossed the desert and become worse." Say from me to that haji, or pilgrim, the pest of his fellow-pilgrims, that he lacerates the skin of mankind by his contention. Thou art not a real pilgrim, but that meek camel is one who is feeding on thorns and patient ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... misery, crime, pauperism, disease, and death. Occasionally circumstances produce a happy combination, and the result is a reasonably correct union in spite of ignorance; but such cases are so rare that they are like oases in the desert, and the subject of universal admiration and comment when they occur. The most casual observer notes, that unhappiness is the rule in the married state, and conjugal felicity the exception. A recent discussion of the question, "Is Marriage a Failure?" has brought out so many exhibitions ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... Personae," he added to this class of work, shaping in the mould of blank verse mainly used for "Men and Women" his personifications of the Medium Mr. Sludge, the embryo theologian Caliban, the ripened mystical saint of "A Death in the Desert"; while Abt Vogler, the creative musician, Rabbi ben Ezra, the intuitional philosopher, and the chastened adept in loving, James Lee's wife, although held within the embrace of their maker's dramatic conception of them, as persons of his stage, were ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... degenerate when they are forced to live a life that it is possible to live but only in a miserable way. Some of the lowest tribes of men, like the South African Bushmen, or the Digger Indians, have been forced by stronger tribes to withdraw into the desert and to exist upon a lower plane of life. The physique of such peoples betrays the hardships which they have suffered. Men also flee from an unfavorable environment, thus escaping death or degeneracy, if the way into a more favorable locality lies open to them. Much of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... coward, and so add one more crime to the first. You'd shirk a duty, and desert those who need you. You'd leave me in the lurch, and those women dependent on ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... concern without the advice and consent of her parent. This was no very agreeable declaration to me, whose aim had been to win her inclination first, and then secure my conquest by a private marriage, to which I flattered myself she would express no reluctance. That I might not, however, desert my cause before it was desperate, I waited on her mother; and, with great formality, demanded the daughter in marriage. The good lady, who was a very notable woman, behaved with great state and civility; thanked me for the honour I intended her family; and said, she did not doubt ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... and spread vast scarlet wings and flew away across the garden to the far hills, and Lionel was left with the empty page before him, for the page was quite empty except for the green palm tree and the yellow desert, and the little streaks of red where the paintbrush had gone outside the pencil outline ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... them my baptismal name, which they accurately remembered; they told me theirs in return, which I very soon forgot. I mention this trifling circumstance, because I afterwards was frequently surprised at the retentive memory of these people during my journey through the desert ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... Kashima is much the same as that of a desert island. When a stranger is cast away there, all hands go down to the shore to make him welcome. Kashima assembled at the masonry platform close to the Narkarra Road, and spread tea for the Vansuythens. That ceremony was reckoned a formal ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... not desert him. He repeated we had no right to call in question any action of his and that none but Sir Richard could claim an account of his stewardship. I did not reply, as I might have done, that the money, being found in the house after Mistress Lucy had come of age, was patently hers, and in attempting ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... stage-drivers tell me that the snow does not fall to such a depth as in the northern part of New England; that the weather is tolerably uniform; and that the roads are at all times kept open and much travelled. After all, it is a great way before we come to the home of the Esquimaux, and the desert of ice ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... of her nature, the other and better part (the depraved part, she would have told you) cherished the memory of his smallest act and word. In fact, the flowers had no association with Jonas except that along with the awakening of her love came this little sentiment for flowers into the dry desert of her life. But one day Mrs. Anderson discovered the old blue broken tea-pot with ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... nothing save a few bushes, dying for want of moisture. Farther on, the mountain gorge of the Infernets showed its yawning chasm amidst tumbled rocks, struck down by lightning, a huge chaos, a wild desert, rolling stony billows as far as the eye could reach. Then came all sorts of well remembered nooks: the valley of Repentance, narrow and shady, a refreshing oasis amid calcined fields; the wood of Les Trois Bons-Dieux, with hard, green, varnished ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... that the difference of the languages required a different mode of versification. The first strophe is eminently happy: in the second he has a little strayed from Pindar's meaning, who says, "if thou, my soul, wishest to speak of games, look not in the desert sky for a planet hotter than the sun; nor shall we tell of nobler games than those of Olympia." He is sometimes too paraphrastical. Pindar bestows upon Hiero an epithet, which, in one word, signifies "delighting in horses;" a word which, in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... "If a robber should assault, or a wild beast attack, or hunger or thirst or cold afflict, one fleeing in the desert and mountains, or a storm or hurricane drown one making haste through the seas in precipitate navigation, Christ beholds in him His soldier, wherever he may be fighting; and He gives the reward to him who dies persecuted for the name of His honor, which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... revealed to us by his books, John Shirwood, Bishop of Durham, 1483-93. He was an adherent of Neville whom we mentioned as the patron of Emmanuel of Constantinople; and having risen to prosperity as Neville rose, he did not desert his patron when Fortune's wheel went round. It does not appear that he was educated in Italy; but for a number of years he was in Rome, as a lawyer engaged in the Papal court; and to his good service there as King's proctor he probably owed his advancement to Durham. Whilst at Rome, he bought ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... uttered his words expressed proud irony. Thus Satan would have spoken, tempting a famished one in the desert. ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... the wreck of the past, which hath perished,[x] Thus much I at least may recall, It hath taught me that what I most cherished Deserved to be dearest of all: In the Desert a fountain is springing,[y][81] In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... once more; but as they crossed the busy river all his light-heartedness seemed suddenly to desert him; the questions he had been vainly asking himself earlier that day were reiterated in his brain. Where was she? What had become of her? His hands clasped closely. A red spot burned ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... health had returned. His cheeks were ruddy, his dark eyes clear and bright, his tall form erect and sturdy. Moreover the affectionate care his new friends had given him and his interest in the girl filled his heart with the happiness which is the rain of youth and without which it becomes an arid desert. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... for Truth, weary wanderers, athirst in the desert—are waiting and watching for rest and drink. Give them a cup of cold water in Christ's name, and never fear the consequences. What if the old dragon sends forth a new flood, to drown the Christ-idea? He can neither drown your voice with its roar, nor again ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... think," said he, gripping the back of a chair and looking down at her fiercely, "to think that a girl who can earn nine hundred dollars a year teaching school, and stay at home and do her duty by her family besides, should plan to desert her mother outright—now she's old and sick! Of course I can't stop you! You're of age, and children nowadays have no sense of natural obligation after they're grown up. You can go, of course, and disgrace the family as you propose—but you needn't expect to have me consent to it or approve ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... was too young, and he wished I had heard nothing about it. We are to go on as if nothing had happened, and I know they think we shall forget all about it! As if we could! Not that I wish it to be different. I know it would be wicked to desert papa and mamma while she is so unwell. The truth is, Humfrey,' and her voice sank, 'that it cannot be ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... walled with steel, Shot fiery avalanches That shivered hope and made the sturdiest reel. Yet peach-bloom bright as April saw Blushed there anew, in blood that flowed O'er faces white with death-dealt awe; And ruddy flowers of warfare grew, Though withering winds as of the desert blew, Far at the right while Ewell and Early, Plunging at Slocum and Wadsworth and Greene, Thundered in onslaught consummate and surly; Till trembling nightfall crept between And whispered of rest from the heat of the whelming strife. But unto those forsaken of life ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... again, even after disenchantment; and the better and the purer the man is, the more sacred is the appeal to him of woman's weakness. Because he is strong, and she is weak, he feels that it would be unmanly to desert her; and, if there ever was any thing for which John thanked his sister, it was when she went over and spent hours with his wife, patiently listening to her complainings, and soothing her as if she had been a petted child. All the circle of friends, ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... beloved "Little Women," or some other of her favourites. Reading was the sole sitting-down occupation that Cricket did not think was intolerably stupid, and a sheer waste of time. Fortunately, she always had boundless resources of amusement within herself, and she would not have been lonely on a desert island. ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... to hold her forever: for when she is really a woman, and not merely a female, when she has a rich soul and an abounding vitality, she is made for so many things which she cannot accomplish alone and with none to help her!... A man is much less lonely, even when he is most alone: he can people the desert with his own thoughts: and when he is lonely in married life he can more easily put up with it, for he notices it less, and can always live in the soliloquy of his own thoughts. And it never occurs to him that the sound of his voice going on imperturbably babbling in ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... streamed down his face and neck. Carefully, yet with no thought of pain to himself, Gale tried to pull the cactus joint away. It was as firm as if it had been nailed there. That was the damnable feature of the barbed thorns: once set, they held on as that strange plant held to its desert life. Ladd began to writhe, and sweat mingled with the blood on his face. He cursed and raved, and his movements made it almost impossible ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... leave the other free and single; and there is reason to believe that female birds during the breeding-season are especially liable to premature death. Again, birds which have had their nests destroyed, or barren pairs, or retarded individuals, would easily be induced to desert their mates, and would probably be glad to take what share they could of the pleasures and duties of rearing offspring although not their own. (7. See White ('Nat. Hist. of Selborne,' 1825, vol. i. p. 140) ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... corner of a dock near a fashionable white-bait house for the edification of man. Thousands of years have passed away since the first junk was built on this model, and the last junk ever launched was no better for that waste and desert of time. The mimic eye painted on their prows to assist them in finding their way, has opened as wide and seen as far as any actual organ of sight in all the interval through the whole immense extent of that strange country. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... shouted the Earl; 'Tostig will not desert his friends and go over to his foes. He and his friends will die on this spot like men, or will win ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... Mrs. Mostyn, "are you going to desert the old woman for the young one, or are you going to stay and see my gardens and have tea? That is right. Good-bye, my dearest Jane. Give my dear love to Cissy, and tell her to come over and see me—but I shall have a glimpse of her ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... presently came out upon the rim of the last slope. A long league of green slanted below them, breaking up into straggling lines of trees and groves that joined the cedars, and these in turn stretched on and down in gray-black patches to the desert, that glittering and bare, with streaks of somber hue, faded ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... great war, and the King had many soldiers, but gave them small pay, so small that they could not live upon it, so three of them agreed among themselves to desert. One of them said to the others, "If we are caught we shall be hanged on the gallows; how shall we manage it?" Another said, "Look at that great cornfield, if we were to hide ourselves there, no one could find us; the troops are not ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... is not a hundred miles from London, yet "far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife." A green, well-wooded valley, in the midst of those far-stretching, cold-looking Cotswold Hills, it is like an oasis in the desert. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... and suffering. It may be there are not many people who know that up here at the top end of the world there is a country of forest and stream twenty times as large as the State of Ohio, and in which the population per square mile is less than that of the Great African Desert. And it's all because everyone must live off the game. Everything goes back to that. Let something happen, some little thing—a migration of game, a case of measles. The Indians will die if there are not white men near to help them. ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... she said, a joyful light in her eyes that made her quite a different person. "Hugo will probably go back to his old position, but I—oh, I could not desert Three Towers now after all you girls have done ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... minutes in surveying them and the pioneers. He had traveled many miles, and been through some singularly stirring scenes since he last looked upon Martinsville, but the gracious Being that had protected him all his life, did not desert him in his extremity, and the frame was as supple and free from weakness or injury as when he faced the ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... more simple and innocent than they average. I've seen your charmer, and I admit that she is a fine creature. As far as looks go, you show as much judgment as any man in town, but there your wits desert you. Girls in her position are not nice as to terms when they can greatly better themselves. You have money enough to lodge her like a princess compared with her present ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... he struck one full deep chord and began singing softly the "Bedouin Love-song," "From the desert I come to thee." The refrain floated ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... see you arisen from darkness, and one with the light. This desire reaches out to all rational beings, but much more to you three, concerning whom I have had the greatest sorrow, and marvel more at your fault than at all the others who have shared it. For did all desert their father, you should have been such sons as strengthened the father, showing the truth. Notwithstanding that the father might have treated you with nothing but reproof, you ought not therefore to have assumed the lead, denying his holiness ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... fruits of their agricultural labours. The land on the Caura, for the most part a virgin soil, is extremely fertile. There are pasturages for more than 15,000 beasts; but the poor inhabitants have neither horses nor horned cattle. More than five-sixths of the banks of the Caura are either desert, or occupied by independent and savage tribes. The bed of the river is twice choked up by rocks: these obstructions occasion the famous Raudales of Mura and of Para or Paru, the latter of which has a portage, because it cannot be passed by canoes. At the time of the expedition of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... limitation on this one, I understand, since I have to be fairly near its object. If I lock it in a steel box and drop it in the desert, I'll guarantee it won't bother anybody. I don't suppose you'd have a shot at stealing the other ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... have yet to see what will be the end of this cruel conflict. Let us not desert our suffering friend and his ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... high noon in the desert, but there was no dazzling sunlight. Over the earth hung a twilight, a yellow-pink softness that flushed across the sky like the approach of a shadow, covering everything yet concealing nothing, creeping steadily onward, yet seemingly still, until, pressing low over the earth, it took on changing ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... be no just grounds to doubt it. I know—I knew—Dunwoodie, you would never desert us in the hour of our greatest need!" The violence of her feelings prevailed, and the agitated girl found relief in ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... him—of the beauty of things seen, of things plastic, beauty of the human form; beauty of far-distant lands and the varied pageant of their aspect and history; of great rivers flowing seaward; of tombs by the wayside; of the glorious terror of the desert's naked face; of languorous fountain-cooled gardens, close hid in the burning heart of ancient cities; beauty of sound, beauty of words and phrases, above all, of the eternal beauty of youth and the illimitable expectation and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... And when they looked towards the place where they were wont to see cattle, and herds, and dwellings, they saw nothing now, neither house, nor beast, nor smoke, nor fire, nor man, nor dwelling; but the houses of the court empty, and desert, and uninhabited, without either man, or beast within them. And truly all their companions were lost to them, without their knowing aught of what had befallen them, save those ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... gain in Servia. Austria-Hungary mobilized against Servia and not against Russia and there was no ground for an immediate action on the part of Russia. I further added that in Germany one could not understand any more Russia's phrase that "she could not desert her brethren in Servia", after the horrible crime of Sarajevo. I told him finally he need not wonder if Germany's army ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... pause, "how did you back out when you parted with your wife?" "You may well say 'back out,'" said he. "I was taken slap aback—it came over me like a clap of thunder. I was half inclined to play the shy cock and desert, and had it not been for the advice of the good old man, I should have been mad enough to have destroyed my prospects in the Service for ever. Now," said he, "how do you feel?" "A little qualmish," said I, "and I'll take a good stiff glass of grog ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... Westward, as it fell thilke tyde, The brother which was hote Cham Upon his part Aufrique nam. Japhet Europe tho tok he, Thus parten thei the world on thre. 580 Bot yit ther ben of londes fele In occident as for the chele, In orient as for the hete, Which of the poeple be forlete As lond desert that is unable, For it mai noght ben habitable. The water eke hath sondri bounde, After the lond wher it is founde, And takth his name of thilke londes Wher that it renneth on the strondes: 590 Bot thilke See which hath no wane Is ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... in history had had his dreams—and what was wrong with dreams, after all?—so completely gratified? What child, envisioning a desert island all his own could imagine that his island would be the whole world? Together Johnson and the Earth would grow ...
— The Most Sentimental Man • Evelyn E. Smith
... of the caravanseras in the desert. They stand solitary and unsupported, and are always ready to crumble ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... we had not, would not the sense and the satire of it be delectable? A great deal has been left out: the chapter is, for Rabelais, rather a long one. The momentary doubt of the usually undoubting Picrochole as to what they shall drink in the desert, allayed at once by a beautiful scheme of commissariat camels and elephants,[99] which would have done credit to the most modern A.S.C., is very capital. There is, indeed, an unpleasant Echephron[100] who points the old moral of Cineas to Pyrrhus himself. But Picrochole rebuffs him with the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... disappointed in you altogether, Harry. I have looked upon you as being a real friend of Frank, and now you desert him directly his enemy says a few soft words to you. I despise such friendship, and I don't want to have anything more to ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... off to see the goose in spectacles, and was pressed into the service of King Corny for many hours afterwards, to assist in searching for its eggs. One of the Black Islands was a bare, high, pointed, desert rock, in which the sea-fowl built; and here, in the highest point of rock, this Solan goose had deposited some of her eggs, instead of leaving them in nests on the ground, as she usually does. The more dangerous ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... It is difficult to realise that probably no man, white or black, has ever set foot in the forest a few hundred yards away, and yet we are travelling smoothly along a steel railroad through a tractless desert of trees propelled by a modern steam locomotive. The line does not pass near a single native village, for this part is not thickly populated and the only creatures whose paths are interrupted, are the ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... leaving the house—we conversed for five minutes—we parted—she went out—her last words being that she would return at half-past one o'clock; and not long after that time, if ever mimic bells—bells of rejoicing, or bells of mourning, are heard in desert spaces of the air, and (as some have said) in unreal worlds, that mock our own, and repeat, for ridicule, the vain and unprofitable motions of man, then too surely, about this hour, began to toll the funeral knell of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... careful. If he were to invent too much they might denounce him as a traitor to the "Hills" in general. If he were to tell them too little they would lose interest and might very well desert him at the first pinch. He must feel for the middle way and upset ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... three at Ludlow is very important; for Prince Edward now, at the instance of Gloucester, definitely pledged himself to the cause of reform and good government. It may be said for the Red Earl of Gloucester that in deserting Simon he did not desert his cause. To ensure the future of English liberties it was no longer necessary to support De Montfort: "henceforth it was not Simon but Edward who best represents the cause of orderly ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... no master. He was in the habit of attaching himself to a corps, and continuing faithful so long as they fed him well and did not beat him. A kick or a blow with the flat of a sword would cause him to desert this regiment, and pass on to another. He was unusually intelligent; and whatever position of the corps in which he might be the was serving, he did not abandon it, or confound it with any other, and in the thickest of the fight was always near the banner he had chosen; ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... DESERT. An extensive tract, either absolutely sterile, or having no other vegetation than small patches of grass or shrubs. Many portions of the present deserts ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the lofty ceilings whence darkness fell. The flooring of red-colored tiles was cold and hard to the feet; before the chairs there were merely a few threadbare little rugs of poverty-stricken aspect, and athwart this desert all the winds of heaven blew through ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... went on; "but be careful. Your argument, while reflecting on Italian sensuality, seems to me to lean towards German idealism, which is no less fatal heresy. If men of imagination and good sense, like you, desert one camp only to join the other; if they cannot keep to the happy medium between two forms of extravagance, we shall always be exposed to the satire of the sophists, who deny all progress, who compare the genius of man to this tablecloth, which, being too short ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... carried me away in spirit into a desert: and I saw a woman seated on a crimson-colored wild beast, full of names of reviling, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and crimson, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... "you have been so true and faithful, and have shown so much regard for me, that I know you would not willingly desert me, and yet I do not like to lead you into danger unnecessarily; but tell me, do you think we could manage to get away ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... but when she stood in the loose wreckage of it—how should she use her freedom? If it was a cage, at least it was a comfortable cage; at least it was better than the howling darkness of the unfamiliar desert beyond. ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... sunlight fell into that little white, glistening, frozen desert, and illuminated it with a cold and dazzling flame; no living thing appeared among this ocean of hills; there was nothing more in this immeasurable solitude, and no noise disturbed ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... assisting in the examination of German prisoners, was surprised when an American prisoner was brought before him. "Where do you belong?" asked the captain. "I am with an aerial squadron in the south of France" replied the prisoner. "I walked fourteen days to get here." "Did you desert?" asked Captain Lauer. "No," the man replied, "I want to fight. That is what I came to France for. When I get home the folks will ask what I did in the war and when I answer 'worked' they will say 'Why the devil didn't ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... truth is, that I have been all my life trying to harden my heart, and have not yet quite succeeded—though there are great hopes—and you do not know how it sunk with your departure. What adds to my regret is having seen so little of you during your stay in this crowded desert, where one ought to be able to bear thirst like a camel,—the springs are so few, and most of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... inhabitant of England cannot dream of, and against which no cloak could furnish protection, began. In the midst of these were the troops embarked in their new and straitened transports, and each division, after an exposure of ten hours, landed upon a small desert spot of earth, called Pine Island, where it was determined to collect the whole army, previous to its crossing ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... land outlines had then begun to assume roughly the same appearance they do to-day, though the British Islands were still joined to the European continent, while the Baltic Sea was non-existent, and the Sahara desert then formed part of the ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... Saracens, and I never could bring myself to inquire whence that strange food was obtained. A stoup of English ale, too, is worth all the Cyprus wines, especially when the Cyprus wines are half full of the sand of the desert. Pah! it makes my throat dry to think of those horrible meals. So you have brought Cnut and your four archers safely ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... oathes and his surety he should die* Granted him love, on this conditioun, That evermore mine honour and renown Were saved, bothe *privy and apert;* *privately and in public* This is to say, that, after his desert, I gave him all my heart and all my thought (God wot, and he, that *other wayes nought*), *in no other way* And took his heart in change of mine for aye. But sooth is said, gone since many a day, A true wight and a ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... where persons have been bitten by it, but it is always well to remember that the teeth themselves may be in a condition to produce blood-poisoning, which might cause death without the assistance of any particular toxic venom. The rattlesnake, however, which is rather too common in the desert, is a different sort of a chap. If he strikes you, you may just as well make your will, and chirp your death song, as to monkey with physicians, and squander some of the good wealth which may ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... are crocodiles in it half-a-mile long," cried Griggs. "We're going to have our share. Then it's beyond the salt desert?" ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... the empty hills. He leaned upon the parapet waiting, with the faintest hope that the diabolical boy would tire of his joke, return, and set him free. Again and again he asked himself who was this boy who had recognised him in this Scotch desert. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... come over, post-haste, to report three cases among his men; and at sun-down the little mountain battery, with its three subalterns and full camp equipment, marched out into the open desert, scornfully overlooked by that Pisgah height of the Frontier, the Takti Suliman, whose square-cut crags were printed in sharp outline upon a ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... culture, but it is no longer. This culture was not able to bear the light of the eighteenth century, still less that of the nineteenth, and now, in this twentieth century, it breaks out and threatens us—this unorganized mob, this mob of Asia; like the sands of the desert it would sweep down over our harvest fields. That we already know; we are already experiencing it. That, too, the Americans know, for every one who has stood upon the ground of our civilization and who with a keen glance regards ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed, that mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had resolved to maintain the strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the ship reached port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the speediest end to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing—namely, not to sing out for whales, in case any should be discovered. For, spite of her leak, and spite of all her ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the history of the island we observe that the movement of colonization has been from east to west; and that here, as everywhere in the Spanish colonies, the places first peopled are now the most desert. The first establishment of the whites was in 1511 when, according to the orders of Don Diego Columbus, together with the conquistador and poblador Velasquez, he landed at Puerto de Palmas, near Cape Maysi, then called Alfa y Omega, and subdued the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... enlistment in the "Lost and Strayed," when four of its companies were pioneering shortly after the war, where even the paymaster couldn't find them. Such of them as could be found in course of years were gathered up and sent to San Francisco for further exploration in other desert lands, but Oolahan and four of his fellows of Company "A," not having returned from wagon escort duty, were finally dropped as dead or deserted (those were days wherein nobody much cared which), whereas they were merely drunk at Cerbat. ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... hath joy of me, riding the Tartar glissade, And one, far faring o'er orient islands Whose blood yet glints with my blade's accolade; North, west, east, I fling you my last hallooing, Last love to the breasts where my own has bled; Through the reach of the desert my soul leaps pursuing My star where it rises a Star ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... the flash on his forehead, By the hope in those eyes wide and steady, He was leagues in the desert already, Driving the flocks ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... this state of the atmosphere, known as the Fata Morgana of Sicily, the Mirage of the Desert, the Spectre of the Brocken, and the more common exhibitions of halos, coronae, and mock suns. The Mountain House at Catskill has repeatedly been seen brightly pictured on the clouds below. Rainbows are also due to this condition ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... was the dining-table that held the center of the stage, and that held everything else as well. The dinner, through its sequence of soup, meat, salad, and desert, was displayed in lavish hospitality. Cove etiquette evidently demanded that no square inch of ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... Climate: mostly desert; mild to cool winters with dry, hot, cloudless summers; northern mountainous regions along Iranian and Turkish borders experience cold winters with occasionally heavy snows that melt in early spring, sometimes causing extensive flooding in central ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... to languish out the remainder of life in a desolate wilderness, without the possession, or even hope, of any domestic comfort, and cut off from all commerce with mankind, except the naked savages who prowled the desert, and who perhaps were some of the most rude ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... down from under me, and left me fighting with the waves for life and Martha, I was cast ashore on a desert island," began Crippen fluently. "There I remained for nearly three years, when I was rescued by a barque bound for New South Wales. There I met a man from Poole who told me you were dead. Having no further interest in the land of my ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... They danc'd then till they were weary; and afterwards retired to another large Room, where they found the Tables spread and furnished with all the most seasonable cold Meat; which was succeeded by the choicest Fruits, and the richest Desert of Sweetmeats that Luxury could think on, or at least that this Town could afford. The Wines were all most excellent in their Kind; and their Spirits flew about thro' every Corner of the House: There was scarce a Spark sober in the whole ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... read the Conferences of Cassien, the 'Holy Ladder' of Climacus, the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert, or ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... had dwindled away. People left before the sermon to go to Gwynplaine. "Chaos Vanquished," the Green Box, the Laughing Man, all the abominations of Baal, eclipsed the eloquence of the pulpit. The voice crying in the desert, vox clamantis in deserto, is discontented, and is prone to call for the aid of the authorities. The clergy of the five parishes complained to the Bishop of London, who complained ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... come not near Now—not this time desert thy cloudy place To scare me, thus employed, with that pure face! I need not fear this audience, I make free With them, but then this is no place for thee! The thunder-phrase of the Athenian, grown Up out of memories of Marathon, Would echo like his own sword's grinding ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... made way for us as we passed and hooted in our rear. I felt the ridicule of my situation, but had too much gallantry to desert this fair one, who had sacrificed everything for me. Having wandered through the fair, we emerged, like another Adam and Eve, into unknown regions, and "had the world before us where to choose." Never was a more disconsolate pair seen in the soft valley of West End. The ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... was known also as the Land of the Seven Cities, from its seven bishoprics. When Coronado heard of the pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico, he may have confounded them with the towns of Oppas, and to this day the seven cities of Cibola are a legend of our desert. Harold's Norsemen were told by the wild Skraelings of Maine of a pale-faced people farther south, who walked in processions, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... parlour, I'd want someone to think it was beautiful. If I wrote a limerick, I'd want someone to think it was clever. I want appreciation, consideration, sympathy, affection! I'm starving for love, I'm dying for it, and I'd go across the desert on my knees for the man who could ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed |
