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Desert   /dˈɛzərt/  /dɪzˈərt/   Listen
Desert

noun
1.
Arid land with little or no vegetation.



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"Desert" Quotes from Famous Books



... led, it sacrificed much more than this; but at the time, he thought the price he named a high one, and he could not foresee that science and society would desert him in paying it. He, at least, took his education as a Darwinian in good faith. The Church was gone, and Duty was dim, but Will should take its place, founded deeply in interest and law. This was the result of five or six years in England; a result so ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... night, and if you do not shoot you are like a fish upon dry land. Lord Melbourne hardly feels equal to the exertion, and therefore thinks that he shall establish himself for the present at Melbourne, where he will be within reach of Trentham, Beau Desert,[137] Wentworth,[138] and Castle Howard,[139] if he likes to go to them. The only annoyance is that it is close to Lord and Lady G——, whom ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... face. It is a common attitude of inexperience, under like circumstances. Dr. Nash certainly had said to her that "the strength was well maintained." But do we not all of us accept that phrase as an ill-omen—a vulture in the desert? No—no! Look the facts in the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... dream, realisable only on the top rungs of the operatic ladder, which, later, she felt she was not destined to scale. None the less there are dreams that do come true, though usually, beforehand, there is a desert ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... Colmans plunged into the water. Instances of extraordinary penance abound, beside which the austerities of Simon Stylites almost pale. The Irish saints' love of solitude was also a very marked characteristic. Desert places and solitary islands of the ocean possessed an apparently wonderful fascination for them. The more inaccessible or forbidding the island the more it was in request as a penitential retreat. There ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous

... of the nature of her sentiments, I am determined to develop them clearly before I discover mine: if she loves as I do, even a perpetual exile here will be pleasing. The remotest wood in Canada with her would be no longer a desert wild; it would be the ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... out right at last'; he has such faith in the goodness of Providence. The sport of adverse circumstances, the plaything of the miserable beings sent to him from Zanzibar—he has been baffled and worried, even almost to the grave, yet he will not desert the charge imposed upon him by his friend Sir Roderick Murchison. To the stern dictates of duty, alone, has he sacrificed his home and ease, the pleasures, refinements, and luxuries of civilized life. His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... than enough to remove the ignominy of an unresisting surrender, pleasantly remarking to those who bore me along that to a person of philosophical poise the written destiny was as apparent in the falling leaf as in the rising sun, pointing the saying thus: "Although the Desert of Shan-tz is boundless, and mankind number a million million, yet in it Li-hing encountered his mother-in-law." Changing to meet another of our company setting forth with a club to make the venture, I was permitted ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... thought has not tended to clear up but rather to deepen the mystery of life in its relation to antecedent conditions; of fate in its relation to desert. Our common sense, as embodied in law, treats a man as responsible for the good or evil that he personally intends. This is no doubt an excellent practical rule, without which society could hardly exist at all; but looked at philosophically it does ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... lieth like the stars of heaven in the desert and hath no praise; Pain in the head and shivering like a scudding cloud turn unto ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... under no conditions is it so excruciating as in the midst of the ocean. The sight of water which you may not drink,—the very proximity of that element,—so near that you may touch it, and yet as useless to the assuaging of thirst as if it was the parched dust of the desert,— increases rather than alleviates the appetite. It is to no purpose, that you dip your fingers into the briny flood, and endeavour to cool your lips and tongue by taking it into the mouth. To swallow it is still worse. You might as well think to allay thirst by drinking liquid fire. The momentary ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... lava rock and sand for mile upon mile, to where the distant mountain ridges reached out and halted peremptorily the ugly sweep of it. The railroad gashed it boldly, after the manner of the iron trail of modern industry; but the trails of the desert dwellers wound through it diffidently, avoiding the rough crest of lava rock where they might, dodging the most aggressive sagebrush and dipping tentatively into hollows, seeking always the easiest way to reach some remote ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... now," said Mr. Rose, as he placed his smoking set in position near his own particular easy chair, "but in a day or two we'll have it looking like a little Paradise on earth. Just you wait, Miss Dolly, till you see this desert blossom like a rose,—like a whole Rose ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... this much more wonderful than the opera itself," observed his Excellency. The floor and wings were like great yellow spots, and the whole immense stage resembled a great, sandy desert. Vaudrey raised his head to gaze at the symmetrical arrangement of the chandeliers, as bright as rows of gas-jets, amongst the hangings of the friezes. A huge canvas at the back represented a sunlit Indian landscape, and ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... and disloyal persons at sundry places have enticed and procured soldiers to desert and absent themselves from their regiments, thereby weakening the strength of the armies and prolonging the war, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and cruelly exposing the gallant and faithful soldiers remaining in the ranks to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... prisoner. Instead of sending him to a camp, as the Huns do with most of our poor chaps they get, the Boches kept the sergeant with them, taking him from place to place. It was their idea, I believe, to either force him to desert and join them, or use him as a decoy—or perhaps make ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates

... Negotiations between the Irish Chiefs and the Besiegers The Capitulation of Limerick The Irish Troops required to make their Election between their Country and France Most of the Irish Troops volunteer for France Many of the Irish who had volunteered for France desert The last Division of the Irish Army sails from Cork for France State of Ireland after ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... contingent upon resolution of sovereignty issue Disputes: claimed and administered by Morocco, but sovereignty is unresolved and the UN is attempting to hold a referendum on the issue; the UN-administered cease-fire has been currently in effect since September 1991 Climate: hot, dry desert; rain is rare; cold offshore currents produce fog and heavy dew Terrain: mostly low, flat desert with large areas of rocky or sandy surfaces rising to small mountains in south and northeast Natural resources: phosphates, iron ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... secular, of fabulous value, within the walls of its great fortress-like cathedrals; Napoleon's soldiers over-ran the land, and brought with them rapine and destruction; so that in many a shrine, as at Montserrat, we still can see how in a few days they turned a Paradise into a desert. It is not only the West that has suffered. In China the rarest and loveliest wares and fabrics that the hand of man has wrought were stored in the Imperial Palace of Pekin; the savage military hordes of the West ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... soon stand my chance of being robbed in the stage, as be attacked here. Besides, I cannot make up my mind to desert my fellow passengers. It seems cowardly to send them off to be plundered without giving them a hint ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... she detected tactful inquiry in his last remark and roused herself painfully to make due explanations to her host. But he waved his hands at her, with the desert-man's courtesy which covers fine points better than ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... his experience is nil. He dreams, probably, of majestic storms, or heavenly calms, of coral islands, and palm groves, and foreign lands and peoples. If very imaginative, he will indulge in Malay pirates and wrecks, and lifeboats, and desert islands, on which he will always land safely, and commence a second edition of Robinson Crusoe. But he will scarcely think, till bitter experience compels him, of very long watches in dirty unromantic weather, of holy-stoning ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... the fact that he was employed on each of these occasions by the very persons—members of the Muscovy Company and others—who most would have desired to punish him had they believed that punishment was his just desert. That he did not testify against Hudson must count, therefore, as a strong point in Hudson's favor; so strong—his credibility and theirs being considered comparatively—that it goes far toward offsetting the testimony ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier

... Laurencine had to prove to the maids that she could hold the sunshade in one hand and push the doll's perambulator with the other. Finally, the procession of human beings and vehicles moved, munitioned, provisioned, like a caravan setting forth into the desert, the ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... indifferent to anything she thought. He prepared to lead the way down beyond the Sphinx, apparently into the desert. ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... God, gone forth to heal and bless. Calm lie the desert pools in a fair wilderness; Wind-shaken moves the reed, so moves His voice the soul, Sick folk surprised of joy, wax when they hear ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... Followers, Fauourers of my Right: If euer Bassianus, Csars Sonne, Were gracious in the eyes of Royall Rome, Keepe then this passage to the Capitoll: And suffer not Dishonour to approach Th' Imperiall Seate to Vertue: consecrate To Iustice, Continence, and Nobility: But let Desert in pure Election shine; And Romanes, fight for Freedome in your Choice. Enter Marcus Andronicus aloft with ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... tradesmen of the quarter with their wives and daughters-seemed highly enthusiastic: especially the women. He represented so perfectly the ideal of the shopkeeper imagination, that magnificent shepherd of the desert, who addressed lions with such an air of authority and tended his flocks in full evening dress. And so, despite their bourgeois bearing, their modest costumes and their expressionless shop-girl smiles, all those women, made up their little mouths ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... perfectly stunning beginning with that wild healing-chap in the far West. As it is now, you make nothing of it—it might have happened to anybody and it never came to anything, except that you went off into the wilderness and stayed alone. You should tell how you fasted with him in a desert, and how he told you secrets and imparted his healing power to you. Then get the reporters about you and talk queerly so that they can make a good story of it. Also live on rice and speak with an accent—any kind of accent would make you more interesting, Bernal. Then preach your ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... may be considered as the wonders of Egypt, is the temple of Jupiter Ammon in the midst of the Great Desert. This temple was situated at a distance of no less than twelve days' journey from Memphis, the capital of the Lower Egypt. The principal part of this space consisted of one immense tract of moving sand, so hot as to be intolerable to the sole of the foot, while the air was pregnant ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... of close-knitted hearts about to part that seized upon the company. Love can thrive on the bitter-sweet of that pain. It was a deeper sadness—the sadness that in evil hours seizes upon the individual soul and says: "You stand alone. From this desert place of the mind you can flee by the road of any trifling distraction, but into it no companion ever enters. You stand alone." "I myself," cries the soul of man, and recoils from that brink of infinite ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... "Desert my charming wife!" he replied. "Ask the hungry pauper, who turns his back upon the fragrant restaurant, if he deserts his dinner. You are as beautiful, as bright, as lovely as ever—you cannot think with what a sigh ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... disannulled the succession, according to those families out of which the high priests used to be made, they ordained certain unknown and ignoble persons for that office, that they might have their assistance in their wicked undertakings; for such as obtained this highest of all honors, without any desert, were forced to comply with those that bestowed it on them. They also set the principal men at variance one with another, by several sorts of contrivances and tricks, and gained the opportunity of doing what they pleased, by the mutual quarrels of those who might have obstructed ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... down] There was an old man, a venerable old man—Here, I've forgotten where it was, my dear madam—only it was in some desert spot. He had twelve daughters, my dear madam; each younger than the other! He didn't have the strength to work himself; his wife, too, was very old, the children were still small; and one has to eat and drink. What they had was used up ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky

... a jewel that will not pass current in statecraft," responded Cavendish. "Moreover, that the plotter should be plotted against is surely only his desert. But thou art a mere sailor, my Talbot, and these subtilties of policy are ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sun and moon, with as little meaning, and less comprehension! What impertinence it is for a woman like yourself,—vain, weak and worldly,—to assert your own will—your own thought and opinion—in the face of the Most High! What! YOU will desert the Church? YOU whose ancestors have for ages been devout servants of the faith? YOU, the last descendant of the Counts Hermenstein, a noble and loyal family, will degrade your birth by taking up with the rags and tags of humanity—the scarecrows of life? And by your sheer stupidity and obstinacy, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... Cadie, on the 6th of May, 1613, under the conduct of Sieur de la Saussaye. From there they proceeded to Port Royal, took the two missionaries, Biard and Masse, on board, and coasted along the borders of Maine till they came to Mount Desert, and finally determined to plant their colony on that island. A short time after the arrival of the colony, before they were in any condition for defence, Captain Samuel Argall, from the English colony in Virginia, suddenly appeared, and captured and transported ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... had listened wondering, for the violin had spoken to him of many things of which the girl who played it could know nothing. It had spoken of long perilous journeys and the faces of strange countries; of the silver way across moonlit seas; of the beckoning voices from the under edges of the desert. It had taken a deeper, a more mysterious tone. It had told of great joys, quite unattainable, and of great griefs too, eternal, and with a sort of nobility by reason of their greatness; and of many unformulated longings beyond the reach of words; but with never a single ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... as the flying come, In silence and in fear; They shook the depths of the desert gloom With their ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... stuff that Stella wore, her fair hair was brushed; indeed, had it not been for the sun blisters on her face and hands, one would scarcely have believed that this was the same child whom Indaba-zimbi and I had dragged for hour after hour through the burning, waterless desert. ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard

... to leeward long since, the shades of evening were gradually creeping up, and the sea and everything was covered with a purple haze, save where the racing waves rushed over each other in a mass of seething foam, that scintillated out coruscations of light—little oases of brightness in the desert of the deep. ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... some obscure situation; but you raised hopes only to prostrate them—and imaginings which have led to my destruction. Sacred is the duty of a parent, and heavy must be the account of those who desert their children, and are required by Heaven to render up an account of the important trust. Couldst thou, oh! father, but now behold thy son! God Almighty!—but I will not curse you, father! No, no"—and I burst into tears, as I leant against the damp walls ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... saying something emphatic and vulgar—"Well, I don't at all events want you!" What somehow happened, nevertheless, the pity of it being greater than the irritation—the sadness, to her vivid sense, of his being so painfully astray, wandering in a desert in which there was nothing to nourish him—was that his error amounted to positive wrongdoing. She was moreover so acquainted with quite another sphere of usefulness for him that her having suffered him to insist almost convicted her of indelicacy. Why hadn't ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... already prepared a very considerable force to invade the Gallic provinces on the side of Rhaetia; and though he could not expect any assistance from Licinius, he was flattered with the hope that the legions of Illyricum, allured by his presents and promises, would desert the standard of that prince, and unanimously declare themselves his soldiers and subjects. [49] Constantine no longer hesitated. He had deliberated with caution, he acted with vigor. He gave a private audience to the ambassadors, who, in the name of the senate and people, conjured him to deliver ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... certain acts were passed forbidding a husband to seize his wife's earnings and neglect her[400]; and she was actually allowed to keep her own wages after the desertion of her lord. Before that time he might desert his wife repeatedly, and return from time to time to take away her earnings and sell everything she had acquired. An act in 1886 (49 and 50 Vict., c. 52) gave magistrates the power to order a husband to pay his wife a weekly ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... marking a growth rapid and gigantic, it is our duty to make new efforts for the preservation, improvement, and civilization of the native inhabitants. The hunter state can exist only in the vast uncultivated desert. It yields to the more dense and compact form and greater force of civilized population; and of right it ought to yield, for the earth was given to mankind to support the greatest number of which it is capable, and no tribe or people have a right to withhold from the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... she knew that the boy had been cast out to perish, and she had not hoped to see his face again. She feared, perhaps, that it was but one of the happy visions with which her excited fancy had often deceived her in the solitude of the desert or in prison; but when she felt his hand warm within her own and heard his little eloquence of childish love, she began to know that ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... this desert is less dangerous than formerly, it is impossible to protect it effectually, without establishing a small body of horsemen or dromedaries at Adjeroud; and it is a discredit to the government of Egypt, that this is not done. The well of Emshash affords a seasonable supply of ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... thought then: There is Poppaea, who cast aside two husbands for Nero, there is Calvia Crispinilla, there is Nigidia, there are almost all whom I know, save only Pomponia; they trafficked with faith and with oaths, but she and my own one will not desert, will not deceive, and will not quench the fire, even though all in whom I place trust should desert and deceive me. Hence I said to thee in my soul, How can I show gratitude to thee, if not with love and honor? Didst thou feel that in Antium I spoke and conversed with ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... for a taste in aphorisms," Demetrios replied. He said, "Now I embark." Yet he delayed, and spoke with unaccustomed awkwardness. "Come, you who have been generous till this! will you compel me to desert you here—quite penniless?" ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... springing forward and catching him by the arm. "Have you a wife, a child, a sister? If so, listen! you can understand me! I am, as you see old, very old! I have scars, also, all in front; honorable scars, of wounds inflicted by the Moorish assagays, of Jugurtha's desert horsemen—by the huge broad swords of the Teutones and Cimbri. My son, my only son fell, as an eagle-bearer, in the front rank of the hastati of the brave tenth legion—for we had wealth in those days, and both fought and voted in the centuries ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... leave to-day," said Hartledon, entreatingly, feeling an instant prevision that with the departure of Thomas Carr all his courage would ignominiously desert him. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... Giovanni Caboto the Genoese was leaving the best home of scientific navigation for the best home of sea-borne trade. His very name was no bad credential. Surnames often come from nicknames; and for a Genoese to be called Il Caboto was as much as for an Arab of the Desert to be known to his people as The Horseman. Cabottaggio now means no more than coasting trade. But before there was any real ocean commerce it referred to the regular sea-borne trade of the time; and Giovanni Caboto must have either upheld an exceptional family tradition or struck out an ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... they afraid, indeed, that had I not forced them to hold to their course they would have turned and rowed up stream, or beached the boat and fled into the desert. But I cried to them to steer on northwards, for thus perhaps we should sooner be done with this horror, and they obeyed me. Ever as we went the hue of the water grew more red, almost to blackness, till at last it seemed as though we were travelling through ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... of the Secamp girls, Mrs. Windibrook attributed it to their great privations in the alkali desert. "One day," continued Mrs. Windibrook, "when their father was ill with fever and ague, they drove the cattle twenty miles to water through that dreadful poisonous dust, and when they got there their lips were cracked ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... which succeed intoxication, are meant to warn against excess. On the first occasion they are simply corrective; in every succeeding one they assume more and more a penal character in proportion as the conscience carries with them the sense of ill desert. ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... quality to bring forth the delicacy of his wit and the breadth of his intellect. As for the two women, they had long been counted among the cleverest in society. This evening was like a halt in the oasis of a desert,—a rare enjoyment, and well appreciated by these four persons, habitually victimized to the endless caution entailed by the world of salons and politics. There are beings who have the privilege of passing among men like beneficent stars, whose ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac

... any means a desert island. It was inhabited by intelligent, kindly people, who kept milk-giving cows and hens which laid eggs. It was well cultivated. Grapes and wheat grew there. There were fish in the surrounding sea, and the islanders possessed boats and nets. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... or uninspired student. To a grander intellect these historical delineations are not maps but pictures: they compose a forest wilderness, veined and threaded by sylvan lawns, 'dark with horrid shades,' like Milton's haunted desert in the 'Paradise Regained,' at many a point looking back to the towers of vanishing Jerusalem, and like Milton's desert, crossed dimly at uncertain intervals by forms doubtful and (considering the character of such ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... of the clear, long- enduring, searching eyes, and that strange look of second-sight upon him which those only have who live apart from men, under the sky. It is a look you can never mistake. Sailors have it, and shepherds, and dwellers in the desert. The eye sees through you—into you, and beyond you. It is almost impossible for any person to be either so arresting in himself or possessed of such utterance as will cause the weathered eye to check its scanning of distance ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... life which will bear favorable comparison with Ben-Hur and other high-class books of the same style. The description of the flight of the children of Israel from Egypt, and their subsequent wanderings in the desert, are placed before the reader in ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... houseless in that lost 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

... height, heels together, and leg well out of danger, and gently let your avenging rod fall along his spine. This, by the way, is the only occasion, except when you are acknowledging a hit, on which you may be allowed to desert the first position for legs ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn

... "As travellers on the desert, spent and worn, see far across the sand the palm-tree's green that marks life-giving wells, so Ederyn hailed this summons to the king. The soul-consuming thirst that long had urged him on grew fiercer as the well of consummation ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston

... perceptual illusion the sense is in real contact with the right object, but it is only on account of the presence of certain other conditions that it is associated with wrong characteristics or misapprehended as a different object. Thus when the sun's rays are perceived in a desert and misapprehended as a stream, at the first indeterminate stage the visual sense is in real contact with the rays and thus far there is no illusion so far as the contact with a real object is concerned, but at the second determinate stage it is owing to the similarity of certain of its characteristics ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... desert her in her old age. He will desert none of us, if we only trust in him," said ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... in the practice of all virtues, and was endowed with the gift of miracles. A wicked strumpet of Caesarea, called Zoe, hearing his sanctity much extolled, at the instigation of the devil undertook to pervert him. She feigned herself a poor woman, wandering in the desert late at night, and ready to perish. By this pretext she prevailed on Martinianus to let her remain that night in his cell. Towards morning she threw aside her rags, put on her best attire, and going in to Martinianus, told ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... books; yet though this pipe after midnight is nearly done, and the fire too, I have not been able to settle on a book. The books are like the ashes on the hearth. And listen to the wind, with its unpromising sounds from the wide and empty desert places! What does any of these old books know about me, in the midst of those portents of a new age? We are all outward bound, and this is the first night of a long voyage, its ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... there be, who, through want of clear intelligence of our course, or tendernesses of affection towards us, cannot conceive so well of our way as we could desire, we would entreat such not to despise us, nor to desert us in their prayers and affections; but to consider rather that they are so much the more bound to expresse the bowels of their compassion towards us; remembering alwaies that both Nature and Grace doth binde us to relieve and rescue, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... times needs advice from her blind, but smiling, mother. There comes a moment in life when moral beauty seems more urgent, more penetrating, than intellectual beauty; when all that the mind has treasured must be bathed in the greatness of soul, lest it perish in the sandy desert, forlorn as a river that seeks in vain ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... towards the great walk, while her hands carried on her work. As her mother delayed her return, she went from the wall down to the gate, and out to the low river shore where the bulrushes swayed in the gentle south wind. A stonechat of the desert sat on a rock by the river, wagged its tail, and flapped its wings, as though it wished to show something which it saw; and chattered at the sight of something strange among the bulrushes. High up in the air a hawk ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... a more favorable site in a warmer latitude, Champlain, who already had explored a part of the coast and had visited and named the island of Mount Desert, set out in a small vessel with Monts and about thirty men on a voyage of discovery. They followed the shores of Maine closely, and by the middle of July were off Cape Ann. Then they entered {109} ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... swiftly through the hot thin air. The noonday sun blazed down upon it and the desert world below. All about was the solemn silence of death. No living thing appeared either in the air or on the drab, gray earth. Only the aircraft itself displayed any signs of life. The sky, blue as indigo, held not the shadow of a cloud, ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... the largest in the world; and a very fine choir. The acoustics of this immense and peculiarly-shaped building are most perfect. The Temple Gentiles are not allowed to enter. Outside the irrigation limits the country has a most desolate, desert, hopeless aspect. What nerve the Mormons had to penetrate ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... begins, come on up with your men without asking leave. Report every half-hour. I'll be on the bridge, of course. If I can pick up a steamship I'll call her and desert ship; if not—well, we're somewhere outside the Winter Quarter light-ship. I'll need about five hours of the speed we're making to pick up the light vessel and beach the yacht in the lee of Assateague; maybe not quite five ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... behaviour to you, sir, sufficiently justifies the appellation, his own vanity, or perhaps some wicked views, might make him boast of a falsehood; for if there had been any reality in Miss Western's love to him, the greatness of her fortune would never have suffered him to desert her, as you are well informed he hath. Lastly, sir, I promise you I would not myself, for any consideration, no, not for the whole world, consent to marry this young lady, if I was not persuaded she had all the passion for me which I desire she ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... from the gate and heaved a great sigh of relief at his narrow escape. Or was it regret? Johnny himself did not know, but he called it relief because that was the most comfortable emotion a young man may take away with him into desert loneliness. ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... libertinism of my protector inspired, daily become more painful.—And, indeed, I soon did recollect it as such with agony, when his sudden death (for he had recourse to the most exhilarating cordials to keep up the convivial tone of his spirits) again threw me into the desert of human society. Had he had any time for reflection, I am certain he would have left the little property in his power to me: but, attacked by the fatal apoplexy in town, his heir, a man of rigid morals, brought his wife with him to take possession of the house and ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... Jesuits continued going from lodge to lodge, and in this way Onondaga gained vague knowledge of the plots outside the fort. The French could venture out only at the risk of their lives, and spent the winter as closely confined as prisoners of war. Of the ten drilled soldiers, nine threatened to desert. One night an unseen hand plunged through the dark, seized the sentry, and dragged him from the gate. The sentry drew his sword and shouted, "To arms!" A band of Frenchmen sallied from the gates with swords and muskets. In the tussle the sentry was rescued, and gifts were sent out ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... the future will not be a desert, tree-less country. However, immediate measures to save our remaining trees must be developed. The greater part of our virgin timber has already been felled. The aftermath forests, which succeed the virgin stand, generally ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack

... outrageously mad; though just then composed and quiet. "Brother," said he to him, "have you any commands for me? for I am going to return to my own house, God having been pleased, of His infinite goodness and mercy, without any desert of mine, to restore me to my senses. I am now sound and well, for with God nothing is impossible; put your whole trust and confidence in Him, and he will doubtless restore you also. I will take care to send you some choice food; and fail not to eat it: for I have reason to believe, from ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... I was thinking of the same thing, and I have made up my mind to cut and run on the first opportunity, and I advise you to do the same thing. Indeed, I should not be happy if I left you behind; in truth, I would not run unless you promise to desert also." ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston

... defunte est ma belle, Prenez, s'il vous plait, ma selle, Et ma bride, et mon cheval incomparable; Car il ne faut rien dire, Mais vite, vite m'ensevelir Dans un desert sec ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... not lost The warm noon ends in frost And worldly tongues of promise, Like sheep-bells die from us On the desert hills cloud-crossed: Yet through the silence shall Pierce the death-angel's call, And "Come up hither," recover all. Heart, wilt thou go? I go! Broken hearts ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... worth three regiments untrained. Every thing about these troops is despicable, except the Cossack himself, who is a man of fine person, powerful, adroit, subtle, a good horseman, and indefatigable; he is born on horseback, and bred among civil wars; he is in the field, what the Bedouin is in the desert, or the Barbet in the Alps; he never enters a house, never lies in a bed; and he always changes his bivouac at sunset, that he may not pass a night in a place where the enemy ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... God promises to his weary people, on their pilgrimage to Zion, that "in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert" (Isa. 35:6, and often elsewhere), with obvious allusion to the miraculous supplies of water furnished to the Israelites in their journey through the Arabian desert to the land of Canaan. The water here promised is the water of life, and not literal ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... along the strip of sandy Down That just divides the Desert from the sown, Where name of Shop and Study is forgot,— And Peace to Croker on ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton

... and when I have given him the dispatches necessary for his establishment, you shall go thither and be queen. In the mean time I am going to order an apartment for you in my palace, where you shall be treated according to your desert." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.

... man. In that character you pity poor Mr. Little, but you blame him a little because he fled from trouble, and left his wife and child in it. To you, who are Guy Raby—mind that, please—it seems egotistical and weak to desert your wife and child even for the grave." (The widow buried her face and wept. Twenty-five years do something to withdraw the veil the heart has cast over the judgment.) "But, whatever you feel, you utter only regret, and open your arms to your sister. She writes back in an agony, for which, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... Britain, which of old persecuted, scourged, and exiled our fugitive parents from their native shores, now pursues us their guiltless children, with unrelenting severity; and whereas this, then savage and uncultivated desert, was purchased by the toil and treasure, or acquired by the blood and valour of those our venerable progenitors; to us they bequeathed the dear bought inheritance; to our care and protection they consigned it; and the most sacred obligations are upon us to transmit the glorious purchase, unfettered ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... repentance to short joys is due, When reason rules, what glory must ensue. If you will love, love like Eliza then, Love for amusement, like those traitors, men. Think that the pastime of a leisure hour She favor'd oft—but never shar'd her pow'r. The traveller by desert wolves pursued, If by his heart the savage foe's subdu'd, The world will still the noble act applaud, Though victory was gain'd by needful fraud. Such is, my tender sex, our helpless case, And such the barbarous heart, hid by the begging face, By ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... on a desert isle, as a sailor, under pretense of having committed some great crime." Thus our good Noah Webster gives us the dry bones, the anatomy, upon which the imagination may construct ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... steed, which had often borne him over the borders. The veteran warrior, with nearly a century of years upon his head, had all the fire and animation of youth at the prospect of a foray, and careered from rank to rank with the velocity of an Arab of the desert. The populace watched the army as it paraded over the bridge and wound into the passes of the mountains, and still their eyes were fixed upon the pennon of Ali Atar as if it bore with it ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... the moon in a mist. On each is a gentleman riding astraddle, With neat Turkey carpets in lieu of a saddle; The camels, behind, seem disposed for a lark, The taller's a well-whisker'd, fierce-looking shark. An Arab, arrayed with a coal-heaver's hat, With a friend from the desert is holding a chat; The picture's completed by well-tailed Chinese A-purchasing opium, and selling of teas. The minister's navy is seen in the rear— They long turned their backs on the service—'tis clear That they now would declare, in their typical way, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... heartless as she. I'll never forgive her for the way she treated Connie. Let's not talk of her, Irma. It makes me feel cross and horrid, and, of all days, I'd like to be happy to-day. There's so much to be happy over, and I'm so glad to see all of you. Life would be a desert waste ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... I stray, he doth convert, And bring my mind in frame And all this not for my desert, But for his ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... the eventful day dawned which filled us with amazement and alarm, since the fate of the world was decided in our walks, even in those terrible hours toward which our friend's carefree life flowed on, fortune did not desert him, for he was saved first through the precaution of a young and resolute friend, and then through the attention of the French conquerors, who honored in him both the meritorious author, famed throughout the world, and a member of their own ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... following day Slone rode out of the forest into a country of scanty cedars, bleached and stunted, and out of this to the edge of a plateau, from which the shimmering desert flung its vast and desolate distances, forbidding and menacing. This was not the desert upland country of Utah, but a naked and bony world of colored rock and sand—a painted desert of heat and wind and flying sand and waterless wastes and barren ranges. But it did not ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... order of the Supreme Government, they will do their best for the good of the people and the state; for I have always considered Jhansi among the native states of Bundelkhand as a kind of oasis in the desert, the only one in which a man can accumulate property with the confidence of being permitted by its rulers freely to display and enjoy it. I had also to receive the visit of messengers from the Raja of Datiya, at whose capital we were to encamp the next day, and, finally, to take leave of my ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... and her wood-brown eyes looked grieved and pleading. Mary Isabel was still pretty, and vanity is the last thing to desert a properly ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Suez Canal existed then, and the Candia that took Robert Hart from Southampton left him at Alexandria. Thence he had to travel up the Mahmudi Canal to the Nile, push on towards Cairo, and finally spend eighteen cramped and weary hours in an omnibus crossing the desert to Suez, where he got one steamer as far as Galle, and another—the Pottinger from Bombay—which called there took him on to ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon

... long story; but he would just give it in brief:—A Jew out of Anklam, named Benjamin, went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and having suffered great hardships and distress by the way, was taken in and sheltered by a hermit, in the desert, who converted and baptized him. The Jew stayed with the old hermit till he died; and the old man, as a costly legacy, left him the Schem Hamphorasch, written on seventy palm-leaves. But as Benjamin could not read ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side: When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast, And, sick of the present, I cling to the past; When the eye is suffused with regretful tears, From the fond recollections ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... till day closes, Vagrant over desert sands, Brooding on her eggs reposes When chill night that ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... of an odd expression that had come into Dunlavey's eyes at the mention of Ten Spot. Had Dunlavey succeeded in bribing Ten Spot to desert him? He had left Ten Spot at the Circle Bar, not inviting him to Dry Bottom because he felt that the latter would rather not come since he had deserted Dunlavey. And Ten Spot had come to town anyway. What did it mean? Did it mean that Ten Spot ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer

... David Roberts, R.A., is one thanking him for a remembrance of his (Mr. Roberts's) travels in the East—a picture of a "Simoom in the Desert," which was one of Charles ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... 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 ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... to have lost all the rest of it living with you. I am not perfectly sure that I am right in going, for everybody seems to think that women, mothers especially, should bear anything rather than desert the home. I could not take Jack away, for you love him and he will be a comfort to you. A comfort to you, yes, but what will you be to him now that he is growing older? That is the thought that troubles ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... tender kindness in his voice and look, whenever he did but offer a slice of bread to his little guest, such as made her feel what was home and what was love—"like a shower of rain after a parched desert" as she said to herself; and she squeezed Sylvia's hand under the ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

... is among the poorest countries in the world, with 65% of its land area desert or semidesert and with a highly unequal distribution of income. Economic activity is largely confined to the riverine area irrigated by the Niger. About 10% of the population is nomadic and some 80% of the labor force is engaged in farming and fishing. Industrial activity is ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... I turned the desert miles were crossed, And when I came the weary hours were sped! For there you stood beside the open door, Glad, gracious, smiling as before, And with bright eyes and tender hands outspread Restored me to the Eden I had lost. Never ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke

... a great trial to Mr. Martyn, who in the flush of enthusiasm had let him be put too forward at first, and found the wild man of the desert far too strong for him. Sometimes, when they differed about a word in the translation, Sabat would contend so violently for a whole morning that poor Mr. Martyn, when unable to bear it any longer, would order his palanquin and be carried over to the Sherwoods to escape from the ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... exclaimed indignantly, "a British sailor! You talk of danger, and would desert a thousand men, women, and children, including two hundred of your own countrymen, and leave them at the mercy ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty

... for him. But pluck up a heart; for the man is a deft warrior for all his fair face, which thou lovest as a woman should, and his hands may yet save his head. And if he be slain, yet are there other men of the kindred, and the earth will not be a desert ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... Ethiopian north-south trending highlands, descending on the east to a coastal desert plain, on the northwest to hilly terrain and on the southwest to ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... one's family on the ground that she has preserved her virtue. Yet all whose eyes were not blinded by partisanship, whose manhood was not emasculated by servility, would in these last years have welcomed the least of them as manna in the desert. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... of which is the faith in a spirit, in something that preserves the personality of the man and does not perish with the body. This faith was, in fact, one of the chief elements in the Egyptian religion—the element best known to us through the endless cemeteries which fill the desert from one end of Egypt to the other, and through the ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner

... the summer of 1824 and remained till after the battle of Navarino in 1827. Greece was saved, but the land was a desert and its people starving. Doctor Howe returned to America to raise funds and beg provisions for liberated Hellas, in which he was remarkably successful; but we find also that he published a history of the Greek Revolution, the ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... "Disasters at Sea"; and the page contained the narrative of a shipwreck. On evidence apparently irresistible, the drowning of every soul on board the lost vessel had been taken for granted—when a remnant of the passengers and crew had been discovered on a desert island, and had been safely restored to their friends. Having read this record of suffering and suspense, Catherine looked at her mother, ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... leave your poor little Phoebe, whom nobody loves, whose love nobody wants, with whom nobody here has one feeling in common?" And then all at once came as it were a vision before her eyes, of a scene whereof she had heard very frequently from her father,—a midnight meeting of the Desert Church, in a hollow of the Cevennes mountains, guarded by sentinels posted on the summit,—a meeting which to attend was to brave the gallows or the galleys,—and Phoebe fancied she could hear the words of the opening hymn, as the familiar ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... is so much swifter. Happiness takes years to build; but misery swoops like an avalanche. Such, and even more depressing, are the thoughts young folk give way to when their first great trouble rushes and sweeps them into a desert, trackless to the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... Another eye looked on their beaming cheeks; When the storms howl, I shall not think of one, Alone in the far forest, With none to spread his blanket, With none to build his lodge— Cold, hungry, lonely, in the desert glen. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... wings flapped on the earth perpetually for the whole hour. I took my $25 from the treasurer and went home with a heavy heart. It is beyond my knowledge why, after speaking every day for a whole week, freely and decently, my wits should desert me and my tongue be tied just at the time when I am most ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... and perhaps there will be some measure of reward for you if you serve me faithfully throughout. Follow the habits of a lifetime by playing me false and there's an end to you. You shall have for constant bodyguard these two lilies of the desert," and he pointed to the colossal Nubians who stood there invisible almost in the shadow but for the flash of teeth and eyeballs. "They shall watch over you, and see that no harm befalls you so long as you are honest with me, and they shall ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... continued 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 me from listening to the teaching ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... all a father who loves his son, and who has such a son to love as God has in Christ. Well, He says; if you love and desire, honour and estimate My Son like that, I cannot deny Him the reward and the pleasure of possessing you and your love. And thus, without any desert in you—any desert but sheer desire—you have made the greatest, the easiest, the speediest, the most splendid purchase that all the poor man's market affords. No, William Guthrie; faith is not so very difficult to the sinner who has desire. For where desire ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte

... with his hands under the stones in the stream. He had always been a quiet boy, liking to sit at his mother's feet and watch the flowers grow on her embroidery frame, while the chaplain read aloud the histories of the Desert Fathers from a great silver-clasped volume. He would rather have been bred a clerk and scholar than a knight's son, and his happiest moments were when he served mass for the chaplain in the early morning, ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... 27th of October (a month before) stands as a remarkable piece of work. We pushed on to Prieska, via De Aar, and reached Upington, on the scarcely completed new line from Prieska, on the 25th of November. The journey over the desert stretch from Prieska to Upington was full of alarms; during the night the train halted in the lonely veld owing to a washaway, and we stood to arms, throwing out cossack-posts around the train wherein the Commander-in-Chief slept. It ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie

... my friend, has proved abortive; Still there remains an after-game to play: My troops are mounted; their Numidian steeds Snuff up the winds, and long to scour the desert. Let but Sempronius lead us in our flight, We'll force the gate where Marcus keeps his guard, And hew down all that would oppose our passage; A day will bring us into Caesar's camp. SEMP. Confusion! I have failed of half my purpose; Marcia, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... grunted. In her own worry she had come across the hall to speak to Nannie, and find out, if she could, something about Blair. As she turned to go back to the dining-room, a little more uneasy than when she came in, her eye fell on that picture which Blair had left, a small oasis in the desert of Nannie's parlor, and with her hand on the door-knob she paused to look at it. The sun was lying on the dark oblong, and in those illuminated depths maternity was glowing like a jewel. Sarah Maitland saw ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland



Words linked to "Desert" :   piece of ground, go away, Simpson Desert, Dasht-e-Lut, leave, Death Valley, Dasht-e-Kavir, dissent, go forth, flee, fly, Sinai, Mohave, An Nefud, Kyzyl Kum, Dahna, Rub al-Khali, Patagonian Desert, Mojave, take flight, resist, walk out, Nafud, Nefud, Kalahari, Kizil Kum, oasis, Qizil Qum, Qara Qum, Ar Rimsal, ditch, expose, Negev, rat, parcel of land, maroon, parcel, tract, piece of land, protest, An Nafud, Gobi, biome, Sahara, Kara Kum, strand



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