"Desolate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as to praise. Why are the characters therein depicted so persistently disagreeable, even in the lighter stories? Why are the women always freckled, the men predominantly red and watery in the eye? Why is the country so flat, so foggy, so desolate; and why are the peasants so lumpish and miserable? Russia before the Revolution could not have been so dreary as this; the prevailing grimness must be due to some mental obfuscation of her writers. I do not refer to the gloomy, powerful realism of the stories ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... to be hot it began to be cold. The leaves, instead of drifting away in soft, dying colors, like sunset clouds, turned yellow all at once; and were whirled off the trees in a single gusty night, leaving every thing bare and desolate. Thanksgiving came; and before the smell of the turkey was fairly out of the house, it was time to hang up stockings and dress the Christmas tree. They had a tree that year in honor of Katy's being downstairs. Cecy, who had gone away to boarding-school, came home; and it was all delightful, ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... the while; but he does not sigh so openly that his action is detected; rather does he stifle his sighs, though with difficulty. And he is seized with pity at hearing, seeing, and perceiving the grief of the poor ladies, who cried: "Ah, God, how hast Thou forgotten us! How desolate we shall now remain when we lose so kind a friend, who gave us such counsel and such aid, and interceded for us at court! It was she who prompted madame to clothe us with her clothes of vair. Henceforth the situation will change, for there will be no one ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... became a prey to the most poignant grief and remorse. He shut himself up in his desolate house, where he was abandoned by all his neighbors, and by all his servants, with the exception of the old housekeeper and house-steward, whose devotion to the family they had served so long, retained them still in the service of its last ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... mind and body. When at length I had recovered sufficiently to walk about, I made a hasty survey of the little island or sandbank upon which I found myself. Thank God, I did not realise at that moment that I was doomed to spend a soul-killing two and a half years on that desolate, microscopical strip of sand! Had I done so I must have gone raving mad. It was an appalling, dreary-looking spot, without one single tree or bush growing upon it to relieve the terrible monotony. I tell you, words can never describe the horror ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... in search of Patricia; Jack Gardner and the lawyer lighted cigars and betook themselves to an "S" chair at a far corner of the veranda. Duncan remained where he was, alone, screened from view by overhanging vines, as desolate in spirit as any man can be, who is suddenly brought face to ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... couldn't. I'll wait until our cobbler has made you a pair of boots. But isn't that desolate region of blasted oaks and sundered rocks wonderful? You find everything in the forest. In a few minutes I shall ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... brighten. He stands upon his feet, walks a few steps, and falls. Isaac is stronger than ever. He lifts his fainting comrade, takes him in his arms, staggers on, reaches the empty and desolate house, and discovers a beaten path leading southward. He goes on, resting now and then, but ever speaking ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... myself desolate and alone in that house where I had formerly been the very soul; where, if I may so express myself, I had enjoyed a double life, and by degrees, I accustomed myself to disregard everything that, passed, and even those who dwelt there. To avoid continual mortifications, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... be true, what a warning might not he have bestowed on the young prince Henry, destined to run a like course of perjury and ambition, and to feel it turn back upon him in the dreariness of desolate old age, when "he never smiled again." Had not the penitent Harold more peace at the last than ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... still at the edge of the wood, and glanced across the moonlit garden to the house. It seemed dark, deserted and desolate. There was no sign of a light in any of ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... this world than to see it in hell fire, for he must see it there or here: now if he sees it here, this is the place of prayer; here is the preaching of the word, which is God's ordinance, to beget faith. Besides, here God applieth promises of mercy to the desolate, and Christ also hath protested that he that cometh to him he 'will in no wise ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... valiant heroes who compose his devoted Volunteer corps.... This would accelerate his darling object of governing us by a military aristocracy. The countries which supplied us with quantities of corn now groan under the iron yoke of the Tigress of the North or lie desolate from this infernal war. We send immense stores to the emigrants and the Chouans. Those rebels, not satisfied with traitorously resisting the constituted authorities of their country, have desolated the face of it. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... but there are a very great number who profess affection for us. When the government secretary, Cambronero, died in the year 1840, all his servants shed tears abundantly. A serving-maid of the Senora de Recano was left desolate, when the latter embarked for Espana a short time ago. An old woman on the occasion of [the engagement of] Movales in the year 1823, gave Col. Santa Romana proofs of great affection and fidelity. During the same engagement, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... morning all that was left of the flour, tea, and sugar was trodden into the muddy soil and hopelessly lost; not an ounce of food could be collected. There was no game to be seen; every bird and beast seemed to have fled from the desolate ranges. Mr. Tyers had been for many years a naval instructor on board a man-of-war, understood navigation and surveying, and, it is to be presumed, knew the distance he had travelled and the course to be followed in returning to ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... I could but sleep till thou comest again to wake me, how blessed I should be; but, alas, I must wake all through the desolate time!" ...
— Lost - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... oyster-shells get there? I can not determine. Broken crockery and oyster-shells are suggestive of restaurants—but then they could have had no such places away up there on that mountain side in our time, because nobody has lived up there. A restaurant would not pay in such a stony, forbidding, desolate place. And besides, there were no champagne corks among the shells. If there ever was a restaurant there, it must have been in Smyrna's palmy days, when the hills were covered with palaces. I could believe in one restaurant, on those terms; but then ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... got lost. For three full weeks he never saw a star. For three full weeks, day after day, his vessel fled before the gale onward, ever onward, over the gray, desolate, wildly tossing water, until they had need to spread their sail to catch the rain, for watercasks were empty; and one dried herring per day for food was all that Ulf could spare his crew out of their scanty stock. Then the ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... imagination, but you spoke of courage too? I mean,—is there any immediate cause for alarm? Any personal danger, for instance, now?" For the clergyman's weighty sentences had made him realize in a new sense the loneliness of his situation here among these desolate hills. He would appreciate some assurance that his life was not to be trifled with before he lost the power to withdraw if ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... pope puffed up with the promises given to the Church: "I am with you unto the end of the world," Mt 28, 20; "I will not leave you desolate," Jn 14, 18; "I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not," Lk 22, 32; and others. Though he sees and feels the wrath of God, yet, caught in these promises, he dreams, and likewise his followers, that his throne and power ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... certainly the latter. Lafayette failed, therefore, in his patriotic views; not as Bonaparte is said to have insinuated, because he aimed at what was impracticable; but because those whose interest it was to second his views, did not support him. A ruined throne and desolate country subsequently attested the purity of his principles, and the ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... fighting; there might at worst even be war with Mexico; and whatever happened, we couldn't stay on indefinitely at Alvarado. Kitty Main had taken the cottage and asked us to visit her only for six weeks. Besides, Alvarado would be desolate without our ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Marcia alone, but in some feminine and elusive way she divined his intention and frustrated it, and in spite of the congratulations of his guests he was left standing upon his lonely hearth with a desolate ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... stretching out in the distant horizon, without one object to mark its extensive surface, white and desolate in its vastness—such is the scene which proclaims the fearful desert of Sahara to the eye of the wanderer who has lost himself in these frightful regions. In this also it resembles the sea, that ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... prognostics by the symptoms. What can these signs fore tell otherwise than folly, dotage, madness, gross ignorance, despair, obstinacy, a reprobate sense, [6590]a bad end? What else can superstition, heresy produce, but wars, tumults, uproars, torture of souls, and despair, a desolate land, as Jeremy teacheth, cap. vii. 34. when they commit idolatry, and walk after their own ways? how should it be otherwise with them? what can they expect but "blasting, famine, dearth," and all the plagues of Egypt, as Amos denounceth, cap. iv. vers. 9. 10. to be led into captivity? If our ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... tender, helpless thing, you know, that melts under your kisses. But this heart that I found will take a long time to break. Proud anger will strengthen it at first; but one string will snap, and then another, and another, until, at last—" she swept her arms abroad with a wild and desolate gesture. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... roads through Belgium and Luxemburg. To come this way Germany had for more than a decade been constructing strategic railways leading from the Rhine and Moselle valleys to the Belgian frontier, double-track roads that served in a desolate country, but were provided with all the necessary machinery for detraining thousands ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... awaits general criticism we may add here that Tragedy is never greater than when her handmaid is ready to do her modest service. Sophocles puts into the mouth of Oedipus, at the moment of his departure into blind and desolate exile, tender injunctions regarding the care of ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... find my love, oh bid him come! And tell him, on these mountains I remain Even as a lamb who cannot find her home: And tell him, I am left all, all alone, Even as a tree whose flowers are overblown: And tell him, I am left without a mate Even as a tree whose boughs are desolate: And tell him, I am left uncomforted Even as the grass upon the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... old servant Katoda came out, and bowing himself to the ground before his master, poured out the long tale of wrong, telling him all that had happened, and how it was that he found his daughter in such a wild and desolate spot with only two old servants ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... PLANTING. They suffer plain after plain, and hill after hill, to be denuded of trees, and make no provision for the supply of those who are to come after them. Thus, not only a great portion of the country about Rouen—(especially in the direction of the road leading to Caen—) is gradually left desolate and barren, but even here, as you approach the town, there is a dreary flatness of country, unrefreshed by the verdure of foliage: whereas the soil, kind and productive by nature, requires only the slightest attention of man to repay him a hundred fold. What they will do some ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... this information gladdened her greatly. To be alone—solitary and unobserved now seemed delightful. Those white pills did more for her, raised her spirits better, than any human society. They brought her dreams, sleeping or waking; dreams a thousand times more delightful than her real, desolate existence. To give herself up to memory, to pray, to dream, to picture herself in the other world among her beloved dead—and besides that to eat and drink, which she was always ready to do very freely—this was all she asked ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of dark forms swept before him, and the camp, so full of life a minute ago, is desolate. It ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... time to time. In the frightful "Whig's Vault," a semi-subterranean dungeon, one hundred and sixty covenanters—men and women—were for several months confined by orders of the infamous Claverhouse. A single tiny window looking out on the desolate ocean furnished the sole light and air for the great cavern, and the story of the suffering of the captives is too dreadful to tell here. The vault was ankle deep in mire and so crowded were the prisoners that no one could sit without ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... sensibly to the brilliancy of the complexion of London. The flare of electricity in the region of the theatres made a midnight summer in the empty heart of September, and recalled the gayety of the season for the moment to the desolate metropolis. But this splendor was always so massed and so vivid that even in the height of the season it was one of the things that distinguished itself among the various immense impressions. The impressions were all, if I may so try to characterize them, transitory; they were effects ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... her might. The comeliest knight that was ever seen of his age was he, and had he lived longer would have been one of the best knights known, and of the great love she had in him made she his body be embalmed when the Knight of the Dragon had slain him, he that is so cruel and maketh desolate all the lands and all the islands. The Damsel of the Circlet of Gold hath he defied in such sort that already hath he slain great part of her knights, and she is held fast in her castle, so that she durst not issue forth, insomuch ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... pines, and driving the snow in dense clouds from the highway leading through, the forest. There was no sound, save that of the winter's gale, and the trees groaning beneath its power. A solitary light, twinkling as a star through the dark woods, was shedding its beams on this desolate scene. It proceeded from a small house near the main road, where the forest-keeper had peacefully lived with his wife for more than twenty years. On the hearth in the cottage a merry fire was burning, and Katharine, the forest-keeper's ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the paucity of thrift and vegetation, the poet and the artist will still find enough to delight the eye and fire the imagination in Spain. The ever transparent atmosphere, and the lovely cloud effects that prevail, are accompaniments which will hallow the desolate sierras for the artist at all seasons. The poet has only to wander among the former haunts of the exiled Moors, and view the crumbling monuments of his luxurious and artistic taste, to ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... fire, and we stretched ourselves at full length on the slope by its side and smoked a quiet pipe, Sverdrup made himself thoroughly comfortable, and told us one story after another. However gloomy a country might look, however desolate, if only there were plenty of driftwood on the beach, so that one could make a right good fire, the bigger the better, then his eyes would glisten with delight—that land was his El Dorado. So from that time forth he conceived a high opinion of the Siberian coast—a ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... St. Antony, the perusal of which was a main agent in the conversion of St. Augustine. Hilarion (a remarkable personage, whose history will be told hereafter) carried their report and their example likewise into Palestine; and from that time Judaea, desolate and seemingly accursed by the sin of the Jewish people, became once more the Holy Land; the place of pilgrimage; whose ruins, whose very soil, were kept sacred by hermits, the guardians of ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... founder at any moment; indeed the wonder to me was that she remained afloat so long, for she had by this time sunk so deep that her channels were completely buried, only showing when she rolled heavily away from us. Poor old barkie! what a desolate and forlorn object she looked as we pulled away from her, with little more than her bulwarks showing above water, with the seas making a clean breach over her bows continually, as she rolled and plunged with sickening sluggishness to the great ridges of steel-grey water that incessantly ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... and bade him play. Under the influence of the music he ordered the soldiers to dig trenches in the sandy bed of the waterless waddy through which lay the line of march. They did so, and next morning the trenches were full of the water that had drained down into them underground from the desolate, forbidding mountains on either hand. The prophet's success in striking water in the wilderness resembles the reported success of modern dowsers, though his mode of procedure was different. Incidentally ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Dona Rita had declared. The only thing unsatisfactory (and even inexplicable) about our Dominic was his nephew, Cesar. It was startling to see a desolate expression of shame veil the remorseless audacity in the eyes of that man superior to all scruples ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... extinguished their blind partiality for the descendants of the old Scoto-Irish kings. The restoration of that royal house was, therefore, an event which penetrated to the remotest wilds of Connaught, lighting up with cheering expectation the most desolate hovels of the proscribed. To the Puritans settled in Ireland, most of whom, from the mean condition of menial servants, common soldiers and subaltern officers, had become rich proprietors, the same tidings brought ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... him Mr. Goddard sank back in his chair with a heavy sigh, as he realized fully, for the first time, how entirely alone in the world he was, and what a desolate future lay before him, shorn, as he was, of home and friends and all the wealth which for so long had paved a shining way for him through ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Light they were called "Those who fly the whole day without resting,"[2] and it was said of them that they had the power of reaching instantly even a very distant place. When the Light-God himself departs, they too disappear, and their city is left uninhabited and desolate. ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... samples of the water and passed on to Wieltze, intending to walk into the salient to see what "No man's Land" was like. Men had told us that, unlike the rest of the front near the trenches, there were no growing crops, and no birds sang in that desolate, dreary, shell-shattered area, and we wanted ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... still there, somewhat as Gethsemane might have been, I fancy. I had wanted to be alone, that I might wrestle with my trouble. Yet now that I was facing it, my spirit quailed. Never had I felt so desolate, or dreamed that the human heart ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... this desolate place he would not say it aloud, the answer came back from this very afternoon when somebody had mentioned casually that the Squire was come home again. Mark half turned to follow Esther, but in the moment of turning he set his face resolutely in the direction of home. If Esther were really on ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... been seeking to create great warm clouds, great scented cloths, wide curtains, as though he had come to his art to find something in which he could envelop himself completely, and blot out sun and moon and stars, and sink into oblivion. For such a healer Tristan, lying dying on the desolate, rockbound coast, cries through the immortal longing of the music. For such a divine messenger the wound of Amfortas gapes; for such a redeemer Kundry, driven through the world by scorching winds, yearns. His lovers come toward each other, seeking in each other the night, the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... murder, the story of his long struggle with the Arctic ice, offers for his redemption a series of pictures of self-sacrifice, tenderness, honor, courage, and piety. No hope of profit drew the seamen of all maritime nations into the dismal and desolate ice-floes that guard the frozen North. No lust for gold impelled them to brave the darkness, the cold, and the terrifying silence of the six-months Arctic night. The men who have—thus far unsuccessfully—fought with ice-bound nature ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... image and a situation that had been beautifully sketched by Miss Bannerman in "Basil," one of the striking (though, to rapid readers, somewhat unintelligible) metrical tales published early in this century, entitled "Tales of Superstition and Chivalry." Basil is a "rude sea boy," desolate and neglected from infancy, but with feelings profound from nature, and fed by solitude. He dwells alone in a rocky cave; but, in consequence of some supernatural terrors connected with a murder, arising in some way (not very clearly made out) to trouble ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the island near sunset, landing at a place called Eddingsville, which was a favorite summer resort with the aristocracy of Edisto. It has a fine beach several miles in length. Along the beach there is a row of houses, which must once have been very desirable dwellings, but have now a desolate, dismantled look. The sailors explored the beach for some distance, and returned, reporting "all quiet, and nobody to be seen"; so we walked on, feeling quite safe, stopping here and there to gather ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... months later the chiefs friends went to implore him to come home. They brought him back a corpse; they had found him dying, and carried away the body. In another case, when the Maori oracle was consulted as to the issue of a proposed war, it said: 'A desolate country, a desolate country, a desolate country!' The chiefs, of course, thought the other country was meant, but they were deceived, as Croesus was by Delphi, when he was told that he 'would ruin a great empire'. ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... proceeded again to the shore just before daybreak. The distant moaning of the sea, the harsh screams of the cormorants with the desolate nature of the spot, chilled my spirits. I had passed a sleepless night, and the storm rose again, and raged till near daybreak with increased fury, but the wind was now greatly hushed. The sea, however, showed marks of its violence; the bay was white with foam, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... forgotten treasure when they returned, I insisted on the lumbering article being left in peace. So that, as man goeth treasureless to his grave, whatever he may have accumulated before the fatal moment, they had to set off for the far country without chest or ginger-beer—not therefore altogether so desolate and unprovided for as they imagined. The abandoned treasure was forgotten the moment the few tears it had ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... supposes. Suppose you hated me and I thought you a beldam! Practice would seem to suggest fresh fields and pastures new.... But oh, the muddy, damp fields and the desolate, barren pastures.... I know one thing I should do. I should wish myself back here in the dark, with my feet spoiling the sofa cushion, and my head in the lap of my dear delusion—my heavenly delusion. God avert my disillusionment! I would not have ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... fragment of stone, not larger than a pin's head, and on putting this into an envelope and handing it to a psychometrist who had no idea what it was, she at once began to describe that wonderful ruin and the desolate country surrounding it, and then went on to picture vividly what were evidently scenes from its early history, showing that the infinitesimal fragment had been sufficient to put her into communication with the records ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... eyes wander over the desolate garden of the next house, so recently robbed of all its greenery; then the muslin-draped windows opposite came within her vision. The caroling canary, in his little gilded prison, caught a glance, a frolicking squirrel running an endless race in his make-believe home, a lady stitching ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... who drives his flock to water at the pond opposite my window, is the only thing that gives token of the season. I am quite mortified at this on your account, for April, in general a month of great beauty here, will be as desolate as winter. Nevertheless you must come and see me, you and Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch, and perhaps you can continue to stay a day or two, or to come more than once. I want to see as much of you as I can, and I must change much, if I be in any condition to go to London, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the heart of the storm rolled far away. For the moment they could look far out across the shadow-swept hills, and out of the heart of the desolate landscape the whistling ran thrilling upon them. It was so loud and close that of one accord the two listeners jerked their heads about and stared at each other, and then turned their eyes as hastily away, as though terrified by what they had seen—each in the face ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... desolate, and eerie was our mound when we got to the top of it. By that time the sun had set, and a universal ghostly grey, fast deepening into night, banished every sensation of joy aroused by the previous lightness. Although the scene and circumstances were nothing new to us we could not shake off the depressing ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... remaining lady a desolate and faintly reproachful look. He was kind, but he was a man; and Laura saw that this last abandonment was being attributed in ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... a long journey and the afternoon was wearing on. The passenger in the last third class compartment but one, looking out of the window sombrely and intently, saw nothing now but desolate brown hills and a winding lonely river, very northern looking under ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... toward the south; and in the other direction, had it been daylight, the aviators could have looked off to the open country, where fields lay. These were no longer covered with the fruits of the harvest, as in prewar times, but lay desolate, with ruined farm buildings, and everywhere the indelible mark of the ruthless hand of the Hun showing what had befallen the border ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... and Sundays, when the Parisians muster in great force to promenade the still picturesque suburbs, the country roads are desolate after the return home of the clerks who have slaved at the desk in the city. One might believe oneself a hundred miles from a ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... and the man grew, and grew. He was the biggest and strongest and therefore most lovely thing on board the ship, and that sufficed her. As for him, the child manifestly loved and trusted him, and that was all-in-all to his weary, desolate heart. ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... built at this angle of the river a fortress which was called the Basilia. Houses soon began to cluster round it upon the ruins of an old Helvetian town, and thus Basel or Bale obtained its existence and its name. Bale suffered many calamities. War, pestilence, and earthquake alternately made it desolate. Whether we must enumerate among its misfortunes a Grand Ecclesiastical Council which assembled there in 1431, and sat for seventeen years, deposing one infallible Pope, and making another equally infallible, let theological disputants decide. But ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the snow where the wind had not covered them. A girl had left the village the day before my arrival, which made my task all the easier. So I went up into that vast, desolate silence, the fog closing in steadily, getting thicker and thicker, the trail getting narrower until at last it was ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... all alone in the world," she answered, her blue misty eyes filled with tears. "I had a month ago a dear, good, kind father, but he has died, and I am indeed desolate. I always believed him rich, and to these things," with a gesture that included her dress and the ornaments on the table, "I have ever been accustomed. Thus I ordered without consideration such clothes as I thought needful. ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... is the window where, one day, I crouched to see him go, When all the world with wrath was gray And desolate with snow. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... well—should he not have her with him? If he had that thing to fight, did he not need her help? What did men think women were like? Did he think she was one to sit down and reason out what would be advantageous? Better a little while with him on a slippery plank than forever safe and desolate upon the shore! ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... on the ebb when Newton was left in this desolate situation. After some minutes passed in bitterness of spirit, his natural courage returned; and although the chance of preservation was next to hopeless, Newton rose up, resolved that he would use his best efforts, and trust to Providence ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... ridiculous and unjust. I tell you, you and those for whom you act will be accountable for a great crime—for innocence betrayed—for a young life made desolate—for perhaps a dishonored grave. I plead not for myself, but for one helpless and pure, who at this hour may be the victim of a villain's plot. In the name of humanity, I entreat you give me but time to avert the calamity, and I will follow you without ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... Valley, the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings properly speaking, that the tombs of Thothmes I and Hatshepsu lie, and here the most recent discoveries have been made. It is a desolate spot. As we come over the hill from Der el-Bahari we see below us in the glaring sunshine a rocky canon, with sides sometimes sheer cliff, sometimes sloped by great falls of rock in past ages. At the bottom of these slopes the square openings of the many ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... out in the garden two or three times on a leash; but he had no thought of escape. The Master had left him, and bade him stay there; and his heart was empty and desolate within him. Now and again his dark eyes filled with moisture, and the sadness of his face was so wonderfully striking as to impress the Misses Sandbrook, who, truth to tell, were not over and above intelligent, nor even very kind-hearted. They had not half the kindly good-nature of their ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... found to be impossible of disproof. But Bedah, his wife who had loved him, had learnt these things, and now told all to the White Man, hoping that thus her husband's murder might be avenged, and thereby she risked the life which his death had temporarily made desolate. ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... his bereavement came home to him with crushing strength. Back of the open grave stood a great throng of people, waiting in the wintry wind. The sun shone brightly on the snow, but "The Hermitage" was desolate, for its light and laughter and love were gone. The casket was carried down the slope, and a long way behind it came the General, slowly and almost helpless, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... its shores just as beautiful as during the previous summer. To be sure, the portion that had been burnt down during the great forest fire looked black and desolate but only a small portion of this territory was to be seen from the boat. They passed along the shore opposite and put in at a little ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... other things go as chance shall dispose of them. In the mean time I have lost a companion[746], to whom I have had recourse for domestick amusement for thirty years, and whose variety of knowledge never was exhausted; and now return to a habitation vacant and desolate. I carry about a very troublesome and dangerous complaint, which admits no cure but by the chirurgical knife. Let me have your ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... benefit or an ornament to society, as he ought to be, is a curse and a disgrace to it; within the limits of sobriety all the rational enjoyments of life are comprised, and without them are to be found all those which desolate society with crime, indigence, sickness, and death. In maintaining sobriety in the world, and especially among persons of your own class, you will certainly have much to contend with; remember that firmness of character, when acting upon right feeling ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... through what appeared to me the most gloomy and desolate country I had ever beheld, we arrived, between seven and eight o'clock, at Moy, the seat of the Laird of Lochbuy. Buy, in Erse, signifies yellow, and I at first imagined that the loch or branch of the sea here, was ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... occasion to remark the extraordinarily desolate nature of that country, through which the drove-road continued, hour after hour, and even day after day, to wind. A continual succession of insignificant shaggy hills, divided by the course of ten ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... F-84 got about 120 miles to the north, the pilot checked his fuel; he had to come back. And when I talked to him, he said he was damn glad that he was running out of fuel because being out over some mighty desolate country alone with a ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... island of Cuba is almost as long as the distance from Valladolid to Rome; it is now almost entirely deserted. The islands of San Juan [Porto Rico], and Jamaica, very large and happy and pleasing islands, are both desolate. The Lucaya Isles lie near Hispaniola and Cuba to the north and number more than sixty, including those that are called the Giants, and other large and small Islands; the poorest of these, which is more ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... over and over again. It is looked upon as an unanswerable criticism. We are supposed to be people who tear down, but do not build; people who take away the dear hopes and traditional faiths of the past, and leave the world desolate, without ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... make himself generally useful. I could not help feeling immensely amused at this specimen of a Texan judge. We started again about 3 P.M., and soon emerged from the mosquite bushes into an open prairie eight miles long, quite desolate, and producing nothing but a sort of rush; after which we entered a chaparal, or thick covert of mosquite trees and high prickly pears. These border the track, and are covered with bits of cotton torn from the endless trains of cotton waggons. We met ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... doing all in her power for Mrs Pipkin and her family. She gave toys to the children, and absolutely bestowed upon Mrs Pipkin a new carpet for the drawing-room. Then Mr Fisker came and took her away with him to America; and Mrs Pipkin was left,—a desolate ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... go now, when I have so learnt to love thee! now, when I looked to years of faithful devotion to prove how wholly the past was banished—how wholly I was thine alone! to atone for hours of suffering by years of love! Oh, how couldst thou leave me friendless—desolate?" ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... white flower of manhood in the dust; Ten thousand thousand hearts made desolate; My troubled world a seething pit of hate; My helpless ones the victims of thy lust;— The broken maids lift hopeless eyes to Me, The little ones lift handless arms to Me, The tortured women lift white lips to Me, The eyes of murdered white-haired sires and dames Stare up at ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... Tadoussac at the mouth, the banks are rich and fertile; but thence cliffs rise abruptly out of the water to a lofty height—sometimes 2000 feet—and two or three miles apart. The depth of the Saguenay is very great, and the surrounding scenery is of a magnificent but desolate character. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... They rushed up the narrow railway chutes and through one of the numerous gateways that opened out upon the barge docks. No one opposed them; no one was standing guard. From behind came the sound of rushing footsteps. Lightning flashed in the sky and the rumble of thunder broke over the desolate night. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... tenants, but his mother. His mother must know of this Phoenician management. What would she say about it to her son? How she would look at him! How sneeringly she would laugh! And she would not be a woman if she did not speak to him as follows: "I told thee, Ramses, that Phoenicians would desolate thy property." ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... atmosphere of change. Old rugs on which she had sprawled were rolled up and reeking with moth balls. The little white bed, on which she had napped unlawfully, was stripped to the mattress. The cushions on which she had curled were packed away—the fire was out—the hearth desolate. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... Anglo-Saxon people from the half tribe of Ephraim, and possibly from the half tribe of Manasseh; and consequently her right and title to possess, at the present moment, for herself and for them, a share or shares of the desolate cities and places in the land of their forefathers! By Theta, M.D.[279] (Private circulation.) London, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... went armed, for the country we had to cross was of the wildest, though we went by the great road that runs from west to east of England, made even before the Romans came. But it crossed the edge of Dartmoor, the most desolate place in all the land, where outlaws and masterless men found fastnesses whence none could ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... unfrequented—possibly even unknown—alike by painter and tourist. And there—if undisturbed—he would remain, diligently working all day in the open air during favourable weather; and, when the elements were unpropitious for work, taking long walks over solitary heaths and desolate mountain sides, or along the lonely shore. And when the first snows of winter came, reminding him that it was time to turn his face homeward once more, he would pack up his paraphernalia and return to town, laden with studies ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... cope with them by force of arms, they consulted with their bishop ... that it was not ere the chanons began a church upon a piece of their own ground.... And thus became Old Sarum in a few years utterly desolate." ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... thankful for the assurance of even his presence. Had it been Ludovic's mother, how much better would it have been! But that she should be received even by his father,—by such a father,—was much to her in her desolate condition. ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... horrors," he said, looking about the brilliantly lit drawing-room, for Mr. Morris was expecting a large company to supper. "In these rooms I can scarcely believe I have been for days travelling through a country strangely and terribly changed since I last saw it—so desolate and soldier-ridden and suspicious that I am truly glad to get within these walls. And to-night, when my passport had been examined for the hundredth time since leaving Havre and we had passed the city barrier, I thought the ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... about to withdraw, but I stopped him to request that he would come back before dark, and sit up that night, in one of the empty bedrooms, so as to be within call in case I wanted him. He understood readily enough my unwillingness to be left alone all night in the most desolate part of that desolate house, and we arranged that he should come ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... charcoal woodland extended for some distance, I turned out of it, and round the main road through the plantation, as I could not ride through the blackened boughs and branches without getting begrimed. It had a strange wild desolate effect, not without a certain ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... fireside of the widow Grosvenor, where from a mother's lips, you will be assured of the blessings which accompany a dutiful child. That fireside is not desolate, for the members of the household have been led to say,—"Thy will, O Lord, not mine, be done." Mrs. Grosvenor, though somewhat advanced in life, still retains that peculiar freshness of her earlier days; and as she proudly glances upon the young man by her side, calling him "my son," you can hardly ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... against the grey distance. It matters little by what gate or from what quarter we enter. On every side the scene is much the same. The Campagna surrounds the city. A wide, waste, broken, hillock-covered plain, half common, half pasture land, and altogether desolate; a few stunted trees, a deserted house or two, here and there a crumbling mass of shapeless brickwork: such is the foreground through which you travel for many a weary mile. As you approach the city there is no change in the desolation, no sign of life. Every now and then a string of some half-dozen ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... Will that redeeming day shine out on men, That shall behold them rise, erect and free As Heaven and Nature meant mankind should be! When Reason shall no longer blindly bow To the vile pagod things, that o'er her brow, Like him of Jaghernaut, drive trampling now; Nor Conquest dare to desolate God's earth; Nor drunken Victory, with a NERO'S mirth, Strike her lewd harp amidst a people's groans;— But, built on love, the world's exalted thrones Shall to the virtuous and the wise be given— Those bright, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... a half they reached the gourbi. Everything was just as they had left it, and it was evident that no one had visited the place during their absence. All was desolate as the shore they ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. And this miracle the tinker has wrought. There is no ascent, no declivity, no resting-place, no turn-stile, with which we are not perfectly acquainted. The wicket-gate, and the desolate swamp which separates it from the City of Destruction, the long line of road, as straight as a rule can make it, the Interpreter's house and all its fair shows, the prisoner in the iron cage, the palace, at the doors of which armed men kept guard, and on the battlements of which walked ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... then of our Scots sufferers). But he had not stayed there long, until his zeal for the persecuted interest of Christ, and his tender sympathy for the afflicted remnant of his covenanted brethren, who were then wandering in Scotland, through the desolate caves and dens of the earth, drew him home again; choosing rather to undergo the utmost efforts of persecuting fury, than to live at ease in the time of Joseph's affliction, making Moses's generous choice, rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy what ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... carriage. Vizard, touched to the heart by Ina's appeal, held out his eloquent arms to his stricken sister, and she tottered to him, and clung to him, all limp and broken, and wishing she could sink out of the sight of all mankind. He put his strong arm round her, and, though his own heart was desolate and broken, he supported that broken flower of womanhood, and half led, half lifted her on, until he laid her on a sofa in Somerville Villa. Then, for the first time, he spoke to her. "We are both desolate, now, my child. Let us love one another. I will be ten times tenderer ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... loftiest genius cannot ignore them; the sublimest charity must begin with them. They are their own exceeding great reward, their self-sacrifice is infinite joy, and the selfishness which discards them receives in return loneliness and a desolate old age. Yet these, though the most tender and intimate portion of human life, do not form its whole. It is given to noble souls to crave other interests also, added spheres, not necessarily alien from these,—larger knowledge, larger action also,—duties, responsibilities, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... ever disappearing population. Towns like Dendermonde, that were of 10,000 people, have now 4,000, and in Dendermonde 1,200 houses have fallen under the iron and fire of war. Into that vast graveyard and camp of the desolate only the United States enters with an adequate and responsible organization ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... wormwood—which, of course, neither horse nor oxen would touch. This grew all around us in low thickets. Its gnarled and twisted bushes, with their white silvery leaves, so far from gladdening the eye, only served to render the scene more dreary and desolate—for we knew that this plant denoted the extreme barrenness of the soil. We knew that, wherever it grew, the desert was ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Miss Sheila Langford as she halted her pony on the crest of a slight rise and swept the desolate and slumberous world with an anxious glance. Quite the most appalling of these thoughts developed from a realization of the fact that she had lost the trail. The whole categorical array of inconveniences incidental to traveling in a new, unsettled country ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... she paused to look about her. It was a desolate scene. The tide was so far out by this time it looked as if there were more sand than sea in the bay. The water was the cloudy grey colour of flint, with white rims where the waves broke on the shore. The sky was low, level, and dark; where it met the water ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... to 33 deg.; everything in the tent is soaking. People returning from the outside look exactly as though they had been in a heavy shower of rain. They drip pools on the floorcloth. The snow is steadily climbing higher about walls, ponies, tents, and sledges. The ponies look utterly desolate. Oh! but this is too crushing, and we are only 12 miles from the Glacier. A hopeless feeling descends on one and is hard to fight off. What immense patience is ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... and paler, and soon upon the woof of the clouds a splash of dull yellow showed where the sun would be. The fog rose, laying bare the desolate ocean. Before us were two very small islands, mere handfuls of sand, lying side by side, and encompassed half by the open sea, half by stiller waters diked in by marshes and sand bars. A coarse, scanty grass and a few stunted trees with branches ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... am desolate and sore bereft, Lo! a forsaken one, Like a sole beacon on a mountain left, ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... stretching to the river Anadir on the North, and South to the Kurilian Islands, bathed on the east by the ocean, and on the west by the sea of Ochotsk, is, like many men, better than its reputation. It is supposed to be the roughest and most desolate corner of the world, and yet it lies under the same latitude as England and Scotland, and is equal in size to both. The summer is indeed much shorter, but it is also much finer; and the vegetation ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... not fated that it should remain, since the hungry sea took its sacrifice. The summer was very hot in London, and many infants sickened there of some infantile complaint, among them their own child. Like hundreds of others, it died when only a few months old and left them desolate. ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... administrative headquarters are at the town of Burha. The district contains an area of 3132 sq. m. It forms the eastern portion of the central plateau which divides the province from east to west. These highlands, formerly known as the Raigarh Bichhia tract, remained desolate and neglected until 1866, when the district of Balaghat was formed, and the country opened to the industrious and enterprising peasantry of the Wainganga valley. Geographically the district is divided into three distinct parts:—(1) The southern lowlands, a slightly undulating plain, comparatively ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Altinum fled to Torcello and the islands around. Their city—even materially—passed with them. The new houses were built from the ruins of the old. The very stones of Altinum served for the "New Altinum" which arose on the desolate isle, and inscriptions, pillars, capitals came in the track of the exiles across the lagoon to be worked into ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... boat, passing a series of wharves, and beyond these a tract of waste, desolate bank very gloomy in the half light and apparently boasting no habitation of man. The activities of the Greenwich bank seemed remote, and the desolation of the Isle of Dogs very near, touching them intimately with ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the pale rocks above the shore Uplift their bleak and furrow'd aspect high! How proudly desolate their foreheads, hoar, That meet the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... of his late distress. He would fain have thought it a small matter, to be adequately set at rest for him by certain well-tested influences of external nature, in a long visit to the place he liked best: a desolate house, amid the sands of the Helder, one of the old lodgings of his family property now, rather, of the sea-birds, and almost surrounded by the encroaching tide, though there were still relics enough of hardy, sweet things about it, to form what ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... deep at an irrigation canal, for he turned away from water when he followed the army, and leaving the level, dust-cushioned road behind, plunged into a rock-strewn, rolling land, desolate and silent. The growing light of the moon was his ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... ranges. There are several extensive plains, notably those of Alemtejo, lying south-west of the Serra de Portalegre; of Beja, between the Sado and Guadiana; and of Ourique, farther south between the same rivers. Some portions of these plains are fruitful, others marshy, while large tracts are mere desolate wastes. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... experiences, preparing both mind and sense for true art, were nevertheless interrupted and damped by one of the most melancholy sights,—by the destroyed and desolate condition of so many of the streets of Dresden through which I took my way. The Mohrenstrasse in ruins, and the Church (/Kreuzkirche/) of the Cross, with its shattered tower, impressed themselves deeply upon me, and still stand like a gloomy spot in my imagination. From ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... without a murmur. But with my life as a physician is bound up the knowledge of great secrets and the future of man. This it was, when we missed the caravan, tried for a short cut and wandered to this desolate ravine, that ate into my soul, and, in five days, has changed my beard from ebony ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... morning, and from the roar and fury of the subsequent engagement. The news of Hugo de Lacy's victory every where spread abroad with all alacrity of triumph, and had induced many of the inhabitants of the country, who had fled before the fury of the Wolf of Plinlimmon, to return to their desolate habitations. Numbers also of the loose and profligate characters which abound in a country subject to the frequent changes of war, had flocked thither in quest of spoil, or to gratify a spirit of restless curiosity. The Jew and the Lombard, despising danger ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott |
