"Far-off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cosmology, with its fantastic pictures of Mount Meru, has become a nursery-tale; the old Chinese nature-philosophy finds believers only among the little educated, or the survivors of the feudal era; and the youngest schoolboy has learned that the constellations are neither gods nor Buddhas, but far-off groups of suns. No longer can popular fancy picture the Milky Way as the River of Heaven; the legend of the Weaving-Maiden, and her waiting lover, and the Bridge of Birds, is now told only to children; and the young fisherman, though steering, like his fathers, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... strong, level flight. I watched him as long as my eye could hold him. When he was fairly clear of the mountain he began that sweeping spiral movement in which he climbs the sky. Up and up he went without once breaking his majestic poise till he appeared to sight some far-off alien geography, when he bent his course thitherward and gradually vanished in the blue depths. The eagle is a bird of large ideas, he embraces long distances; the continent is his home. I never look upon one without emotion; I follow him ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... some stealthy creeping step to guide my next blow, I thrust away my pistol and changing my staff to my right hand, drew forth the broad-bladed sailor's knife I carried, and so waited mighty eager and alert, but heard only the far-off booming of the wind. Then a floorboard creaked faintly to my left, and turning short, I whirled my staff, felt it strike home and heard a fierce cry and the uneven tread ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... that was one thing. Gudrun, critical of everything, gave it her full approval. Ursula loved the situation, the white table by the cedar tree, the scent of new sunshine, the little vision of the leafy park, with far-off deer feeding peacefully. There seemed a magic circle drawn about the place, shutting out the present, enclosing the delightful, precious past, trees and deer and silence, like ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... and had taken shape in my dream. It was that of an army which on the night before the battle had heard the flute of Chang Liang. By his playing he had brought before the rude soldiers the far-off scenes of their childhood, which they had not looked upon for years—the sights and sounds of their homes, the faces and the spots which were familiar to them and dear. And they, as they heard this music, and felt these memories well up in their hearts, were seized with a longing and a desire ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... assisted, in a somewhat shuffling manner, at the coming over of William of Orange. His own exploits were often really romantic, in the cities of the Indian sultans or the war of the wooden ships; it was the exploits of the far-off founders of his family that were painfully realistic. In this the great gentry were more in the position of Napoleonic marshals than of Norman knights, but their position was worse; for the marshals might be descended ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... he stood at length on the banks of the stream, which here flowed from east to west in a broad and majestic course through an entirely open country, from which only here and there detached mountains rose up in solitary grandeur. Not far-off another river, the Faro, rushed forth, not much inferior to the principal river, descending from the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... happy. We must profit by the example. I will go forth among the tribes of red men, and by the help of the Great Spirit unite them into one people; make of them a dam to stay the flow of this mighty water, lest it utterly sweep away our forest and cast us like driftwood, broken and scattered, on the far-off shores beneath the setting sun. We have warned the white stranger to come no farther, but have spoken to the winds that hear not; we have entreated him to come no farther, but have prayed to the rocks that feel not. Then, let him come. I see his warriors in the east, in the south, in the north, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Hurrah! the old sweeper has lit. Now the cobwebs will fly. Don't hurry back," shouted the man; and a faint, far-off voice answered, "I shall be back again ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... situation he felt for a boy of thirteen, and he meant to do his very best to keep it now that he had been lucky enough to get it; in the far-off future, too, he saw himself no longer the van-boy, but in the proud position now occupied by Joshua as driver, and this he considered, though a lofty, was by no means ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... constables handed Charley the warrant. He looked at it with a curious smile. It was so natural, yet so unnatural, to be thus in touch with the habits of far-off times. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a girl in her first love-dream be harassed with such a problem—be brought face to face with such "old, unhappy, far-off things"? He felt a fierce indignation with Coryston. And as he again sat solitary by the window, he lost himself in visualizations of what was or might be going on that summer afternoon at Hoddon Grey. He knew the old house—for Lord ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... peasantry. The peasant carried his wishes and prayers to the familiar wishing-well, and presented offerings to the spirit of the well by throwing them into the water or hanging them on the surrounding trees. The fairy rather than far-off Wodan was looked to for good fortune; the rite of the fabulous village hero, with its quaint immemorial usages, roused more enthusiasm than the stately public ceremonial. Another side of the mind of early Germany is to be gathered from the ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... and trees in the silent river, at this time of the year looking so cold and treacherous in its rippleless flow. The wet grass was stiffening with frost, and the only sounds disturbing the chillier purity of advancing night were the erratic bell at the bridge and the far-off rumble of a train on the mountain-side. Man still afforded the discordant note, and the only heat in the surroundings was that in the burning young heart ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... to laugh at some secret remembrance, and Denys's thoughts flew once again to that far-off Scotch town and the dark-haired boy with merry, twinkling eyes. Not a very auspicious remark for Reggie, who had neither father ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... head full of?" asked Pauline suddenly. She had been watching her for some moments, unable to interpret the shining, far-off look ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... in the scale of civilization, deeming them an unprofitable race, whose days were given over to sloth, and their nights to armed and malignant prowling. For the colored people of the censured states, she had a profound and far-off sympathy, viewing them from an unreal and romantic standpoint. This tender attitude was mental; physically she shrank from them with disgust, and it was not the least of the crosses entailed by a residence in the south that she would be obliged to ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... his knees, his head pressed against the bed-clothes, in a far-off, heart-broken voice that pierced through the sheets and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... land, with a moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into their composition. The bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England. There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... awoke the echoes along the deserted pathway. I stopped every now and then to gaze upon the tranquil river, whose eddies were circling in the pale silver of the moonlight. I listened with attentive ear as the night breeze wafted to me the far-off sounds of a guitar, and the deep tones of some lover's serenade; while again the tender warbling of the nightingale came borne across the stream on a wind rich with the odor of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... almost meeting overhead, and anon, an opening in their ranks afforded a glimpse of some charming little valley, some sequestered nook amongst the hills, some grassy meadow, or field of golden wheat, or a far-off view of ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... whirred to death in the machinery. She might have gone to the bridge over the river, and thrown herself off, not knowing what she did. Or, what if the pond had been a river, and she were now floating away, helpless, out of reach of any who came to save her, to some far-off dam where the water roared and splashed on cruel rocks. Or she might, in her dream, have tipped over the boat where the water was deep, and been unable to swim, encumbered by her clothing. Then she might have been such a girl as Sarah Rowe, who would have suffered ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... face. He could no longer recall all the nice, tender things, so sweet, so bitter, that had come to his mind that morning when he thought of the other, of little Lise, of the dainty Ashflower. What, then, had become of her, the former one, the one he had loved? That woman of far-off dreams, the blonde with gray eyes, the young girl who used to call him ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... devoted people, gathered to hail the approach of a long-exiled and well-beloved sovereign, they crowded upon the path over which she came, and yielded themselves with gladness at her feet. The mingled songs and sounds of their rejoicing might be heard, and far-off murmurs of gratulation, rising from the distant hollows, or coming faintly over the hill-tops, in accents not the lees pleasing because they were the less distinct. That lovely presence which makes every land blossom, and every living thing ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... Liverpool. After surveying with a good deal of satisfaction the twinkling lights that distinguish every minaret in Constantinople each night during the fast of Ramadan, I fall asleep, and enjoy, beneath a sky in which myriads of far-off lamps seem to be twinkling mockingly at the Ramadan illuminations, the finest night's repose I have had for a week. Nothing but the prevailing rains have prevented me from sleeping beneath the starry dome entirely in peference to putting up ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... lapse into deep reveries, even when the music was light and gay, as was the character of the earlier part of the entertainment. At times she would start perceptibly when her father spoke to her, and hesitate in her answer, as if she had to recall her thoughts from far-off wanderings. It would seem that Mr. Mayhew was troubled by her sad face and absent manner. He justly felt that the brilliant music ought to enliven her like sunlight; and that it did not proved the presence of some ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... who was fumbling near-sightedly in his pocket-book for his card. "I shall be very happy to see you at my room," he said. "Ah, thank you," he added, taking his book, with a simple relish as if it were something whose pleasantness was sensible to the touch. He gave Colville the scholar's far-off look as he turned to go: he was already as remote as the fifteenth century through the magic of the book, which he opened and began to read at once. Colville stared after him; he did not wish to ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... Peggy came round the end of the house, with a hat on, and a little bundle under her arm, and approached the carriage, making, however, a wide turn toward the office, at which, and a mile or two beyond, her far-off gaze ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... times when he realised to the full that he was using them to satisfy a certain craving. They were close to Anne in every way; they represented her by proxy; they had letters from her written in the far-off town in Canada; she loved them, she encouraged them, she envied them. And they talked of her,—how they talked ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... from Spofford Junction, and a friendly greeting from an occasional merchant, and then the breezy passage across the Rio Grande bridge, spanning the meandering waters which never bore vessels of any sort to the far-off sea, and finally the negotiation of the narrow street in Piedras Negras, past the plaza and the bull-ring, and countless little wine-shops, and the market, with its attractively displayed fruits and vegetables ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... on top of the hill we looked down on another picture. All about us was the plain, its distant rim merged in northern sea-mist; and through the mist, in the glitter of the afternoon sun, far-off towns and shadowy towers lay steeped, as it seemed, in summer quiet. For a moment, while we looked, the vision of war shrivelled up like a painted veil; then we caught the names pronounced by a group of English soldiers leaning over ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... is held below. The tea hour is one of peculiar interest. Many young men who are engaged in business in the week, and give this day of rest to the business of their King, meet here after having spent the afternoon teaching in various schools. During this meal letters are read from far-off lands, often written by those who had formerly met here, and who have gone from this training to dark places of the earth. Many subjects for prayer are thus brought forward and remembered before the Lord; then the building is again ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... of a life replete, A few brief hours as men measure time, A chapter in life's book, closed now—yet vaguely sweet As odor-laden zephyrs from some far-off clime— Should drift across my heart while joysome memories rise Of golden moments snatched from Arcady, Of silver sails and opal-tinted skies, Of ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... hours,—as the swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man's swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... sister, for whose accommodation a bed had been hired in the neighbourhood. On that evening Alaric would be released from his prison; and then before daybreak on the following day they were to take their way to the far-off docks, and place themselves on board the vessel which was to carry ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... sense of calmness permeating an individual, man becomes able to retire more into himself, away from the noise, the confusion and strife of the world, which come to his ears only as faint, far-off rumblings, or as the tumult of the life of a city heard only as a buzzing hum by the ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... mind heard him in the depths of its dark, degrading purgatory. But the lips moved and a long groan made answer; a far-off wail, a despairing appeal caused the glance Francoise and her son exchanged to overflow with impotent tears, and drew from them both a simultaneous cry in which their sorrows met: Pecaire! the local word expressive ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... colors. Some of these frescoes, tints as vivid as when they were laid on by the artists of twenty centuries ago, remain to this day on the walls of ancient Roman dwellings, and enable us to know how people lived in those far-off times. ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... the distance, she espied a moving object, and down on the silent air of eventide came the far-off rattle of a horse's hoofs. Some one was riding, galloping that way. He was returned at last. She leaned on the battlements, her breath coming in quick, short gasps, and watched the horseman growing larger with every stride of ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... the tips of spires flecking the verdure of the far-off valleys. He saw the hurrying smoke of a locomotive. He saw with awakening vision, starting from that dead farm of his, the region of trade and life. A film had fallen from his eyes. The energetic arrow of love ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... the newspapers; but these papers failed to reach the reading-table at Storm, and the girls did not miss them. Kate had never encouraged the reading of newspapers in her household, finding the monthly reviews cleaner and more reliable; and indeed the doings of people in the far-off world were less real to Jemima and Jacqueline than episodes in such novels as their mother read aloud by the evening lamp, while one girl sewed and the other lost herself in those dreams of youth which are ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Christopher meant when he said that the sound did not come out of the instrument, but that it came in to it, sweeping home from all the walls and corners of the chamber, a slow, rich, concentric wind of tone. He felt it about him, murmurous, pulsating, like the sound of surf borne from some far-off coast. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... meant to be the best collection attainable of that delight of all children, and of many grown people who retain the child-heart still—the old-fashioned, time-honored classic Fairy-tale. It has been compiled from all sources—far-off and familiar; when familiar, the stories have been traced with care to their original form, which, if foreign, has been retranslated, condensed, and in any other needful way made suitable for modern British children. ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... inspired Balboa and his men. They talked long and earnestly with the Indians and fully satisfied themselves of the existence of a great sea and of a far-off country abounding in treasure on the other side. Could it be that mysterious Cipango of Marco Polo, search for which had been the object of Columbus's voyage? The way there was discussed and the {38} difficulties of the journey estimated, and ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Thine eyes are full of tears; Are they wet Even yet With the thought of other years? Or with gladness are they full, For the night is beautiful, And longing for those far-off spheres? Thy little heart, that hath with love Grown colored, like the sky above On which thou lookest ever— Can it know All the woe Of hope for what returneth never, All the sorrow and the longing To these hearts of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... reckon there aint none on the lakes, like there are in the ocean. I've got a cousin sails the Pacific. He's seen serpents lots o' times—on the shores of them far-off islands." ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... arrange her hair. And then, more and more, hour by hour, she evoked in him the memory of the past! Her laughter, her pretty ways, her motions, brought back to his lips the savor of former kisses given and returned; she made of the far-off past, of which he had forgotten the precise sensation, something like a dream in the present; she confused epochs, dates, the ages of his heart, and rekindling the embers of cooled emotions, she mingled, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... consider you negligible because you belong to a class that is content to be, not to do. I assure you they consider themselves the most important group in New York—in America—at present: the life-giving group of suns round which far-off planets ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of earthly things, Wrapt you in radiant aura, safe from woe. The path became a long cathedral aisle, The sinking sun, the Host to bow before With folded hands and rev'rently adore, The zephyrs wafting incense sweet the while. There was a far-off priest, with gentle smile, Whose parting benediction seemed to pour Upon us, from the verge of some blest shore, To which our ling'ring steps he would beguile. An organ pealed from somewhere in the heights Above us, and a sweet-voiced chorus rang A "Nunc Dimittis," and from caverns ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... The male parent was scarcely more than an intruder and the necessity to please the entire family and, above all, the mother-in-law, the generic head of the family has left its mark upon the masculine mind, even unto this far-off day, when by virtue of this ordeal of primitive man, an idea seems to exist, that a mother-in-law is to be both feared and dreaded, if not propitiated. When we contemplate the persistence of those traits of human ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... Raphael forgets Perugino; Fra Bartolomeo forgets Botticelli; Sodoma forgets Leonardo; the narrower hesitating styles of the fifteenth century are abandoned, as the great example is disseminated throughout Italy; and even the tumult of angels in glory which the Lombard Correggio is to paint in far-off Parma, and the daringly simple Bacchus and Ariadne with which Tintoret will decorate the Ducal Palace more than fifty years later—all that is great and bold, all that is a re-incarnation of the spirit of Antiquity, all that marks the culmination of Renaissance art, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... he stammered; the words were stifled in his throat. Twilight descended from the far-off mountains, and the last reflections of the sun became pallid in the east. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... early fragrance Of those blossoms, fresh and sweet, Up and down the old verandah I would chase my darling's feet. But on earth no more the beauty Of her face my eye shall greet, Nevermore I'll hear the music Of those merry pattering feet— Ah, the solemn starlight, falling On the far-off Georgia bloom, Tells no tale unto my darling Of her absent ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Vale of Tawasentha, From the Valley of Wyoming, From the groves of Tuscaloosa, From the far-off Rocky Mountains, From the Northern lakes and rivers All the tribes beheld the signal, Saw the distant smoke ascending, The Pukwana of ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... Well, he must let Abbott know of this. It might be as well, perhaps, if he called on Mrs. Abbott tomorrow, to remove any doubt that might remain in her mind. The fellow Wager being an old acquaintance of his, he could not get rid of a sense of far-off responsibility in this matter; though, happily, Wager's meeting with Mrs. Abbott's cousin, which led to marriage and misery, came ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... were simple souls. I believe that Josephine's wagon was hitched to a star; else I could not have loved her. And she believed the same of mine. She wandered in the panoply of her maiden independence to far-off rookeries attended by me only (or some other swain only). Though we were fain to discuss De Musset and Herbert Spencer, Darwin and Dobson, George Eliot and Philip Gilbert Hamerton—strange names to the elder generation—our scheme of life was still essentially grave and plain ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... sounded "lights out,"—bugle answering bugle in far-off camps. When our not elaborate night-toilets were complete, Strong threw somebody else's old boot at the candle with infallible aim, and darkness took possession of the tent. Ned, who lay on my left, presently reached ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... everlasting doom. Before long a sudden whirlwind arose, and drove away the pitch-dark mist usually hovering over the Land of Oblivion, and in the wan light, I could see myriads of livid candles, and by their gleam, I obtained a far-off view of the mouth of the bottomless abyss. But if that was a horrible sight, overhead was one still more horrible—Justice, on her throne, guarding the portal of hell, and holding a special tribunal above the entrance thereto, to pronounce the doom of the damned ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... vision Hendrick Hudson must have had in those far-off September and October days, and such the picture which visitors still compass long ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... calm upon this lonely shore, Where I was dropped by the receding waves— For, after all, I am ashore. And now A last "good luck upon the road" I send To speed the daring sailor who will give No ear to one that just has come to grief. With sails hauled close, steer for the open sea And for the far-off goal your soul desires! Ere long you must fall off like all the rest, Although a star your guiding landmark be For in due time the stars ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... not resist a sudden temptation. That strange twist came over his face, which heralded a far-off joke. He spoke ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... have been alike interested in the late project for forcing water by a pipe line over the mountainous region lying between Suakim and Berber in the far-off Soudan, few men of either nation have any proper conception of the vast expenditure of capital, natural and engineering difficulties overcome, and the bold and successful enterprise which has brought into existence far greater pipe lines in our own Atlantic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... DEAR DAD,—In some rustic nook reclining, silken tresses softly twining, Far-off bells so faintly ringing, While we list the blackbird singing, Merrily his roundelay. There! I composed those lines this morning during the process of shaving. I don't think they are very bad. I put them at the beginning of my letter so as to make sure that you will read them, a process ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... we leave the child to think of God as a separate, far-off person, on a throne somewhere in the skies. The child is finding his way into a universe. The God who is a minute fraction of that universe makes possible the religion that is no more than a negligible ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... &c., which is a very clumsy and unscientific way of setting to work. The architects in such cases make use of the centrolinead, a clever mechanical contrivance for getting over the difficulty of the far-off vanishing point, but by the method I have shown you, and shall further illustrate, you will find that you can dispense with all this trouble, and do all your perspective either inside the picture or on a very ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... thee, I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven Green. To behold the wandring Moon, Riding neer her highest noon, Like one that had bin led astray Through the Heav'ns wide pathles way; And oft, as if her head she bow'd, Stooping through a fleecy cloud. Oft on a Plat of rising ground, I hear the far-off Curfeu sound, Over som wide-water'd shoar, Swinging slow with sullen roar; Or if the Ayr will not permit, Som still removed place will fit, Where glowing Embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, Far from all resort of mirth, Save the Cricket on the hearth, Or the Belmans ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... channels in the solid front of the glacier, others gurgling out of arched openings at the base. All these water-streams were riding on the parent ice-stream, their voices joined in one grand anthem telling the wonders of their near and far-off fountains. The lake itself is resting in a basin of ice, and the forested moraine, though seemingly cut off from the glacier and probably more than a century old, is in great part resting on buried ice left behind as the glacier receded, and melting slowly ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... on their summits were gold. Little steps of onyx ran all this way and that. With cobbled agates were its streets a glory. Through small square panes of rose-quartz the citizens looked from their houses. To them as they looked abroad the World far-off seemed happy. Clad though that city was in one robe always, in twilight, yet was its beauty worthy of even so lovely a wonder: city and twilight were both peerless but for each other. Built of a stone unknown in the world ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... anticipation of the evil which might be gathering ahead, ah! what a sullen mystery of fear, what a sigh of woe, was that which stole upon the air, as again the far-off sound of a wheel was heard! A whisper it was—a whisper from, perhaps, four miles off—secretly announcing a ruin that, being foreseen, was not the less inevitable; that, being known, was not therefore healed. What could be done—who was it that could ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... once among the South American tribes a belief that in a certain far-off country lived a king called El Dorado, the Gilded One. He ruled over a region where gold and precious stones were found in abundance. The story influenced a vast number of adventurers who led expeditions to seek the land of golden ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... animals in the circus tent. "Tell us your story, Umboo! Tell us about when you were a baby in the far-off jungle ...
— Umboo, the Elephant • Howard R. Garis
... to get it out directly, played in "Frozen Deep" and "Uncle John," presided at supper of company, made no end of speeches, went home and gave in completely for four hours, then got sound asleep, and next day was as fresh as you used to be in the far-off ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... the day we celebrate as the anniversary of the birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, in the obscure, little hill town of Bethlehem in the far-off Judaean land, over nineteen ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Twiston went, the war still seemed A far-off thing: a nightmare dreamed, Some bruit or fable half-believed, Too ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... liberated French literary ideals from the heavy and oppressive yoke of the Naturalistic school. Truth now soared on unhampered pinions, and the reading world was completely won by the unsurpassed intensity and faithful accuracy with which he depicted the alluring charms of far-off scenes, and painted the naive soul of the races that seem to endure in the isles of the Pacific as surviving ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... Richard, and said: "O fosterer of my love, knowest thou not that as now he speaketh as a Friend of the Well, and wotteth more of far-off tidings than even this wise ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... we speak until it stood serenely balanced upon the world's edge, sending to our feet a silvery pathway that twinkled on the waves. And then, by the merest accident of our position as the yacht changed its course among the keys, two far-off pine trees, appearing to move out side by side across the sea, stopped in the center of the moon. She caught her breath at the unusual beauty of this. That sigh from her, and the mystic night, all but drove me mad. My ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... cave Streamed forth a nation, in the olden time, To crown with flowers the brave, Flushed with the conquest of some far-off clime, And, louder than the roar of meeting seas, Applauding thunder rolled upon the breeze. Memorial columns rose Decked with the spoils of conquered foes, And bards of high renown their stormy paeans sung, While Sculpture touched the marble white, And, woke by his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... of Apollo-worship, there was a festival called the Stepteria, or festival "of those who make the wreathes," in which "mystery" a Christian Bishop, St. Cyprian, tells us he was initiated. In far-off Tempe—that wonderful valley that is still the greenest spot in stony, barren Greece, and where the laurel trees still cluster—there was an altar, and near it a laurel tree. The story went that Apollo had made himself ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... the bright stars of German literature. When you read his works, it is as if you were climbing a high mountain, in merry company, to see the sun rise. At times you are enveloped in mist,—the morning wind sweeps by you with a shout,—you hear the far-off muttering thunders. Wide beneath you spreads the landscape,—field, meadow, town, and winding river. The ringing of distant church-bells, or the sound of solemn village clock, reaches you;—then arises the sweet and manifold fragrance of flowers,—the birds begin to sing,—the vapors roll ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... windy uplands among the hills of Down With all the world spread out beneath, meadow and sea and town, And ploughlands on the far-off hills that glow with ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... sound was heard, plainer and evidently some ways down the stream. Again and again we heard it, and decided that it must be a gun shot, and yet we were puzzled to know how it could be. We were pretty sure there were no white people ahead of us, and we did not suppose the Indians in this far-off land had any firearms. It might be barely possible that we were coming now to some wagon train taking a southern course, for we had never heard that there were any settlements in this direction and the barren country would preclude any such thing, as we viewed it now. If it was a hostile ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... angry and sad heart he gave over the search, and the Polynesia was headed once more toward the far-off imperial ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... advent: Twilight only was with her, and tranquil, ruddy Firelight; to these sisters, the Bright and the Dark, she had been speaking, ere I entered, in poetry. Sir Walter Scott's voice, to her a foreign, far-off sound, a mountain echo, had uttered itself in the first stanzas; the second, I thought, from the style and the substance, was the language of her own heart. Her face was grave, its expression concentrated; she bent on me an unsmiling eye—an eye just returning from abstraction, just ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the pillared aisles of Rievaulx. By and by we quitted the wood, and having descended a deep ravine, we climbed a barren moor, over which we had proceeded half way, when to my unutterable joy, we discovered the far-off fane of Rievaulx, whose wan towers just peered from out of the hanging woods. Pursuing our way we soon exchanged the trackless moor for a much more grateful domain. A sloping wood on each side of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... fresh, after the close streets of London, that to him it seemed even full of scents of numberless flowers; and the sun was shining everywhere, upon the blossoms in the garden, and the fine old elm-trees in the park, and the far-off hills. He grasped Tony's hand in his, and bade ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... of the recluse or the student in his appearance. He was in fact a typical, healthy-looking Britisher, very much like any other man of his class whom one would meet in the mess-room of the British army, in the wardrooms of the fleet, or in the far-off posts of the Empire, where the administrative cogs of the great machine are to be ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... all those years of misery and wandering, he had not once admitted to himself the true nature of this fog-cottoned grail. He knew it, and he did not know it. It was patrolling the edge of his mind, circling a far-off periphery, recognizable by a crude silhouette but nameless. Any time he wanted to, he could have summoned it closer and said, You are it, and I know you, and I know what I am looking for. It is...? Is what? Worthless? Foolish? ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... taken Virginia's field-glass, and was gazing through it at the far-off land which with each moment seemed to grow more distinct. Only the delicate, aquiline profile could be seen by the eager eyes that looked for a sign of weakness. She did not speak at first, but a visible shiver ran through her body. The field-glass came down rather suddenly, and her fingers ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... go ballooning [he writes]. In the long sun-bathed Brazilian afternoons, when the hum of insects, punctuated by the far-off cry of some bird lulled me, I would lie in the shade of the veranda and gaze into the fair sky of Brazil where the birds fly so high and soar with such ease on their great outstretched wings; where the clouds mount so gaily in the pure light of day, and ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... all crowded round him as he threw back the heavy lid. There was a curious aromatic smell came from within, a sort of mingling of cedar and camphor and spices—a smell that made you think of foreign parts and queer, far-off places. And it was indeed a strange collection of things and objects that Mr. Lindsey took out of the chest and set down on the table. There was an old cigar-box, tied about with twine, full to the brim ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... take revenge another way— To bring her to the dust.... Come with me, love, And I will love thee.... Madam, let her live. I have a far-off burrow where the King Would miss her and ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... tumultuous crowd. From the Piazza di Montecitorio and the Piazza Colonna came a perfect uproar that swelled and rose and fell and rose again, mingled with shrill trumpet-blasts. The tumult increased as the gray cold twilight deepened. Horror at the tragedy enacted in a far-off land made the populace howl with rage; men broke through the dense crowd running and waving great bundles of newspapers. Through all the clamour, the one word Africa ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... plentiful records and written documents, from the days of St. Osmond to the time of Henry VIII., that the materials employed in English ecclesiastical embroideries were the best that could be found in our own country or in far-off lands, and the art bestowed on them was the best we could learn and give. Various fabrics came from Byzantine or Saracenic looms, which are described as damasked, rayed, marbled, &c. The few surviving specimens fully justify the admiration bestowed ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... to see to it that your love is big and broad enough; all-inclusive enough to wish to see every one happy from your immediate family to your far-off neighbor in Central Africa. You need not worry about whether they break the moral code as you see it. You are to render love and service to this world with all your heart and all your power; if you do this, you will reach the goal of ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... offered up also the sorrow of his father and his sister, his own humiliation, the straitened circumstances in which he should find himself. He saw in front of his bed, through the window, the vague, far-off brightness of the sky, his hope, his end. Little by little his eyes closed, in a delicious sense of confidence ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... when long lengthened out the conflict was Of those two champions, and the might of both In that strong tug and strain was equal-matched, Then, gazing from Olympus' far-off heights, The Gods joyed, some in the invincible son Of Peleus, others in the goodly child Of old Tithonus and the Queen of Dawn. Thundered the heavens on high from east to west, And roared the sea from verge to verge, and rocked The dark earth 'neath the heroes' ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... vicissitudes of his appeal to the jury of his countrymen, and of his countrymen's subsequently handing him over to another jury upon a fresh appeal. It began to flood the broad spaces at the bottom of Parliament Street in far-off days when the case of Tichborne v. Lushington was opened in the Sessions House, and it continued without weariness or falling-off all through the progress of the civil suit, beginning again with freshened zeal with the commencement ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... found no satisfaction amid the uproar of Clerkenwell Green. For all that, Kirkwood could not become other than himself; his vehemence was moderated, but he never affected to be at one with Snowdon in that grave enthusiasm of far-off hope which at times made the old man's speech that of an exhorting prophet. Their natural parts were reversed; the young eyes declared that they could see nothing but an horizon of blackest cloud, whilst those enfeebled by years bore ceaseless witness ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... one dream, think and live! It produces a certain homesick impression on me, a little like that of certain forgotten melodies whereof the accent touches the heart, one knows not why. It is as though far-off paths came back to me, glimpses of youth, a confused murmur of voices, echoes from my past. Purity, melancholy, piety, a thousand memories of a past existence, forms fantastic and intangible, like the fleeting shadows of a dream ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... meditative moods it was the narrowing perspective of far-off yards which pleased her best. She loved, at twilight, when the distant brown-stone spire seemed melting in the fluid yellow of the west, to lose herself in vague memories of a trip to Europe, made years ago, and now reduced in her mind's eye to a pale phantasmagoria of indistinct ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... officials have been found at Gezer, between Jerusalem and the sea. After each of the above-mentioned wars it is to be presumed that the Egyptians held Syria for some years, though little is now known of the events of these far-off times. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... herself that he nearly always came to Cedar House at this hour, if he had not been there earlier in the day. But she could not help remembering that there were times when he did not come. If he should not be on the way now, if she should fail to meet him, if he should be still at his far-off home, or have gone elsewhere—But she threw the paralyzing thought from her and suddenly began to strike the pony again and again, with her soft little ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... moonlight. They were opening the first of those long, deep trenches. They were careful in these early days of war. They turned each face downward as they packed them in. The grave diggers could not then throw the wet dirt into their eyes and mouths. Aching hearts in far-off homes couldn't see; but these boys still ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... so absorbed that they would become quite unconscious of the tourists that would gather to watch the pretty group, for Venice was full of tourists in those days—people who came, even from far-off America, to see the wonderful St. Mark's Square, and hard-hearted, indeed, was the man or woman who could turn away without buying at least one bag of grain from insistent vendors and join the children in ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... we attended the Wesleyan chapel, where we formed two units in a large congregation, as we had done in the far-off Wesleyan chapel of the Shetland Islands. Here again we appreciated the good service, including the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... to be drawn into England's quarrels. Until less than ten years ago, there was justification for the point of view; for while England seemed to be ever on the brink of war, the United States lived peacefully in her far-off Valley of Avilion. But the map of the world has changed, and while the United States has left her seclusion and come out to play her part in the world-politics, England has been buttressing herself with friendships, ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... a huge hand had been laid upon the movement, everything suddenly stood still again, in strained effort to hear. A far-off, tiny echo of a steam whistle whined somewhere a long way off. Men stole together into groups and stood motionless, listening and sending angry glances at the restless carts. Was it real, or was it a creation of the heart-felt ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... long barred by the ice which bound up the river during winter, were daily arriving, and the huge timber ships were receiving their cargoes of logs, brought down through innumerable streams and lakes which intersect the country, hundreds of miles from the far-off interior. ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... far-off figure looming so large between the rifts in the dense leaguer which the Arab has drawn around Khartoum? We cannot save him with all this host and all this piled-up treasure; but, behold! our failure shall be his triumph; for God has raised a ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... thee, my one never forgotten friend, to thee, my dear companion, whom I have left for ever, but shall not cease to love till my life's end.... Alas! thou knowest what parted us. But that I have no wish to speak of now. I have left thee... but even here, in these wilds, in this far-off exile, I am all filled through and through with thee; as of old I am in thy power, as of old I feel the sweet burden of thy ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... blear and sear the sunlight from the south, His mute mouth opened, and his first word came: 'Knowest thou me now by name?' And all his stature waxed immeasurable, As of one shadowing heaven and lightening hell; And statelier stood he than a tower that stands And darkens with its darkness far-off sands Whereon the sky leans red; And with a voice that stilled the winds he said: 'I am he that was thy lord before thy birth, I am he that is thy lord till thou turn earth: I make the night more dark, and all the morrow Dark as the night whose ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... brow to an ice-cold spring that gushes out of the rock under a pine; or lying idly on the soft meadow in the cool shade of the plane, is lulled by the whispering west wind through the branches, the monotone of the cicalas, the faint sound of a far-off shepherd's pipe floating down the hills; or looking up into the heart of the oak, sees the dim green roof, layer upon layer, mount and spread and shut out the sky.[2] Or the citizen, leaving the glare of town, ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... that swung to and fro above the little Virgin all decorated with flowers by us. The king offered me a throne, but I preferred the throne of our Mother Superior, and I entertained a vague ambition to occupy it some far-off day in the distant future; the king was heart-broken and dying of despair. Yes, mon Dieu! I preferred to the pearls that were offered me by princes the pearls of the rosary I was telling with my fingers; and no costume ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... million slaves entered the temple of liberty. But they bore the emancipator upon their shoulders and enshrined him forever in the temple of fame, where he who gave bountifully shall receive bountiful honor through all the ages. There, too, in the far-off past stands an uplifted cross. Flinging wide his arms this crowned sufferer sought to lift the world back to his Father's side. In life he gave his testimony against hypocrisy, Phariseeism and cruelty. For years he gave himself to the publican, the sinner, ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... clear blue sky, when the sun was gone down on the silent earth, clad in the pure white snow-mantle, and away over the tops of the forest-pines, at the diamond stars hung in the far-off heaven, gazed Annie Evalyn through that long, dreary winter, from the window of that rude hut in the solitary depths of Scraggiewood. How she mourned o'er her shattered idols, all fallen and wasted on their shrines! What a blow had been dealt her sensitive nature! "O, it was so ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... companionship she had lost. Who that has stood by the grave of a precious friend has not experienced the same feeling of inadequateness in the consolation that comes from even the strongest belief in a far-off rising again of all ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... rushed to the girl's pale cheeks; her brown eyes expressed unadulterated joy. Marguerite, who was studying her closely, was conscious that her poor aching heart went out to this exquisite child, the far-off innocent cause ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... lost everything," she said, "I have lost everything!" And she remembered, as one remembers something in the far-off long ago, how that very morning, when she awoke, her first thought had been "Shall I see him to-day?" Each day she passed without seeing him had seemed to her a lost day, and she had accustomed herself to go to sleep thinking of him, remembering ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... now. The quiet childhood of Humanity, spent in the far-off forest glades and by the murmuring rivers, is gone forever; and human life is deepening down to manhood amid tumult, doubt, and hope. Its age of restful peace is past. It has its work to finish and must hasten on. What that work may be—what this world's share is in the great design—we ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... that kill! I thought of the hill In the far-off Jura chain; Of the two, the three, o'er the wide salt sea, Whose hearts would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... if you trust in God and ask Him to help you. He sends troubles to teach us lessons, dear, and to draw our thoughts to Him, but never, never to make us miserable," said Mrs Nisbet softly. "You did not feel that you had lost your father when he was far-off in India, and he is a great deal nearer to you now in the spirit world. Never think of him as in the grave, think of him in heaven, and it will grow dear and home-like to you just because he is there. It ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... question of expense, from chartering individual steamers. But the public at home was not permitted to know of these petty limitations and annoyances. On the contrary, people all over the United States, at their breakfast-tables, read the despatches from the far-off Sudan dated from "On board the New York Herald's dahabeah Rameses" or "The New York American's despatch-boat Abbas Hilmi," or "The Chicago Tribune's special steamer General Gordon," and never dreamed that ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... lost all record of the greatest of its inventors—the pioneers who in far-off ages devised the simple appliances with which men tilled the ground, did their domestic work, and fought their battles for thousands of years. He who hung up the first weaver's beam and shaped the first rude shuttle was a more wonderful ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... in a wobbly fashion, as though utterly fatigued, a fact that was apparent to everyone. They could hear the far-off howls of those who had waited up the track to welcome the runners. A crowd followed his progress, but was wisely prevented from breaking in upon the roadway, so that those in the grandstand were enabled to see all that ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman |
