"Sirocco" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... places here and there, few enough as the Arabs know, that the Sahara's deadly sand has never been able to devastate; and there are places even in the Somme that German malice, obeying the Kaiser as the sand of Sahara obeys the accursed sirocco, has not been able to destroy quite to the uttermost. That little cluster of trees at Behagnies is one of these; Divisional Headquarters used to shelter beneath them; and near them was a statue on a lawn which probably stood by the windows ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... believe me,—every inflection of your voice suggesting some tender pressure of her soft hand or taper waist, every cadence falling on her gentle heart like a sea-breeze on a burning coast, or a soft sirocco over a rose-tree. And then, think, my boys,—and it is a fine thought after all,—what a glorious gift that is, out of the reach of kings to give or to take, what neither depends upon the act of Union nor the Habeas Corpus. No! they may starve us, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... when upon a silent, sullen day, With a sirocco, for example, blowing, When even the sea looks dim with all its spray, And sulkily the river's ripple 's flowing, And the sky shows that very ancient gray, The sober, sad antithesis to glowing,— 'T is pleasant, if then ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... this moment on my table a lovely nosegay—roses, geraniums, rare heaths, and perfect white camellias. Our windows are all wide open; the heat is intense, and the air that comes in at them like a sirocco. It is unusual weather for the season even ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... "I was glad he did not see her indisposition—he has a heart as tender as a woman's, and it would have distressed him greatly! I do hope, princess, that you will find her quite recovered on your return. I think it must be the effect of sirocco." ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... was going to dine with Rokeby at his club he told Marie about it just as she was stretching a reluctant foot out of her bed into the cold of a grey December morning, and an extraordinary rebellion rose in her with sirocco-like fierceness. She got out of bed without replying, clutched at her dressing-gown and dragged it on, while Osborn's drowsy voice continued, "Desmond asked me, and I thought I would; he wasn't sure if you'd mind—if you'd think it rather often. But ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... I began to talk about the weather, which is disagreeable enough from sirocco in the hot spring months (it was the end of October) ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... that. It is very difficult duly to delineate a bore in a narrative, for the very reason that he is a bore. A tale must aim at condensation, but a bore acts in solution. It is only on the long-run that he is ascertained. Then, indeed, he is felt; he is oppressive; like the sirocco, which the native detects at once, while a foreigner is often at fault. Tenet occiditque. Did you hear him make but one speech, perhaps you would say he was a pleasant, well-informed man; but when he never comes to an end, or has one and the same ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... o'er the infernal regions whipped up clouds of dust, and spun them into fantastic shapes, filling eyes and lungs, but no discomfort could dull the joy he felt on coming into his kingdom. He had turned his back to the wind to wait the passing of a sirocco of sand, when a double-seated American waggon, drawn by two steaming horses, flashed on him out of the storm, driving him headlong to the ground, and coming to a standstill within a few feet. The bag had served as a buffer, and the deeply-ploughed ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... allusion has yet been made; namely, the conversion of the great desert of the Sahara from sea into land since the commencement of the Pleistocene period. When that vast region was still submerged, no sirocco blowing for days in succession carried its hot blasts from a wide expanse of burning sand across the Mediterranean. The south winds were comparatively cool, allowing the snows of the Alps to augment to an extent which ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... to read the comedy; after fifteen or twenty minutes Mrs. Vervain opened her eyes and said, "But before you commence, Florida, I wish you'd play a little, to get me quieted down. I feel so very flighty. I suppose it's this sirocco. And I believe I'll lie down ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... thus he falls comparatively unprepared into the conflict with the dog-days. Your Bengalee mounts defences of tattees and punkahs that cool down a hot wind, or whistle air into presence in a trice. Whereas in this part of the world, as the Sirocco blows, so it must steal into your room, parching your face, and covering you all over with a clammy stickiness, through which you may distinctly feel the subdolent shudder of incipient ague. When he has darkened his room, and spread cool mats on the floor, the poor Smyrniot has nothing farther that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... confined to the house for three days, partly by indisposition, and partly by a vile sirocco, which brought, as usual, vapours, clouds, and blue devils in its train—this most lovely day tempted me out; and I walked with V. over the Monte Cavallo to the Forum of Trajan. After admiring the view from the summit of the pillar, we went on towards ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... as fierce, Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds, Eurus, and Zephyr; with their lateral noise, Sirocco and Libecchio." ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... in"—so sighs the man of today.... This is the sort of modernity that made us ill,—we sickened on lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous dirtiness of the modern Yea and Nay. This tolerance and largeur of the heart that "forgives" everything because it "understands" everything is a sirocco to us. Rather live amid the ice than among modern virtues and other such south-winds!... We were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor others; but we were a long time finding out where to direct our courage. We grew dismal; ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... to semiarid; mild, wet winters with hot, dry summers along coast; drier with cold winters and hot summers on high plateau; sirocco is a hot, dust/sand-laden wind especially ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... and the Veiled Woman drew the black curtains round him. I walked on, as the guide, some yards in advance. The air was still, heavy, and parched with the breath of the Australasian sirocco. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... started early. A terrible day! A ghiblee in all its force[125]. The wind is directly from south (قبلي "south"). It is quite dry, unlike the sirocco which blows at Malta. Sirocco is damp and most enervating, and south-east in its direction. Probably, however, it is the same wind, but sweeping over the sea it attracts moisture, and changes to south-east. I was praying for, and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the wind has just changed,' said Captain Cadurcis. 'It seems to me that we shall have a sirocco. There, it shifts again! We shall have a sirocco ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... as you will, it is a gem, it is a marvel, it is a miracle. Some of the effects are very daring, approaching even to the boldest flights of the rococo, the sirocco, and the Byzantine schools—yet the master's hand never falters—it moves on, calm, majestic, confident—and, with that art which conceals art, it finally casts over the TOUT ENSEMBLE, by mysterious methods of its own, a subtle something which refines, subdues, etherealizes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... than genial warmth prevails in them, arising from the confined breath of such a concourse. On approaching the stair-case, if the orchestra be silent, the entrance of these regions of harmony is announced by a heat which can be compared only to the true Sirocco blast such as you have ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... verge of the parapet of the Latomia, where the breath of the sirocco, the gnawing tooth of time, and the slow ravelling of rain had serrated the ledge, stood Leo, gazing into the dizzying depths of the charnel house that swarmed with the ghosts of nine thousand men, who once were ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... kitchen-gardens. Pretty as they are to the eye, they are not considered to be wholesome; and no Roman will live in a house near one of them, especially if it lie on the southern and western side, so that the Sirocco and the prevalent summer winds blow over it. The daily irrigation, in itself, would be sufficient to frighten all Italians away; for they have a deadly fear of all effluvia arising from decomposing vegetable substances, and suppose, with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... of my text becomes more beautiful and striking, if we note that, in the previous chapter, where the Prophet was in his threatening mood, he predicts that 'an east wind shall come, the wind of the Lord shall come up from the wilderness'—the burning sirocco, with death upon its wings—'and his spring shall become dry, and his fountain shall be dried up.' We have then to imagine the land gaping and parched, the hot air having, as with invisible tongue of flame, licked streams and pools dry, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... well refreshed, and in the cool north rooms of the palace the warm hours of the day slipped like beads from a leash. It scarcely seemed her fingers that touched the harp to tune, but as if some herald of sirocco, some faint, hot breeze, had brushed between the strings. It scarcely seemed her voice that talked to me, but something distant as the tone in a sad sea-shell. What I said I knew not; I was in a maze, bewildered with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... its mists, heavy with sleep, dazed, motionless, with a quartz-like transparence, and myriads of rays fell upon the water as if arrow-points had pricked it, making a dazzling reflection, doubled in intensity by the whiteness of the cliffs and the soil, by a veritable African sirocco which raised the dust in a spiral column as the carriage passed. They reached the hottest, the most sheltered portions of the Corniche,—a genuinely tropical temperature, where dates, cactus, the aloe, with its tall, candelabra-like branches, grow in the fields. When he saw those slender trunks, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... its lazaroni, and its English travellers, as I suppose, that one of the seven sleepers to have done, who went to purchase bread with money five centuries old. As to the marble cities of Moorish Africa, when we consider their exposure to the sirocco, and read Dolomieu's Experiments on the Atmosphere, during the prevalence of that wind at Malta, we shall find but too probable a reason for ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... Ponte Molle, 'tis strange in truth, That the lovely days of my vanished youth And love's old dream are recurring. Through the land the hot sirocco blows, And within my heart the old flame glows, Sweet music within me ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... name for the sirocco (which see). The simoom, sirocco, samiel, and kamsin seem to be modifications of the same wind from ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... too; and who knows but that there might even be a miracle vouchsafed, a rending of the veil? The only procession that passes him is that of the intimidated orphans. No heavenly power intervenes for him—perhaps (he bitterly conjectures) for fear of offending the Vatican. Sirocco, now and again, blows furiously at his back, but never splits the sheeting. Rain often soaks it, never rots it. There is no help for him. He stands a mock to the pious, a shame and incubus to the emancipated; received, yet hushed ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... mosaic of the world's surface which a bird sees in its migration, that difference between the district of the gentian and of the olive which the stork and the swallow see far off, as they lean upon the sirocco wind. Let us, for a moment, try to raise ourselves even above the level of their flight, and imagine the Mediterranean lying beneath us like an irregular lake, and all its ancient promontories sleeping in the sun: here ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... awhile. He was in a section of country where, at certain seasons, the heat is like that of the Desert of Sahara. There are portions of Arizona and Lower California where the fervor of the sun's rays at noonday smite the earth with the withering power of the sirocco. ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... indeed, there are two suites of apartments—the smaller and cozier suite upon the first floor for the winter, and the grander and airier chambers and saloons above, for defence against the insidious heats of the sirocco. But, for the most part, people must occupy the same room summer and winter, the sole change being in the strip of carpet laid meagrely before the sofa during the latter season. In the comparatively ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... wiser than the Reformation that persecuted Boehme, but the spirit of the Reformation was ever intensely anti-mystical, and wherever its breath hath passed the fair flowers of mysticism have withered as under the sirocco. ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... same desert), says Fa-hian, "there are a great many evil demons; there are also sirocco winds, which kill all who encounter them. There are no birds or beasts to be seen; but so far as the eye can reach, the route is marked out by the bleached bones of men who have perished in ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... first weeks of his stay in Rome, guide-books and histories of the city were never out of his hands; and he took up his pen only to write the promised weekly letter to his cousin. Nor, as the spring advanced, and the tides of the Roman populace, driven before the hot blast of the sirocco, began to roll towards Frascati and the hills, would Ivan follow them. On the contrary, he seemed to glory in the increasing heat of the unclouded sun; and, when he had sent from him, one by one, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... do shall he do also."—What a blessing Christ's ministry must have been to thousands of sufferers! He passed through Galilee as a river of water of life. In front of Him were deserts of fever blasted by the sirocco, and malarious swamps of ague and palsy, and the mirage of the sufferer's deferred hope; but after He had passed, the parched ground became a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water, the eyes of the blind were opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame man leaped as ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... the thin attenuated air of that altitude, would suddenly blaze on you so fiercely, that your eyes were blinded and your face blistered, as if you had been suddenly transported within the influence of a sirocco. Well, now, since you know the road, let us take a walk after breakfast. It shall be a beautiful clear day—not a speck or cloud in the heavens. Mary ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... for phthisical patients, although during the winter and spring the weather is cold and variable, and in autumn the sirocco is frequent. When a sirocco has blown for some days, it lulls suddenly, and is succeeded by an equally strong breeze from the north-west, contrasting violently with the former in temperature and everything ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... foolish eidolon whom she can scarce respect, and through days of disgust and nights of agony strives to "do her duty," to conceal from the world her disappointment. Thus is blood that might have been a sirocco to stir the soul of an anchorite, transformed into an icy mist—the Paphian Venus lies crushed, degraded, cold, amid the reeds of Pan. But this mesalliance, this mating with Davus the detested instead of with Oedipus the adored, is not the only cause of indifference. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... crime, madness, bloodshed, and death. How hot, sultry, and enervating to the whole constitution of man, physically and mentally, is the atmosphere we have been breathing so long! The miasma of the swamp, the simoom of the desert, the merciless sirocco, are healthful when compared to such an atmosphere. And, hark! what formidable being is that who, with black expanded wings, flies about from place to place, and from person to person, with a cup of fire in his hands, which he applies to their eager lips? And what spell or charm ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... received they in the midst of leaves, That ever bore a burden to their rhymes, Such as from branch to branch goes gathering on Through the pine forest on the shore of Chiassi, When Eolus unlooses the Sirocco. Already my slow steps had carried me Into the ancient wood so far, that I Could not perceive where I had entered it. And lo! my further course a stream cut off, Which tow'rd the left hand with its little waves Bent down the grass that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... of the day spent during the blast of that furnace-like sirocco has been oft quoted. But the reader should remember when reading it that the man who wrote it was in such a weakened condition that he had not sufficient energy left to withstand the hot wind, whilst the shade under which the ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... thought in Italy that the clearing of the Apennines has very materially affected the climate of the valley of the Po. It is asserted in Le Alpi che cingono l'Italia that: "In consequence of the felling of the woods on the Apennines, the sirocco prevails greatly on the right bank of the Po, in the Parmesan territory, and in a part of Lombardy; it injures the harvests and the vineyards, and sometimes ruins the crops of the season. To the same cause many ascribe the meteorological changes ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... resort of all pious Mohammedans, and Mocha, with its bright sunlit minarets, the place so suggestive of good coffee, were to be seen in the distance. In coasting along the shores of Nubia, the dense air from off the land was like a sirocco, suffocatingly hot, the effect being more enervating than that of any previous experience of the journey. Here the water was observed to be much saltier to the taste than that of the open sea, a fact easily accounted ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... forcedly. "I'm not very bright to-day. I think it was the sirocco of yesterday that has upset ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... a mouthful of food; changing everything in their haversack for a sup of dirty water, and driven to pay with the thrust of a saber for a lock of wretched grass to keep their beasts alive through the sickliness of a sirocco. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... elude the galeases and circumvent his antagonists, the Venetians on the Christian left, by passing between them and the shore. Barbarigo observed the movement, and prepared to oppose by adopting it; but his pilots, inferior to those of Sirocco in local knowledge, dreading the shoals and shallows, did not stand toward the coast with sufficient boldness. The Pacha therefore effected his purpose with a few of his vessels and Barbarigo found himself placed between two fires; his own galley at one time ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... and Latin "columba" mean the diver; and the dove uses the air much as the fish uses the sea, it glides, it dives, it shoots through its airy ocean; it hovers against the breeze, or presses its breast against the sirocco storm, as you may see fish poised in their course against the stream; then with a sudden turn it relaxes the strain and sweeps away down the wind. The dove is an airy emblem of the sea upon which Venice and the Venetians live, but more than that—the most permanent ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... The sirocco has been blowing all day, and it is a hot unwholesome evening with no cool sea-breeze. Mosquitoes and fire-flies are lively enough, but most other creatures are faint. The coquettish airs of pretty young women in the tiniest ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... imagine, gentlemen," continued Hardy, as he again knocked the ashes off his cigar, "that going to sea is attended with some few discomforts, such as battening down the hatches in a sirocco in the Mediterranean off Tripoli; a simoom in the China Seas; a bitter northwest gale off Barnegat, with the rigging and sails frozen as hard as an iceberg; but if a man can catch forty winks of sleep once ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... sirocco wind blows primarily in March and April; desertification; only perennial river ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... whom were mounted and armed with sabres and long guns. Our man, Mustapha, had charge of the baggage-mule, carrying our tent and the provisions for the trip. It was a dull, sultry morning; a dark, leaden haze hung over Jerusalem, and the khamseen, or sirocco-wind, came from the south-west, out of the Arabian Desert. We had again resumed the Oriental costume, but in spite of an ample turban, my face soon began to scorch in the dry heat. From the crest of the Hill of Offence there is a wide view over the heights on both sides of the valley of the Brook ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... a temporary prosperity among them; but the shortness of his administration will always interrupt the completion of his projects, and the caprice, imbecillity, or injustice of some one or other of his successors, like the blast of the sirocco, wither up the tender shoots of prosperity, which a consistent and protecting government would have nurtured and brought to maturity. The experience of the past has sufficiently evinced the little dependence which is ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... they received the early breezes among the leaves, which kept a burden to their rhymes, such as gathers from bough to bough through the pine forest upon the shore of Chiassi, when Aeolus lets forth Sirocco.[1] ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... La Valette! Adieu, Sirocco, sun, and sweat! Adieu, thou palace rarely entered! Adieu, ye mansions where—I've ventured! Adieu, ye cursed streets of stairs![20] (How surely he who mounts them swears!) Adieu, ye merchants often failing! Adieu, thou mob for ever ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... arrived when the doctor should have paid his visit, and no doctor came. I presumed that the sirocco detained him also; but as the state of Jadin appeared to me alarming, I resolved to go and rouse my Esculapius, and bring him, willing or unwilling, to the hotel. I took my hat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... these spectacles my friends have witnessed!" exclaims the self-delighted Baptista Porta. When his friends drank wine out of the same cup which he had used, they were mortified with wonder; for he drank wine, and they only water! or on a summer's day, when all complained of the sirocco, he would freeze his guests with cold air in the room; or, on a sudden, let off a flying dragon to sail along with a cracker in its tail, and a cat tied on his back; shrill was the sound, and awful was the concussion; so ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... presence—I must breathe her spirit—I must go to her! She waits for me. Has destiny thrown us together without design? Ought I not to be her consolation, and ought she not to be my repose? Life is not a sport. It does not force two souls together like the grains of sand in the desert, which the sirocco whirls together and then asunder. We should hold fast the souls which friendly fate leads to us, for they are destined for us, and no power can tear them from us if we have the courage to live, to struggle, and to die for them. She would ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... sent us Fresh from dear Mundi Juventus. When Love and all the world was young, And birds conversed as well as sung; And men still faced this fair creation With humour, heart, imagination. Who come hither from Morocco Every spring on the sirocco? In russet she, and he in yellow, Singing ever clear and mellow, 'Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet you, sweet you, Did he beat you? Did he beat you?' Phyllopneustes wise folk call them, But don't know what did befall them, Why they ever thought ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... and a lovely pink sunset, and there's a beautiful mild sirocco blowing off the African shore to make the 'ot night pleasant as we approach it in the boats. A man could 'ardly arsk to be torpedoed under more pleasant conditions, I say, and we continue to row toward the shore in 'igh 'opes. It's maybe two in the mornin' when we see the side-lights of a ship. ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... will be the warmth of the present summer. It has no cure, I suspect, in all its length and breadth, for a sick soul, but it would make an admirable atmospheric hospital for sick bodies. What a delightful shelter would it be for the invalids who throng to Rome, where the sirocco steals away their strength, and the tramontana stabs them through and through, like cold steel with a poisoned point! But within these walls, the thermometer never varies. Winter and summer are married at the high altar, and ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wretched tub, reeking with indescribable odours as it rolled in the oily swell of the past storm through which the MOZAMBIQUE had ridden without a tremor. The benches, too, were frightfully uncomfortable, and sticky with sirocco moisture under the breathless awning. Above all, there was the unavoidable spectacle of the suffering passengers, natives of the country; it infected him with misery. In attitudes worthy of Michelangelo they sprawled about the deck, groaning with anguish; huddled up in corners ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... hatred directed against all those who stood by the Nation. I know that hell hath no fury like the vindictiveness of those who are hurt by the truth being told of them. I apprehend being assailed by a sirocco of contradiction and calumny. But I solemnly affirm in advance the entire and absolute truth of every material fact, statement and description. I assert that, so far from there being any exaggeration in any particular, that in no instance has the half ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy |
