"Wilderness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the throng for a sight of Alice. Often as he had seen the piece in the course of its six weeks' wandering in the wilderness he had never succeeded in recognizing her from the front of the house. Quite possibly, he thought, she might be on the stage already, hidden in a rose-tree or some other shrub, ready at the signal to burst forth upon the audience in short skirts; for ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... to be sixty-eight roads to heaven, of which but one is the true way, although here and there a by-path offers experimental variety to the restless and bold. The true way for the man in the woods to attain the elusive best of his wilderness experience is to go as light as possible, and the by-paths of departure from that principle lead only to the slightly increased carrying possibilities of open-water canoe trips, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... was a moment that marked the fate of our nation, it was that one. It forecast Bennington, Saratoga, and Yorktown, Gettysburg and the Wilderness. Well might the provincials exult as they saw the retreat of the regulars; and well might Washington exclaim, when he learned that the farmers had driven the British, "Then the liberties of ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... ranchman was a very successful one, and it is doubtful if he expected to make much money out of it. He lost nothing in a financial way, and there is no doubt but that the experience was of great benefit to him. In this semi-wilderness he met all sorts and conditions of men, and grew to know them thoroughly. In the past his dealings had been almost entirely with people of large cities and towns, and with men of learning and large business affairs; here he fell in ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... intersects the Michigan Central Railroad, a few miles west of Detroit. For over twelve hundred miles this iron road, fitly named the Grand Trunk, transports our Western products. Entering Lake Huron, with its innumerable islands and almost wilderness shores, our sail through it, of two hundred and seventy-five miles in all, brought us early, on the 2d of August, off Saginaw and Thunder Bays, its western arms, with Presque Isle, the Great Manitoulin Island, bearing north by east; and by noon, we reached Point de Tour, at ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... They wander east, they wander west, And are baffled and beaten and blown about By the winds of the wilderness of doubt; To stay at ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... race endures. But when the Comtist asks me to worship "Humanity"—that is to say, to adore the generalised conception of men as they ever have been and probably ever will be—I must reply that I could just as soon bow down and worship the generalised conception of a "wilderness of apes." Surely we are not going back to the days of Paganism, when individual men were deified, and the hard good sense of a dying Vepasian could prompt the bitter jest, "Ut puto Deus fio." No divinity doth hedge a modern man, be he even a sovereign ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Mountain, as portrayed here? Have they not only undergone the hardship, but been crucified by the Government which they served for carrying out the laws of that Government? In a word, are latter day freebooters of our Western Wilderness playing the same game in the great transmontane domain as the old-time pirates played on the high seas? Is this a true story of "the Man on the Job" and "the Man on the Firing Line" and "the Man Higher ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... sufficient preparation, has had a disastrous effect, and the present state of many provinces is that of a wilderness overrun by brigand bands too strong for the civil authority to deal with. But one cannot fail to recognize and appreciate the humane motives which urged the premature establishment of civil administration. Scores of nobodies before the rebellion became somebodies during ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... civilization does as much injury to the lower tribes of creation, as it does good to man. If it polishes our faculties, it enfeebles their instincts. The Turkish dog, living nearly as he would have done in the wilderness, exhibits the same sagacity, amounting to something of government. For instance, the Turkish dogs divide the capital into quarters, and each set has its own; if an adventurous or an ambitious dog enters the quarters of his neighbours, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... or rather the errand of Jahveh, God of Israel, for whom I speak. Have you not heard it before? It is that you should let his people go to do sacrifice to him in the wilderness." ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... there fine green grains of glauconite. He knew no names like these, and naught of meteorological potency. He had studied no other rock. His casual notice had been arrested nowhere by similar signs. Under the influence of his ignorant superstition, his cherished illusion, the lonely wilderness, what wonder that, as he pondered upon the rocks, strange mysteries seemed revealed to him? He found significance in these cabalistic scriptures—nay, he read inspired words! With the ramrod of his gun he sought to follow ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of these chambers was found to contain, when the house was pulled down, a rough bed, candlestick, remains of food, and a breviary. A Roman Catholic school and presbytery now occupy its site. It is a melancholy sight to see the "Wilderness" behind the house, still adorned with busts and urns, and the graves of favourite dogs, which still bear the epitaphs written by Cowper on Sir John Throckmorton's pointer and Lady Throckmorton's pet spaniel. "Capability Brown" ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... cedars; the twilight is creeping With shadowy garments, the wilderness through; All day we have carolled, and now would be sleeping, So echo the anthems we warbled to you; While we swing, swing, And your branches sing, And we drowse to your ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... offer to buy the Crown. He knew that it was something very important to them, and he admitted, grudgingly, that they could care for it better than he. At least, they would not keep it in a hole under a hut in the wilderness, guarded only by dogs. But they were not Keepers, and he was. To them, the Crown would be but one of many important things; to him it was everything. He could not imagine ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... General Grant has dictated 50 pages of foolscap, and thus the Wilderness and Appomattox stand for all time in his own words. This makes the second volume of his book as valuable as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whom the commander-in-chief's sins were piled up. They said that the beating back of my company caused the panic which led to the headlong flight of our little army. Yes, Aleck, they piled up his sins upon my unlucky shoulders, and I was driven out into the wilderness—hounded out of society, a dishonoured, disgraced coward. Aleck, boy," he continued, with his voice growing appealing and piteous, "I was engaged to be married to the young and beautiful girl I loved as soon as the war was over, and I was looking forward to happiness ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... long years of wild adventure, through all the time of after peace, in love and war, in the shine of the camp fire, in the glare of the sacrificial flame, in the light of lonely stars illumining the lonely wilderness, that ring has shone upon my hand, reminding me always of her who gave it, and on this hand it shall go down into the grave. It is a plain circlet of thick gold, somewhat worn now, a posy-ring, and on its inner surface ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... entirely disappears, and the terrible and sublime blaze out together. We have continually about us animals of a strength that is considerable, but not pernicious. Amongst these we never look for the sublime; it comes upon us in the gloomy forest, and in the howling wilderness, in the form of the lion, the tiger, the panther, or rhinoceros. Whenever strength is only useful, and employed for our benefit or our pleasure, then it is never sublime; for nothing can act agreeably to us, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... is a man living all alone on a strip of rock and sand between the wilderness and the sea, who wants you to send somebody to take charge of a bird ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... breaks between, which she had to fill up as best as she could, he told her all his story, even to the sad secret of all, which had caused him to run away from home, and hide himself in the last place where they would have thought he was, the safe wilderness of London. There, carefully disguised, he had lived decently while his money lasted, and then, driven step by step to the brink of destitution, he had offered himself for employment in the lowest grade of his own profession, and been taken as assistant by the not over scrupulous ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... equipped with mosquito netting and with supplies. He had a reliable map, and anyhow he had only to follow the tracks left by the Selfridge party. He turned his back upon the big river and plunged into the wilderness. ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... half a dozen soldiers are stationed. In the whole of Portugal there is no place of worse reputation, and the inn is nicknamed Estalagem de Ladroens, or the hostelry of thieves; for it is there that the banditti of the wilderness, which extends around it on every side for leagues, are in the habit of coming and spending the fruits of their criminal daring; there they dance and sing, feast on fricasseed rabbits and olives, and drink the muddy but strong wine of the Alemtejo. An enormous fire, fed by the trunk of ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... will have heard that Allan Quatermain, who was one of the party that discovered King Solomon's mines some little time ago, and who afterwards came to live in England near his friend Sir Henry Curtis. He went back to the wilderness again, as these old hunters almost invariably do, on one pretext or another.[*] They cannot endure civilization for very long, its noise and racket and the omnipresence of broad-clothed humanity proving more trying ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... and grew till at the end of ten days that she had not seen Lydgate, it grew into terror at the blank that might possibly come—into foreboding of that ready, fatal sponge which so cheaply wipes out the hopes of mortals. The world would have a new dreariness for her, as a wilderness that a magician's spells had turned for a little while into a garden. She felt that she was beginning to know the pang of disappointed love, and that no other man could be the occasion of such delightful aerial building as she had been enjoying for the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... what? Why this wild protest of the wilderness? Was it this wide-blown, scattered fire, whose sparks and ashes were sown broadcast, till but stubborn remnants clung under the sheltering back-log of the bivouac hearth? Was it this frail lodge, built upon pliant, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... towards the window, and indicating the foot-passengers and omnibuses then passing down the far side of Russell Square, "are as far beyond them as they ever were. We can only look upon ourselves, Mary, as pioneers in a wilderness. We can only go on patiently putting the truth before them. It isn't THEM," she continued, taking heart from her sight of the traffic, "it's their leaders. It's those gentlemen sitting in Parliament and drawing four ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... asked. "And with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know thy pride and the naughtiness of thy heart, for thou hast come down that ...
— David the Shepherd Boy • Amy Steedman
... Paul felt when he beheld Athens, and 'his spirit was stirred within him.' I see one of the finest countries in the world, full of industrious inhabitants; yet three-fifths of it are an uncultivated jungle, abandoned to wild beasts and serpents. If the gospel flourishes here, 'the wilderness will in every respect become a ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... of the little child somewhere in this cruel, relentless wilderness. His heart ached for the son that he might no longer seek to save—that and the realization of Jane's suffering were all that weighed upon his brave spirit in these that he thought his last moments of life. Succour, all that he ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... proportions. With money behind one, the problem of where to live approaches more nearly to the simple question of where do you wish to live, and a rich daughter-in-law would have surely seen to it that she did not have to leave her square mile of Mecca and go out into the wilderness of bricks and mortar. If the house in Blue Street could not have been compounded for there were other desirable residences which would have been capable of consoling Francesca for her lost Eden. And now the detested Courtenay Youghal, with his mocking eyes and air of youthful cynicism, ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... a drum or two sounded the step, and off the brigade marched, slowly and solemnly. A cornet signal, followed by a drum roll, and then the Naval Academy Band crashed into the joyous march, consecrated to this occasion, "Ain't I glad I'm out of the wilderness!" ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... successive held their transient sway;— Where once the priest his sacred victims led And on the altars their warm lifeblood shed,— Where swollen rivers once had amply flowed And splendid galleys down the stream had rowed, A dreary wilderness now meets the view, And nought but Memory can ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... into trouble by introducing two comparisons in the same sentence or paragraph, one of which contradicts the other. Thus should we say "Pilot us through the wilderness of life" we would introduce two figures of speech, that of a ship being piloted and that of a caravan in a wilderness being guided, which would contradict each other. This ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... is beautiful. From the edge of the rich, flowery fields on which I trod to the midway sides of the snowy Olympus, the ground could only here and there show an abrupt crag, or a high straggling ridge that up-shouldered itself from out of the wilderness of myrtles, and of the thousand bright-leaved shrubs that twined their arms together in lovesome tangles. The air that came to my lips was warm and fragrant as the ambrosial breath of the goddess, infecting me, not (of course) with a faith in the old religion of the isle, but ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... chicaneries to dispose of their property at any price to these wealthy owners of the woodlands. Old farmlands, on which numerous generations have been supported for thousands of years, are being transformed into wilderness, in which the roe and the deer house, while the mountains, that the noble or bourgeois capitalist calls his own, become the abode of large herds of chamois. Whole communities are pauperized, the turning of their cattle upon the Alpine ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... narrowly look upon thee and consider thee, saying, 'Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, and didst shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness and destroyed the cities thereof, that opened not the house of ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... miles bore to the westward of south. We passed through forests of the box or goborro, under which grew a luxuriant crop of grass and two of these flats (on which we saw yarra trees also) stretched away to the westward, breaking the elsewhere unvaried wilderness of sandhills and scrub. On crossing one of these forest flats we heard the sound of the natives' hatchet on some hollow trees before us; and Piper as usual hastened forward to communicate with them, but in vain for, as soon as they saw him, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... hand to her, and she put her own into it with a confidence as instinctive as the bird's. Then, hand in hand they crossed the bridge and struck into the wilderness again; climbing slopes still warm and odorous, passing through dells full of chilly damps, along meadows spangled with fire-flies, and haunted by sonorous frogs; over rocks crisp with pale mosses, ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... foes, as well as may be, are kept at bay; there is room in plenty instead of dismal overcrowding. The grateful plant repays the care bestowed upon it by bursting into a sportiveness unsuspected, and indeed impossible, amidst the alarms and frays incessant in the wilderness. It departs from parental habits in most astonishing fashion, puts forth blossoms of fresh grace of form, of new dyes, of doubled magnitude. The gardener's opportunity has come. He can seize upon such of these "sports" as he chooses and make them ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... father lived a many years agone Lord of this land, master of all cunning, Who ruddy gold could draw from out grey stone, And gather wealth from many an uncouth thing, He made the wilderness rejoice and sing, And such a leech he was that none could say Without his word what soul should ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... mazes tenantless, And not a friendly echo answers me. Oh for a foot as airy as the wing Of the young brooding dove, to overpass, On swift commission of my true heart's love, All metes and bournes of this lone wilderness: So should I quickly find my truant lord. But, as it is, I can no farther go. What shall I do? despair? lie down and die? If I give o'er my search I shall despair, And if I do despair, I quickly die. Avaunt Despair! I will not yet despair. Begone, grim herald of oblivious Death! ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... light tinkling from her metal girdle; she moved so gracefully that I thought I beheld a beautiful star, and her smile was that of a fairy about to vanish from human sight. The tender and voluptuous music of the dance seemed to come from her lips, while her head, covered with a wilderness of black tresses, bent backward as if her neck was too slender to support ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was never re-built. The castle was never re-inhabited, people avoided it as a spectre-stricken dwelling. Its windows were bricked up, its garden became a wilderness of weeds, its steps and staircases fell to pieces. Ruin wrought her ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... me, and that is to reflect that I have often allowed the record of old sadnesses to heighten my own sense of luxurious tranquillity and security. Not so will I err again. I will rather believe that a mighty price is being paid for a mightier joy, that we are not astray in the wilderness out of the way, but that we are rather a great and loving company, guided onward to some far-off city of God, with infinite tenderness, and a love so great that we cannot even comprehend ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... but a few who were denounced as unpractical sentimentalists for favouring an irreconcilable foe—could think of no way of enforcing order, except by a wholesale use of the sword and the gallows. They could find no means of restoring peace except turning the rich land into a wilderness, and rooting out by famine those whom the soldier or the hangman had not overtaken. "No governor shall do any good here," wrote an English observer in 1581, "except he show himself ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... needeth. If thou shouldst be present then, thou wilt see him more tenderly ministered unto than all the rest.—And if such a man prayed not?—If such a man slept ere he repented, he would wake with hatred in his heart towards the city and everyone therein, and would straightway flee into the wilderness. And the angel of the Lord would go out after him, and smite him with a word, and he would vanish from amongst us, and his life would be the life of one of those least of living things that are in your world born of the water; and there must he grow up again, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... to me, as it came to pass once before in the time when the Jews went out of Egypt with Moses, who took them from captivity." And indeed there was something of Moses in this man, who thus led his little rabble from a Spanish seaport out across the salt wilderness of the ocean, and interpreted the signs for them, and stood between them and the powers of vengeance and terror that were ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... their clothing loses every trace of sand. Occasionally gusts stream over the wild waste, raising a dense drift to a height of a foot or two only, and streaming like a fringe over the steep northern edge. Though the sun is blazing down on the glistening wilderness there is little sensation of heat, for the cool lake breeze is ever blowing. On the landward side, the insidious approach of the devouring sand is well marked. One hundred and fifty feet below, the foot ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... country from colonizing the southern parts of it, which were almost totally unoccupied, or the northern parts, which were almost all left uncultivated? It was wicked to deny the right of civilized man to cultivate the wilderness; but he was bound to treat the savage with kindness, and to communicate to him the advantages of civilization. The New Zealand Company had treated the savage with kindness, making him ample compensation for the land purchased of him, by setting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... wandered for hour after hour through a perfect wilderness of such streets we saw not a single white person; it seemed as though I were the only Caucasian among the more than a million Asiatics, though this, of course, was not actually ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... city, no doubt, lady, but in truth I would rather be in the country than in this wilderness of narrow streets. But indeed I have had somewhat of an adventure, and one which I think may prove of advantage;" and he then related to his mistress his visit to the booth ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... Tame the fierce walkers of the wilderness, Than that Oeagrian harpist, for whose lay Tigers with hunger pined ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... packed a flat-iron among my stuff, an' you boys joshed me about it, said I was bughouse. But I figured out: there's camp-meetin's an' socials up there, an' a nice, dinky, white shirt once in a way goes pretty good. Anyway, thinks I, if there ain't no one else to dress for in that wilderness, I'll dress for the Almighty. So I sticks ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... live, avoid his face; Dwell in the wilderness apart, And gather force for vanquishing, Ere thou returnest to his place. Then arm, and with undaunted heart Give battle, till he own ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... railroads should be built that it almost implored the projectors to accept the great gifts of franchises, land and money that it proffered as assistance. A radiantly glowing description is forged of the men who succeeded in laying these railroads; how there stretched immense reaches of wilderness which would long have remained desolate had it not been for these indomitable pioneers; and how by their audacious skill and persistence they at last prevailed, despite sneers and ridicule, and gave to the United States a chain of railroads ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... but there is some manna in the wilderness, my lord. Hem! On Friday night the widows' mites dropped in. "Forty scavengers, three and fourpence. An aged pew-opener of St Martin's parish, sixpence. A bell-ringer of the established church, sixpence. A Protestant infant, newly born, one halfpenny. The United Link ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... is brimming over with thrilling adventure, woods lore and the story of the wonderful experiences that befell the Cranford troop of Boy Scouts when spending a part of their vacation in the wilderness. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... grow weaker, but this is so. In great age nothing seems to matter, and it is this indifference that I wish to escape from. Thou goest forth in the morning to lead thy flock in search of pasture, if need be many hours, and God is nearer to us in the wilderness than he is among men. This meaning, Jesus said, that under this roof I, too, may cease to love God? Not cease to love God: one doesn't cease to love God, Hazael answered. But, Hazael, this night I've yielded up the flocks to ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... or of the Egyptians is often led by a desire for the fabulous. Search is now being made in the western desert of Egypt for a lost city of burnished copper; and the Anglo-Egyptian official is constantly urged by credulous natives to take camels across the wilderness in quest of a town whose houses and temples are of pure gold. What archaeologist has not at some time given ear to the whispers that tell of long-lost treasures, of forgotten cities, of Atlantis swallowed by the sea? It is* not only children who love the tales of Fairyland. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... porters deserted, because they believed the white men were cannibals and intended to eat them when safe away from the haunts of men; through Usagara, the country of Gara, where Captain Grant was seized with fever; through Ugogo's great wilderness, where buffalo and rhinoceros abounded, where the country was flooded with tropical rains, on to the land of the Moon, three thousand feet above sea-level, till the slowly moving caravan reached Kaze. Here terrible accounts of ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... small company of traders established themselves in the silence and solitude of the wilderness. Their trading boats ran up the river, and along the coast, visiting every creek and inlet in the pursuit of furs. The natives, finding this market thus suddenly opening before them, and finding that their furs, heretofore ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... evil spirits so dreaded by her people, speaking in dull, monotonous undertones, like ceaseless, rolling thunder far away, threatening destruction and death to all who fell within their reach. Even to her, whose home was the wilderness, the ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... of the derelicts of the world. On the east side of the river, over there, was a semblance of civilization. That is to say, men wore white linen, avoided murder, and frequently paid their gambling debts. But on this west side stood wilderness, not the kind one reads about as being eventually conquered by white men; no, the real grim desolation, where the ax cuts but leaves no blaze, where the pioneer disappears and few or none follow. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... boys and a man was moving slowly on one of the little lakes in the great northern wilderness of what is now the State of New York. The water, a brilliant blue under skies of the same intense sapphire tint, rippled away gently on either side of the prow, or rose in heaps of glittering bubbles, as the paddles were ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... of Australian settlement, when the shores of Port Jackson were occupied by a sparse population, and the region beyond was unknown wilderness and desolation, a great part of the Haymarket was occupied by the brickfields from which Brickfield Hill takes its name. When a 'Southerly Burster' struck the infant city, its approach was always heralded by a cloud of reddish dust from this locality, and in consequence the phenomenon gained ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... all; it was a storm of thwacks that fell on the back of Shibli Bagarag. When they had wearied themselves in this fashion, they took him as had he been a stray bundle or a damaged bale, and hurled him from the gates of the city into the wilderness ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Shetland ponies, whose breakneck course in the picture followed one whichever way he turned. When these glories had been pasted upon the wall and had been discussed to the point of cynicism, the Court of Boyville reluctantly adjourned to get in the night wood and dream of a wilderness ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... whooping howling wilderness, a sort of Malibran. With Lind, Labache and Melba mixed and all combined in one. I'm a grand cathedral organ and a calliope sharp, I'm a gushing, trembling nightingale, a vast ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... marble effigy protected from vandalism by an iron cage. There is the skeleton figure representing Fox (who should have been called Goose), the poor creature who starved himself to death in trying to imitate the fast of forty days in the wilderness. Since this performance has been taken out of the list of miracles, it is not so likely to be repeated by fanatics. I confess to a strong suspicion that this is one of the ambulatory or movable stories, like the "hangman's stone" legend, which I have found in so many different parts ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... crownless, in her voiceless woe;[nm] empty urn within her withered hands, Whose holy dust was scattered long ago; The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;[457] The very sepulchres lie tenantless[458] Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow, Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness? Rise, with thy yellow waves, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... let out its invaluable contents. It is this decapitated end of the head, also, which is at last elevated out of the water, and retained in that position by the enormous cutting tackles, whose hempen combinations, on one side, make quite a wilderness of ropes ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... had never, so persistent was it, got quite grown over in the years when the maiden ladies lived here. Perhaps boys had kept it alive, running that way. At the foot and on the river bank were bushes, alder and a wilderness of small trees bound by wild grape-vines into a wall. Through these Lydia led the way to the fallen birch by the waterside. She turned and faced Jeffrey in the gathering dusk. He fancied her face looked ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... studious retirement; and with posterity, in the generous aspirings after future renown. The solitude of such a mind is its state of highest enjoyment. It is then visited by those elevated meditations which are the proper aliment of noble souls, and are, like manna, sent from heaven, in the wilderness of this world. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... flying fast from Heaven's fated face, And from the world that her discovered wide, Fled to the wasteful wilderness space, From living eyes her open shame to hide, And lurked in rocks and caves long unespied. But that fair crew of knights, and Una fair, Did in that castle afterwards abide, To rest themselves, and weary powers repair, Where store they found of all ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... society produces, men begin to manifest what is called civilization; but never in rude and shelterless circumstances, or when widely scattered. Even men who have been civilized, when transferred to a wide wilderness, where each has to work hard and isolatedly for the first requisites of life, soon shew a retrogression to barbarism: witness the plains of Australia, as well as the backwoods of Canada and the prairies of Texas. Fixity of residence and thickening of population are perhaps the ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound Save his own dashings,—yet the dead are there; And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... compassion for all creatures. He that cheerfully leads such a life in the forest, with large-tusked elephants for companions, with no human being by his side, and contented with the produce of the wilderness, is said to act after the manner of the wise. A large lake when it becomes turbid, resumes its tranquillity of itself. Similarly, a man of wisdom, when disturbed in such matters, becomes tranquil of himself. I see that a person that has fallen into such a plight as thine ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... anxious that he should go to Pollington and 'tell them anything about poor Dick.' They did, in truth, know everything about poor Dick; that poor Dick's money was all gone, and that poor Dick was earning his bread, or rather his damper, mutton, and tea, wretchedly, in the wilderness of a sheep-run in Queensland. The mother's letter was not very piteous, did not contain much of complaint,—alluded to poor Dick as one whose poverty was almost natural, but still it was very pressing. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... over his body and mind. He heard voices from heaven. He saw strange visions of distant hills, pleasant and sunny as his own Delectable Mountains. From those abodes he was shut out, and placed in a dark and horrible wilderness, where he wandered through ice and snow, striving to make his way into the happy region of light. At one time he was seized with an inclination to work miracles. At another time he thought himself actually possessed by the devil. He could distinguish ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Ancient Wood is white and chill, But what know I of wintry woes? The Pipesmoke Trail is mine at will— Naught may hinder and none oppose. Such the power the pipe bestows, When the wilderness calls I may Tramping go, as I smoke and doze, Over the ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... first year of the presidency of Bishop McIlvaine. It was the centre of vast forests, broken only by occasional clearings, excepting along the lines of the National road, and the Ohio river and its navigable tributaries. In this wilderness of nature, but garden of letters, he remained, at first in the grammar school, and then in the college, until the 6th of September, 1837; when at twenty years of age he took his degree and diploma, decorated with one of the honorary ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... I didn' mane it. It just took me, ye see, lyin' up yondher and huggin' me thoughts in this—wilderness. I swear to ye, George: and ye'll just wet your throat to show there's no bad blood, and that ye belave me." He took up a pannikin from the floor beside the bunk, pulled a hot iron from the fire, and stirred the frozen drink. The invalid turned his ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Brambles, bristling with sharp thorns, which had thrown their long, straggling arms across the paths, caught and tried to hold back any bold adventurer who attempted to penetrate into the mysterious depths of this desolate wilderness. Solitude is averse to being surprised in dishabille, and surrounds herself with all ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... except for scarcity of fish, the scene is very little altered, and one is a boy again, in heart, beneath the elms of Yair, or by the Gullets at Ashiesteil. However bad the sport, it keeps you young, or makes you young again, and you need not follow Ponce de Leon to the western wilderness, when, in any river you knew of yore, you can find the Fountain ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... each sweeping pond'rous bough Resist, when straight the Whirlwind cleaves, Dashing in strength'ning eddies through A roaring wilderness of leaves! How would the prone descending show'r From the green Canopy rebound! How would the lowland torrents pour! How deep the ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... window I had seen a large hall with a marble floor and broad stone stairs winding upwards into unknown regions. By the walks I had arrived at the locked door of the kitchen garden, at a small wood or wilderness of endless delights (including a broken swing), and at a dilapidated summer-house. I had wandered over the spongy lawn, which was cut into a long green promenade by high clipt yew-hedges, walking between which, in olden times, the ladies grew erect and stately, as plants among ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... buildings. Two sites in it are especially notable. At its southern end is Birs Nimrud and some adjacent mounds, anciently Borsippa; here stood a huge temple of the god Nebo. Near its north end, ten or eleven miles north of Borsippa, round Babil and Kasr, is a larger wilderness of ruin, three miles long and nearly as broad in extreme dimensions; here town-walls and palaces of Babylonian kings and temples of Babylonian gods and streets and dwelling-houses of ordinary men have been detected and in part uncovered. ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... Dedmond, I say without hesitation you've no notion of what you're faced with, brought up to a sheltered life as you've been. Do realize that you stand at the parting of the ways, and one leads into the wilderness. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gently and to greater distance down to the banks of the river. I could not see the river itself. The view of the dell at my left hand was lovely. A little stream which ran in the bottom had been coaxed to form a clear pool in an open spot, where the sunlight fell upon it, surrounded by a soft wilderness of trees and climbers. Sweet branches of jessamine waved there in their season; and a beautiful magnolia had been planted or cherished there, and carefully kept in view of the house windows. But the ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... he bade Jemima good-night, gave her explicit directions to call him, should his uncle awake (her own room opened out of St. George's) spread his blanket in the cramped hall outside the sick man's door—he had not roughed it on shipboard and in the wilderness all these years without knowing something of the soft side of a plank—and throwing his heavy ship's coat ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... in a wilderness of secondary considerations," she said. "Don't ask me to tell you all that women can do, all that women can be. There is a new life, different from the old life of dependence, possible. If only we are not divided. If only we work together. This is the one movement that brings women of different ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... nine o'clock upon a summer Sunday morning, in the year sixteen hundred and something. The sun looks down brightly on a little forest settlement, around whose expanding fields the great American wilderness recedes each day, withdrawing its bears and wolves and Indians into an ever remoter distance,—not yet so far but that a stout wooden gate at each end of the village street indicates that there is something outside which must stay ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... emphasis laid, all through his writings, on the importance of conduct. The penetrating analysis, in ch. vi, of The Form of Perfect Living, of the possible sins humanity can commit on its journey through the wilderness of this world, hardly leaves a corner of the heart unlighted; lets not one possible shift, twist or excuse of the human conscience go free. But it all has the Church as its immediate background; the Mystical ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... holding clusters of wax-lights, which shed their rays over the display below. In the centre arose a huge epergne of silver, fashioned into the shape of a drooping palm-tree, whose leaves were of frosted silver, and about the trunk played a wilderness of monkeys. Beneath, around the board, were cut-glass decanters, flat bulbous flasks of colored Bohemian glass, crystal goblets, delicate and almost shadowy wine-cups from Venice, silver wine-coolers, all mingled in with a heterogeneous collection of rare china and silver dishes. ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... years ago, This land was forest, and a bright pure river Ran through it to and from the Ocean stream. Now, through a wilderness of human forms, And human dwellings, a polluted flood Rolls up and down, charged with all earthly poisons, Poisoning ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... brought together the elements of a Christian church. Far from all ordinances, means of grace, or Christian brotherhood, or cooeperation, he had seemed to himself to be merely the lonely, solitary "voice of one crying in the wilderness," as unassisted, and, to human view, as powerless. With poverty, and cold, and physical fatigue he had daily been familiar; and where no vehicle could penetrate the miry depths of the forest, where it was impracticable even to guide a horse, he had ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... beetling citadel, its winding walls, its massive gates, the peaked roofs of its houses, the tall steeples of its churches, the graceful campaniles of its numerous convents—they set actively to the work of attack which remained as the culmination of their heroic march through the wilderness. The enchantment of distance had now vanished, and the reality of vision was before them. Arnold had the quick insight of the born commander. He understood that he could accomplish nothing from Levis. The broad St. Lawrence rushed by him with a ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... shall eventually return to my beloved France," she remarked sadly, "I anticipate many a heartache to see the terrible condition of the fair country that has been turned into a howling wilderness by the vandal German armies. Ah! I almost dread the day, much as I yearn to ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... no record that Elijah had any settled home. The wild paths of the wilderness and the mountains were familiar to him, and he dwelt where some spreading tree would afford him a leafy shelter. He moved from place to place, according to God's commands. Now, as he left the presence of Ahab, God's word came to him, directing ...
— The Man Who Did Not Die - The Story of Elijah • J. H. Willard
... great prose-master of France, Gustave Flaubert, is always in modulation. No two canvases are rhythmically alike, except in the matter of masterfulness. He, too, was a master of magnificent prose painting, painting worth a wilderness of makers of frozen mediaeval patterns. Mr. Henry B. Fuller, the author of the Chevalier di Pensieri-Vani, once spoke of the "cosy sublimity" in Raphael's Vision of Ezekiel; one might paraphrase the epigram by describing the pictures of Velasquez as boxed-in ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... by the life of our Lord himself. The mediaeval conception of Christ was that He exhibited only the passive virtues of meekness, patience, and submission to wrong. From the gospels we form a different idea. He vanquished the devil in the wilderness; He faced human opposition boldly and without fear; He denounced the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and encountered their rage and violence. He went calmly along His appointed path, neither turning to the right hand nor to the left. Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... at this period (the autumn of 1853) was little more than a wilderness. The nearest town of any size was Nevada City, fringed by the shadows of the lofty Sierras. Between the gulches had sprung up as if by magic a forest of tented camps and tin-roofed shanties, with gambling-booths and liquor saloons by ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham |
