"Reed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cicero was wrong in supposing that the Republic, which had in fact already fallen, could be re-established by the strength of any one man, could be bolstered up by any leader, has to be admitted; that in trusting to Pompey as a politician he leaned on a frail reed I admit; but I will not admit that in praising the man he was hypocritical or unduly self-seeking. In our own political contests, when a subordinate member of the Cabinet is zealously serviceable to his chief, we do not accuse him of falsehood ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... "Another broken reed, my friend! If rumour speaks truly, he has made a bargain with Conde, and will support him even in open rebellion. By the way, do not wander about the city too ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... transfigured to that?" and something, she knew not what, sent a quiver through her and made the image in the glass tremble—the image of a tall and shapely girl whose round and perfect figure swayed to the boat's motion, lithe as a reed to the wind, while she stood erect looking at something that had been pointed out, and the boatmen paused with their oars in the air; the image of a face on whose dark cheek the rose was burning, in whose dark eye a veiled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... like a wilted meadow reed, the blue streamers on her hat drooped dejectedly, her best shoes were all dusty, and the three-cornered rent was the feature of her best muslin delaine dress that one saw first. Then her little delicate face was all tear-stains ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... "Say, Reed," said the voice in English, "tell the parchment-faced old buzzard that we appreciate the little comedy he has staged for us. Tell him it is bully-bueno, but he must not overdo it. We are plum done up, and want a few days ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to his companions and be witness of the contest which might determine whether the princess was to be another's bride, his great love and his utter despair of winning her so oppressed him that he lay as motionless as a broken reed. He scarcely heard the music of the birds, and paid no heed to the murmur of the brook rushing by his feet. The crackling of branches near him barely disturbed him, but when a shadow fell across his eyes ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... the hall was the common living-room for both men and women, who slept on the reed-strewn floor, the ladies' sleeping-place being separated from the men's by the arras. The walls were hung with tapestry, woven by the skilled fingers of the ladies of the household. A peat or log fire burned ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... was the standard biography during the eighteenth century. It was reprinted by Pope, Hanmer, Warburton, Johnson, Steevens, Malone, and Reed; but they did not give it in the form in which Rowe had left it. Pope took the liberty of condensing and rearranging it, and as he did not acknowledge what he had done, his silence led other editors astray. Those who did note the alterations ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... that is, in a gauger's manner, round, and up and down—surface and contents; what is in them and what may be got out of them; and in fine, their entire canon of weight and capacity. That yard-measure of Modesty's, lent to those who will use it, is a curious musical reed, and will go round and round waists that are slender enough, with latent melody in every joint of it, the dark root only being soundless, moist ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... had moved before them, and made doubtful Richard's echelon. They knelt, pulled bowstrings to the ear. The sky grew dun as the long shafts flew; the oncoming tide of men flickered and tossed like a broken sea, and the Soldan's green banner dipped like a reed in it. A second time the blast of arrows, like a gust of death, smote them flat: Richard's voice rang sharply out—'Passavant, chivalers! Sauve Anjou!'—and a young Poictevin knight, stooping low in his saddle, went rocking down the line with words for Henry of Champagne, who ruled the centre. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... in impulsively; nodded at the matron, a plump worthy widow named Nodelquist, and at a couple of farm-women who were meekly rocking. The rest-room resembled a second-hand store. It was furnished with discarded patent rockers, lopsided reed chairs, a scratched pine table, a gritty straw mat, old steel engravings of milkmaids being morally amorous under willow-trees, faded chromos of roses and fish, and a kerosene stove for warming lunches. The front window was darkened by torn net curtains ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... cast his eyes he saw a terrible foe of his arrived at that spot. That foe was none else than a restless mongoose of coppery eyes, of the name of Harita. Living in underground holes, its body resembled the flower of a reed. Allured to that spot by the scent of the mouse, the animal came there with great speed for devouring his prey. And he stood on his haunches, with head upraised, licking the corners of his mouth with his tongue. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... frown o' the great, Thou art past the tyrant's stroke; Care no more to clothe and eat; To thee the reed is as the oak: The sceptre, learning, physic, must All follow ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... the bosom above, and became a tightly fitting garment, with two bands over the shoulders, like braces, to keep it in place. The feet were not always covered; on certain occasions, however, sandals of coarse leather, plaited straw, split reed, or even painted wood, adorned those shapely Egyptian feet, which, to suit our taste, should be ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Social Emergency." Houghton. $1.35. (Twelve excellent essays by President Foster, Reed College, and nine others, on social ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... she had grown thinner than ever, or rather that her thinness, which had formerly had a healthy reed-like strength, now suggested fatigue and languor. And her face was spent, extinguished—the very eyes were lifeless. All her vitality seemed to have withdrawn itself into the arch of dense black hair which still clasped her forehead like the noble ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... wonder. All that Mary could tell her of things seeable through it could never persuade the child to risk her own eye at either end of it. So Mary would look again and see, out in the prairie, in the morning, the reed birds, the marsh hen, the blackbirds, the sparrows, the starlings, with their red and yellow epaulets, rising and fluttering and sinking again among the lilies and mallows, and the white crane, paler than a ghost, wading in the grassy shallows. She saw the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... given me a measuring reed like a rod, and it was said, Arise, and measure the temple of God, (and the altar,) and those who worship in it. But the court which is without the temple, leave out, and measure it not; for it is given to the Gentiles: and they will tread ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... Jordan immersed to his waist. Upon His left, S. John stands upon a rock, his staff in his left hand, while his right rests upon the head of Our Lord. Opposite to him sits enthroned the old god of Jordan, a reed in his hand, listening, perhaps, to the words of the Father: "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." Over Christ's head the Dove is ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... Majesty's surveying ship, gave us a passage to Labuan, where the Bishop wanted to hold a confirmation. This ship was going to Manilla, and from thence to Hong Kong, before she returned to Singapore, and, through the kindness of Captain Reed, we accompanied her. At Labuan I caught the fever of the country, but it did not come out for ten days, by which time we were at Manilla. We anchored off Manilla on Christmas-day evening: it had been a very wet day, but cleared up at night, and we ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... with literature and the art of writing (, duppu sharrute). Ashur-bani-pal addresses him as "Nebo, the beneficent son, the director of the hosts of heaven and of earth, holder of the tablet of knowledge, bearer of the writing-reed of destiny, lengthener of days, vivifier of the dead, stablisher of light for the men who are troubled" (see tablet R.M. 132) In the reign of Sargon II the temple library of Nebo was probably housed in some building at or near Nabi Ynis, ...
— The Babylonian Story of the Deluge - as Told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Adams, but saw him little, and heard him less, as I will relate. Mr. Reed, of Barnstable, introduced me,—"Father Reed," as they used to call him, from his having been longer a member of Congress than any other man in the House,—and I said to him, as we were entering the White House, "Now tell Mr. Adams who I am and where from; for ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... the Municipal League had consisted almost entirely in working up evidence in cases of municipal corruption for the use of her legal superiors. An untried lawyer, and a woman lawyer at that—surely a weak reed for her father to ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... when he was quite the skeleton grown, As weak as a reed, and as cold as a stone He fell all to pieces, and with a faint groan, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... wooden clubs, and bows of the same, arrows of reed with wooden points, hardened in the fire, darts with pieces of ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... to leave with the reader is, that lovely flowers, and green trees growing in the open air, are the proper guides of men to the places which their Maker intended them to inhabit; while the flowerless and treeless deserts—of reed, or sand, or rock,—are meant to be either heroically invaded and redeemed, or surrendered to the wild creatures which are appointed for them; happy and wonderful in ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... intuition given A PRIORI. That every change has a cause must necessarily (without being thus formulated) be one of the initial beliefs of conscious beings far lower in the scale than man, whether derived solely from experience or otherwise. The reed that shakes is obviously shaken by the wind. But the riddle of the wind also forces itself into notice; and man explains this by transferring to the wind 'the sense of his own nature.' Thunderstorms, volcanic disturbances, ocean waves, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the hemlock than the vine. Truth is the flash that turns aside no more For castle than for cot. Truth is a spear Thrown by the blind. Truth is a Nemesis Which leadeth her beloved by the hand Through all things; giving him no task to break A bruised reed, but bidding him stand firm ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... flaccidity; inactivity &c. 683. anaemia, bloodlessness, deficiency of blood, poverty of blood. declension of strength, loss of strength, failure of strength; delicacy, invalidation, decrepitude, asthenia[obs3], adynamy[obs3], cachexy[obs3], cachexia[Med], sprain, strain. reed, thread, rope of sand, house of cards. softling[obs3], weakling; infant &c. 129; youth &c. 127. V. be weak &c. adj.; drop, crumble, give way, totter, tremble, shake, halt, limp, fade, languish, decline, flag, fail, have one leg in the grave. render weak &c. adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... threeasurer iv a dimon' mine poorin' his dhrink; an', though he was feelin' well, they was something on his mind. 'What ails ye?' ast Hanna. 'I was thinkin',' says Mack, 'how pleasant 'twud be if me ol' frind Tom Reed was here,' he says. ''Twud be Paradise if he was here,' he says, whin, lo an' behold, who shud come acrost th' dimon'-studded beach, wadin' through th' bank-notes that 'd been dropped be th' good farmers iv ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... covered with people, and the pile and stake upon the top, upon the which the tall constable jumped up when he saw us coming, and beckoned with his cap with all his might. Thereat my senses left me, and my sweet lamb was not much better; for she bent to and fro like a reed, and stretching her bound hands toward heaven, she ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... place to stretch himself across the parapet, and look down, over the narrow patch of stone paving, down into the deep moat, whose waters were lit up by the sunshine, so that the boy could see the lily and other water-plant stems and clumps of reed mace; at the farther edge the great water-docks and plantains, with the pink-blossomed rush. But his attention was wholly riveted by the fish which swarmed in the sunny depths, and for a time he lay there upon his breast, kicking up his heels and studying ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... aspect. On the eastern corner there was built a temporary stage upon which the dance of Koehi was to be performed. For about half a block, with the stage on the right, there was a display of flowers and plant settings arranged on shelves sheltered with reed screens. Everybody was looking at the display seemingly much impressed, but it failed to impress me. If twisted grasses or bamboos afforded so much pleasure, the gallantry of a hunchback or the husband of a wrong pair should give as much pleasure ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... to have supplied him with some anecdotes and quotations; and I observe the fair hand of Mrs. Thrale as one of his copyists of select passages. But he was principally indebted to my steady friend Mr. Isaac Reed, of Staple-inn, whose extensive and accurate knowledge of English literary history I do not express with exaggeration, when I say it is wonderful; indeed his labours[132] have proved it to the world; and all who have the pleasure ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the lord of the rocks and caves, was the cave bear, as his slighter brother, the grizzly, was lord of the thick woods below, and as the dappled lion—the lion of those days was dappled—was lord of the thorn-thickets, reed-beds, and open plains. He was the greatest of all meat-eaters; he knew no fear, none preyed on him, and none gave him battle; only the rhinoceros was beyond his strength. Even the mammoth shunned his country. This invasion perplexed him. He noticed these new beasts were shaped ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... baby in har arms, all a-faint and a-tired, and har pore heart clean broke, and she say dat she'm jess ready ter drop down and die. Den I tries ter comfut har, massa; I takes har up from de floor, and I say ter har dat de good Lord He pity har—dat He woant bruise de broken reed, and woant put no more on her dan she kin b'ar—dat He'd touch you' heart, and I toled har you'se a good, kine heart at de bottom, massa—and I knows it, 'case I toted you 'fore you could gwo, and when you's a bery little chile, not ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... to the utmost. Far-stretching away to the eyes, winding blue in the midst of the meadows, As a necklet of sapphires that lies unclaspt in the lap of a virgin, Here asleep in the lap of the plain lies the reed-bordered, beautiful river. Like two flying coursers that strain, on the track, neck and neck, on the home-stretch, With nostrils distended, and mane froth-flecked, and the neck and the shoulders, Each urged to his best by the cry and the whip and the rein of his rider, Now they skim o'er the ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... 'mid Colone's olives swart'—(Kiss me, my Siren!)—Well, it seemed awful to watch that bee—he seemed so instantly from the teaching of God! AElian says that ... a frog, does he say?—some animal, having to swim across the Nile, never fails to provide himself with a bit of reed, which he bites off and holds in his mouth transversely and so puts from shore gallantly ... because when the water-serpent comes swimming to meet him, there is the reed, wider than his serpent's jaws, and no hopes of a swallow that time—now fancy the two meeting heads, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Providence was no jagged, quivering reed, but a strong, staunch, firm staff that had never yet failed him, and in this hour of severe trial he leaned his aching heart confidently and ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... could, I trusted them. They were like the group of attendants and entertainers who come down by train when people in the country give a party; they represented the contract for carrying the party on. That was an excellent relation with them—a possible one even with so broken a reed (from her slightness of cohesion) as Henrietta Stackpole. It is a familiar truth to the novelist, at the strenuous hour, that, as certain elements in any work are of the essence, so others are only of the form; that ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... illustrating Hungarian rural life, from pastures and farmyards to churned butter and manufactured cheeses, from the silk-worm in the chrysalis to the valuable silken web. We can see the life of farmers in the country homesteads, in simple reed huts or tents, the various crops they grow on their fields, the yellow honeycombs taken from the hives in autumn, tanned leather and the straps, saddles, and trunks that are made of it. We can see the weapons, implements, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... possible that, in other things, she had been equally mistaken? She took up her daughter's letter and read it over. The first shock of its reception had passed away, and nothing but the quivering of the head remained of the fearful agitation that had shook her little form like a reed. ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... women of Canton, have they not written to the missionaries "that there is no tear that they shed that is not red with blood because of this opium?" ("China," by M. Reed, p. 63). Why, then, does China, while she protests against the importation of a drug which a Governor of Canton, himself an opium-smoker, described as a "vile excrementitious substance" ("Barrow's Travels," p. 153), ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... civilized, and lived almost in white fashion. They kept negro slaves, the same as the white people, to till their fields, and wait upon them; they wore clothing of calico, cotton, and the like, in bright colors. Their houses were firmly built of reed and cane, with thatched roofs; ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... bridle-bit of the Shah of Persia's horse, and the golden hammer, with which his hoofs are shod. Musical instruments should be like the silver tongs, with which the high-priests tended the Jewish altars—never to be touched by a hand profane. Who would bruise the poorest reed of Pan, though plucked from a beggar's hedge, would ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Spake the reed—"I'm a maid named Syrinx, And there once lived a god named Pan; He liked me, but I didn't like him, So away to the ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... pistol, which, under the system of percussion locks, has not even a flint to connect it with farming. Or put the question to a still higher legal functionary, who, on the same occasion, when he should have been a reed, inclining here and there, as adverse gales of evidence disposed him, was seen to be a manufactured image on the seat of Justice, cast by ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... The sweetest, softest pussy willow of a girl with a delicious accent said, "So deed I also feel, in the conevent, when they all at once spik ingles!" She was in pearl gray, no powder, no mustache, slim as a reed. Her gentle name is Maria de Guadalupe Rosalia Merced Castello, but they call her "Lupe" ("Loopie," Sally, not Loop!) She is a penniless orphan, just visiting her kin at present, but lives with an uncle in Guanajuato (where delves my C.E. ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... with the Broadstairs Lifeboat which deserves passing notice here. It was raised by the late Sir Charles Reed, in 1867, the proceeds to be distributed annually among the seamen who save life on that coast. The following particulars of this fund were supplied ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the hot South—the home of the alligator and the gar. No, it is a stream of a far different character, though also one of great magnitude. Upon the banks of the former ripens the rice-plant, and the sugar-cane waves its golden tassels high in the air. There, too, flourishes the giant reed, the fan-palm, and the broad-leafed magnolia, with its huge snow-white flowers. There the aspect is Southern, and the heat tropical for most ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... make a transverse incision into the tree to the depth of some inches, and then cut sloping down from the notch, till they leave a flat superficies. This they hollow out to a capacity to receive about a quart. They then put into the hollow a bit of lighted reed, and let it remain for about ten minutes, which, acting as a stimulus, draws the fluid to that part. In the space of a night the liquor fills the receptacle prepared for it, and the tree continues to yield a lesser quantity for three successive nights, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... mother, then little Matty Reed; we were at school together in New Haven, and she was my roommate. We were not at all alike, for I was wholly selfish, while she found her greatest pleasure in ministering to others' happiness; but she crossed my path at last, and then I thought ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... sooner left his mouth than up came a great Swede who was one of the workmen in Lloyd's, and he had Nahum Beals in a grasp as imperturbable as fate. The assassin, even with the strength of his fury of fanaticism, was as a reed in the grasp of this Northern giant. The Swede held him easily, walking him before him in a forced march. He had a hand of Nahum's in each of his, and he compelled Nahum's right hand to retain the hold of the ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... bale of papers—it had of course no index and no synopsis, and some of the pages were not numbered—handed it over to Whippham, and when he proved, as usual, a broken reed, the bishop had the brilliant idea of referring the young man to Canon Bliss (of Pringle), "who has a special knowledge quite beyond ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... big committee chairman, Mr. Root was not of counsel in the big cases. He tried to associate himself with counsel but the traditions of the Senate and the jealousy of Senators were against him. He had not the passion for public service that makes Reed Smoot and Wesley Jones miraculously patient with the endless details of legislation. After ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... helmet makes contact with the skull in those spots where the probes of the encephalograph are placed. When the brain is stimulated into thought, the brain waves are monitored and recorded, amplified, and then fed back to the same brain-spots. Not once, but multifold, like the vibration of a reed or violin string. The circuit that accepts signals, amplifies them, returns them to the same set of terminals, and causes them to be repeated several hundred times per millisecond without actually ringing or oscillating is the real research secret of the ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... kind of grass with a stalk, as big as a great wheaten reed, which hath a blade issuing from the top of it, on which though the cattle feed, yet it groweth every day higher, until the top be too high for an ox to reach. Then the inhabitants are wont to put fire to it, for the space ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... their schoolboy Saturdays among the birds and rabbits. Near by flows the Ocmulgee, where the boys, inseparable in sport as well as in the more serious aspects of life, were wont to fish. Here Sidney cut the reed with which he took his first flute lesson from the birds in the woods. Above the town were the hills for which the soul of the poet longed in ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... quantity of chi (a drink made of fermented millet) from a hut near at hand. It proved a nutritious and exhilarating though not intoxicating beverage, and we drank it a la Sikkimite, warm, through a reed a foot in length and from a joint of bamboo holding perhaps a couple of quarts. The colonel informed me that the Lepcha language is very copious, expressive and beautiful, abounding largely in metaphor. The number of words is very extraordinary, and requires a person to be something ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... with a twinkling stillness of feature and inclination of the titillated ear to the operator, such as the Mexican Peccary is said to show when its dorsal surface is gently and continuously irritated with the pointed extremity of a reed or of a magnolia-branch. What other people think well of, we certainly have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... an accident drove him into a new path, which ultimately brought him to the invention of a speaking telephone. He began his researches in 1874 with a musical telephone, in which he employed the interrupted current to vibrate the receiver, which consisted of an electro-magnet causing an iron reed or tongue to vibrate; but, while trying it one day with his assistant, Mr. Thomas A. Watson, it was found that a reed failed to respond to the intermittent current. Mr. Bell desired his assistant, who was at the other end of the line, to pluck the reed, thinking it had stuck to the ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... the vast. I would refer only to the doors sinking in perspective into the thickness of the wall, and adorned without end in their columns and pointed arches; to the window with its rose springing out of the round form; to the outline of its framework, as well as to the slender reed-like pillars of the perpendicular compartments. Let one represent to himself the pillars retreating step by step, accompanied by little, slender, light-pillared, pointed structures, likewise striving upwards, and furnished with canopies to shelter the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... The weaving of each reed was done the same way until the whole frame was crossed with willows held firmly in the middle by ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... curved, and sharply pointed; the chaps are of equal length. arround the base of the beak including the eye and a small part of the throat is of a fine crimson red. the neck and as low as the croop in front is of an iron grey. the belly and breast is a curious mixture of white and blood reed which has much the appearance of having been artifically painted or stained of that colour. the red reather predominates. the top of the head back, sides, upper surface of the wings and tail are black, with a gossey tint of green in a certain exposure to the light. the under side of ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... her hands fall; gnashing her teeth she turned away and seated herself upon the divan. Her lover and her husband stood before her; the one, trembling like a broken reed, leaned against the wall, the other erect and proudly conscious of his ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... my bitter tears, flow ever; All I love I leave behind; Sadly whisper here the willows, And the reed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... sincerely devoted to liberty, thought to make the nobles its tools, and only leagued with them to secure their services. The crafty Mazarin quietly beheld these dissensions, and was sure of ultimate success, even though at one time banished to Cologne. And, like a reed, he was ever ready to bend to difficulties he could not control. But he stooped to conquer. He at last got the Prince of Conde, his brother the Prince of Conti, and the Duke of Longueville, in his power. When the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Irish bills of so many Liberal leaders in every constituency, soon led to disaffection among the people. What was lost in some districts, however, was to some extent made up, says an English writer, by "the support of that very broken reed, the Irish vote, which was destined to pierce the hand of so many a confiding candidate who leaned upon it." While this debate was in progress a bill directed against the carrying of arms in Ireland was introduced ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... old grange or lonely fold, Or low morass and whispering reed, Or simple style from mead to mead, Or sheep walk up ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... the lesson taught so long, So oft, so vainly—learn to do no wrong! A single step into the right had made This man the Washington of worlds betrayed: A single step into the wrong has given His name a doubt to all the winds of heaven; The reed of Fortune, and of thrones the rod, Of Fame the Moloch or the demigod; His country's Caesar, Europe's Hannibal, Without their decent dignity of fall. 240 Yet Vanity herself had better taught A surer path ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... graciously come this way," said the despicable Xuriel, bowing low. Poor Edna had to follow him up a steep outside staircase to a gloomy room where deep-set windows commanded a view of the Courtyard below. He found some sheets of parchment and a reed pen, and lent her the inkhorn from his own girdle. As he was depositing these on a great oaken table, he glanced out of the window and gave a high ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... me, by that law, Which was ordain'd me, when I issued thence. Not so, if Dame from heaven, as thou sayst, Moves and directs thee; then no flattery needs. Enough for me that in her name thou ask. Go therefore now: and with a slender reed See that thou duly gird him, and his face Lave, till all sordid stain thou wipe from thence. For not with eye, by any cloud obscur'd, Would it be seemly before him to come, Who stands the foremost ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Penhaligon at once, and caution her about Alcibiades. . . . No, I won't, though. I'll call first and have it out with Mary-Martha. She thinks she knows everything, and she has a way of making others believe it. But she has proved herself a broken reed over this affair: and," said Miss Oliver to herself with decision, "I rather fancy I'll make ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... reason why it is true to say that Jacques is neither tall nor short, and why it is also true to say he is tall and he is short. He is what God chooses him to be. For us, he is the middle reed of our living ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... should observe the above features, and also the movements, seizing of prey, breathing, moulting, semi-resting or pupa stage, at the close of which the pupa climbs up a reed or stalk of grass and bursts the skin ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... that this repose I owe, For him I worship, as a god below. Oft on his altar shall my firstlings bleed, See, by his bounty here with rustic reed I play the airs I love the livelong day, The while my oxen round ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... received a letter from Sir E. J. Reed, containing the following extracts: —"I was aware previously that plans had been proposed for constructing unarmoured steam rams, but I was not acquainted with the fact that you had put forward so well-maturerd a scheme at so early a date; and ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... atmosphere, like a gauze veil on the stage, they could not quite succeed. By and by the gauze veil turned to rain, but rain suited the wild landscape—far better, by the way, than it suited Mrs. Senter, whose nightly hair-wavers are but a reed to lean upon in wet weather. She made some excuse to come behind with Emily and me, and before the car started again I summoned courage to ask if I might take her place, saying I loved to feel ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... proved in her regard but the empty crackling of a fire of thorns. No matter what may be a youth's sentiment for girlhood, he never likes it to be witness of anything disparaging to his sturdy resolution and manly purpose. But Adele had seen him shake like a reed under the deepest emotions that could give tone to character; and in his mortification at the thought, he transferred to her a share of the resentment he felt against himself. It was a relief to treat her with a dignified coolness, and to meet all her tender inquiries, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Then the Grand Wazir walked forward and did as the King had done and all the Notables who were present threw cash into the crucibles, bar-silver and piastres and dollars. Thereat the Darwaysh stepped out of the crowd and brought from his cowl a reed used as an etui[FN156] wherefrom he drew a spoon-like ear-picker and cast into one of the crucibles a something of powder like grain.[FN157] This he did to each one of the melting pots; after which he disappeared from the eyes of the folk and taking the boy with him returned ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... subjects for its province—from the origin of music to the purpose of the universe; and the central figure—the queer, delightful, Bohemian Rameau, evoked for us with such a marvellous distinctness—is in fact no more than the reed with many stops through which Diderot is blowing. Of all his countrymen, he comes nearest, in spirit and in manner, to the great Cure of Meudon. The rich, exuberant, intoxicating tones of Rabelais vibrate in his voice. He has—not all, for no son ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... mighty Mincius wanders, with links and loops, and fringes all the banks with the tender reed." Not the Muses of Greece, but his own Casmenae, song-maidens of Italy, have inspired him here, and his music is blown through a reed of the Mincius. In many such places he shows a temper with which we of England, in our late age, ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... fitness and fulness of Christ as a Saviour, and his never enough to be admired tenderness and condescending willingness to accept of humble, heart broken, and heart-panting sinners after him, with such plainness of speech demonstrated, as may enable the most bruised reed to quench all the fiery darts of the devil, whereby he laboureth to affright them from making application to Jesus for salvation. Now that the Lord would make those and such-like labours of his faithful servants useful and advantageous ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... saw a child, And he laughing said to me: "Pipe a song about a lamb;" So I piped with merry cheer. "Piper, pipe that song again;" So I piped:, he wept to hear. "Piper, sit thee down and write In a book, that all may read;" So he vanished from my sight, And I plucked a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... David Reed's.—I find my little room up in the attic very cosey and a house full of boarders very amusing to study. Mrs. Reed very kind. Fly around and take C. his stories. Go to see Mrs. L. about A. Don't want me. A blow, but I cheer up and hunt for sewing. Go to hear Parker, and he ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... and killed Robert with, was blown through a long, hollow reed, a weapon much used in Africa, and the barb had been dipped in poison so subtle, rapid and sure in its effect, that the wound the girl had received accidentally in her hand, was fast proving fatal to her. In Robert Bramble's case, ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... Reed, and when she grew up, she became a teacher of the Shaker school, then an Eldress, and even a preacher. I don't know what kind of a little quail girl you would make, Sue; do you think you could walk for miles through the ice ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... prefer herself to Diana, and decried the charms of the Goddess. But violent wrath was excited in her, and she said, 'We will please her by our deeds.'[28] And there was no delay: she bent her bow, and let fly an arrow from the string, and pierced with the reed the tongue that deserved it. The tongue was silent; nor did her voice, and the words which she attempted {to utter, now} follow; and life, with her blood, left her, as she endeavoured to speak. Oh hapless affection! What pain did I {then} endure in my ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Have you heard how the ex-Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tom Reed, defines an honest man in politics? 'An honest man is a man ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... lion near," he whispered, searching among the reed stems with his eyes. "I see lion," he whispered again, and pointed, but I could see nothing save the stems of ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... presumably in flasks of the usual Italian kind, bottles encased in straw or reed, &c., with oil on the top of the wine instead of a cork in ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... almost on my throat, and he shook me with fearful grip, so that I hit him with my right hand just below his heart, and bent him double like a reed. His terrible gasps for breath were so alarming that I thought at first he would never recover his wind; but when he did he drew his knife, and raised his arm to take aim at my throat. It is probable ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... was a very quaint one. They would hollow out a little hole in the ground, making a little dome over it; then in went a few hemp-tops; and on to them a few stones made red hot in a fire. Then the dome was closed up and a reed stuck through it. Then one man after another would go and draw up into his lungs as much smoke as he could with one prolonged deep inspiration; and then go apart and cough in a hard, hacking distressing way for ten minutes ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... humiliation; that which was our pride has become our humiliation and our punishment. That which was the source of our wealth—the sure foundation on which we built—has become itself the instrument of our humiliating poverty, which compels us to appeal to the charity of other counties. The reed upon which we leaned has gone through the hand that reposed on it, and has pierced ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... to say, Val Elster was as a very reed in the hands of the old woman. Let her once get hold of him, and she could turn him any way she pleased. He felt afraid of her, and bent to her will. The feeling may have had its rise partly in the fear instilled into ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... it out many years ago, and its discovery was always considered a point in her roll of merit. It was an expanse of grassy land, bounded on one side by the Porth Powys stream and on the other by a deep dyke, and leading down over a rushy tract to the reed-grown banks of the river. The view over the many miles of marshland, with the blue mountains rising up behind and the silvery gleam of the river, was superb. The brown, quivering, feathery reeds made a glorious foreground ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... in his district there were more American settlers than in Lower Canada.[465] On the Niagara peninsula, especially, climatic conditions, favorable to farming, had induced a large immigration. But local disloyalty is a poor reed for an assailant to rest upon, and to sustain it in vigorous action commonly requires the presence of a force which will render its assistance needless. Whatever inclination to rebel there might have been was effectually quelled ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... dream until I come upon the Calvary set on a solitary hillock, with its prayer-steps lending a wide prospect across the olives and the orange-trees, and the broad valleys, to immeasurable skies and purple seas. There is the iron cross, the wounded heart, the spear, the reed, the nails, the crown of thorns, the cup of sacrificial blood, the title, with its superscription royal and divine. The other day we crossed a brook and entered a lemon-field, rich with blossoms and carpeted ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... such a habit That they shall think we are accomplished With that we lack. I'll hold thee any wager, When we are both accoutred like young men, I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two, And wear my dagger with the braver grace, And speak between the change of man and boy With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps Into a manly stride; and speak of frays Like a fine bragging youth; and tell quaint lies, How honourable ladies sought my love, Which I denying, they fell sick and died; I could not do withal. Then I'll repent, ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... find me halting between two opinions,—that ere this day I would be a Christian indeed. And looking back upon my alternating feelings, ever since reason was mine, upon the innumerable resolutions to do good, which have been as staves of reed, I must want common perception not to assent to the truth, that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" But, oh, it is not this only, which my intellectual conscience is burdened with: when I look at the visitations of divine grace ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... himself to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and said, "Hast thou seen the son of Amram?" The tree replied, "Since the day on which he came to me to get a writing reed, wherewith to write the Torah, I ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... great torment. The Arab practitioner declares that the worm is at work, and is seeking for a means of escape from the body. He accordingly burns half a dozen holes with a red-hot iron or ramrod. In a few days the head of the guinea-worm appears; it is immediately captured by a finely-split reed, and by degrees is wound like a cotton thread by turning the reed every day. This requires delicate manipulation, otherwise the worm might break, and a portion remain in the flesh, which would increase the inflammation. An ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker |
