"Thorny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the path of the virtuous woman without the independence that accompanies the possession of her own money, was in ancient days much more thorny than that of the concubine or the prostitute; and it is because of this fact that parental love, the most powerful of all levers employed by the Cosmic Law to lift love out of degradation, instituted the custom of the "dowry," and although this, too, has at various times become a source ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... plains and wooded hills east of Rio Paraguay; Gran Chaco region west of Rio Paraguay mostly low, marshy plain near the river, and dry forest and thorny scrub elsewhere ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... respects, however, there was everything which could gratify the eye and the taste. The land was fertile, the soil cultivated, the scenery beautiful. Tall trees—the mulberry and the poplar—arose in long lines; here and there the cactus stretched forth its thorny arms, and at intervals there appeared the dark green of extensive olive-groves. Behind the traveller there extended a wall of purple hills, and before him arose the giant heights of the Pyrenees. Among these last the road at length entered, and, winding along at the base of sloping hills, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... political career, must have been a sad alloy to its pleasure and its pride. The fable of the sheep that leaves its fleece on the bramble bush is but too apt an illustration of the fate of him, who thus sees himself stripped of the comforts of friendship by the tenacious and thorny hold of politics. On the present occasion, however, the desertion of his standard by a few who had followed him cordially in his ascent to power, but did not show the same alacrity in accompanying his voluntary fall, was amply made up to ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... endure not so much corporal pain for a small preferment, or some honour, as they call it, yet stick not to commit actions, by which they are more shamefully and more lastingly stigmatised? But you may say, "Though these be the most ordinary and open ways to greatness, yet there are narrow, thorny, and little-trodden paths, too, through which some men find a passage by virtuous industry." I grant, sometimes they may; but then that industry must be such as cannot consist with liberty, though it ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... Believe me: the dear God has brought you together to help each other gain Heaven, to be prop and staff to each other on the narrow, toilsome way that leads to eternal life, to level and lighten that way for each other through love, meekness, and long-suffering—for it is rough and thorny. Now when gloomy days come, when faults break out in one or the other, or both, then think not of bad luck, as if that made you unhappy, but of the dear God, who has long seen all these faults and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... think this association of ideas very complimentary to myself, I thanked her for her good advice. I nevertheless took away as a souvenir a flower and one of the thorny apples, seeing which the peasant trudged on her way, saying no doubt that it was wasting time and words to give advice to lunatics. Again the cliffs drew very close together, and the valley was nothing more than a deep crack in the earth's crust. On one side was unbroken ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... low hedge, but though it was low it was very thorny, and while he was trying to find a place to get through, he looked over and spied a hare crouched in the rough grass, just under the hedge between it and the wheat. The hare was lying on the ground; she did not move, though she saw Bevis, and ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... obtaining refreshments. For this trick, Pepper and some of the others got after the Pornellites and made them prisoners in a cave, from which they could escape only by going out a back way, through some water and mud, and thorny bushes. ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... summer during a spare hour I met him in an empty room in the museum, where there were usually very few visitors at that time of day, and where large show-cases gave concealment. He came up to me and told me he had been away in the country, and that, when making his way home through hedges and thorny bushes, some of the thorns got stuck amongst his clothes and were still giving him uneasiness. 'I would be very grateful,' he said, 'if you would put your hand down and try if you can feel any thorns sticking in my underflannels and pull them out.' He then unbuttoned ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... but toward which side are you? Have you fallen into the soft feather-bed of agnosticism, or the thorny ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... us the merry May Comes no more with golden weather; Fields, and woods, and sunshine gay, Purple skies, and purple heather. We have had our holyday, And I sit with folded hands, In the twilight looking back Over life's uneven track— Thorny wilds, and desert sands. ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... deviated from custom or tradition to make each new candidate for a living shrink from any publicity that could be avoided. Society frowned upon the woman who dared to strike out in new paths, and thus made them even more thorny than ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... accorded her by the bar of Chicago and by the general public; for her somewhat exceptional position as well as her ability had made her one of the marked characters of the city. Her short life, so successful and brilliant to the public eye, was not without its dark and thorny places. Unusual responsibilities of a domestic nature, opposition of various kinds and keen disappointments only nerved her to greater persistency, and her courage was upheld by the generous and abundant recognition which she ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... has accompanied you on the thorny and bloody path to victory, will forsake you, and you will not be aware of it, for conquerors and tyrants are always blind. You will conquer and dominate. And you will plunge into injustice, and you will not feel the quagmire under your feet.... Every ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... against the pride that, in spite of the prohibition of the Almighty, sought to know all things, 'to become as gods.' Meekness, humility, self-abnegation, affection, are the beautiful flowers that grow by the wayside; but the pathway is not the less thorny, and no good can be accomplished by denying or sugar-coating ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... life and its thorny ways, She sought the friend of her early days: "Mother, I bring thee a breaking heart, In sorrows deep it hath borne a part; Speak to me tenderly as of yore, Let thy kiss rest on my brow once more; To the ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... something of a mouse-trap now,' said he, 'or a lion's den, if you like a statelier image; the way in is easy enough, but the way out is more difficult than the steep and thorny path to heaven. Every town and village we should come to would rise against us with hue and cry, and drive us back to the city, to perish there; so cruel are men become through ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... words. A city shattered, burned, destroyed, desolate, a land wasted, humiliated, made a desert and a wilderness, or wearing the thorny crown of humiliation and subjugation, is invested with the sacred prerogatives and immunities of the dead. The base human revenge of exultation at its fall and ruin should shrink back abashed in the presence of the infinite Divine chastisement. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... with a lowering front, unmindful of the hints of Dr. Mather, who is aware of an unsettled dispute between the captain and the governor, relative to the authority of the latter over a king's ship on the provincial station. Into this thorny subject, Sir William plunges headlong. The captain makes answer with less deference than the dignity of the potentate requires: the affair grows hot; and the clergymen endeavor to interfere in the blessed ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... worked he could steal peeps into the dining-room, and see the curly brown head between the two gay ones, as the three sat round the table. He could not help hearing a word now and then, as the windows were open, and these bits of conversation filled him with curiosity for the names "Thorny," "Celia," and "George" were often repeated, and an occasional merry laugh from the young lady sounded like music ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... maintenance, and cannot be put in motion in any other; and whose muscular power is so exclusively exercised that the nervous power which produces intelligence is thereby greatly reduced. People of this kind must absolutely have something that they can take hold of on the slippery and thorny path of their life, some sort of beautiful fable by means of which things can be presented to them which their crude intelligence could most certainly only understand in picture and parable. It is impossible to approach them with subtle explanations and fine distinctions. ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... think every blessed place in the tropics is a flat shore and palm-trees and surf, bless 'em! This place, for instance, wasn't a bit that way. Not common rocks they were, undermined by waves; but great curved banks like ironwork cinder heaps, with green slime below, and thorny shrubs and things just waving upon them here and there, and the water glassy calm and clear, and showing you a kind of dirty gray-black shine, with huge flaring red-brown weeds spreading motionless, and crawling and darting things going through it. And far away beyond the ditches and ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... offered to my thoughts at that time was, to get up into a thick bushy tree like a fir, but thorny, which grew near me, and where I resolved to sit all night, and consider the next day what death I should die, for as yet I saw no prospect of life. I walked about a furlong from the shore, to see if I could find any fresh water ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... roses and honeysuckles, jasmine and clematis. Pinks, lilies, columbines made the garden patches gay, and, as though so many flowers were not enough, the windows, too, shone with geraniums and the scarlet tassels of great cactus, that lifted their exotic, thorny bodies behind the window panes. Not a wall but flaunted red valerian and snapdragon. Indeed Bridetown was ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... understandest not how it is to be repaired. The essieu is left on the spot, as the load is too heavy for the horses. Thy courage has evaporated. Thou beginnest to run. The heaven is cloudless. Thou art thirsty; the enemy is behind thee; a trembling seizes thee; a twig of thorny acacia worries thee; thou thrustest it aside; the horse is scratched till at ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... alone, The Redbreast, sacred to the household gods, Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves His shivering mates, and pays to trusted ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... does not try to push sound carpentry or ready wit into genius. Fortune and his own impetuous onslaught upon life cast Kilmer into the role of hack journalist: he would have claimed no other title. Yet he adorned Grub Street (that most fascinating of all thorny ways) with gestures and music of his own. Out of his glowing and busy brain he drew matter that was never dull, never bitter or petty or slovenly. In the fervent attack and counter-attack, shock and counter-shock of his strenuous days ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... sad, it is the Holy tide: Be dusky mistletoes and hollies strown, Sharp as the spear that pierced His sacred side, Red as the drops upon His thorny crown; No haggard Passion and no lawless Mirth Fright off the solemn Muse,—tell sweet old tales, Sing songs as we sit brooding o'er the hearth, Till the lamp flickers, and the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... offered to my thoughts; at that time, was, to get up into a thick bushy tree, like a fir, but thorny—which grew near me, and where I resolved to sit all night—and consider the next day what death I should die, for as yet I saw no prospect of life. I walked about a furlong from the shore, to see if I could find any fresh water to drink, which I did, to my ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... or twice to examine the wide circle of the horizon with eyes that were trained to note every aspect of the wilderness. On his right the plains melted away in gentle swell after swell, until they met the horizon. Their brown surface was broken only by the spiked and thorny cactus and stray bits ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from the superior, for sending a future saint; from the nuns, for sending such a love of a plaything; and, finally, from papa, for sending such substantial board and well-bolted lodgings, 'from which,' said the malicious old fellow, 'my pussy will never find her way out to a thorny and dangerous world.' Won't she? I suspect, son of somebody, that the next time you see 'pussy,' which may happen to be also the last, will not be in a convent of any kind. At present, whilst this general rendering of thanks was going on, one person only took no part ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and fenced lands. The frontier still was offering opportunity for the bold man to reap where he had not sown. Lands leased to the Indians of the civilized tribes began to cut large figure in the cow trade—as well as some figure in politics—until at length the thorny situation was handled by a firm hand at Washington. The methods of the East were swiftly overrunning those of the West. Politics and graft and pull, things hitherto unknown, soon wrote their hurrying story also over all this newly won region from which the rifle-smoke ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... and looked up in the air; then took a glance at Martha's broom, and as he looked down he thought he saw Toody winking at him. So he just smiled and said: "I declare, by the tom-tit's folly, and the mole's pin-hole eye, and the woodpecker's thorny tongue, that I ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... of costly splendour, fabrics by the artist wove, Dry wood from the thorny jungle, perfume from the ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... to take short pieces of stems or dry twigs from her slippers, and often the thorny branches of the low ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... Dryad: Sprinkle out of flower bells Mortal sense entrapping spells; Make no sound On the ground; Strew and lap and lay around. Gnat nor snail Here assail, Beetle, slug, nor spider here, Now descend, Nor depend, Off from any thorny spear. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... wapiti, and the wolf, nesting place of buzzards, land of cloud-nourished trees and wild things that live without drink. Above all, it is the land of the creosote and the mesquite. The mesquite is God's best thought in all this desertness. It grows in the open, is thorny, stocky, close grown, and iron-rooted. Long winds move in the draughty valleys, blown sand fills and fills about the lower branches, piling pyramidal dunes, from the top of which the mesquite twigs flourish greenly. Fifteen or twenty feet under the drift, where it seems no rain ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... as if there was going to be trouble between the two boys, for Thorny was naturally masterful, and illness had left him weak and nervous, so he was often both domineering and petulant. Ben had been taught instant obedience to those older than himself, and if Thorny had been a man Ben would ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... by a wide belt of thorny shrubs, interlaced and fastened together by cords, extended from the bank of the river, about a thousand yards above Seringapatam; and, making a wide sweep, came down to it again opposite the ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... sisterhood of artists beckon me on; what Elizabeth Cheron, Sibylla Merian, Angelica Kauffman, Elizabeth Le Brun, Felicie Fauveau, and Rosa Bonheur have achieved, I also will accomplish, or die in the effort. These travelled no royal road to immortality, but rugged, thorny paths; and who shall stay my feet? Afar off gleams my resting-place, but ambition scourges me unflaggingly on. Do not worry about my future; I will take care of it, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Homiletics with Dr. Weissenborn; PASTORALE [not Pastoral Poetry, but the Art of Pastorship] and MORALE with Dr. Buddaeus.' [There, your Majesty!—what a glimpse, as into infinite extinct Continents, filled with ponderous thorny inanities, invincible nasal drawling of didactic Titans, and the awful attempt to spin, on all manner of wheels, road-harness out of split cobwebs: Hoom! Hoom-m-m! Harness not to be had on those terms. Let the dreary Limbus close again, till the general ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... wicked son of thine, O Dhritarashtra, hath his hour come. He chooseth evil, not good, though entreated by his well-wishers. Thou also followest in the wake of this wicked wretch of sinful surroundings, who treadeth a thorny path setting at naught the words of his well-wisher. This exceedingly wicked son of thine with all his counsellors coming in contact with Krishna of unstained acts, will be destroyed in a moment. I dare not listen to the words of this sinful and wicked ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the left-hand fence ran a thick belt of underwood, sumac and birch, with a few young oak trees interspersed; but in the middle of the swampy level, covering at most some five or six acres, was a dense circular thicket composed of every sort of thorny bush and shrub, matted with cat-briers and wild vines, and overshadowed by a clump of tall and leafy ashes, which had not as yet lost one atom of their foliage, although the underwood beneath them ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... not any desponding thoughts; I rest alone upon the mercies and the merits of a suffering and a redeeming Saviour; he is my sole refuge. To our mother, my conscience acquits me either of intentional errors, or errors of omission. This is a source of the purest consolation; it clears the rough, the thorny path to the valley of death. Elizabeth, my dearest sister, listen to me before I go hence, and be no more seen. Every night recall to mind the actions of the day. Let this be the question you put to yourself: "Have I done my ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... Bushes, thorny twigs, and the roots of trees hindered their progress. The child followed the vision of his mother, made clear now and then by the moon's rays across the heavy foliage. They were in the mysterious wood of the family of Ibarra. Basilio often stumbled and fell, but he got up again, without feeling ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... also, is the thorny tamarisk, the same tree which grew up around the body of Osiris. It was a sacred tree among the Arabs, who made of it the idol Al-Uzza, which Mohammed destroyed. It is abundant as a bush in the Desert of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... but we never came to that old road again. Once I thought I'd found it, but it was only some open, flat, thorny ground. It was very dark then, the dark comes on so fast here. Suddenly we both began to run as hard as we could, hand in hand; I don't know why, something set us off and I felt just as if I must, and I suppose Joyce did too, and then—crash!—before ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... moment the autumn Session was approaching, in which the thorny subject of reforming Parliamentary procedure must be disposed of, and the Cabinet were preoccupied with this till 6 p.m. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the valley through thick timber and withered underbrush which tore his clothes and delayed his march. There were fallen trunks with spreading branches to be scrambled over, and tangles of thorny canes, but he was cheered by signs that somebody had passed on ahead of him not long before. Later, the forest died out and the bottom of the hollow was strewn with sharp-edged stones, which threatened to tear his worn boots from his feet, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... snakes with double tongue, Thorny hedge-hogs, be not seen, Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong, Come not near our fairy Queen. Philomel with melody, Sing in your sweet lullaby, Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby: Never harm, nor spell, nor charm, Come ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare
... with an impulse not the less savage because there is a dark shadow beside them for evermore. There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... each opening year, fresh with the dew of heaven and the blush of innocence, coming up in this wild garden of a world, what would the gardener do without you? Where would all beauty and sweetness be found among the thorny bushes and the withering old shrubs and the rotting weeds, were it not for you? Maidens with clean hands and pure hearts, in whose touch there is something that heals the ills and soothes the pains of mortality, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... next most common tree, but I fancy it does not extend beyond 7,500 feet; this is in general use for firewood, many of the trees, especially below, are much damaged, and on these the leaves are generally very thorny. Next is the Zaitoon, but it is not common in this direction, although common a mile to the south on the ridge first ascended. The soil is now saturated with snow water, and appears good and plentiful. The want of soil is another reason why the lower ranges are ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... that too," says Mrs. Monkton, who has now grown rather pale. "But there is still one more thing to know—that in making such a marriage as we have described, a woman lays out a thorny path for her husband. She separates him from his family, and as all good men have strong home ties, she naturally compels him to ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... necessary that I should know. Now that she has chosen to take herself off I shall not choose to live under the same roof with her again. If Lord Kingsbury speaks to you on the subject you should make him understand that." Poor Mr. Greenwood felt that there were thorny paths before him, in which it might be very difficult to guard his feet from pricks. Then he had to consider if there were to be two sides in the house, strongly opposed to each other, with which would it be best for him to take a part? The houses of the Marquis, with all ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... it were, but poorer were the love. Lord, I would have me love thee from the deeps— Of troubled thought, of pain, of weariness. Through seething wastes below, billows above, My soul should rise in eager, hungering leaps; Through thorny thicks, through sands unstable press— Out of my dream to him who slumbers not ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... marriage, Prince Alexander of Battenberg had been sounded by the Russian authorities, with a view to his acceptance of the Bulgarian crown. By the vote of the Bulgarian Chamber, it was offered to him on April 29, 1879. He accepted it, knowing full well that it would be a thorny honour for a youth of twenty-two years of age. His tall commanding frame, handsome features, ability and prowess as a soldier, and, above all, his winsome address, seemed to mark him out as a natural leader of men; ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... together on the very rock where Katy sat that day when Uncle Ephraim told her of the different paths there were through life, some pleasant and free from care, some thorny and full of grief. Katy had never forgotten the conversation, and, without knowing why, she had always avoided that rock beneath the butternut as a place where there had been revealed to her a glimpse of something sad; and so, when Wilford proposed resting there, she at first objected, but ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... finished, there is always for the author a most doleful hour, when, retracing his steps, he thinks of what he has attempted, the difficulties of the task, the unlikeliness that he has overcome them. Misprints taking wrong numbers by the hand, black and thorny creatures, dance their wild dance round him. He is awe-stricken, and shudders; he wonders at the boldness of his undertaking; "Qu'allait-il faire dans cette galere?" The immensity of the task, the insufficience of the means stand in striking contrast. He had ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... true, my poor poetical fury, he will pen all he knows. A sharp thorny-tooth, a satirical rascal, By him; he carries hay in his horn: he will sooner lose his best friend, than his least jest. What he once drops upon paper, against a man, lives eternally to upbraid him in the mouth of every slave, tankard-bearer, or waterman; ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... by whom conferred, M. Thiers went to Bordeaux in 1871, is a thorny question, into which I need not here enter. What he might have done for his country is, perhaps, uncertain. What he did we know. He founded a republic of which, in one of his characteristic phrases, he said that: 'it must be Conservative, or it could not be,' ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... solitudes lying to the north-west of King Hudibras' town, keeping carefully out of the way of open places, lest wandering hunters should find her, and sleeping in the forked branches of trees at night. Of course the necessity of thus keeping to the dense woods, and making her way through thorny thickets, rendered her journey very fatiguing; but Branwen was unusually strong and healthy, though the grace of her slender frame gave her a rather fragile appearance, and she did not find herself exhausted even at the end of a long day's march; while ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... searched the rattling shallows, and many a rock-walled well, Where the silver-scaled sea-farers, and the crook-lipped bull-trout dwell. But most when their hearts were merry 'twas the joy of carle and quean To ride in the deeps of the oak-wood, and the thorny thicket green: Forth go their hearts before them to the blast of the strenuous horn, Where the level sun comes dancing down the oaks in the early morn: There they strain and strive for the quarry, when the wind hath fallen dead In the ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... and implacable genius of superstition. Their mutual resolution was supported by the example of millions, of either sex, of every age, and of every rank; and each proselyte who entered the gates of a monastery, was persuaded that he trod the steep and thorny path of eternal happiness. [25] But the operation of these religious motives was variously determined by the temper and situation of mankind. Reason might subdue, or passion might suspend, their influence: but they acted ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... graphic illustration of gesture, that his audience laughed at the merry tale till the tears ran down their cheeks. Then with a few allusions to his strange childhood, he thanked the God who led him through thorny ways into the very arms of love and peace in the cottage of Robert and Janet Grant, whence, and not from the fortune he had since inherited, came all ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... finest in the herd, and kept my eye on her in particular. At length two of the troop had walked slowly past at about sixty yards, and the one which I had selected was feeding with two others, on a thorny tree before me. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to put forth a tender green tendril and clasp her kind friend's helping hand, which, if rough and thorny, ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... shock of feeling, mingled with the terrible sense, periodically alive in him, of physical doom, seems to have stripped from the thorny soul its outer defences of mental habit. He sees once more the hideous spectacle of his father's death, his own black half-remembered moments of warning, the teasing horror of his sister's increasing weakness of brain. Life has been on the whole a burden, though ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... night, they grew bolder, and showed not the least fear of the camp fires, which were always kept alight. They paid no heed to the noise and tumult they caused, or even to gunshots fired at them in the darkness. A tall, thick fence of tough, thorny bushes was erected round each camp as a protection, but the lions always jumped over or broke through it when they wanted a man. In the daytime the Colonel followed their tracks, which were plainly visible ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... omitted to mention the provocation which gave rise to many of them. Eusden, Colley Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, Blackmore, Smyth, and Lord Hervey are among the prominent criminals placed in Pope's pillory, and the student of the age may find an idle entertainment in tracking the poet's thorny course, while he gives an unenviable notoriety to names of which the larger number were 'born to ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... the rear. For several miles we traversed the lower slopes of the range, winding hither and thither but steadily working our way eastward, now passing over sterile, rocky ground, sparsely dotted here and there with clumps of thorny scrub, and anon opening out a glorious prospect of gently undulating, fertile country, dotted with plantations,—the smoke-blackened roofless walls of some of the mansions built on them clearly suggesting ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame, And spare the meek usurper's holy head. Above, below, the rose of snow, Twin'd with her blushing foe, we spread: The bristled boar in infant-gore Wallows beneath the thorny shade. Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom, Stamp we our vengeance deep, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the way to His palace-gate:" - "That way is thorny, and steep, and straight; By none can His palace-gate be seen, Save those who have washed in ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... sudden case of want among the poor caused him to ask her aid, for he knew very well that her heart and hand went forth on every occasion of distress. Hers it was to soothe and cheer and comfort and help, and many a thorny path was made smooth and many a heavy burden lifted by her brave and generous spirit and the pleasant, cheerful way she had of doing such things. In the presence of others she made a duty of cultivating cheerfulness of manner. Not that she ever for ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... add the reckoning up I suppose, between now and then, Having walked himself in the thorny, difficult Ways of men. ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... a native of the South of France, Corsica, and some other localities, for the purpose of making tobacco-pipes was introduced into this country. The word "brier" or "briar" has no connexion whatever with the prickly, thorny briar which bears the lovely wild rose. It is derived from the French bruyere, heath—the root of the White Heath being the material known as "briar" or "brier," and at first as "bruyer." The Oxford Dictionary quotes an advertisement from the Tobacco Trade Review of so recent a date ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... knew not where; Up windy downs far-stretching, bleak and bare; Through swamps that soddened under stagnant air; In blackest woods and brambled mesh, Thorny bushes ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... houses, I counted upwards of 180, and although extensive traces of fire, and of new houses existed, I should reckon it to have contained only about 300. At the Pagoda I gathered a curious Rutaceous-looking decandrous thorny tree, with foliis bijugis. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... was sent to me from California, and lived for a few weeks, but as nothing would induce it to eat, to my great regret it pined and died. It was about as large as an ordinary full-grown toad, of a speckled grey colour, with rich brown markings, its head something like a lizard, with large thorny projections which extended all along the spine. The feet were very remarkable, each toe being furnished with a sucker which enabled the Gecko to walk with perfect ease in any position on a wall or pane of glass without losing its hold; and ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... snakes with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen Newts and blind-worms do no wrong Come not near our Fairy Queen. Philomel, with melody Sing in our sweet lullaby Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby; Never harm, nor spell, nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the place to plunge into the thorny questions which surround the thought of the tempted Christ. However these may be solved, the great fact remains, that His temptations were most real and unceasing. It was no sham fight which He fought. The story of the wilderness is the story of a most real conflict; and that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is ended. If you have followed us thus far, neglect not to receive what we have faintly endeavored to inculcate; and ever remember, while treading life's thorny vale, that "a kind word is of more value than gold or ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... concerned with the practical task of reconciling actual difficulties, bringing nations together for various purposes—arbitration, international trade, boards of conciliation and the like. This is the slow and thorny path, and on account of its very difficulty is apt to engross the thoughts and energy of the best brains which devote themselves to the cause. But the first line, of self-cultivation and the promotion of a favourable spirit among others, though open to any one and easy of approach, ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... finding plenty who gave us glorious sport. The jungles consisted of great grass plains, with thickly wooded patches of dense tree jungle, intersected here and there by deep ravines, with stagnant pools of water at intervals; the steep sides all thickly clothed with thorny clusters of the wild dog-rose. It was a difficult country to beat, and we had always to supplement the usual gang of beaters with as many elephants as we could collect. In the centre of the jungle was an eminence of considerable height, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Italians rallied round the standard of the patriot, whose words lit in them the spark of sacrifice. They received his adjurations gladly, promising to obey them. He pointed out a thorny road, but the reward was at the end, the illumination of the soul which crowns each great endeavour. Self had to be forgotten and family ties broken if they held back from the claims of country. Mazzini thought the family sacred, but he bade parents give up their sons ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... had lost track of the man they were after when they heard a crack ahead of them, followed by a short yell of alarm. Merrick had stumbled over a fallen log and pitched headlong into some thorny bushes. It took him some time to extricate himself, and ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... and Flounder the facts seem to suggest that differences of habitat may have something to do with the development of the scales. In the Baltic the Flounders are as large as those on our own coasts, but the thorny tubercles are much more developed, nearly the whole of the upper surface being covered with them. The Plaice, on the other hand, are smaller than those of the North Sea, and the males have the scales spinulate over a considerable ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... of my readers are disturbed by this thorny question, I beg leave to recommend, to them Letter 69 of Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes; and the late Mr. John Palmer of Islington's Answer to Dr. Priestley's mechanical arguments for what he absurdly calls 'Philosophical Necessity.' BOSWELL. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the Pinta hoisted on board another reed, a small board, and a little stick, which appeared to have been cut with an instrument of iron; it was evident that human hands had been employed upon these things. Almost at the same moment, the men of the Nina perceived a branch of some thorny tree covered with blossoms. At all this every one rejoiced exceedingly; there could be no doubt now of the proximity of the coast. Night fell over the sea. The Pinta, the best sailor of the three vessels, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... You try to disbelieve it, you think yourself deceived; but no: Caroline lacks intellect, she is dull, she can neither joke nor reason, sometimes she has little tact. You are frightened. You find yourself forever obliged to lead this darling through the thorny paths, where you must perforce leave ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... and strange as these? When health gushes through each vein, Who paint the fever of the brain? Who picture half the grief and pain That follows pale sickness in her train? With bitterest dregs she fills her cup, And makes her victims drink them up: Binds them to thorny pillows down, And frightens sleep with her stern frown; Or if perchance the eyelids close, She gives her victim no repose, But hurries round and madly screams, And conjures up her wildest dreams, Binds reason in her iron chains, To fancy gives her longest reins, And whips and spurs ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... brier, woodbine, bramble, forming one impenetrable thicket, and almost uniting with the lower branches of the elms, and oaks, and beeches, which rise at regular distances overhead. No foot can penetrate that dense and thorny entanglement; but there is a walk all round by the side of the wide sloping bank, walk and bank and copse carpeted with primroses, whose fresh and balmy odour impregnates the very air. Oh how exquisitely beautiful! and it is not the primroses only, those ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... tyres splashing through puddles, and spattering him with mud, Herrick's face was very tired and worn, but in his eyes there lurked a little faint light of happiness that he had helped another weary soul a few steps forward on its pilgrimage over a thorny road. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... every thought of the future was more entirely regulated with reference to her welfare. It is no sinecure to have the entire devotion of a strong, enterprising, self-willed friend, as Agnes had all her life found. One cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles, and the affection of thorny and thistly natures has often as sharp an acid and as long prickers as wild gooseberries,—yet it is their best, and must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... slap at a mosquito Val headed inland, following with ease that trail of footprints. Ricky was suffering, too, for her rashness he noted with satisfaction when he discovered a long curly hair fast in the grip of a thorny ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... seclusion and independence, of stern self- reliance, and sincere upright searching into religious truth—were only traceable in the features which were the distinctive creations of the Gothic schools, in the varied foliage and thorny fretwork, and shadowy niche, and buttressed pier, and fearless height of subtle pinnacle and crested tower, sent "like an unperplexed ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... in advance of his comrade, he decided to await his coming. At the same time he sent one of his escort into Enramada to discover if Lieutenant Navarro had by any chance reached that place, and to arrange for fresh mounts. Then he threw himself down in the scant shadow of a thorny bush for ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... way is cut off by huge thorny hedges and fences of barbed wire—man's devilish improvement on the bramble—brought down to the water's edge. The river-follower must force his way through these obstacles, in most cases greatly to the detriment ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... half-contemptuous, half-pitiful look at Amelia. "I have no wish to marry. Truly, I have not seen many happy examples of wedded life in our family. All my sisters are unhappy, and I see no reason why I should tread the same thorny path." ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... right and my duty to pursue; and yet I found that, whatever route I took, before long I came to a tall and formidable looking fence. Confident as I might be in the existence of an ancient and indefeasible right of way, before me stood the thorny barrier with its comminatory notice-board—'NO THOROUGHFARE. By order. MOSES.' There seemed no way over; nor did the prospect of creeping round, as I saw some do attract me.... The only alternatives were either to give up my journey—which I was not minded to do—or to ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... Rinaldo ceased in little time to spy Baiardo's traces, who strange course had run; And made for thorny thicket, wet or dry, Tree, rock, or river, with design to shun Those cruel claws, which, pouncing from the sky, To him such outrage and such scathe had done. Rinaldo, after labour vain and sore To await him at the fount returned ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... gravel walks were bordered with great lilac-bushes, mock-orange, and bridal-wreath. Back of the house was a neglected rose garden, surrounded by a low stone wall over which the long suckers trailed and matted. They had wound their pink, thorny tentacles, layer upon layer, about the lock and the hinges of the rusty iron gate. Even the porches of the house, and the very windows, were damp and heavy with growth: wistaria, clematis, honeysuckle, and trumpet ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... incipient teardrop; and, although Mr. Taylor told her that the individual was nothing and the Office everything, he had been rather gratified. Thinking that a turn in the open air might clear his brain and enable him better to grapple with this very thorny question, he changed his cassock for a long tailed coat, put on his wide awake, and, leaving the precincts of St. Edward Confessor, struck across Park Lane and along the Row. He passed several people he knew, both men and women: Mrs. Marland was there, attended by two young men, ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... times before doing so. I reckoned, when at last I emerged upon it, that it was a distance of some six or seven miles from the settlement, though, owing to my ignorance of the way, it had taken me a whole morning to cover it. Did she have to thread these thorny thickets every time she came to the little town? No; doubtless she was acquainted with ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... who breathed threatenings and slaughter against the Church—while Jeremiah himself, in his moods of despair, seems to have caught the temper of the tribe among whom his family dwelt. Whether in the land or in its sons it was hard, thorny soil that needed deep ploughing.(101) It was, too, as Isaiah had predicted, the main path of invasion from the North,(102) by Ai, Migron, Michmash, the Pass, Geba, Ramah, Gibeah of Saul, Laish, and poor Anathoth herself. It had been the scene of many massacres, and above all of the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... a fortnight? Good heavens! it seemed months, years, a lifetime! These revolutions of mind are not to be measured by time. It had come to this that the late fellow of Oriel, so aristocratic in his tastes, so temperate in his likings, had entered certain devious paths, where hidden pitfalls and thorny enclosures warn the unwary traveller of unknown dangers, and in which he was walking, not blindfold, but by strongest will and intent, led by impulse like a mere boy, and not daring to raise his eyes to the future. "And what Grace would have said!" And for the first ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... trying to emulate fair Lady Rose, held their heads so very high that they, of course, did not hear the low, soft cry, "Oh, will no one give me shelter?" At last there came an answer, "I will, gladly," in a shy and trembling tone, as though fearing to be presumptuous, from a thick thorny bush which helped to protect the more dainty beauties from the rough blasts of a sometimes too boisterous wind; in consideration of which service the flowers considered the briar as a good, useful sort of thing, respectable ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... not assimilate the dirt? Should we be less careful about mental and moral food materials? The Junior Classics have been selected with this principle in mind, without losing sight of the fact that every developing human being needs to have a vision of the rough and thorny road over which the human race has been slowly ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... in the procession, and the teacher, riding on, found her lying face down among the briars of the desolate meeting-house yard, her small body convulsively heaving with her weeping, and her slim fingers grasping the thorny briar shoots as though she would still hold to the earth that lay in freshly broken clods ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... farewells already? Wasn't my whole life one thorny path of farewells? At post offices, steamer-quays, railway stations—with the waving of ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... mainland called Pangu; they were steaming straight out of a bay. To the east a massive headland closed the view, with the tilted edges of the rocky strata showing through its ragged clothing of rank bushes and thorny creepers. The wind had begun to sing in the rigging; the sea along the coast, green and as if swollen a little above the line of the horizon, seemed to pour itself over, time after time, with a slow and thundering fall, into the shadow of the leeward cape; ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... to feel if the plaster Christ were above his head. His groping old fingers found it, and he stayed, half-reared up against his pillows for an instant, while he touched the drooping head with its thorny crown, and on that familiar touch he let his hand fall, and ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... the wretch that long has tost On the thorny bed of pain Again repair his vigour lost And walk ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... intersected with backwaters,*1* in which lie alligators, electric eels, and stinging rays. Far as the eye can reach are swamps, swamps, and more swamps, a sea of waving pampa-grass. After the swamps thickets of tacuaras (canes), forests of thorny trees, chanares, nandubay, jacarandas, urundey, talas, and quebrachos, each one hard enough to split an axe, some, like the black canela, almost like iron; the inhabitants ferocious and intractable as when the Governor ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... under guard of negroes, twenty of the men pressed on afoot through tangled vines and thorny bushes, still led by the dogs, until they brought up at the bottom of a tall cliff, and here the hounds seemed to be at fault, for they ran around and around a tree, looking up into it and whining. The herder swung himself into the branches and scrambled almost to the top. "Nobody here," he ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... if she has as yet journeyed any particular distance at all—or any more than set out upon the road. For the look she shot at me convinces me that she has started—in fact, has reached that turn in the thorny path where she is less inclined to defend herself than her own possessions. You seem ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... rainbows had found board and lodging. We may call him toad-hopper or spittle-bug, or as Fabre says, "Contentons-nous de Cicadelle, qui respecte le tympan." Like all of its kindred, the Bubble Bug finds Nirvana in a sappy green stem. It has neither strong flight, nor sticky wax, thorny armature nor gas barrage, so it proceeds to fashion an armor of bubbles, a cuirass of liquid film. This, in brief, was the rainbow which caught my eye when I broke open the stump. Up to that moment no rainbow had existed, only a little light sifting through ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... wounded, helpless man across the saddle, this stretch of thorny and contorted desert was practically impassable. Yet Gale headed into it unflinchingly. He would carry the Yaqui as far as possible, or until death make the burden no longer a duty. Blanco Sol plodded on over the dragging sand, up and down the steep, loose banks of washes, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... from Bourn. He and my other hunter continued to see it two or three times a week, and to hear its peculiar note much oftener, but could never get a specimen, owing to its always frequenting the most dense thorny thickets, where only hasty glimpses of it could be obtained, and at so short a distance that it would be difficult to avoid blowing the bird to pieces. Ali was very much annoyed that he could not get a specimen of this ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... return. June came in upon the Bay, bringing with it a more vivid life in the environs of Naples. As the heat of the sun increased the vitality of the human motes that danced in its beams seemed to increase also, to become more blatant, more persistent. The wild oleander was in flower. The thorny cactus put forth upon the rim of its grotesque leaves pale yellow blossoms to rival the red geraniums that throng about it insolently in Italy. In the streets of the city ragged boys ran by crying, "Fragole!" and holding aloft the shallow baskets in ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... a despot's fortunes be, After his days of strength had flown, Amidst this people, proud and free, Whose histories from such sources run? The thought is its own mockery. I pity the audacious one Who may ascend that thorny throne, And bide a single setting sun. Day dies; my shadow's length has grown; The sun is sliding down the west. That trumpet in my camp was blown. From yonder high and wooded crest I shall behold my squadron's camp, Prepared to sleep its guarded rest In the low, misty, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... stared at the profile of District Attorney Sanderson's private secretary. So she was a "society girl," a "Forsyte" girl! Was that the reason, perhaps, why she had been so thorny with him, a mere "dick"? Well, he wasn't just a dick any longer. He was a Special Investigator ... A society girl, ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin |
