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Withered   /wˈɪðərd/   Listen
Withered

adjective
1.
Lean and wrinkled by shrinkage as from age or illness.  Synonyms: shriveled, shrivelled, shrunken, wizen, wizened.  "He looked shriveled and ill" , "A shrunken old man" , "A lanky scarecrow of a man with withered face and lantern jaws" , "He did well despite his withered arm" , "A wizened little man with frizzy grey hair"
2.
(used especially of vegetation) having lost all moisture.  Synonyms: dried-up, sear, sere, shriveled, shrivelled.  "The desert was edged with sere vegetation" , "Shriveled leaves on the unwatered seedlings" , "Withered vines"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Withered" Quotes from Famous Books



... year, having been born in Durham in 1717. He lived to the age of nearly eighty- eight, and one who remembered him In his latest years says: "He rises to my mind the very ideal of age and decrepitude—a small, emaciated old man, very lame, his ashen and withered features surmounted sometimes by a cap, and sometimes by a small wig— always quiet and gentle in his manner." Such a condition as is here described is still, however, in the future for him. He is still vigorous enough to preside in the convention of the clergy, ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut

... on Brynhild's mountain top spinning their thread of destiny, and telling the story of Wotan's sacrifice of his eye, and of his breaking off a bough from the World Ash to make a heft for his spear, also how the tree withered after suffering that violence. They have also some fresher news to discuss. Wotan, on the breaking of his spear by Siegfried, has called all his heroes to cut down the withered World Ash and stack its faggots ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... until a consciousness of her presence filled the apartment. Her face was more than stern. It wore the commanding expression of a high-born woman roused to the full extent of an unusually strong nature. Her dark eyes had an overmastering fire, and her withered cheeks were red with ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... perfect nearness, of complete devotion—even that loses all its magic; all its dignity is destroyed by its own pettiness, its brevity. Yes; a man loved, glowed with passion, murmured of eternal bliss, of undying raptures, and lo, no trace is left of the very worm that devoured the last relic of his withered tongue. So, on a frosty day in late autumn, when all is lifeless and dumb in the bleached grey grass, on the bare forest edge, if the sun but come out for an instant from the fog and turn one steady glance on the frozen ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... the weather changed; the golden hue of autumn gave place to a chilly greyness; the sky became sad with winterly clouds; the land became soggy with frequent rains; the trees showed their bare black boughs; the withered leaves drifted along the roads before blustering winds that came up from the sea; the evenings grew long and the mornings dreary; but still Alma, with her mother, remained ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... words I ever heard uttered by either that old arch-fiend or his weak, miserable kinsman. Father Paul turned and left the room. I watched his withered hand—the hand I had so often felt resting on my head in holy benedictions—clasp the door-knob, turn it slowly, then, with bowed head and his pale face wrapped in thought, he left the room—left it with the mad ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... by Lichas. Scarce has the herald gone, ere Deianira is terrified by a strange phenomenon: a part of the wool with which the supposed filter had been applied to the garment was thrown into the sunlight, upon which it withered away—"crumbling like sawdust"—while on the spot where it fell a sort of venomous foam froths up. While relating this phenomenon to the chorus, her son, Hyllus, returns [370], and relates the agonies of his father under the poisoned garment: ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... disadvantage," he resumed. "My supplanter, with perhaps more wisdom than delicacy, remains in the room," and he cast a glance at me that might have withered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs, and other heads of states. But the longer humanity lived the weaker grew the belief in this peculiar, God—given right of the ruler. That belief withered in the same way and almost simultaneously in the Christian and the Brahman world, as well as in Buddhist and Confucian spheres, and in recent times it has so faded away as to prevail no longer against man's reasonable understanding and the true religious feeling. People saw ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy

... warmth—the colours that start into life add to the feeling. The bare birch has no leaf to reflect it, but its white bark shines, and beyond it two great elms, the one a pale green and the other a pale yellow, stand side by side. The brake fern is dead and withered; the tip of each frond curled over downwards by the frost, but it forms a brown background to the dull green furze which is alight here and there with scattered blossom, by contrast so brilliantly yellow as to seem like flame. Polished ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... when two years ago the world first felt the impact of the pestilence and millions withered up like blighted corn. ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... taste of the golden fruit Till the golden new time come Many a tree shall spring from shoot, Many a blossom be withered at root, Many a song be dumb; Broken and still shall be many a lute Or ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... rarefied perception of beauty that we may trace the quickening of spirit which artists and poets experience on the mountains. Heine, going to the Alps with winter in his soul, "withered and dead," finds new hope and a new spring. The melodies of poetry return, he feels once again his valour as a soldier in the war of ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... of filth and refuse from the way of his more fortunate fellows. Indeed, look upon him in what light you may, he is in some sort a practical moralist. Though far remote from the ivy chaplet on Wisdom's glorious brow, yet his stump of withered birch inculcates a lesson of virtue, by reminding us, that we should take heed to our steps in our journeyings through the wilderness of life; and, so far as in him lies, he helps us to do so, and by the exercise of a very catholic faith, looks for his reward to the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... thought, so perpetually their object, that at last it absorbs the softer and more agreeable qualities of their nature; and they die mere models of austerity, fashioned out of a little parchment and much bone. Anatomists will tell you that there is a heart in the withered old maid's carcase—the same as in that of any cherished wife or proud mother in the land. Can this be so? I really don't know; but feel ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... farewell to the wild world and its lawless freedom, haunted me for days. There was also a pen-and-ink drawing I wish I could reproduce here. A young buccaneer, splendid in evil bravery, leaned across a bar where a strange, beastly, little, old, withered, rat-like figure was drawing the drink. The little figure was like a devil with the soul all concentrated into malice, and the whole picture affected one with terror like a descent into ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... his problem. As he drove down Whitehall the sun brightened to a naked midday heat, throwing its cloak of mists behind it. The gilding on the Clock Tower sparkled in the light; even the dusty, airless street, with its withered planes, was on a sudden flooded with gaiety. Two or three official or Parliamentary acquaintances saluted the successful minister as he passed; and each was conscious of a certain impatience with the gravity of the well-known face. That a great man should not be content to look victory, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... deal of activity that seems inseparable from dust. The wheels make such a lot of noise as they go around. Doing that does not root down in the secret touch with Jesus, may be quite vigorous for a time, but soon leaves behind as its only memory withered up branches. This is a practical age, we are constantly told. Things must be judged by the standard of usefulness. That is surely true, and good, but there is very serious danger that the true perspective of service be lost in the dust that is ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon

... hundred and fifteen years. Her eyes brightened, and she fronted away to the main range to a towering crag of granite, facing the north, where Bull Elk Canyon empties into the Big Horn. She held her withered arm high above her head ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen

... be?—but it is a chemical reaction in a vital process. Our mental and spiritual life—our emotions of art, poetry, religion—are inseparable from physical processes in the brain and the nervous system; but is that their final explanation? The sunlight has little effect on a withered leaf, but see what effect it has upon the green leaf upon the tree! The sunlight is the same, but it falls upon a new force or potency in the chlorophyll of the leaf,—a bit of chemistry there inspired by life,—and the heat of the sun is stored up in the carbon or woody tissues of the plant ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... of getting moss-backed. He had been harping on the city string again and asked me if I intended to live and die a withered beauty on ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... stood still. The grape crops, indeed, were prodigious, but the vintage was not profitable because the wine had a tendency to sour. Gentle rains in September prepared the ground for an untimely fertility. Trees blossomed and, though some fruits withered prematurely, cherries actually ripened. Thus the Rhinelands presented a pleasant appearance ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... turned to gaze Upon the huge tree, dark and lone, The withered finger of the crone Marked out, and glancing in the rays Of morn, beheld a serpent coil Its glossy length, with easy toil, Up the brown trunk, till close it hung Above the wild bird's nest and young; While round and round, with scream of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... whole feudal organization was outwardly intact, the thinker who was watching the signs of the times would not have been long in arriving at the conclusion that feudalism was "played out," that the whole fabric of mediaeval civilization was becoming dry and withered, and had either already begun to disintegrate or was on the eve of doing so. Causes of change had within the past half-century been working underneath the surface of social life, and were rapidly undermining ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... good, And bent his lips to the trickling flood; Then—as the chronicles declare, On the honest faith of a true believer— His cheeks, though wasted, lank, and bare, Filled like a withered russet-pear In the vacuum of a glass receiver, And the snows that seventy winters bring Melted ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte

... lifetime. When spring unfolds her green leaves I would be provoked to indite an essay on hope and youth, were it not that it is already writ in the carols of the birds; and I might be tempted in autumn to improve the occasion, were it not for the rustle of the withered leaves as I walk through the woods. Compared with that simple music, the saddest-cadenced words have but a ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... glamoured my poor boy Tim. See!"—and he caught up a blue-eyed, handsome boy, who had been clinging to his side, and baring the child's arm, showed it to the spectators; there was a large scar on the limb, and it was shrunk and withered. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... plant any but the largest Kernels, and such as are plump: For since in the finest Shells there are sometimes withered Kernels, it would be very imprudent to ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus

... westeria, reached the top, and slipping, sliding, found herself in the pathway running round the outside, scratched, bruised, and breathless, but without the walls, and so far free, at any rate. Months afterwards she found some withered lilac-blossoms lodged amongst the ribbons of her hat; how they recalled to her the moment of that desperate rush and clamber, the faint, dewy scent of the flowers, which she noticed even then, the rustle and crash of the branches, which ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... violets for the grave of youth, And bay for those dead in their prime; Give me the withered leaves I chose Before in ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... rooms and vacant courts, Replete in years gone by with beds where statesmen lay; Parched grass and withered banian trees, Where once were halls for song and dance! Spiders' webs the carved pillars intertwine, The green gauze now is also pasted on the straw windows! What about the cosmetic fresh concocted or the powder just scented; Why has the hair too on each temple become white like hoarfrost! Yesterday ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... pell-mell. For a long while the drawer had not had the periodical setting straight which woman grants it, and its contents were aged, dingy and undesirable—camisole-ribbons like boot-strings, lace collars long out of fashion, a rose or two crumpled into flat and withered blobs, shapeless and faded. She ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... with a plentiful under-growth of holly, over-shadowed a floor of brown leaves and red fern; and at the end of the wood nearest home, where the oaks joined their own fir plantations, one mighty gnarled tree, broader and older than all the rest, held aloft its withered ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... footsteps in the distant Fatherland, where the "romance of travel" became their guidebook. The merchant and the lawyer, the journalist and the mechanic, reading its pages, found that the stern realities of life had not withered up all the romance of their natures, and under its fascinations they became boys again. Even Horace Greeley, that most practical and unimaginative of men, became rapturous over it. It was a great success, and established the poet's fame ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... imagined, the whole scene was one well calculated to take a strong hold upon the imagination. The eminences, rising gradually from the river's banks, were dotted with white canvas tents, mingled with the more sombre-looking huts, constructed with once green but now withered branches. A few hundred yards from the river lay a large heap of planks and framings, which I was told were intended for constructing a store; the owner of which, a sallow Yankee, with a large pluffy cigaretto in his mouth, was labouring away in his ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks

... want of money; fourthly, it often finds such engagements for them by acting as their honest, disinterested agent; fifthly, it is its principle to act humanely upon the instant, and never, as is too often the case within my experience, to beat about the bush till the bush is withered and dead; lastly, the society is not in the least degree exclusive, but takes under its comprehensive care the whole range of the theatre and the concert-room, from the manager in his room of state, or in his caravan, or at the ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... an old manoeuvre; she had heard her brothers talk of it many times, and also—she remembered it now—of the counter-trick to meet it. There must be bush at hand, to set fire to, that the advance may be seen as soon as it forms and withered with musketry. ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... spouseless Adriatic mourns her love; St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood, Spared but in mockery of his withered power." ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... all is not sunshine, and the life of the labourer can be very hard—"a young person can stand it; but an old man gets racked with rheumatism, and bent and withered before his time; yet he must work on the same, or else go ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne

... ignoble person. On the contrary she is kind and generous, full of the best intentions. She has simply reached a point in her selfish round of vanity and pleasure-seeking where she can no longer distinguish between right and wrong. Her soul is withered, starved, because it has been deprived of God's love and God's truth; yet the deterioration came gradually, no doubt, beginning with petty lies and compromises and evasions of responsibility. If she had any past transgression on her conscience ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... he went down to the sea, there he met the emperor: if he took the wings of the morning, and fled to the uttermost parts of the earth, there also was the emperor or his lieutenants. But the same omnipresence of imperial anger and retribution which withered the hopes of the poor humble prisoner, met and confounded the emperor himself, when hurled from his giddy elevation by some fortunate rival. All the kingdoms of the earth, to one in that situation, became but so many wards of the same infinite prison. Flight, if it were even ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... modern structure. The gate was closed, and the bolts rusted in the wards. The long withered grass bore no marks of having been recently trodden; every thing appeared in the state in which it might be supposed to have been left, when the vain-glorious unfortunate projector of this monumental trophy of his own greatness augmented the heaps of dead who ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... there, and make enquiries myself. To make sure that I should forget nothing, he drew the family photographs from under his pillow, and handed them over: the little witch-grandmother, with a face like a withered walnut, the father, a fine broken-looking old boy with a Roman nose and a weak chin, the mother, in crape, simple, serious and provincial, the little sister ditto, and Alain, the young brother—just the ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... in the discussion an aged stranger from the valley of Taaoa, a withered man whose whole naked chest was covered with intricate tattooing, laid down his pipe and artlessly revealed his idea of the communion service. It was, he thought, a religious cannibalism, no more. And he was puzzled that his people ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... before the world, for the passing hour or day or year, she knew, and the knowledge sickened her to her soul's death, that the home was doomed. She kept thinking of it as a tree, whose roots were cut; a tree whose leaves were still green, whose comeliness still pleased the eye but whose ugly, withered branches soon must stand out to affront the world. And sorrowing for the beauty that was doomed she went to her work. All night with her father she ministered to the tortured man, but in the morning she slipped away to her home again hoping her numb ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... worked up a lively humor. Algy had exhausted his supply of hot water, but not his supply of language. It seemed as if the stream of Oriental invective being poured through the walls of the building might have withered almost anything extant. But Goldite whisky had failed on his besiegers earlier and their vitals were ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... will only be said hereafter of you that you belonged to an assembly convened at New-Haven on the 29th of August 1804, which sprang up in a day, chose major Judd chairman; and like "Jonah's Gourd withered in a day." ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast

... herself in her master's great chair, and drew it close to Fanny. There was no light in the room but the expiring fire, and it threw upward a pale glimmer on the two faces bending over it,—the one so strangely beautiful, so smooth, so blooming, so exquisite in its youth and innocence,—the other withered, wrinkled, meagre, and astute. It was like the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... (as in Polynesia, where "Captain Cook's path" was shown in the grass) that the heat of the hero's body might blast the grass; so Starcad's entrails withered the grass. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... schlagen!" which signifies: "Scoundrel! accursed blackguard! I will beat you to a jelly!" It was a mode of address that Samuel had heard often in his infancy; but familiar though he might be with paternal amenities, when he saw his father uplift a withered, claw-like hand, a cry escaped his lips; he started back to evade the blow, entangled his feet in the legs of a chair, stumbled, and flung himself violently against ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... the use of it? The hearts of women are like little pieces of furniture wherein things are secreted, full of drawers fitted into each other; one hurts himself, breaks his nails in opening them, and then finds within only some withered flower, a few grains of dust—or emptiness! And then perhaps he felt afraid of learning too ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... United States, though very small to start with, was always strong enough to keep the command of the sea and to prevent the makeshift Southern parts of a navy from ever becoming a whole. Privateers took out letters of marque to prey on Northern shipping. But privateering soon withered off, because prizes could not be run through the blockade in sufficient numbers to make it pay; and no prize would be recognized except in a Southern port. Raiders did better and for a much longer time. The Shenandoah ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... ash-tree (the Mexican fresno), the pride of Tacubaya; which throws out its luxuriant branches, covering a large space of ground, was pointed out to us as having a tradition attached to it. It had nearly withered away, when the Ylustrisimo Senor Fonti, the last of the Spanish archbishops, gave it his solemn benediction, and prayed that its vigour might be restored. Heaven heard his prayer; new buds instantly shot forth, and the tree has ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... not been able to read these pages, and have been compelled to entrust their revision to other eyes and other hands. I will utter no more complaints, my dear friends; the consciousness of the depth of my affliction admits not of complaints and lamentations. I have lost all; I am a withered branch, that feels and suffers still. You only have I won! Your society, which must compensate me for all my studies, joys, and hopes, would almost outweigh my sorrows, did not my very sickness prevent me from enjoying it as I could wish, and did I not know that Fate ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... leaned here to watch them buried there. He said there would always be a place next your mother for you. 'Tell the boy that,' he said." Chad put his arms around the tombstone and then sank on one knee by his mother's grave. It was strewn with withered violets. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... sound of the language keeps for us the freshness of the imagery—the sweet-briar and the hawthorn, the mavis and the oriole—which has so long become publica materies. It is not withered and hackneyed by time and tongues as, save when genius touches it, it is now. The dew is still on all of it; and, thanks to the dead language, the dead manners, it will always be on. All is just near enough to us for it to be enjoyed, as we cannot enjoy antiquity or the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... going at a gentle trot, silent, along a woodland path—a brown, soft, shady road, nearly five miles from home, our horses scattering about the withered leaves that lay thick upon it. A good deal of underwood and a few large trees had been lately cleared from the place. There were many piles of fagots about, and a great log lying here and there along the side of the path. One of these, when a tree, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... touched at Valparaiso; which might, we agreed, possibly be a paradise for fleas, but certainly not for human beings of good taste. The climate is fine,—of that I have no doubt,—but the surrounding country is sterile and monotonous, the vegetation just then on the hills consisting of half-withered cacti, though in the valleys and the plains to the left of the town we saw groves of fruit trees and flowering shrubs. I can best describe the place by saying that it is divided by two deep ravines into three hills, sprinkled over with whitewashed ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... sight. He could not even recognize the elegant young man in that thing without—as Bossuet said—a name in any language. It was, in truth, a corpse with whitened hair, its bones scarce covered with a wrinkled, blighted, withered skin,—a corpse with white eyes motionless, mouth hideously gaping, like those of idiots or vicious men killed by excesses. No trace of intelligence remained upon that brow, nor in any feature; nor was there in ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... sun darting his warm, golden light between the dark-green extended branches of these distant forest pyramids, so that they seem to be basking in the very focus of his rays. Untrodden and virgin as these forests appear, an occasional cross, with its withered garland, gives token of life, and also of death; and green and lonely is the grave which the traveller has found among these Alpine solitudes, under the shadows of the dark pine, on a bed of fragrant wild-flowers, fanned by the pure air ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... years, amongst these valleys, happy years have come and gone, And my youthful hopes and friendships withered with them one by one; Days and moments bearing onward many a bright and beauteous dream, All have passed me like to sunstreaks flying down a distant stream. Oh, the love returned by loved ones! Oh, the faces that I knew! Oh, the wrecks of fond affection! Oh, the ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... was covered with flowers, the luxuriant hedgerows were white with blossoms, the air was impregnated with the odours of the gardens and orchards. Still Mary sighed as she thought of Lochmarlie—its wild tangled woods, with here and there a bunch of primroses peeping forth from amidst moss and withered ferns—its gurgling rills, blue lakes, and rocks, and mountains—all rose to view; and she felt that, even amid fairer scenes, and beneath brighter suns, her heart would still turn with fond regret to the land ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... gregariously than we had ever seen it, in the stony banks of the channel of the torrent from the hills. One thorny tree or shrub (first seen at the base of Mount P. P. King) again appeared here; it was, generally, in a withered state; had a leaf somewhat like the human hand, and a pod containing two peas of a bright scarlet colour, about the shape and size of a French bean. This, sometimes grew to a tree as much as a foot in diameter; and the natives, who, like Nature herself, may be said to do nothing in vain, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... man, all of which society fashions to meet its needs. Now in the social order, as in Nature's order, there are more young shoots than there are trees, more spawn than full-grown fish, and many great capacities (Athanase Granson, for instance) which die withered for want of moisture, like seeds on stony ground. There are, unquestionably, household women, accomplished women, ornamental women, women who are exclusively wives, or mothers, or sweethearts, women purely spiritual or purely material; just as there are soldiers, artists, artisans, mathematicians, ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... ridge at back of Steep Head at 10.0., and halted at Timber Creek at 11.0. The heavy rains which occurred in Beagle Valley do not appear to have extended to this part of the country, and the grass is still dry and withered. At 2.30 p.m. resumed our route and reached the principal camp at 6.30, and found the party all well, except Richards, who was still suffering severely from the injury to his wrist. Mr. Baines was absent, having started on Wednesday in search of two horses which had ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... blue eyes, and then, with "Ach! der Liebling! mein schoener Schatz!" caught up Tony to her shrivelled breast in a sudden surprise, and, going back to the door, called "Fredrika!" Another old woman, dried, withered, with pale blue eyes, appeared, and the two, hastily shoving us chairs, took Tony between them, chattering in delighted undertones, patting his fat cheeks, his hands, feeling his clothes, straightening his leg, and laughing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... rode in company to the spot where the fight had taken place. There we found the bush torn up by the roots, and all the earth about it ploughed up where we had fought. The ground was also dyed with blood for several yards round, and where it had fallen the grass was withered up to the roots, as if scorched with fire. We also picked up a cluster of hairs—long, wiry, crooked hairs, barbed at the ends like fish-hooks; also three or four scales like fish-scales, only rougher, and as large as doubloons. The spot where the fight took place is now ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... so it is called by Divines, whose word is the rather to be taken, as they are, many of them, more conversant with this Evil than ever Philosophers were. The Name of this man is Moore to whom you kindly destined that Laurel, which, though it hath long been withered, may not probably soon drop from the Brow of its present Possessor; but there is another Place of much the same Value now vacant: it is that of Deputy Licensor to the Stage. Be not offended at this Hint; for though I will own it impudent enough in one who hath so many Obligations of his own to you, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... flat stones. Few are the acorns, Past is the time for berries, Fled are the fishes, the prawns and the grasshoppers, Blown far are the grass-seeds, Flown far are the young birds, Old are the roots and withered. Built are the fires for the meat. Laid are the boughs for sleep, Yet thy people cannot sleep. ...
— The Acorn-Planter - A California Forest Play (1916) • Jack London

... withered and old In winter nights, that are so cold, Plaining in vain unto the moon; Thy wishes then dare not be told: Care then who list, for ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... in others. How unequally the power to resist cold, for instance, seems to be distributed among plants and trees, and probably among animals! One spring an unseasonable cold snap in May (mercury 28) killed or withered about one per cent of the leaves on the lilacs, and one tenth of one per cent of the leaves of our crab-apple tree. In the woods around Slabsides I observed that nearly half the plants of Solomon's-seal (Polygonatum) ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... selfe doth seeke. Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues, Fie painted Rethoricke, O she needs it not, To things of sale, a sellers praise belongs: She passes prayse, then prayse too short doth blot. A withered Hermite, fiuescore winters worne, Might shake off fiftie, looking in her eye: Beauty doth varnish Age, as if new borne, And giues the Crutch the Cradles infancie. O 'tis the Sunne that maketh all ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... on purpose. I shall be glad when it's over, for I think my mother 'ull perhaps get easier then. It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off, and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree." ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... charm. She might have had birds, this woman, for they are cheap enough and plentiful enough, heaven knows; but she has them not, therefore she must wear within things infinitely precious, namely, good sense, good taste, good feeling. Does any woman imagine these withered corpses (cured with arsenic), which she loves to carry about, are beautiful? Not so; the birds lost their beauty with their ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock

... spoke: the brawny spearman let his cheek Bulge with the unswallowed piece, and turning stared; While some, whose souls the old serpent long had drawn Down, as the worm draws in the withered leaf And makes it earth, hissed each at other's ear What shall not be recorded—women they, Women, or what had been those gracious things, But now desired the humbling of their best, Yea, would have helped him to it: and all at once They hated ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... my love," answered the low, deep voice of Ernest; "but my mother is coming to awaken you with a cold and icy hand. I have scattered roses over you while you slept, but her blighting touch has withered them." ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... stooped; with his withered hands the old one took the offered support, and, rising, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... withered; and the first had a crooked back, the second a crooked nose, and the third a crooked mouth. He of the crooked back began, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... 'Lizy, is this little missis?" It was asked by an old, respectable-looking, grey-haired negress. I did not hear my aunt's answer; but I stopped and turned to the woman and laid my little hand in her withered palm. I don't know what there was in that minute; only I know that whereas I touched one hand, I touched a great many hearts. Then and there began my good understanding with all the coloured people on my mother's estate of Magnolia. There was a general outburst of ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... living in a tiny little house somewhere near the river—Westminster or Chelsea. His wife would be a dreadful person, thin, withered, herring-gutted—a sort of red herring with a cap. But his daughter would be charming, she would have inherited her father's features. I can imagine these women living in admiration of this man, tending on him, speaking very little, removed from worldly influences, seeing only the young men who ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore

... energy of early manhood,—the capacity for furious anger which the man had lost half a century ago, crammed to the brim with vigor till it became agony. But the next moment, if it were so (which it could not have been), the face grew ashen, withered, shrunken, more aged than in life, though still the murderous fierceness remained, and seemed to ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest; it was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs: but now in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk. It is now at best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air. It is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... through pruriency of youthful talents—and Greybeards hobble after them, in whom number of years is a cloak for poverty of experience. Some who have much leisure, because every affair of their own has withered under their mismanagement, are eager to redeem their credit, by stirring gratis for the public;—others, having risen a little in the world, take swimmingly to the trade of factious Politics, on their original stock of base manners and vulgar opinions. Some are theorists hot ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... the mother and daughter together. They both looked much older and terribly changed. The mother's hair was silvered, but the daughter was so faded and withered that her mother might have been taken for her elder sister, not more ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... his question and sat down by her hostess to soothe that now abashed person for her failure. Captain Lem had withered even the lady of the ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... a little hay, but the grass is mown late; and is so often almost dry and again very wet, before it is housed, that it becomes a collection of withered stalks without taste or fragrance; it must be eaten by cattle that have nothing else, but by most English farmers would ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... the decline of mental freshness and of hospitality to new ideas which often comes with advancing years, were it not that, in his case, there was no such decline. On the contrary, as his interest in speculative thought gradually withered, his interest on the side of scholarship and linguistics became greater than ever, and his energy here was always seeking new outlets for itself. When he was nearly sixty he began the study of Assyrian. He did so in connection with ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns

... have been well-visaged; whose judgment seemeth to me to be somewhat like as though men should guess the beauty of one long departed by her scalp taken out of the charnel-house. For now is she old, lean, withered, and dried up—nothing left but shrivelled skin and hard bone. And yet, being even such, whoso well advise her visage, might guess and devine which parts, how filled, would make it a ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... clear for an instant, I caught sight of the bed, and a chair, and some withered flowers on the floor, left there, no doubt, since the day of ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... leonis onagrum, a filthy loathsome carcass, a Gorgon's head puffed up by parasites, assume this unto himself, glorious titles, in worth an infant, a Cuman ass, a painted sepulchre, an Egyptian temple? To see a withered face, a diseased, deformed, cankered complexion, a rotten carcass, a viperous mind, and Epicurean soul set out with orient pearls, jewels, diadems, perfumes, curious elaborate works, as proud of his clothes as a child of his new coats; and a goodly person, of an angel-like ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... me—" and the faded blue eyes filled with tears, and the wrinkled lips trembled a little as she recalled the past—"for me! I had lived my life before you were born. My husband was dead, my boy drowned, and my little Mari, the last and brightest, had suddenly withered and died before my eyes—a fever they say, perhaps it was indeed; but the sun has never shone so brightly, whatever, since then; the flowers are not so sweet—they remind me of my child's grave; the sea does not look the same—it reminds me of my boy!" ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... good fire had to be made before the venison could be roasted, so he gave his whole attention to the felling of dry trees and cutting them up into logs for the fire. Jasper was also hungry, and a slight shower had wetted all the moss and withered grass, so he had enough to do to strike fire with flint and steel, catch a spark on a little piece of tinder, and then blow and coax the spark into ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne

... the sheltered hillside Waved its varicolored flowers As a greeting to the trav'ler, Solace to the toilsome hours. Old Jack Rabbit hopped before him, Then sat up, to watch him pass, Dusky horned-toads scurried nimbly Through the withered buffalo grass. Here and there the buzzing rattler Whirred a warning, head alert, Then retreated from the snapping, Stinging strokes of Billy's quirt. Day by day the wild breeze flying, With'ring ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker

... these words, Peyrolles, now thoroughly alarmed and irritated, gave Cocardasse a glance that ought to have withered him, but Cocardasse was not withered, and smiled banteringly ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... unnatural hush there was one voice which made the silence less ominous, and revived the spent and withered freshness of the spirit. To hear that voice seemed to me this morning the one consolation which the day offered. It called me with cool, delicious tones that seemed almost audible, and I braved the deadly heat as the traveller urges ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... visage up did clear. Beaming delight! though now a shade Of doubt would darken into dread, That some unskilled presumptuous arm Had marred tradition's mighty charm. Scarce grew thy lurking dread the less, Till she, the ancient Minstreless, With fervid voice and kindling eye, And withered arms waving on high, Sung forth these words in eldritch shriek, While tears stood on thy nut-brown cheek: "Na, we are nane o' the lads o' France, Nor e'er pretend to be; We be three lads of fair Scotland, Auld Maitland's ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang

... back against the wall, Rocke displayed more courage. Besides, what was the use of mincing matters with a man who had all the appearance of a human automaton, who never flinched or changed color, and whose passions seemed dried up and withered things? ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... was no November chill. It was a brown world, however, through which the two walked; life and freshness all gone from vegetation; the leaves in most cases fallen from the trees, and where they still hung looking as sear and withered as frost and ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... Third Lines, accompanying a Purse Forsaken Christmas is Coming Heart Links The Oak to the Ivy Epigram on a Welshwoman's Hat Shadows in the Fire The Belfry Old Beautiful Barbara Song of the Silken Shroud A University for Wales Griefs Untold I Will Dawn and Death Castles in the Air The Withered Rose Wrecks of Life Eleanor New Year's Bells The Vase and the Weed A Riddle To a Fly Burned by a Gaslight To a Friend Retribution The Three Graces The Last Rose of Summer The Starling and the Goose The Heroes of Alma A Kind Word, a Smile, or a Kiss ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... The withered abdomen filled out. The whitish-gray lump of brain-matter grew slightly darker. It looked as though the mass of the dead slug were as large as the total bulk of the termite ruler; but not until the meal was nearly gone did the voracious ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... to condone a baseness in his nephew which he would have been the first to condemn in a stranger. And again it was easiness which had beguiled him into standing idle while the brother's influence was creeping like strangling ivy over the girl's generous nature; while her best instincts were being withered by ridicule, her generosity abused by meanness, and her sense of right blunted by such acts of lawlessness as the seizure of the smuggling vessel. He feared, if he did not know, that things were going ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... room, the girl had contrived to impart to it a certain air which removed it from the common-place. A bit of flimsy drapery, begged from some studio, hung over one of the windows; a rude print of the Madonna was pinned to the wall, and under it, on the wooden table, was a bunch of withered flowers. They were roses which Helen had given Ninitta, and the Italian, returning home that day, had in her jealous rage thrown them to the floor and trampled upon them. Then remembering that they had been offered to the Madonna, she had been seized with ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... against the darkness outside by the glare of the guttering candles. A pale, worn, withered face; the eyes—but that was owing to its gaunt condition—unnaturally large and bright; the hair, a grizzled black. It gave a searching glance all round the room, and a deep ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... live,' thought the tree joyfully, stretching out its branches wide; but, alas! they were all withered and yellow; and it was lying in a corner among weeds and nettles. The golden star was still on its highest bough, and it glittered in the bright sunlight. In the yard some of the merry children were playing, who had danced so gaily round the tree at Christmas. One of the little ones ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... thou sayest true; the prince once set a dish of Apple-johns before him, and told him there were five more Sir Johns; and putting off his hat, said, I will now take my leave of these six dry, round, old, withered knights. ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... mob, withered by the volley, hesitated a moment. The vestibule was streaming with blood, and shrieking, writhing victims strove in vain to rise. It was a sickening sight, but there was the electricity of anger in the air and no one faltered long. On they ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... the splendour of the sun. For during all that year the circle of the sun rose pale and without rays, and the warmth that came down from it was weak and feeble, so that the air as it moved was dark and heavy owing to the feebleness of the warmth which penetrated it, and the fruits withered and fell off when they were half ripened and imperfect on account of the coldness of the atmosphere. But chief of all, the phantom that appeared to Brutus showed that Caesar's murder was not pleasing to the gods; and it ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... painful obstruction, extending itself everywhere over Europe, and already master of Germany, lay the general mind, when Goethe first appeared in Literature. Whatever belonged to the finer nature of man had withered under the Harmattan breath of Doubt, or passed away in the conflagration of open Infidelity; and now, where the Tree of Life once bloomed and brought fruit of goodliest savour there was only barrenness and desolation. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... who are yet unmade who must become the makers. After thirty there are few conversions and fewer fine beginnings; men and women go on in the path they have marked out for themselves. Their imaginations have become firm and rigid even if they have not withered, and there is no turning them from the conviction of their brief experience that almost all that is, is inexorably so. Accomplished things obsess us more and more. What man or woman over thirty in Great Britain dares to hope for a republic before it is time ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... like this; I have built up that others might tear down. I thought for a few hours that something else was to come to me. I should have known better. It was when you took the daisy—" she raised her hand and touched the withered flower. "I did not reason. I knew I was breaking my trust, and I did not care. After all, perhaps even that was the best thing. It gave me strength and hope to carry on the fight. It was you, then,—not New France. ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... by the casting out of devils. A similar theory was elaborated in Persia. Naturally, then, the Old Testament, so precious in showing the evolution of religious and moral truth among men, attributes such diseases as the leprosy of Miriam and Uzziah, the boils of Job, the dysentery of Jehoram, the withered hand of Jeroboam, the fatal illness of Asa, and many other ills, to the wrath of God or the malice of Satan; while, in the New Testament, such examples as the woman "bound by Satan," the rebuke of the fever, the casting out of the devil which was dumb, the healing of the person whom "the devil ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... adoption. I often say to myself, could I see Alice and Arthur and Walter happy, how happy should I be! I would be more than willing to depart; but there would be still a care for something in this worn-out and withered frame. It will be far better to be with Jesus, but He will keep me here as long as He has any thing for me to do. The dear girls! I am glad they are enjoying themselves, but I long to see them again. I hope they will not be carried away ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... stout Rising—Tantarar-ra-ra! twanged the trumpet of Antony Van Corlear;—until all voice and sound became unintelligible,—grunts of pain, yells of fury, and shouts of triumph mingling in one hideous clamor. The earth shook as if struck with a paralytic stroke; trees shrunk aghast, and withered at the sight; rocks burrowed in the ground like rabbits; and even Christina creek turned from its course, and ran up a ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... oblivion; for it is in this field of research alone that we acquire some idea of the breadth of the gulf which separates our modes of thinking and feeling from those of the civilized nations of antiquity. Tradition, with its confused mass of national names and its dim legends, resembles withered leaves which with difficulty we recognize to have once been green. Instead of threading that dreary maze and attempting to classify those shreds of humanity, the Chones and Oenotrians, the Siculi and the Pelasgi, it will be more to the purpose to inquire ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... was it, on the other hand, a case of conscious, intentional deceit. It was real, but it was not thorough. Something was given to Christ, but because all was not given the issue was the same as if all had been withheld. In the rich young man the seed sprang hopefully, but it withered soon: he did not lightly part with Christ, but he parted: he was very sorrowful, but ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... "Beware the pine-tree's withered branch! Beware the awful avalanche!" This was the peasant's last Good-night, A voice replied, far up ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... wounded as you are, tell you to get up and walk; would you believe Him, or say that you could not? He said that to many when He was on earth, and they took Him at His word, and found that He had healed them. There was, among others, a man with a withered hand. When He said, 'Stretch forth thine hand,' the man did not say, 'I cannot,' but stretched it forth immediately. Just in the same way, when God says, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston

... in the oven and set the damper. And, as she knelt by the stove, something struck her lightly on the back of the neck. She looked up and about her, but there was no one in sight. Then she picked up the object which had struck her. It was a cranberry, withered and softened by ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... about that of the rest of the knoll. Then the sod was laid back in place and well watered, and the few bushes planted back in their original positions. Our sodding should have been done in the spring for best results. The frost soon killed the grass, and the bushes withered away. But a few cents' worth of grass seed was sowed in, and in time gave the knoll a very natural appearance. A bush at the bottom concealed the entrance of the cave, so that no one who was not in the secret would have suspected that beneath that innocent looking knoll ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond

... withered hopes Thou knowest, The baffled yearnings of his heart to snatch From paths unhallowed childhood's tottering feet, And lay a rosy smile on little lips With homeless hunger pale, to curses trained, Whereon no kiss hath ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... crack of Smith's whip and the cattle started into life again; and as he continued to flourish the dreaded lash over their heads, they kept up their speed until we reached the stream, which slowly trickled through dry plains, with scorched grass and withered shrubs; but, near the banks of the river, which during the rainy season became a mighty torrent, green trees and rank grass afforded an agreeable shade from the ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... tense moment the faces of all of them were imprinted on her mind in an unforgettable picture—one of them, an old man, with torn and distended ear-lobes that fell to his chest; another, with the broad flattened nose of Africa, and with withered eyes so buried under frowning brows that nothing but the sickly, yellowish-looking whites could be seen; a third, thick-lipped and bearded with kinky whiskers; and Gogoomy—she had never realized before how handsome Gogoomy was in his mutinous and obstinate wild-animal way. There was ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... blue berries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla." Follow him, but not too closely, for you may see little, if you do—"as he walks in so pure and bright a light gilding its withered grass and leaves so softly and serenely bright that he thinks he has never bathed in such a golden flood." Follow him as "he saunters towards the holy land till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever it has ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... "How pretty, yes? But a little sad too, is it not so? Like rosy hopes that have been withered. Ach, what a foolish talk! So, now you will fasten it please. A real trick it is to button such a dress—so sly they are, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... the sister-heights of Yair. The sheep, before the pinching heaven, To sheltered dale and down are driven, Where yet some faded herbage pines, And yet a watery sunbeam shines: In meek despondency they eye The withered sward and wintry sky, And far beneath their summer hill, Stray sadly by Glenkinnon's rill: The shepherd shifts his mantle's fold, And wraps him closer from the cold; His dogs no merry circles wheel, But, shivering, follow at ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... this impatience; but though she thus tamed his amorous folly and made him humble enough, she failed to reach the evil spirit of love that haunted his heart. After she had made him experience to the full all the tricksy humours of the most wayward girl, and then suffered him just once to press his withered lips upon her tiny hand, he would swear in his excessive delight that he would never cease fervently kissing the Pope's toe until he had obtained dispensation to wed his niece, the paragon of beauty and amiability. Marianna was particularly ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... made the bravest show they could beneath the Fleurs de Lys of France. Close to all this magnificence was the yet living horror of the moat, which was now almost filled up with dead. From time to time the heap of rags and withered anatomies heaved slowly, and the little spectre of a child crawled out, imploring food. And all day long the solemn arguments went on beneath the sumptuous pavilions of the English, until, after three days of discussion, the ambassadors ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... tobacco!'—and—'Dickon, another coal for my pipe!'—and have it into thy pretty mouth as speedily as may be. Else, instead of a gallant gentleman, in a gold-laced coat, thou wilt be but a jumble of sticks and tattered clothes, and a bag of straw, and a withered pumpkin! Now depart, my treasure, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... as children sow cress now-a-days, they planted wheat, fennel, lettuce, and various kinds of flowers, which they watered and tended for eight days. In hot countries the seeds sprang up rapidly, but as the plants had no roots they withered quickly away. At the end of the eight days they were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis and thrown with them into the sea or into springs. The "gardens" of Adonis became the type of transient ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... metal off, like bark from an old tree. The illegible tombstones are all lop-sided, the grave-mounds lost their shape in the rains of a hundred years ago, the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a drysalter's daughter and several common-councilmen, has withered like those worthies, and its departed leaves are dust beneath it. Contagion of slow ruin overhangs the place. The discoloured tiled roofs of the environing buildings stand so awry, that they can hardly be proof against any stress of ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... bed, and feels with her poor withered hands for the girl's head. Cinette is not there, and the poor creature realizes it and weeps in agony. She would have reminded one of an Hindoo idol had she been seen. An hour elapsed, but the poor deformed woman still ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... poems of praise. He himself became very old,—outliving all his children; and there was nothing in the world left for him to live except that tree. And lo! in the summer of a certain year, the tree withered and died! ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn

... neglected flowers, at her father's house in the valley, and her clear ringing notes were distinctly heard by the whole party. After they were gone she continued her song, and lingered long over every faded leaf and withered blossom, with no thought of danger whatever, and none of pain, save the regret that her long cherished plants had been forgotten in the consternation of the previous day, and had fallen victims to the frost-king. But nothing had been touched by the savages. ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... was corrupted; for Royston was still as careful as ever to abstain from uttering one cynicism in her presence; but none the less was it true that daily and hourly some fresh scruple was washed away, some holy principle withered and died. The recklessness which ever carried him on straight to the attainment of a purpose or the indulgence of a fancy, trampling down the barriers that divide good from evil, seemed to communicate itself to Cecil contagiously. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... this man; yet her hate had been but a parasite growth on a nobler stem, with no abiding roots of its own. It withered under his words, and lo, there was the old love, fair and strong and ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Saul's crime, he determined on sacrificing, without being an appointed minister of God. This is a crime often denounced in Scripture, as in the case of Korah, and Jeroboam, and Uzziah. Korah was swallowed up by the earth on account of it; Jeroboam had his hand withered, and was punished in his family; and Uzziah was smitten with leprosy. Yet this was Saul's sin. "And Saul said," in the words of the text, "Bring hither a burnt offering to me, and peace offerings; and he offered the burnt ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... withered to the bone with long repeated fever, like a dead tree unable to draw a single drop ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore

... feet; and the rapidity of the deposition was such that some specimens were collected on the grass, where the stony crust was already formed, although the verdure of the leaf was as yet but imperfectly withered (page 114): a fact which renders less extraordinary M. Peron's statement that the excrements of kangaroos had been found concreted by calcareous matter. Peron ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... policy of massing its troops, and the effect was instantly seen. In Virginia, General Lee's onset was irresistible. His army burst from the entrenchments around Richmond, like the lava from the volcano, and the host of McClellan, shrank withered, from its path. Driving McClellan to his new base, and leaving him to make explanations to his soldiery, "Uncle Robert" fell headlong upon Pope, and Pope boasted no more. Forcing the immense Federal masses disintegrated and demoralized ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... a nook within this solemn Pass, But were an apt Confessional for one Taught by his summer spent; his autumn gone, That Life is but a tale of morning grass Withered at eve. From scenes of art which chase That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass Untouched, unbreathed upon. Thrice happy guest, If from a golden ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... Raquin preserved the use of her hands. She could write on a slate, and in this way asked for what she required; then the hands withered, and it became impossible for her to raise them or hold a pencil. From that moment her eyes were her only language, and it was necessary for her niece to guess what she desired. The young woman devoted herself to the hard duties of sick-nurse, which gave her occupation for body and mind that ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... to you, when your tears are dried, and when you no longer believe what young Niafer once believed; and when, remembering young Niafer's desires and her intentions as to the disposal of her life, you will shrug withered shoulders. To go on living will remain desirable. The dilapidations of life will no longer move you deeply. Shrugging, you will say of sorrow, 'What is it?' for you will know grief also to be impermanent. ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... beds with well rotted manure. At last, about the end of April, sow plentifully so that a single measure (cyanthus) of seed will cover a space ten feet long and five wide. When you have done this brush in the seed with wooden rakes: this is most important for otherwise the sprouts will be withered by the sun. After the sowing no iron tool should touch the beds; but, as I have said, they should be cultivated with wooden rakes, and in the same manner they should be weeded so that no foreign grass can choke out the young alfalfa. The first cutting should be late, when the ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... She called to deaf ears. Then she put her hand on the child and raised one of the arms. It dropped away limp as a withered stalk, showing the ashen white face across which it ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... meantime, was gathering my things, and with a "Come along, now! This is where you change," he led me from the car. I glanced back once, and the hen-faced woman shook her withered brown fist at me, and the large man waved and smiled. The conductor and I ran as hard as we could, he carrying my light luggage, to a stage that seemed to be waiting for us. He shouted some directions to the driver, ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie

... made so loud a summons that the menials hurried to throw open the gate, thinking that it must be some great king or queen, who would demand a banquet for supper and a stately chamber to repose in. And when they saw only a sad and anxious woman, with a torch in her hand and a wreath of withered poppies on her head, they spoke rudely, and sometimes threatened to set the dogs upon her. But nobody had seen Proserpina, nor could give Mother Ceres the least hint which way to seek her. Thus passed the night; and still she continued her search without sitting down to rest, or stopping ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... all my soul In the gret Press's freedom, To pint the people to the goal An' in the traces lead 'em: Palsied the arm thet forges yokes At my fat contracts squintin', An' withered be the nose thet ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... standing behind the sheet of water in his native country, and lingering, as of old, to watch the rays of the setting sun as they melted away from its surface. He thought, too, that his beautiful lily was in his hand, and that while he looked at it the leaves withered and fell at his feet. Then followed a confused recollection of his conversation with the fairy; and after that his thoughts became clearer, and, though still asleep, he remembered where he was, and in what place he was sitting. ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow



Words linked to "Withered" :   wizened, flora, dry, botany, sere, thin, vegetation, lean



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