"Withers" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hid, The orb that waits my search is hid with them. Patience! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year, To plant my ladder and to gain the round That leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame, Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won? Not the stained laurel such as heroes wear That withers when some stronger conqueror's heel Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust; But the fair garland whose undying green Not time can change, nor wrath ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... there so alarming about the hospital?" asked the terrific Aquilina. "When we are neither wives nor mothers, when old age draws black stockings over our limbs, sets wrinkles on our brows, withers up the woman in us, and darkens the light in our lover's eyes, what could we need when that comes to pass? You would look on us then as mere human clay; we with our habiliments shall be for you like so much mud—worthless, lifeless, crumbling to pieces, going ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... that, your Majesty; And we that have free souls, it touches us not; Let the galled jade wince, our withers ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... slumbering volcano, and many lost their all. They thought that they were secure, but it was a dream from which they were awakened to a terrible reality. So in religion. A man under the shadow of a theory may think himself safe, whilst his gourd is only the gourd of Jonah, a thing that withers under the heat of the sun. The feeling of security is very agreeable; but how, if strict Calvinism is adhered to, is any man to get intelligently amongst the elect? If Christ has died only for a few, and the names of these are kept a profound secret, how ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... development, he is able to take hold of life and mould and knead it into more beautiful and useful forms. Domestic selection it is called. Does he wish horses which are fast, he selects the fastest. He studies the physics of velocity in relation to equine locomotion, and with an eye to withers, loins, hocks, and haunches, he segregates his brood mares and his stallions. And behold, in the course of a few years, he has a thoroughbred stock, swifter of foot than any ever in the ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... whole is a desert, over which these columnar formations—resembling a city of the Titans, crumbling slowly into dust—hold an empire of solitude and death. The imagination is oppressed with a sense of utter desolation that withers every mental effort. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... it perhaps reluctantly, but certainly in obedience to the imperious commands of a duty paramount to all form and ceremony, which dictates that truth must be investigated, no matter what galled jade may feel its withers wrung by it. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... that the age, in whose flight, Of ourselves and our friends the remembrance shall die May rise o'er the world, with the gladness and light Of the morning that withers the stars from ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... at mouth, His breath was hot upon the air, His breath scorched souls, as a dry drought Withers green trees ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... to this isolated world belong more or less all those who boast of a higher culture,—men of science, literature, and art. This world does not dwell within the very marrow of life, but parting from it creates a separate circle; in consequence withers within itself and does not help in softening down the animalism of those millions which writhe and ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and wasting. The palace in which Catarina Cornaro spent her girlhood is now a pawnbroker's shop. The last living representative of the haughty house of Lusignan—Kings, in their day, of Cyprus, of Jerusalem, and of Armenia—is said to be a waiter in a French cafe. So royalty withers and power fades. There is no title to nobility save character, and no family pride so unfading as a spotless name. But, though palace and family have both decayed, the beautiful girl who was once the glory of Venice and whom great artists loved to paint, sends us across the ages, in a flash of ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... of the crowd gave him information: Miss Maria Fulton, like nearly everybody else on Manniston Road, had tuberculosis, and Mrs. Withers had been living with her. They had plenty of money—not rich, perhaps, but able to have all the comforts and most of the luxuries of life. They were here in the hope that Furmville's climate ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... European or American article, being made of soft leather, thickly padded, with a handsome saddle cloth beneath, under which again was a fine net made of thin silk cord, reaching from the animal's withers to his tail, the edges of the net being fringed ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... majesty welks and shrivels, the king and soldier starts and cowers, and, armour and all, withers from the air! ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... beings are powerfully affected by propagation. Animals become depressed and dejected after it. The flower which shines so brilliantly at the moment of its amours, after the consummation of that act, withers and falls. It is wise, therefore, in imparting life, to have a care not to shorten one's own existence. Nothing is more certain than that animals and plants lessen the duration of their lives by multiplied sexual enjoyments. The abuse of these pleasures produces lassitude and weakness. Beauty of ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... the thief in the gloaming; It comes, and none may foretell The place of the coming—the glaring; They live in a sleepless spell That wizens, and withers, and whitens; It ages the young, and the bloom Of the maiden is ashes of roses— The Swamp ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... gone through the process of fermentation it becomes pulque. If the plant is left to itself, at about ten years of age there springs up from the centre of the leaves a tall stem, twelve or fifteen feet in height, which bears upon its apex clusters of rich yellow flowers, and then the whole withers and dies,—it never blooms but once. The maguey plant constituted the real vineyards of the Aztecs, as well as the tribes preceding them, its product being the drink of the people of the country long before the days of the Montezumas. At this writing, over ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... health and life, When there's gold for the mighty, and gold for the meek, And gold for whoever shall dare to seek? Untold Is the gold; And it lies in the reach of the man that's bold: In the hands of the man who dares to face The death in the blast, that blows apace; That withers the leaves on the forest tree; That fetters with ice all the northern sea; That chills all the green on the fair earth's breast, And as certainly kills as the un-stayed pest. It lies in the hands of the man who'd sell His hold on his life for an ice-bound hell. What care we ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... must speak to the soul," he declared, "to electrify the man." Another very notable expression is here worth referring to, as it instances how practical and human were his views. "The heart," said he, "warms the genius, but in Pitt the genius withers the heart, which is a very different thing"; and so it is that Cromwell and he were not dissimilar in many of their attributes. Indeed, it is said that Napoleon never tired of quoting or having quoted to him some striking characteristic ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... And though, toil-tried, He withers daily, Time touches her not, But she still rides gaily In his rapt thought On that shagged and shaly Atlantic spot, And as when first eyed Draws rein and sings to the swing of ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... Charleston, who were secretly intermeddling in this matter, without the sanction of the President or the open authority of the War Office. It appears from the records that another assistant adjutant-general, Captain Withers, who joined the rebels at the outbreak of the rebellion, and became a rebel general, was also sent by Floyd to confer with Anderson. It is not at all improbable, therefore, that some one of the messengers who actually ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... you will lose the understanding both of who God is and what man is—proceeds not only from God the Father, but also from God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, in the heathen, God's likeness withered and decayed, as a tree withers and decays when torn up from the soil. And first, they began to call themselves after the names of false gods, which they had invented out of their own carnal fancies. Then they called themselves after the names of their dumb animal's. So, ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... back! Once more the gleams Of your lost Eden haunt our dreams, Where Evil, at the touch of Good, Withers in the Enchanted Wood: Fairies, come back! Drive gaunt Despair And Famine to their ghoulish lair! Tap at each heart's bright window-pane ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... railway, which in its merciless irresistible tramp across the world crushes into a dead level of uninteresting monotony so many varieties of character, manners, and peculiarities. And thus "the individual withers, and the world is more and more!" But is the world more and more in any sense that can be admitted to be desirable, in view of the eternity ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... leave to be gone, your Highness, that I may not grow over familiar like the boy with the pikestaff, for if it do not gall you it shall wring the withers of this my old ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... suspends many of the faculties of the vital and intellectual principle—drunkenness and disease will either temporarily or permanently derange them. Madness, or idiotcy, may utterly extinguish the most excellent and delicate of these powers. In old age the mind gradually withers; and as it grew and strengthened with the body, so does it with ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... times—very often lately—she had felt lost like one strayed in the thickets of tangled undergrowth of a great forest. To her the ex-clerk of old Hudig appeared as remote, as brilliant, as terrible, as necessary, as the sun that gives life to these lands: the sun of unclouded skies that dazzles and withers; the sun beneficent and wicked—the giver of light, perfume, and pestilence. She had watched him—watched him close; fascinated by love, fascinated by danger. He was alone now—but for her; and she saw—she thought she saw—that he was like a man afraid of something. Was it ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... Melbury contrived to get him astride Darling, mounting himself behind, and holding Fitzpiers round his waist with one arm. Darling being broad, straight-backed, and high in the withers, was well able to carry double, at any rate as far as Hintock, and at a ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... friend, faithfulness is the first requisite for keeping him. The way to have a friend is to be a friend. Faithfulness is the fruit of trust. We must be ready to lay hold of every opportunity which occurs of serving our friend. Life is made up to most of us of little things, and many a friendship withers through sheer neglect. Hearts are alienated, because each is waiting for some great occasion for displaying affection. The great spiritual value of friendship lies in the opportunities it affords for service, and if these are neglected it is only to ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... of bone and muscle, is a magnificent animal. The gods forgot little of their old-time cunning in the making of him, in the forging of his shoulders, massive as a bull's withers, in the shaping of his limbs, sturdy as pillars of granite and supple as willows, in the setting of his well-poised head, his heavy jaw, (p. 055) and muscled neck. But the gods seem to have grown weary of a momentous masterpiece when they came to the man's eyes, and Goliath wears glasses. ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... of the valley and out upon them, barely four hundred yards away, came a band of forty or fifty Comanche warriors, crouching low on their horses' withers, madly plying quirt and heel to urge their mounts ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... waterbuck, or tumogo, of the Bechuanas—rise from the head with a slight bend backward, then curve forward at the points. The chest, belly, and orbits are nearly white, the front of the legs and ankles deep brown. From the horns, along the nape to the withers, the male has a small mane of the same yellowish color with the rest of the skin, and the tail has a tuft of black hair. It is never found a mile from water; islets in marshes and rivers are its favorite haunts, and it is quite unknown except in the central humid basin of Africa. Having ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... spent Sunday at Kandango's village. The men killed a hippopotamus when it was sleeping on the shore; a full-grown female, 10 feet 9 inches from the snout to the insertion of the tail, and 4 feet 4 inches high at the withers. The bottom here and all along southwards now is muddy. Many of the Siluris Glanis are caught equal in length to an eleven or a twelve-pound salmon, but a great portion is head; slowly roasted on a stick stuck in the ground ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... which partly covered the yoke; the latter was fastened by broad leather straps, one of which passed around the neck of the oxen, and the other, fastened to the first, passed under their belly. Their high withers, their broad dewlaps, their clean limbs, their small hoofs, shining like agate, their tails with the tuft carefully combed, showed that they were thorough-bred and that hard field-work had never deformed them. They exhibited the majestic placidity of Apis, the sacred bull, when ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... are fortuitous, and depending upon others; the one is troublesome by its rarity, the other withers with age, so that they could never have been sufficient for the business of my life. That of books, which is the third, is much more certain, and much more our own. It yields all other advantages to the two first, but has the constancy and facility of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... now," said Caroline, pressing on the wrung withers, "do you not think this excitement, partial and provincial though it be—the sense of beauty, the hope of conquest, the consciousness of power—better than the dull monotony of the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book V • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... given offense, it appears, to some of the gensd'armes of the Press, by his satirical sketches of the literary profession. Those whose withers are unwrung will admit the truth of many pages and laugh at the caricature in the rest. In the last number of the North British Review is a clever article upon the subject, written with good temper and good sense. Hitherto publishers have been ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... I can't deny that I have gone by that name, and I guess it's the right name for me to go by, seeing that I was christened Jared, after old Uncle Jared Withers, that lives down at Dedham, in the state of Massachusetts. He did promise to do something for me, seeing I was named after him, but he ha'n't done nothing yet, no how. Then the name of Bunce, you see, lawyer, I got from my father, his name ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... shoulder showed him the galloping thoatman in the act of dragging Tara to the withers of the beast, and then, with the fury of a demon, Gahan of Gathol leaped for his own man, dragged him from his mount and as he fell smote his head from his shoulders with a single cut of his keen sword. Scarce had the body touched the pavement when the Gatholian was upon ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... good with gins, especially if placed for a rat. Some persons strew a little freshly plucked grass over the pan and teeth of the trap, thinking to hide it; but it not only smells of the hand, but withers up and turns brown, and acts as a warning to that wary creature. It is a better plan if any dead leaves are lying near to turn them over and over with the end of a twig till they fall on the trap, that is if they are dry: if wet (unless actually raining at the time), should one chance ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... lustre, torrid breath to the nostrils; lo, Torrid brilliancies thro' the vapours lighten swifter, penetrate them, Fasten merciless, ruminant, hueless, on earth's frame crackling busily. He aloft, the frenzied driver, in the glow of the universe, Like the paling of the dawn-star withers visibly, he aloft: Bitter fury in his aspect, bitter death in the heart of him. Crouch the herds, contract the reptiles, crouch the lions under their paws. White as metal in the furnace are the faces of human-kind: Inarticulate creatures of earth dumb all await ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Macias the Italian author had made use of a traditional Spanish type, which has its historical sources, and has inspired many a Spanish poet from the fifteenth century downwards. Macias is knight, poet, and lover; his love is a kind of southern madness which withers every other feeling in its neighbourhood, and his tragic death is the only natural ending to a career so fierce and uncontrolled. Elvira, with whom Macias is in love, the daughter of Nuno Fernandez, is embodied gentleness and virtue, until the fierce progress of her ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... then still alive! I cannot realize how a person who is thoughtful and, nevertheless, knows nothing or wishes to know nothing of God, can endure giving a despised and tedious life, a life which is fleeting as a stream, as a sleep, even as a blade of grass that soon withers; we spend our years as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... float, and propel themselves with involutions of their disks and gently trailing tentacles, and the central peduncle hanging far below, like the clapper of a transparent bell! And yet these wonders are but so much sea-water, inclosed in so slight a tissue that it withers in the sun, and leaves only a minute spot of dried-up ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... warm, palpitating, sweet, When all the grace and beauty leave the old; When like a rose it withers at my feet, Or like a ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... abuse of ridicule is not one of the least calamities of literature, when it withers genius, and gibbets whom it ought to enshrine. Never let us forget that Socrates before his judges asserted that "his persecution originated in the licensed raillery of Aristophanes, which had so unduly ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... though the brute were drawing in her whole frame of a settled purpose. Then, having done enough in this direction, she suddenly stood, and began to kick violently, with her head stretched low between her forelegs. And Tresler felt himself sliding, saddle and all, over her withers! Suddenly the blanket strap failed him. It cracked and gave, and he shot from the saddle like ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Was robbed before Earth gave the wheat; Wandering from broken street to street They come where some huge watcher is And tremble with their love and kiss. They know undying things, for they Wander where earth withers away, Though nothing troubles the great streams But light from the pale stars, and gleams From the holy orchards, where there is none But fruit that is of precious stone, Or apples ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... on the whole, cheerful, she requires great care, and fills us with apprehension. The necessity of providing change for her will probably take us across the water very early in the autumn; and this again unsettles home schemes here, and withers many kinds of fern. If they knew (by "they" I mean my daughter and Miss Hogarth) that I was writing to you, they would charge me with many messages of regard. But as I am shut up in my room in a ferocious and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... as that of the Indian. The pony was of a bright cream color, slender, and with a perfect head and small ears, and one could see that he was quick and agile in every movement. He was well groomed, too. The long, heavy mane had been parted from ears to withers, and then twisted and roped on either side with strips of some red stuff that ended in long streamers, which were blown out in a most fantastic way when the pony was running. The long tail was roped only enough to fasten at the top a number of ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... its action is beyond them, like sights that need a telescope, or sounds out of reach of the ear. Pride like this has two possibilities. It is a Saint Christopher that will serve only the highest. That unfound, it grows bitter, and shrinks more and more into itself, and withers into hopelessness. But if it find the Highest and draw upon that love too great for change or failure, then all things have a new proportion, for grown up to the shelter of the eternities, human ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... friend, how stronger far than I; As from Experience—that sure port serene— Thou look'st; and straight, a coldness wraps the sky, The summer glory withers from the scene, Scared by the solemn spell; behold them fly, The godlike images that seem'd so fair! Silent the playful Muse—the rosy Hours Halt in their dance; and the May-breathing flowers Pall from the sister-Graces' waving hair. Sweet-mouth'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... with. No one speaks. At intervals Mr Bellamy coughs extensively and loudly, just to show his dignity and independence, and to assure the company that his conscience is very tranquil on the occasion—that his firm "withers are unwrung;" and Mr Brammel struggles like an ill-taught bullfinch, to produce a whistle, and fails in the attempt. With these exceptions, we have a silent room. A quarter of an hour passes. Michael finishes his work. He spends one moment in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... side-saddle upon Lilith, and found all it wanted was a little change in the stuffing about the withers, I told Styles to take it and the mare to Minstercombe the next morning, ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... fashionable imitation, and which, in fact, genius can, and by degrees will, create for itself; but that which arises out of wide-grasping and heart-enrooted causes, which is epidemic, and in the very air that all breathe. This it is which kills, or withers, or corrupts. Socrates, indeed, might walk arm and arm with Hygeia, whilst pestilence, with a thousand furies running to and fro, and clashing against each other in a complexity and agglomeration of horrors, was shooting her darts of fire and venom all around him. Even ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... to a schoolmaster, refuses to tell his letters, and the schoolmaster going to whip him, his hand withers." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... make the happy home ridiculous: a truly deplorable work, which the incriminated dramatists were discreet enough for the most part to avoid. The remark brings us to the first of the half-truths, which cause the complexity of the subject. The dramatists whose withers the well-intentioned and disastrous Collier wrung seem to have thought their best answer was to pose as people with a mission—certainly Congreve so posed—to reform the world with an exhibition of its follies. An amusing answer, no doubt, of which the absurdity is obvious! It does, however, contain ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... out of mischief or dread of the darkness, he halted instantaneously, his fore-feet so close together that you might have put them into a bucket. Owing to the depression of his shoulders—for he had no more withers than an ass—the way that he jerked down his head, and the suddenness of the stop, a monkey, although he had been holding on with his teeth, must have been unseated. For me, I was pitched a long way over his head, but alighted upon a spot ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... Nicholas. "The old vine torn from the old wall withers. And your father, Jan; people will gossip. The ...
— The Soul of Nicholas Snyders - Or, The Miser Of Zandam • Jerome K. Jerome
... near the stalls it preserves sheep and goats from the rot and mange. And the rose is called [Greek omitted], probably because it sends forth a stream [Greek omitted] of odors; and for that reason it withers presently. It is a cooler, yet fiery to look upon; and no wonder, for upon the surface a subtile heat, being driven out by the inward ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... rife. 'Twas a voice of hope, that came whispering Its story of strength and life. It told me that seasons of vigor and mirth Follow the night of pain; And the heaven-born soul, like the flowers of earth, Withers, to live again! ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... rusty spike, and took down the saddle blanket. "We'll play I'm Robert Grant Burns," she said. "I'll tell you what to do: Lay the blanket on straight,—it's shaped to Pard's back, so that ought to be easy,—with the front edge coming forward to his withers; that's not right. Maybe I had better do it first, and show you. Then you'll ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... wrote the line declaring that "the individual withers and the world is more and more," he might have been inditing a prophecy summing up those modern tendencies which have engaged our attention in preceding chapters. And there are perhaps few more important questions before us to-day than this—whether Tennyson's prophecy ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... like the foregoing had by this time begun to attract the attention of the Ministry, whose withers had already been sharply wrung by Pasquin; and it has been conjectured that the ballet of Quidam and the Patriots played no small part in precipitating the famous "Licensing Act," which was passed a few ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... 1592-1644: he was a Royalist, but belongs to the literary school of Withers. He is best known by his collection of moral and religious poems, called Divine Emblems, which were accompanied with quaint engraved illustrations. These allegories are full of unnatural conceits, and are many of them borrowed from ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... August and September, for strong westerly winds to prevail for many days in succession. These winds, coming from the great American desert, are almost wholly devoid of moisture, and their aridity is often such that vegetation withers before them as at the touch of fire. Evaporation is increased in a prodigiously rapid ratio with the velocity of wind. The effects of the excessive exhalation from the leaves of plants exposed to the sweep of such drying winds are ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... delegate from Lawrence explained to him the sufferings of the people there—and only General Pierce's double who had given the orders for the assault on that town, which was invaded the next day. My charming friend, George Withers, has, I am almost sure, a double, who preaches his afternoon sermons for him. This is the reason that the theology often varies so from that of the forenoon. But that double is almost as charming as the original. Some of the most well-defined ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... yellow all over, except its extremest point, which was bright scarlet. It looked as if a drop of blood were hanging from it. The first change of the maple-leaf is to scarlet; the next, to yellow. Then it withers, wilts, and drops off, as most of them have ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lava plains; yet flocks of goats, together with a few cows, contrive to exist. It rains very seldom, but during a short portion of the year heavy torrents fall, and immediately afterwards a light vegetation springs out of every crevice. This soon withers; and upon such naturally formed hay the animals live. It had not now rained for an entire year. When the island was discovered, the immediate neighbourhood of Porto Praya was clothed with trees, [1] the reckless destruction of which has caused here, as at ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... arise from the drinking of an amorous potion. The chastity of knight and damsel is determined by the magic horn, whose liquor the innocent drink, but the guilty spill; and by the enchanted garland, which blooms on the brow of the chaste, but withers on that of the faithless. Inventions such as these were regarded as facts, or at least as possible occurrences, by the readers of romantic fiction. Men believed what they were told, and to doubt, to inquire were intellectual efforts which they ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... said; "what has been poured on the leaves of this flower? If I am not mistaken, I know a liquid which withers roses in this manner." She threw aside the bouquet, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... saying something that was far, far too intimate to be said outright. But the noise of the voices served like a clapper in little Mrs. Withers's mind, scaring into the air blocks of small birds, and then they'd settle, and then she'd feel afraid, put one hand to her hair, bind both round her knees, and look up at Oliver ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... which she inherited the principal portion was interested. He did not tell her that a final decision which would settle the right to the great claim might be expected at any moment, and he did not tell her that there was very little doubt that it would be in favor of the heirs of Malachi Withers. He was very sorry he could not see Miss Hazard that evening,—hoped he should be more fortunate to-morrow forenoon, when he intended to call again,—had a message for her from one of her former school friends, which he was anxious to give her. He exchanged ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... dew, which sometimes withers buds, was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls, stood now within the pretty flow'rets' eyes, like tears, that did ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... ethical conceptions. The whole ideal set forth was not that which really inspired the nation, but at best that which was supposed to inspire the court; and the whole drama, like a tree transplanted to an alien soil, withers and dies for lack of the nourishment which the tragedy of the Greeks unconsciously imbibed from its encompassing air of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... till eventide. 'Tis LIFE to reach the livery stable, Secure the RIBBONS and the DAY-BILL, And mount a gig that had a spring Some summer's back: and then take wing Behind (in Mr. Hamlet's tongue) A jade whose "withers are unwrung;" Who stands erect, and yet forlorn, And from a HALF-PAY life of corn, Showing as many POINTS each way As Martial's Epigrammata, Yet who, when set a-going, goes Like one undestined to repose. 'Tis LIFE to revel down the road, And QUEER each o'erfraught chaise's ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... his sports Droop'd like a smitten flower That feels the frost-king's fatal shaft, And withers in ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... black stripe across the shoulders, and black and white lines across the nose and cheeks. The height at the shoulder would exceed fourteen hands, and the neck is ornamented with a thick and stiff black mane. The shoulders are peculiarly massive, and are extremely high at the withers; the horns are very powerful, and, like those of the roan and the sable antelope, they are annulated, and bend gracefully backwards. Both the male and female are provided with horns; those of the former are ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... repeated as witty; every thing that her ladyship wore was imitated as fashionable. Female wit sometimes depends on the beauty of its possessor for its reputation; and the reign of beauty is proverbially short, and fashion often capriciously deserts her favourites, even before nature withers their charms. Lady Delacour seemed to be a fortunate exception to these general rules: long after she had lost the bloom of youth, she continued to be admired as a fashionable bel esprit; and long after she had ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... offended might, For all thine impious proud-heart sophistries, Unlawful magic, and enticing lies. Corinthians! look upon that gray-beard wretch! Mark how, possess'd, his lashless eyelids stretch Around his demon eyes! Corinthians, see! My sweet bride withers at their potency." 290 "Fool!" said the sophist, in an under-tone Gruff with contempt; which a death-nighing moan From Lycius answer'd, as heart-struck and lost, He sank supine beside the aching ghost. "Fool! Fool!" ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... the faithful and the unfaithful, of the worshipper of Mazda and the worshipper of the Daevas, of the wicked and the righteous. Her look dries up one-third of the mighty floods that run from the mountains, O Zarathustra; her look withers one-third of the beautiful, golden-hued, growing plants, O Zarathustra; her look withers one-third of the strength of Spenta Armaiti [the earth]; and her touch withers in the faithful one-third of his good thoughts, of his good words, of his good deeds, one-third of his strength, of his victorious ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... eclipsed them all as completely as the sun eclipses the stars. Even now, you see, after all these years, in an old man's memoirs, the Emperor is still true to his traditions, and will not brook any opposition. As I draw his words and his deeds I feel that my own poor story withers before them. And yet if it had not been for that story I should not have had an excuse for describing to you my first and most vivid impressions of him, and so it has served a purpose after all. You must bear with me now while I tell you of our expedition to the Red Mill and of what befell ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in summer, and often the pickerel weed looks as brown as a bulrush where it is stranded in the baked mud in August. When seed falls on such ground, if indeed it germinates at all, the young plant naturally withers away. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... how ignorant this contemptible quality of envy becomes under the lenses of practical life. "Base envy withers at another's joy." What has caused it? In nine cases out of every ten, it is simply the one-sided view of an ignorant mind, which sees only the bare result of unceasing efforts. Envy sees Fame on the peak. Envy therefore hates Fame, and declares that there are no crags, or ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... in the leaden shape of printed sentences. The symbolism of letters is over us all. An all-pervading nominalism has completely masked whatsoever there is that is real. More and more it is not the soul and Nature, but the eye and print, whose resultant is thought. Nature disappears and the mind withers. No other faculty has been developed in man but that of the reader, no other possibility but that of the writer. The old-fashioned arts which used to imply human nature, which used to blossom instinctively, which have given joy and beauty to society, are fading from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... sixty-two fit for duty, measles prevailing mainly among the volunteers. Half of General Marshall's force at Jalapa was sick, and he reported, December 22d, that he had sent his wagons back to Vera Cruz for medicines and other supplies. Pachuca was occupied without opposition by Colonel Jones M. Withers, Ninth Infantry, and General Cadwallader marched, December 22d, for Lerma and Toluca, the latter the State capital and thirty-eight miles from ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... the first night they came in sight. Of course they were our old friends, the Ponderosa pine, whose name will always be associated with our grand old man from Nebraska. They ought to be renamed the Harrison pine. How they endure the drouth and cold in a soil so poor that grass withers and dies out, and how they stand erect where every other living thing bows to the bleak winds and blizzards of the prairies, is one of the mysteries of plant life. What a splendid bonfire we made of their boughs that night, flaring as a beacon out over the ocean ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... too bloomin' suddint," skirled Henry Withers of the Sick Horse Depot from the bottom of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... coppery, almost golden, chestnut sorrel; flaxen mane and tail, verging on creamy white; short-coupled in the back and with withers that marked the runner; belly smooth and round; legs trim and neat as an antelope's and muscled like a panther's; head small, carried proudly erect and eyes full ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... This was the Epsom and Ascot of The Desert. But I was never more disappointed. All that the Touaricks did with their camels was, they dressed them out most fantastically with various coloured leather harness, that is to say, the withers, neck, and head; they reined them up tightly like blood-horses; and then rode them a full trot in couples. This was the whole of the grand play with camels. Some, however, would not fall into this ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Island to give him. We can derive more benefit from his arraignment of society two hundred and fifty years ago than we should were he to call us to account to-day, because no resentment mingles with our intellectual appreciation: our withers seem to be unwrung. The crucifixions of a former age are always denounced by those who, if the martyr fell into their hands, would be the first to nail ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... have died, and in the sky There lives no cloud to hint of Nature's grief; The sun glares ever like an evil eye, And withers flower ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... genius of criticism, that power of raillery which withers all it overthrows. He had made human nature laugh at itself, had felled it low in order to raise it, had laid bare before it all errors, prejudices, iniquities, and crimes of ignorance; he had urged it to rebellion against consecrated ideas, not by the ideal ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... life is given here as a life free from care, from that miserable anxiety, merimna, which blights and withers human happiness far and wide, whether it comes in the form of a weight of large responsibilities or of the most trifling misgivings. "Be careful for nothing"; "care-ful" in the antique sense of the word; "burthened with care." In the modern sense of careful, no one should be more careful than ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... an angel of God, but when Love has entered the soul, the angel unfolds its plumes and takes flight, and the wind of its wings withers as it passes. He whom it has left misses the angel at his ear, but he is alone for ever. Sometimes it will seem to him then that it had been no angel ever, but a fiend that lied, making him waste his years in a barren toil, and his nights in a joyless ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... dome and costly feast, With all the inventive arts, that nursed the soul To forms of beauty, and by sensual wants Unsensualised the mind, which in the means 210 Learnt to forget the grossness of the end, Best pleasured with its own activity. And hence Disease that withers manhood's arm, The daggered Envy, spirit-quenching Want, Warriors, and Lords, and Priests—all the sore ills[117:1] 215 That vex and desolate our mortal life. Wide-wasting ills! yet each the immediate source Of mightier good. Their keen necessities To ceaseless action goading ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... hand-bills distributed throughout the city. What if the reading succeeds to the height of his wishes? Pass but a day or two, and the whole harvest of praise and admiration fades away, like a flower that withers in its bloom, and never ripens into fruit. By the event, however flattering, he gains no friend, he obtains no patronage, nor does a single person go away impressed with the idea of an obligation conferred upon him. The poet has been heard with ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... the eggs down to the store every two weeks and get a shave; but I don't need a car much, havin' Bill," he replied, smashing a vicious greenhead on Bill's withers that was keeping her mixed up with the traces and the teeth of the harrow. "Besides, they 're skittish, nervous things compared with a hoss. What I 'd like is something neither one nor t'other—a sort of cross between an auto ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... by a profound adept in human physiology, that if a woman waxes fat with the progress of years, her tenure of life is somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old, she lives forever. Such promised to be the case with William the Testy, who grew tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not through the process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his soul, which burnt like a vehement rush-light in his bosom, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... reward then for deserving well of our country? Gratitude may wreath a chaplet of laurel, but trust me, Christine, it withers unless consecrated ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... for luck, and drove it straight and full into the back of the fellow on Madonna Paola's right. He cried out, essayed to turn in his saddle that he might deal with this unlooked-for assailant, then, overcome, he lurched forward on to the withers of his horse and thence rolled over, and was dragged away at the gallop, his foot caught in a stirrup, by the ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... 4, Sheet 24. A hollow cup-shaped vesicle from the brain grows out towards an at first hollow cellular ingrowth from the epidermis. The cavity within the wall of the cup derived from the brain is obliterated, [and the stalk withers,] the cup becomes the retina, and -its stalk- [thence fibres grow back to the brain to form] the optic nerve. The cellular ingrowth is the lens. The remainder of the eye-structures are of mesoblastic origin, except ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... very different manner. A celestial music is heard by turns, and the verse following, in recitative, is murmured in a dull and almost hoarse tone. One would say, that it is the reply of harsh and stern characters to sensitive hearts; that it is the reality of life which withers and repels the desires of generous souls. When the sweet choristers resume their strain, hope revives; but when the verse of recitative begins, a cold sensation seizes upon the hearer, not caused by terror, but by a repression of enthusiasm. At length, the last piece, ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... side up with care. And now I'll have to mount again, a thing that may not appeal very much to Domino. But it's lucky I long ago learned the jockey way of riding, with most of the weight upon the withers of the horse. In that manner you see, Frank, I can relieve the poor beast more than ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson |
