"Empty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was all—vague shadows crept around, The waves sung in his ears their moaning sound; He looked in vain for Hilda's dear, sweet face, Forevermore was lost her loving grace To him. In vain he called forth in despair; His words returned upon the empty air. Like some pale spirit she had stolen from him And left him there 'mid shadows dark ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... life of humanity—and feels this larger life within himself, subjective, if you like, and yet intensely objective. And more. For is it not also evident that the woman, the mortal woman who excites his Vision, has some closest relation to it, and is, indeed, far more than a mere mask or empty formula which reminds him of it? For she indeed has within her, just as much as the man has, deep subconscious Powers working; and the ideal which has dawned so entrancingly on the man is in all probability closely related to that which has ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... resource, her anger, so amazed me that I rode on, dazed, swaying in the stride of the tireless gallop. Then in a flash, alert once more, I saw ahead the mist rising from the Harlem, the mill on the left, with its empty windows and the two poplar-trees beside it, the stone piers and wooden railing of the bridge, the sentinels on guard, already faced our way, watching ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... should sometimes move downward it will do no special harm; anything is better than stagnation. Into this open pipe, which should be not only water-tight but air-tight through its entire length, all waste-pipes from the house should empty as turbid mountain torrents pour into the larger stream that flows through the valley. (Fig. 1.) Now, unless the upward draught through this large pipe is constant and strong, you will see at once that the air contained in it (which we must treat as though it were always poisonous) ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... should have the world, if I may have what Abraham had 'fear not; I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward;' and I believe I shall, Fleda; for it is not the hungry that he has threatened to send empty away." ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... I complain in this letter, have mercy and don't blame me, for, I forewarn you, I am in low spirits, and that earth and heaven are dreary and empty to me at this moment. In a few days our vacation will begin; everybody is joyous and animated at the prospect, because everybody is to go home. I know that I am to stay here during the five weeks that the holidays last, and ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... with the effrontery of youth in love, he deliberately took the almost empty glass from which Ortensia had drunk, poured a little into it from the other, and drank out of it with a look of undisguised gratitude on his handsome face. Thereupon a little colour came to Ortensia's ivory-pale cheek, and Pina smiled pleasantly. Instead ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... a touching insinuation in her manner, and both the young ladies were silent for sometime thereafter watching somewhat wistfully the gentle hands and face that were so quietly busy; till the room was cleared again and looked remarkably empty with Fleda's trunk standing in the middle of it. And then reminding them that she wanted some sleep to fit her for the hardening process and must therefore send them away, she was ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... overtaken at last, and led bashfully into the centre of the group, to suffer the awful penalty of the law. While this popular pastime is prolonged to the last moment, the van is getting ready to return; the old folks assist in stowing away the empty baskets and vessels; and an hour or so before sun-down, or it may be half an hour after, the whole party are remounted, and on their way home again, where they arrive, after a jovial ride, weary with enjoyment, and with matter to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... Order, ostensibly an urban rationalization program, which resulted in the destruction of the homes or businesses of 700,000 mostly poor supporters of the opposition. President MUGABE in June 2007 instituted price controls on all basic commodities causing panic buying and leaving store shelves empty for months. General elections held in March 2008 contained irregularities but still amounted to a censure of the ZANU-PF-led government with significant gains in opposition seats in parliament. MDC ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... as Jess was by herself in the empty byre, to which she withdrew herself with the parcel which the faithful and trustworthy Cuif had entrusted to her, she lit the lantern which always stood in the inside of one of the narrow triangular wickets that admitted light into the byre. Sitting down ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... she passed the open door of a certain pawnbroker, which she had entered often during the last six months, and whither she intended to take her treasure, so that she might comfort her father on her return with the sight of the money. But she had it not, and she went home empty-handed. "And now, Nina, I suppose we may starve," said her father, whom she found sitting close to the stove in the kitchen, while Souchey was kneeling before it, putting in at the little open door morsels of fuel which were lamentably ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... blobs of water grew on the panes of glass to reel heavily down them. Then the sodden square would have shed abundant tears if you could have taken it in your hands and wrung it like a dripping cloth. At such a time the square would be empty but for one vegetable-cart left in the care of a lean collie, which, tied to the wheel, whined and shivered underneath. Pools of water gather in the coarse sacks that have been spread over the potatoes and bundles of greens, which turn ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... B., if one could as easily, in the prime of sensual youth, look twenty years backward, what an empty vanity, what a mere nothing, will be all those grosser satisfactions, that now give wings of ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... he took up the candle, and proceeded to examine it. It was not locked; the doors swung open, and drawer after drawer was examined, but Philip discovered not the object of his search; again and again did he open the drawers, but they were all empty. It occurred to Philip that there might be secret drawers, and he examined for some time in vain. At last he took out all the drawers, and laid them on the floor, and lifting the cabinet off its stand he shook it. A rattling sound in one corner told him that in all probability ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... the calling which he has chosen, sees high excellence highly honoured; sees the high career, and sees its noble ending, marked out each step of it in golden letters. But the Church's aisles are desolate, and desolate they must remain. There is no statue for the Christian. The empty niches stare out like hollow eye-sockets from the walls. Good men live in the Church and die in her, whose story written out or told would be of inestimable benefit, but she may not write it. She may speak of goodness, but not of the good man; as she may speak of sin, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... somewhat in the throat. It becomes, indeed, "the word that makes us linger." But it does not prompt many other words. It is best expressed in few. What goes without saying is better than what is said. Not much can be added to the old English word "Good-by." You are not sending me away empty-handed or alone. I go freighted and laden with happy memories—inexhaustible and unalloyed—of England, its warm-hearted people, and their measureless kindness. Spirits more than twain will cross with me, messengers of your good-will. Happy the nation that can thus speed its ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Sam Lawson, looking pensively over the hay-mow, and strewing hayseed down on his wool. "How that 'are critter seems to tickle and laugh all the while 'bout nothin'. Lordy massy! he don't seem never to consider that 'this life's a dream, an empty show.'" ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... old Toller remarked. "Suppose you remove it—there's a waste of money. Suppose you knock it to pieces—is it worth a rich gentleman's while to sell a cartload of firewood?" Neither of these alternatives having been adopted, and nobody wanting an empty boat-house, the clumsy mill boat, hitherto tied to a stake, and exposed to the worst that the weather could do to injure it, was now snugly sheltered under a roof, with empty lockers (once occupied by aquatic luxuries) gaping on either ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... thing to catch his eye was an empty packing-case, with a heap of shavings and cotton-wool beside it. On the side of the case was printed in blue letters—" Wapshott and Sons. Chicago. Patent Compressed Tea. With Care." Mr. Fogo poked his nose inside it. A faint smell of tea still ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said was like enough, and blamed myself for having let out about the watch. However, there was no help for it, and I turned into an empty bunk and cried myself to sleep. What a voyage that was, to be sure! The ship was a Yankee and so was the master and mates. The crew were of all sorts, Dutch, and Swedes, and English, a Yank or two, and a sprinklin' of niggers. ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... underneath, and the rent would not be lost. And again, so that the said shop may have wherewithal to dispose of its smoke as it has now, it occurred to me to give the said statue a horn of plenty in its hand, hollow within, which would serve for the chimney. Then having the head of the said figure empty, like the other members, of that also I believe we could make some use, for there is here in the piazza a huckster, very much my friend, who tells me in secret that it would make a very fine dovecot. Another fancy strikes me that would be much better, but we should have ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... Surely this ought to be full. A foul bumbard might be empty. "Foulness" and "shedding his liquor" are not necessarily contingent; but fulness and overflowing are. A full vessel, shaken, cannot choose "but ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... opine the most charmin', most nateral, least artificial, kindest, and condescendenest people here are rael nobles. Younger children are the devil, half rank makes 'em proud, and entire poverty makes 'em sour. Strap pride on an empty puss, and it puts a most beautiful edge on, it cuts like a razor. They have to assart their dignity, tother one's dignity don't want no assartin'. It ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... very neat things. They are exceedingly difficult to draw, and very ugly when drawn. Choose rough, worn, and clumsy-looking things as much as possible; for instance, you cannot have a more difficult or profitless study than a newly-painted Thames wherry, nor a better study than an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore at low-tide: in general, everything that you think very ugly will be good for you ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the words, "Try it with fire!" The rioters, with an unanimous shout, called for combustibles, and as all their wishes seemed to be instantly supplied, they were soon in possession of two or three empty tar-barrels. A huge red glaring bonfire speedily arose close to the door of the prison, sending up a tall column of smoke and flame against its antique turrets and strongly-grated windows, and illuminating the ferocious and wild gestures ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... It is not empty optimism that moves me to a strong hope in the coming year. We can, if we will, make 1935 a genuine period of good feeling, sustained by a sense of purposeful progress. Beyond the material recovery, I sense a spiritual recovery as well. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... and from high places, the distance between life and death, between time and eternity, is often measured by half seconds. Little Omassa had leaped too soon, the small brown hands with power to save were not extended. She grasped the empty air, gave a despairing cry, and as she whirled downward, had barely time to realize that the sun had gone black out in the sky, and that the world with its shrieking millions was thundering to its end, ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... households, a large retinue being a mark of gentility, and hospitality was unbounded. During the lord mayor's term in London he kept open house, and every day any stranger or foreigner could dine at his table, if he could find an empty seat. Dinner, served at eleven in the early years of James, attained a degree of epicureanism rivaling dinners of the present day, although the guests ate with their fingers or their knives, forks not coming in till 1611. There was mighty eating and swigging at the banquets, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... men in Ulster county. I do not know exactly how true was this report; though I never saw anything but the abundance of a better sort of American farm under the paternal roof, and I know that the poor were never sent away empty-handed. It as true that our wine was made of currants; but it was delicious, and there was always a sufficient stock in the cellar to enable us to drink it three or four years old. My father, however, had a small private collection of his own, out of which he ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... was whistling softly, possibly some air to which he had made certain card-playing passengers dance the night before. He was in comfortable case, and his soft brown eyes under their long lashes were veiled with gentle tolerance of all things. He glanced lazily along the empty hurricane deck forward; he glanced lazily down to the saloon deck below him. Far out against the guards below him leaned a young girl. Mr. Hamlin knitted his ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... With an empty stomach; for the office of digestion, so material to the attainment of bodily vigour, ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... Noronba, in lat. 4 deg. S. where our skiff was overset going ashore, by the violence of the surf, and Richard Michelburne, a kinsman of our general, was drowned, all the rest being saved. The 25th, our long-boat, while going to fill some empty casks with water, fell in with the same unfortunate surf, and was overset, when two more of our men were drowned. We were so much put about in getting wood and water on board, by the danger of the surf, that we had to pull our casks on shore by means of ropes, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... her husband's ear. With a yell the latter flung his feet from the club-kerb and sat up in his chair. When he turned, Jonah was placidly smoking in the distance, while Daphne met her victim's accusing eye with a disdainful stare, her hands empty in her lap. The table, at which I was writing, ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... womanly instincts rose up in rebellion. Her nerves had been so shaken that she sobbed behind her veil all the way to her destination. Paris, when she reached it, offered her almost nothing that could comfort or amuse her. That city is always empty and dull in August, more so than at any other season. Even the poor occupation of teaching her little class of music pupils had been taken away by the holidays. Her sole resource was in Modeste's society. Modeste—who, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the shadow of a white marble chimney-piece richly carved with Cupids, fluttering, kneeling, supplicating; with arrows new, broken, and mended; with quivers full, depleted, and empty. The great, broad shelf above her pretty head was laden with rare and artistic treasures. A vase from India; a costly fan from China; a dark and mottled bit of color in an ancient frame of tarnished gold, done by some Flemish master of the long-ago. Beyond all this, ...
— The Story of a Picture • Douglass Sherley
... mounted into the empty attic they found the window invitingly open, and, after waiting a few minutes to humor the moon, the soldier volunteered to reconnoiter. He reached the ridge without the slightest difficulty, and ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... She was tolerably sure that a thorough search would comb out a good many more for the Air Board from the Squire's woods than had yet been discovered. The Fallerton hospital wanted more accommodation. There was an empty house belonging to the Squire, which she had already begun, before her absence, with his grudging permission, to get ready for the purpose. That had to be finished. The war workroom in the village, which she had started, must have another Superintendent, the first ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my sex most abominably; but I am contented with knowing my intentions are good, and that I am endeavouring to serve my cousin; for I think you will make her a husband notwithstanding this; or, upon my soul, I would not even persuade her to fling herself away upon an empty title. She should not upbraid me hereafter with having lost a man of spirit; for that his enemies allow this poor ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... began to doubt—intending, if he found the young man innocent, to take him back into the office, and if not, to try to induce him to restore the money, and go, to recover his character, to some other place, to which he would have helped him to remove. He was too late. He found the house empty. "I pity the person," he said, "who misdirected that letter—he was the unconscious cause of the ruin of two excellent beings. We may blame the young man's violence, and may call him foolish and passionate; yet it was a deep hatred of even the appearance ...
— Conscience • Eliza Lee Follen
... capable wife to protect her husband for the balance of their life's journey, so that he would be able to avoid the traps which his enemies set for his feet. Peter, having learned by bitter experience, would never again go chasing after a pretty face, and wake up next morning to find his pockets empty. Peter admitted this too. As this conversation progressed, he realized that the tour of triumph his life had become was a thing entirely of his wife's creation; at least, he realized that there would be no use in trying to change his wife's conviction on the subject. ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... a course without any accession, the only wonder is, that even those waters should cause a current at so great a distance from their source; everything however indicates, as before often observed, that in dry seasons the channel of the river is empty, or forms only a chain of ponds. It appears to have been a considerable length of time since the banks were overflowed, certainly not for the last year; and I think it probable they are not often so: the quantity of water must indeed be immense, and of long accumulation, in the upper ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... asked. All you had to do was to step up and open the door, and then walk along as if you knew where you were going. When you had seen as much as you wanted to, you could stop in front of some room of which the door stood open so that you could tell from the hall that it was empty, and turn around and go away again. Everybody would think that the person you had come to see was out. It sounded perfectly simple, but Dora had never been anywhere except to Eleanor's room at the Hilton House and once, at Betty Wales's ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... pain, like blades, through his lungs, and grateful for the darkness. Almost he wished it was all over—this ordeal. How puny his efforts! Relentlessly life marched on. At midnight he was still fighting his pangs, still unconquered. In the night his dark room was not empty. There were faces, shadows, moving images and pictures, scenes of the war limned against the blackness. At last he rested, grew as free from pain as he ever grew, and slept. In the morning it was another day, and the past was as ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... consumed, in the fire of liberty, every slave-pen within the shadow of the capitol. Our national industries, by an impoverishing policy, were themselves prostrated, and the streams of revenue flowed in such feeble currents that the treasury itself was well-nigh empty. The money of the people was the wretched notes of two thousand uncontrolled and irresponsible State banking corporations, which were filling the country with a circulation that poisoned rather than sustained the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... Council Pipe Chief Plenty Coups Addressing the Council Chief Koon-Ka-Za-Chy Addressing the Council Chief Two Moons Addressing the Council An Indian Communion The Final Trail The Fading Sunset Vanishing into the Mists Facing the Sunset The Sunset of a Dying Race The Empty Saddle ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... men were not sacrificed to the gods, the tourist among the temples would learn that these bloody rites had once been customary, and ceremonies existed by way of commutation. This is precisely what we find in Vedic religion, in which the empty form of sacrificing a man was gone through, and the origin of the world was traced to the fragments of a god sacrificed by gods.(1) In Sparta was an altar of Artemis Orthia, and a wooden image of great rudeness and antiquity—so rude indeed, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... entrance. A long night watch followed, and the next day we had the satisfaction of arresting some of the criminals. The tomb was found to penetrate several hundred feet into the cliff, and at the end of the long and beautifully worked passage the great royal sarcophagus was found—empty! So ended a ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... was made plain by our finding, on an open level space about two miles from the destroyed village, the dead and frozen bodies of the entire party. The poor fellows were all lying within a circle not more than fifteen or twenty paces in diameter, and the little piles of empty cartridge shells near each body showed plainly that every man had made a brave fight. None were scalped, but most of them were otherwise horribly mutilated, which fiendish work is usually done by the squaws. All had been stripped of their clothing, but their ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... Seaton watched intently as his tray, laden with empty containers, floated away from him and disappeared into an opening in ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... out of the water, for its hold was empty; but the runaways climbed aboard easily. Sammy was as brave as a lion. He proposed to take possession of the craft and drive ashore anybody who might already be there. Only, there ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... pictures; he was a gardener. One day he called him into his painting-room to look at his pictures, when the man made the usual vulgar remarks, such as, "Did you do all this, sir?" "Yes." "What, all this?" "Yes." "What, frame and all?" At last he came to an empty frame that was hung against the wall without any picture in it, when he said to Constable, "But you don't call this picture quite finished, do you, sir?" Constable said that quite sickened him, and he never let any ignoramuses ever see his pictures ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... applause, and half the boxes were empty, whilst those who were there seemed merely to occupy them from the effect of habit, and because this is the only evening amusement. The prompter spoke so ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the glare of his eye, the contempt of his gathered lip? Give me the homeliest manners of the homeliest corner of Europe—nay, give me the honest rudeness of the American savage, in preference to this arrogant assumption of an empty superiority. Why, the very tone in which every Frenchman, from fifteen to five-and-forty, utters the words "la France," is enough to raise the laugh, or make the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... "Grenadine" when we saw behind the bar two bottles of Worthington. For a moment we were too stupefied to speak. Then, pulling ourselves together, we stammered out an order for beer, but the girl only smiled. They were empty bottles, souvenirs left by some rascally A.S.C. for the eternal temptation of all who might pass through. The girl in her sympathy comforted us with songs, one of which, "Les Serments," I translated for the benefit of Grimers, who knew no French. We sang cheerfully in French and English ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... be because these proved as impenetrable as would have done walls of iron. At any rate they dashed their naked bodies against the storm of lead and fell in heaps, only about a dozen of our men being killed, as the little graveyard in the centre of the square entrenchment, about which still lie the empty cartridge cases, records to-day. ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... "But it was an empty hope, and a sad wedding," continued the dowager, with a sigh. "That was, to her, a day of gloom, which to others is the one day to look forward to through girlhood and backward to from old age. Oh, yes; it is not so much to be ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... thirteen miles; and its width, where it is broadest, is about five miles. It receives from the north the waters of the Nahr-el-Dhahab, or "Golden River" (which has by some been identified with the Daradax of Xenophon), and from the west two or three insignificant streams, which empty themselves into its western extremity. The lake produces a large quantity of salt, especially after wet seasons, which is collected and sold by the inhabitants of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... one by the bare shoulder, found the flesh surprisingly cold and the girl seemed not to feel my touch. I swung her around to face me, and her black, empty eyes looked off into the far distance. Her lips were tightly compressed, slightly cyanosed. The pupils of her eyes were inordinately dilated, as if ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... tell you something. You're serving at this moment the only gentleman's drink. Do it right, George. Listen! Never refill a gentleman's glass until it's quite empty. Do you know why? Think, George! You pour fresh wine into stale wine and what have you?—neither. I've taught you something, George. Never fill a glass ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... looked towards the farther end of the wood. In a minute more, the thump of a horse's hoofs at a gallop was audible, where the bridlepath was hidden among the trees. It came nearer—nearer—-the creature burst into view, wild with fright, and carrying an empty saddle. Lord Harry rushed into the path and seized the horse as it swerved at the sight of him. There was a leather pocket attached to the front of the saddle. "Search it!" he cried to Iris, forcing the terrified animal back on its haunches. ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... estates, they seized on every thing which had once been their own; and many had reason to rejoice at the economy of the late possessors. The lands and cattle had greatly improved in their hands; the apartments were now decorated with the most costly furniture; the cellars, which had been left empty, were richly filled; the stables supplied; the magazines stored with provisions. But distrusting the constancy of that good fortune, which had so unexpectedly smiled upon them, they hastened to get quit of these insecure possessions, and to convert their immoveable ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... again Susan did not set any vacant places at the festive board. Two empty chairs were too much even for Susan who had thought in September that there ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... short, has it been in all ages and in all countries for men to seek Christ from no higher motive than that they may "eat of the loaves and be filled!"[98] In proof of the single voice that was raised in the wilderness of New South Wales being not altogether an empty and ineffectual sound, we are told that in 1790, when the female convicts who arrived by the Lady Juliana attended divine service for the first time, Mr. Johnson, with much propriety, in his discourse, touched upon their ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... there was a view of the water; Miss Chancellor having the good fortune to dwell on that side of Charles Street toward which, in the rear, the afternoon sun slants redly, from an horizon indented at empty intervals with wooden spires, the masts of lonely boats, the chimneys of dirty "works," over a brackish expanse of anomalous character, which is too big for a river and too small for a bay. The view seemed to him very picturesque, though ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... "Almost empty!" exclaimed Teddy. "There isn't enough to take us another mile. There's a hoodoo in it. We no sooner see those fellows than we lose ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... no other provision is made is expected to air the bed and room, to empty the slop pail and put it on its shelf in the sun, to make the bed and sweep the room; and after breakfast to report for duty, the boys at the office, and the girls to the matron. They will report in the same way at 2:30 p.m., and the ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... filibuster army, and reported ourselves forthwith as a party of recruits just arrived and at their service. The general was altogether absorbed hobnobbing with the old friends whom he had discovered in the passenger crowd, and would not listen to us; but the colonel pointed out an empty building, and told us to drop our luggage there, and amuse ourselves until we heard further from him. This town of San Juan del Sur is entirely the creation of the Nicaragua Transit Company, and is the Pacific terminus of the Isthmus portage-road. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... when she lays a golden egg; but he that returns with his toroks (straps behind the saddle) empty, is ashamed to appear before his wife. Winter is near, and we must provide our households at the expense of the Russians, that we may feast our friends and allies. Choose your station, Ammalat Bek. Do you prefer to advance in front to carry off the flocks, or will you remain with me in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... the middle room of the three, the first being occupied by one Ferdishenko, while the third was empty. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... daughter was born and the old man was afterwards seized with a fatal illness. But the inhabitants would tolerate no Jews among them, so the stranger moved into the forester's house on the Richtberg which had stood empty because a better one had been built deeper in the woods. The city treasury could use the rent and tax exacted from Jews and demanded of the stranger. The Jew consented to the magistrate's requirement, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the patrons to decide absolutely nothing. It is, and will always be, for the gentlemen of the hanging committee alone, duly chosen, to decide whether empty space be preferable to poor pictures—whether, in short, it be their duty to cover walls, merely that walls may be covered—no matter with ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... roam the streets they slyly peep at us and challenge us in twenty different guises. Without knowing why, we look up suddenly to see in a window a face that seems to belong to our gallery of intimate portraits; in a sleeping thoroughfare we hear a cry of agony and fear coming from an empty and shuttered house; instead of at our familiar curb, a cab-driver deposits us before a strange door, which one, with a smile, opens for us and bids us enter; a slip of paper, written upon, flutters down to our feet from the high lattices ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... in his character of Antoninus:—"Remember his constancy in every act which was conformable to reason, his evenness in all things, his piety, the serenity of his countenance, his sweetness, his disregard of empty fame, and his efforts to understand things; how he would never let anything pass without having first carefully examined it and clearly understood it; how he bore with those who blamed him unjustly without blaming them in return; ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... the first Roman to subdue the Jews and set foot 9 in their temple by right of conquest.[498] It was then first realized that the temple contained no image of any god: their sanctuary was empty, their mysteries meaningless. The walls of Jerusalem were destroyed, but the temple was left standing. Later, during the Roman civil wars, when the eastern provinces had come under the control of ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... passed along the silent corridors, looked into the empty rooms, and out of the broken windows upon the flower gardens, once trim and gay, now choked with rubbish, and overgrown with weeds, and sighed over the desolations ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... cruel. And this, after years on years of patient Christian instruction on my part! What is religion? What is education? I read a horrible book once (I forget who was the author); it called religion superstition, and education empty form. I don't know; upon my word I don't know that the book may not—Oh, my tongue! Why don't I keep a guard over my tongue? Are you a father, too? Don't interrupt me. Put yourself in my place, and think of it. Heartless, ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... safe. This being concluded, and the inner one also thrown open, he found the box in a last and entirely, as he had always believed, secret compartment. Anxious to see this wonder, this Eye of Morning, and Heart of Day, he eagerly loosened the band and unclosed the box. It was empty. There was no chain there; the diamond was missing. The sweat streamed from his forehead, his clothes were saturated, he believed himself the victim of a delusion. Calling an assistant, every article and nook ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... relieved Taji from all further necessity of entertaining the Vowels. For at so vulgar, and in Pimminee, so unwonted a sound, as a genuine laugh, the three startled nymphs fainted away in a row, their round farthingales falling over upon each other, like a file of empty tierces. But they ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... improve the social condition of the people. The Premier here uses the far-famed sentiment, almost the very words, of Secretary Drummond, that property has its duties as well as its rights; but a sentiment, however just, is but an empty form of words, unless it receives a practical application at the proper time. The threadbare and almost insulting platitudes—insulting from the very frequency of their use—about developing resources and improving the social condition of the people, were strangely out ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... northwestward. "Let us lean upon Glogau withal," thinks Friedrich; "and let us be out of this straightway! March to-night; towards Parchwitz, which is towards Glogau too. Army rest till daybreak on the Heights of Pfaffendorf yonder, to examine, to wait its luck: let the empty meal-wagons jingle on to Glogau; load themselves there, and jingle back to us in Parchwitz neighborhood, should Parchwitz not have proved impossible to our manoeuvrings,—let us hope it may not!"—Daun and the Austrians having ceased reconnoitring, and gone home, Friedrich rides with his Generals, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... day of the underground saying. He knew where Bevis's hare had her form, and immediately he raced across to her, though not clearly knowing what he was going to do; but as he crossed the fields he saw the sportsman, without any dogs and with an empty gun, leaning over the gate and gazing at the eclipse. With a snarl the fox drove Ulu from her form, and so worried her that she was obliged to run (to escape his teeth) right under the sportsman's legs, and thus to fulfil the saying: ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... life and thought, the Universe would be an empty theater, and Astronomy itself, sublime science, a vain research. We feel that this is the truth, veiled as yet to actual science, and that human races kindred with our own exist there in the immensities of space. Yes, we feel that this ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... had dispersed, and the wind was favourable, though shifting from W. to N.W.N. and N.E. At 7 P.M. we reached Kumaktorvik and found good anchorage close to the Esquimaux winter-houses; but we were disappointed by finding them empty, the people being probably out on the reindeer-hunt. There were four houses standing, apparently not old, and the traces of eight others, situated on a low point of land, well covered with grass, and surrounded ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... deck above. The sight of the empty passage relieved him, but he was surprised to discover that he had not locked the door when he left an hour ago. He stepped ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat
... there were now more signs of life. As the Cossacks rode by, the street had been empty, but now men and women were coming out furtively. They began to come ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... Bessie, she dressed quickly and slipped out to see what the early-morning change of base portended. The common room was empty when she entered it, but before she could cross to the door the Reverend Billy came in, stamping the snow from ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... their distance, and did not trouble us again that day. Those who had not ridden off retired timidly inside their black tents, and not a soul was to be seen about the encampment—which might have been deserted, so silent and so empty did it appear. I registered my daily observations, made a sketch of one of the black tents, and wrote up my diary; ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Rothiemurchus to Aviemore, on which the nearest house is, or used to be, that of a widow named Mackenzie, who in that wide solitude extends her hospitality to the wayfarer. Blessings on her! may her stoup never be dry, or her aumry empty. It is needless to tell the traveller, that by this route he may approach the scenery of the Cairngorm hills from Laggan, Rannoch, and other places near ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... tonga floor, and the horses getting frightened began to jib. Hill seized one by the head, and Jane was safely drawn to shore and sent on her way under guidance of the driver, while we tramped on in the dark until a second torrent barred our way. Here, in the gloom, we made out the tonga empty, and stuck fast against the far bank. It was all right though, for Jane had crawled out at the front and wandered on in search of the dak bungalow, leaving the driver squatting helplessly ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... us, so that I am under a spell. Or else he is a coward and is afraid of me: he must be a craven to stand in awe of me, and it is an act of cowardice not to show himself before me. Ah, thou spirit, craven thing! Why art thou so in fear of me, when before my lord thou weft so brave? O empty and elusive thing, why cannot I have thee in my power? Why cannot I lay hands upon thee now? But how could it ever come about that thou didst kill my lord, unless it was done by treachery? Surely my lord would never have met defeat at thy hands had ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... above them. Dependence was in the order of nature, and a man of Haydn's good sense was the last in the world to starve and fret because his freedom to practice his art and develop his powers was complicated with a sort of feudal service. Some strong souls may find an empty purse the truest source of inspiration, as Mr Russell Lowell declares it to be; but it is very much to be doubted whether a careful investigation would show that a great man's best work was done with the ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... Vast empty shell! Impertinent, preposterous abortion! With vacant stare, And ragged hair, And every feature out of all proportion! Embodiment of echoing inanity! Excellent type of simpering insanity! Unwieldy, clumsy nightmare of humanity! I ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... son—turning against his father. Of this, however, there was little chance, as Dan Hewlett was pretty certain to be either in the "Fox and Hounds" or in the "Blue Lion" collecting partisans. And Johnnie, getting out through the back door, then by the untidy garden, and over the wall of the empty pig-stye, cut out into a stubble field. He was not afraid of his mother missing him till bedtime, as it was the wont of the youths—especially of those who had comfortless homes—to wander about in parties in the evening, bat-fowling sometimes, but often in an aimless sort ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... too!" gently replied Wallace; "else the earth's fame were an empty shroud-it could ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... rippling through, and the moonlight lying white and still. In about three hours we came upon sign of another camp, where somebody had stopped and had made a fire and had eaten. There were burro tracks here, so that it might have been a prospectors' camp; and there was an empty tin can like a ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... in astonishment, and said to myself, "Do I dream, or am I awake?" She now commanded her damsels to empty the warm bath, fill it afresh, and prepare cloths and necessaries for bathing. When they had done as she desired, she ordered the eunuchs in waiting to conduct me to the hummaum, and gave them a rich dress. They led me ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... drays; at the side was the slip of the dock itself, with its warm, green, swaying water, upon which a jostled crowd of various craft was rocking sleepily in the summer morning. The floor of the room was bare. Between the windows, on one side, was an open, empty stove; on the other were two high desks, with stools. An eight-day clock ticked comfortably upon the wall, and on either side of it were two pictures, wood-cuts, eked out with rude splashes of red ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... narrow stone facade with a massive griffon-guarded door. Judith led the way directly into the elevator and designated Markue's floor. It was at the top of the building, where he met them with his impenetrable courtesy and took them into a bare room evidently planned for a studio. There were an empty easel, the high blank dusty expanse of the skylight, and chairs with the somber hats and coats of men and women's wraps like the glistening shed skins ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and it fell on the instant. They say, that it had no sooner fallen than it disappeared. People got off their horses to lift up the body, for it seemed to be there still, the armour being left; but when they came to handle the armour, it was found as empty as the shell that is cast by a lobster. O new, and strange, and portentous event!—proof manifest of the anger ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... of modern physiological accounts of conscience has been to undermine its authority and empty life of its responsibility, but no theory of the origin of conscience must be permitted to invalidate its judgments. If conscience has any moral worth it is that it contains the promise and witness of God. The prime question is, What is the nature of its testimony? According to the teaching ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... Townsend, "relict" of Mr. Levi Townsend, who had been mouldering into dust in the neighboring churchyard for seven years and more. She was thinking of her dead husband, possibly because all her work being done, and the servant gone to bed, the sight of his empty chair at the other side of the table, and the silence of the room, made ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... relatives, who had no idea about how to bring up a sensitive, impressionable child, and they were sure, from the way Elizabeth Ann looked at six months, that she was going to be a sensitive, impressionable child. It is possible also that they were a little bored with their empty life in their rather forlorn, little brick house in the medium-sized city, and that they welcomed the occupation and new interests which a ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... off to the accompaniment of the gentle splashing of a hundred paddles, to follow the windings of the rivers and lakes through which the waters of the Valley of Jad-ben-Otho empty into the great morass to the south. The warriors, resting upon one knee, faced the bow and in the last canoe Mo-sar tiring of his fruitless attempts to win responses from his sullen captive, squatted in the bottom of the canoe with his back toward her and resting ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Water was the source of evil as well as good. To the Sumerians, the ocean especially was the abode of monsters. They looked upon it as did Shakespeare's Ferdinand, when, leaping into the sea, he cried: "Hell is empty and all the ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... When majesty falls to folly. Reverse thy state; And in thy best consideration check This hideous rashness: answer my life my judgment, Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least; Nor are those empty-hearted whose ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... husband, father of my child!—All these fond ties glow at my heart at this moment, and dim my eyes.—With you an independence is desirable; and it is always within our reach, if affluence escapes us—without you the world again appears empty to me. But I am recurring to some of the melancholy thoughts that have flitted across my mind for some days ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... only you go on patiently,' thinks the reader. He will not! Once your modern botanist gets into cells, he stays in them. Hear how he goes on!—"This cell is a sort of sack; this sack is completely closed; sometimes it is empty, sometimes it"—is full?—no, that would be unscientific simplicity: sometimes it "conceals a matter in its interior." "The marrow of young trees, such as it is represented in Figure 24 (Figuier, Figs. 38, 39, p. 42), is ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... a tall Italian mirror, quivering with her power, her beauty, her ability to charm, and with nothing before her but the empty coffee-cups. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... stores as possible, but found it impracticable, as the boat was nearly swamped. All this and the succeeding day, the gale continuing, we could not launch the boats, and were employed carrying such provisions and stores as were saved, to some empty houses which were discovered about six miles to the eastward of where we landed. Finding that with all our exertions we had only been able to save three days' bread, the officers and crew were put upon half allowances, with the melancholy prospect ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... Soon all sight of the town was shut out; even the solitary house on the hilltop vanished. There was nothing left but grey, wheeling fog, and the mother and child, alone, shivering in a little strip of damp ground, an island drifting aimlessly in empty space. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... mouth the years had traced deep lines, and for whom, in the course of a single-handed battle with life, the true reality had come to be success or failure in the struggle for bread. What was art to them but an empty name, a pastime for the drones and idlers of existence? How could he set up his ambitions before them, to be bowled over like so many ninepins? When, at length, after much heartburning and conscientious scrupling, he was mastered by a healthier spirit of self-assertion, which made him rebel against ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... They have but fallen before us, for one day we must fall. Why dost thou build the hall, son of the winged days? Thou lookest from thy towers to-day; yet a few years, and the blast of the desert comes; it howls in thy empty court, and whistles round thy half-worn shield. Let the blast of the desert come! we shall ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold |
