"Solitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Chicago, I turned into the old art-gallery in Michigan Avenue. As I went floating in space past its door, my eye caught through the window the gleam of the white limbs of statues, and my being responded to the soul vibrations they sent out. So I paid my fee, entered, and found the tender solitude for which my heart longed. I sat down and luxuriated in thoughts of the so recent marvelous experience. Need I explain that I was young and the experience ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... permanent success. His exhortations had sometimes a temporary power, but more frequently were repelled with insult and derision. In pursuit of this object he encountered the most imminent perils, and underwent incredible fatigues, hunger, sickness, and solitude. The licence of savage passion, and the artifices of his depraved countrymen, all opposed themselves to his progress. His courage did not forsake him till there appeared no reasonable ground to ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... vista of Fifth Avenue sped the two cars. On the left lay the black solitude of Central Park, on the right the varied architecture of New ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... tired of solitude, and longed to go to the villages. So one day she said to her little brother: "I am going away to find our brother who has taken up his abode in the villages. I will come back in a few moons. ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... lowered muzzles, ploughed the slope with shells. There they stayed, while the blue lines quivered and fell back through the forests on that short winter's afternoon, dragging their wounded from the stagnant waters. But many were left to die in agony in the solitude. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Belknap-Jackson, enduring his ignominious solitude to the limit of his powers, had joined his wife at the lower end of the room. They had taken the unfortunate development with what grace they could. His lordship had dropped in upon them quite informally—charming man ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... sleeping, I passed away the time till sermon was done, and then to Mrs. Martin, and there staid with her an hour or two, and there did what I would with her, and after been here so long I away to my boat, and up with it as far as Barne Elmes, reading of Mr. Evelyn's late new book against Solitude, in which I do not find much excess of good matter, though it be pretty for a bye discourse. I walked the length of the Elmes, and with great pleasure saw some gallant ladies and people come with their bottles, and basket, and chairs, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... She who looks on her race with a maternal interest, who feels that God hath made of one blood all the children of the earth, and who lives not for herself but her neighbor, she is of the genuine female nobility. There is in her character a grandeur,—let her dwell in "Alpine solitude,"—before which the admired of all admirers, the gay butterfly, whose wings open and close with the sun of adulation, shrinks into an ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... book-self-consciousness, the unprotected, public-street feeling one has—all these things are very grave and important obstacles which our great librarians, with their great systems—most of them—have yet to reckon with. A little more mustiness, gentlemen, please, silence, slowness, solitude with books, as if they were woods, unattainableness (and oh, will any one understand it?), a little inconvenience, a little old-fashioned, happy inconvenience; a chance to gloat and take pains and ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... hour of my captivity. The prospect, too, was far brighter. Even after my discovery of the butt of water and box of biscuits—even when I believed there would be a sufficient quantity of both to last out the voyage, there was still the long imprisonment before me—months of silent and wretched solitude ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... the loss of a mother, especially such a mother as my Cornelia. It was terrible for my poor child to lose her at the tender age of three. Please bring a good friend with you, so that you won't suffer from solitude in this ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... irresistible impulse within me which compels me to the field. The die is cast for life or death, and I will abide by the chance that now occurs. If you, sir, refuse me, I will, however, enlist with the first officer that will accept me; for I will no longer wear out life amid the solitude of these surrounding mountains, without either a chance of meriting ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... garments which were Innocent's only wear. A special joy of hers lay in the fact that she knew the management of the secret sliding panel, and that she could at her own pleasure slip up the mysterious stairway with a book and be thus removed from all the household in a solitude which to her was ideal. To-night as she wandered up and down her room like a little distraught ghost, all the happy and romantic associations of the home she had loved and cherished for so many years seemed cut down like a sheaf of fair blossoms by a careless ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... this blissful and uninterrupted solitude had elapsed, when Lady Wallace saw a chieftain at her gate. He inquired for its master-requested a private conference-and retired with him into a remote room. They remained together for an hour. Wallace then came forth, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... in solitude all the day-time, and at night she would have been frightened, had she not been so brave; but every day the crow came and thanked her for her endurance, and assured her that his sufferings were far less ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... work as a woodcutter, which brought them in just enough to keep life in them and rags about them; and he built with his own hands, aided by his faithful Ruth, the mud hovel, wherein they found the only shelter that this cold world had for them. They had left Reading, preferring solitude to averted looks and abusive tongues; and not a creature in Dorchester came near them. Alike as Jews and as poor people, they were not ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... the world. Its influence is never beneficent, but always and necessarily harmful. If the truest well being of the universe, and the supremest glory of Jehovah could have been attained by conditions of solitude, it is not impossible that the good All-Father would have given to every man a continent, and so have made him monarch ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... humanity. When these giant mountain-tops look down in friendly patronage upon the gables and towers, and curling smoke-wreaths of some struggling hamlets lying at their feet, I shall see their grandeur and admire it, but where dumb nature sits in lone and pensive solitude away from the hum of golden industry, beyond the reach and influence of civilization, it has for me only a cold surface of beauty like ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... now be getting nearer the den where the two unknown men used as a hideout. The very solitude of the place affected him. It was as if a heavy weight had been laid on his back, ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... think so," said Ralph. "But it was not poverty that drove me from the busy world to this solitude. Rich or poor, I had money enough for my wants. Here I have little use for money. To me it is a useless and valueless thing. You need have no hesitation in taking this. But on second thoughts, I had better give you more." And he was about ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... great delight and relief at this report. Elise had not, then, buried herself in the solitude of her room in idle complaint, but had sought, like himself, comfort for her suffering in helping and sympathizing with others. In this moment he appreciated the infinity of his love. He yearned to take her to his heart, and pour out to her all his unappreciated, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... this call up a suspicion that there may yet exist other universes, other centres of force, notwithstanding the apparent solitude of our stellar system in space. It will be recollected that the idea of this isolation is founded upon such facts as, that the heavens do not blaze with light, and that the stars gradually appear to thin out as we penetrate ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... room to myself so far on this campaign. I find the communal spirit is not in me. The noisy meals, the heavy bowls of soup, the piles of labelled dinner-napkins, give me an unexpected feeling of oppressive seclusion and solitude, and only when I get away by myself do I feel that my ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... senseless, money-mad, dollar-worshipper knows not peace. Smiles seldom linger on his lips. Peace never rests in his bosom, cheer never lights his face. He is simply a fighting machine, miserable in solitude, suffering when ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... land, wrap and enfold her while she thought things out for herself, for indeed this real world—the world of men and women, of passions and hatred and love—was nothing but a huge and cruel puzzle. She longed for solitude—the solitude which the plains can offer in such absolute completeness—because her heart was heavy and she felt that if she were all alone she might ease the weight on her heart in a ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... diameter of a pencil. I find, in addition, pupae more or less fully coloured, perfect insects, with a distended abdomen, ready to leave the trunk when the hot weather comes again. Life inside the wood, therefore, lasts three years. How is this long period of solitude and captivity spent? In wandering lazily through the thickness of the oak, in making roads whose rubbish serves as food. The horse in Job swallows the ground[2] in a figure of speech; the Capricorn's grub eats its way literally. With its carpenter's-gouge, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... ascend the passes that lead into Glencreran or Glencoe. But to feel the full power of Glen Etive you must walk up it till it ceases to be a glen. When in the middle of the moor, you see far off a solitary dwelling indeed—perhaps the loneliest house in all the Highlands—and the solitude is made profounder, as you pass by, by the voice of a cataract, hidden in an awful chasm, bridged by two or three stems of trees, along which the red-deer might fear to venture—but we have seen them ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... that shades our porch, but years elapse before we are on friendly terms, and a lifetime is spent before the gnarled giant admits us to intimate companionship. Trees are filled with reserve; when denuded of their neighbors, they stand in melancholy solitude until the leaves fall for the last time, until their branches wither, and their trunks ring ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... hundreds of my friends and acquaintances have already perished: of all animals that live on the surface of this planet, what is man when no longer connected with society; or when he finds himself surrounded by a convulsed and a half dissolved one? He cannot live in solitude, he must belong to some community bound by some ties, however imperfect. Men mutually support and add to the boldness and confidence of each other; the weakness of each is strengthened by the force of the whole. I had never before these calamitous times formed any such ideas; I ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... sure that the poor fellow had gone crazy in his solitude, and I suppose I must have shown the feeling in my face, for he repeated the statement hotly: "Rich! Rich! I says. And I'll tell you what: I'll make a man of you, Jim. Ah, Jim, you'll bless your stars, you will, you was the first that ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lady of good parentage? I have made the resolution to conquer my feelings; and before the intimacy has been carried on to an extent that a rupture would occasion any pangs to her that I adore, I will retire from Seville, and lament in solitude my unfortunate condition.' ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... reader's attention and secures his interest in Frank Henniker's development towards civilisation and virtue. His experience of absolute solitude after Jackson's death serves to bring out his sympathies with animals and flowers; while, on the arrival of Mrs Reichardt, he proves himself a loyal comrade under ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... long night of gloom and anxiety; then two or three days of calming down, by degrees —a receding of tides, a quieting of the storm-wash to a murmurous surf-beat, a diminishing of devastating winds to a refrain that bore the spirit of a truce-days given to solitude, rest, self-communion, and the reasoning of herself into a realization of the fact that she was actually done with bolts and bars, prison, horrors and impending, death; then came a day whose hours filed slowly by her, each laden with some ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Nicholas Barthes alone remained in the house and slept in a room on the first floor which Sophie had got ready for him. Pierre, unwilling to quit his brother, dozed off upon a sofa. And the little house relapsed into its deep quietude, the silence of solitude and winter, through which passed the melancholy quiver of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... poor steward were about to interrupt the savage quiet of Timon's solitude. For now the day was come when the ungrateful lords of Athens sorely repented the injustice which they had done to the noble Timon. For Alcibiades, like an incensed wild boar, was raging at the walls ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... sombre in the shade, than when, the day being more advanced, it stood confessed in the full glare and glory of the sun, with its black paint blistering, and its nooses dangling in the light like loathsome garlands. It was better in the solitude and gloom of midnight with a few forms clustering about it, than in the freshness and the stir of morning: the centre of an eager crowd. It was better haunting the street like a spectre, when men were in their beds, and influencing perchance the city's dreams, than ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... excitement and interest. It was a new experience for him and one he was bound to remember. Already the locomotive was gathering momentum. The little town was left behind in the gathering dusk and soon they were threading their narrow iron way through the solitude of the great mountains. Looking back on a sharp curve, and there were many of them on this mountain grade, Jim could see the crescent form of the coaches all alight, where the passengers were ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... any plans for this evening?" she said to me. "Don't make any! If I cheer your tedious solitude you ought to be devoted to me. Don't ask any questions, but obey. Call ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... unappreciated qualities. From the fact that her husband spends a large part of each day away from her, either in attending to his business or in following a sport, she infers that he has ceased to love her. When he returns in the evening, she locks herself into her room, and, having thus assured to herself solitude, she converts it, by an easy process, into the studied neglect ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... recourse to other expedients. He consulted Selden about the technical legality of the sentence. He appealed to Buckingham, who vouchsafed to appear more placable. Once more he had recourse to Gondomar, "in that solitude of friends, which is the base-court of adversity," as a man whom he had "observed to have the magnanimity of his own nation and the cordiality of ours, and I am sure the wit of both"—and who had ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... the weeks went by, in dreary, troublous fashion, cut into a hundred little barren segments. The mind had no space, or stretch, or solitude. It was incessantly harassed, and its impetus was perpetually checked. But Hadria hoped on. This could not last for ever. Some day, doubtless, if she sank not in spirit, the stars and ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... pondering over an explanation of these singularities, a sound fell upon his ear, that produced within him a feeling of joy. It was the hoof-stroke of a horse, breaking upon the profound solitude. It came from behind him; and betokened that some horseman was approaching in his rear, though still invisible on account of a turning in the road, which the young traveller had ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... minstrel weaves A chaplet from the Sybil leaves Of recollection—let the light Of truth upon his lines be bright. May he with reverential tread Approach the dwellings of the dead, Seeking for some sweet flower of good Within their solemn solitude: And if he finds in fadeless bloom Around some well remember'd tomb, Some cherish'd record of the past Which has defied time's rudes blast, And down futurity's deep vale Shed fragrance on the passing gale, Love's labor, then, the task will be, My gentle Muse, for thee and me. 'Mongst those ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... towards the summit. Though it is at the very mouth of the Clyde, its great height causes it to be seen at a distance, preventing it being dangerous to vessels bound to Glasgow. Any person inclined to solitude might take up his abode there, and live without leaving it, as it is inhabited by numerous flocks of sea-fowl, with goats and rabbits; while nettles, and a variety of hardy plants, grow in the interstices of the rocks. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... not strange that while the young man most admired "Heroism" and "Self-Reliance," the girl preferred "Love" and "Friendship," reading them over and over like prose poems, as they are, to the fitting accompaniment of sunshine, solitude, and sympathy, for letters went to and fro ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... persecution, the solitude on the mountain, the agonies on the cross, with the power of a God to sustain him? But unaided and alone to triumph over all human weakness, trials and temptation, was victory not only for Jesus but for every human being ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... that feeding. The wine is the symbol of that, and it proclaims to us that the Christian life here on earth, just because it is the feeding on and the drinking in of Jesus Christ, ought ever to be a life of blessedness, of abounding joy, by whatsoever darkness, burdens, cares, toils, sorrows, and solitude it may be shaded and saddened. They who live on Christ, they who drink in of His spirit, they should be glad in all circumstances, they, and they alone. We sit at a table, though it be in the wilderness, though ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... highly chivalrous disposition, Lieutenant Bezan had few confidants among his regiment, who, notwithstanding this, loved him as well as brothers might love. He seemed decidedly to prefer solitude and his books to the social gatherings, or the clubs formed by his brother officers, or indeed to join them in any of their ordinary ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... The red man had left it forever, but the bear, the deer and the moose remained. The streams and lakes were full of trout; otter and sable still attracted the trapper, and here and there a lumberman lingered alone in his cabin, enamored of the solitude and the wild pursuits to which a hardly gentler industry had introduced him. Such lumber as could be drifted down the streams had long been cut and driven out, and the woods were left to the hunter and his prey, and to the incursions of sportsmen and seekers ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... work—the most self-sacrificing that is known to man because it draws to itself and swallows up a man's whole life, including his hours of leisure and recreation—this work demands extreme consideration, in the form of solitude, freedom from disturbance, from trivial and distracting cares or occupations, and contact with Nature. This kind of consideration is, from the economic point of view, an outlay which mechanical work does not require. If mechanical and intellectual work are to be placed under the same ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... the feeling of complete solitude which the Westerner knows in wild and lonely places; for him the hillside, the ravine, and the mountain gorge are peopled with presences best described as fairies, though in nothing resembling the light-hearted beings which this description generally conveys to the Western mind. To him they ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... ask for another hour of your company. I can no longer keep my sorrow to myself. A dividing line has just been drawn across my life, and I must have the sympathy of someone who knows my past, or I shall go mad in my self-imposed solitude. Come back, Miss Strange. You of all others have the ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... it warbled at the Old Manse, in the first year of her marriage, and which now softly dreamed forth its tunes in a time-mellowed tone. When he died, it seemed as if an anemone, more lovely than any other, had been carried from the borders of a wood into its silent depths, and dropped, in solitude and shadow, among the recluse ferns and mosses which are so seldom disturbed by passing feet. Son of freedom and opportunity that he was, he touched the heart by going to nature's peacefulness like the saints, and girding upon his American ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... side by the fantastic branches of some aged oak;—although to be rowed along that clear stream, has long been amongst the choicest of my summer pleasures, so exquisite is the scenery, so perfect and so unbroken the solitude. Even the shy and foreign-looking kingfisher, most gorgeous of English birds, who, like the wild Indian retiring before the foot of man, has nearly deserted our populous and cultivated country, knows and loves the lovely valley of ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... Chamber of Deputies by the Minister of the Interior, and ably supported by him in a speech of great lucidity and power. Said he, when laying it before the Chamber: "Our subject is not entirely to sequestrate the prisoner nor to confine him to absolute solitude. Some of the provisions of the bill will mitigate the principle of solitary confinement in a manner which was suggested by the Commission of 1840, and should not pass unnoticed by the Chamber. Convicts sentenced to more than ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... again her loathed kind, Thronging the cells of the diseased mind, Hateful with hanging cheeks, a withered brood, Though hourly pastured on the salient blood? Oh! that the wind which bloweth cold or heat Would shatter and o'erbear the brazen beat Of their broad vans, and in the solitude Of middle space confound them, and blow back Their wild cries down their cavernthroats, and slake With points of blastborne hail their heated eyne! So their wan limbs no more might come between The ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... half, Henry buried himself in solitude at Spire. Rodolph remained watchful and expectant, now at Zurich, and now in Saxony. All was calm in the lordships of Hers and Stramen. The Lady Margaret was lamenting the absence of Father Omehr, who had been summoned to Rome, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... vividly do I recall the apparition which stole into my solitude after supper—which I had scented longingly from afar. A wraith all in white—gown and neck and arms and face, the masses of fluffy hair making this last more wraith-like. It sank to the floor beside my low bed, and gathered me, miserable culprit, in a cuddling embrace, and bade me "tell Cousin ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... the indications of a change in the spirit of his son, which were now seen, Sir Austin had marked down to be expected, as due to his plan. The blushes of the youth, his long vigils, his clinging to solitude, his abstraction, and downcast but not melancholy air, were matters for rejoicing to the prescient gentleman. "For it comes," said he to Dr. Clifford of Lobourne, after consulting him medically on the youth's behalf and being assured of his soundness, "it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the journey. And was it only the resultant general sense of such familiarity, diffused through his memory, that in a while suggested the question whether there had not been—besides Flavian, besides Cornelius even, and amid the solitude which in spite of ardent friendship he had perhaps loved best of all things—some other companion, an unfailing companion, ever at his side throughout; doubling his pleasure in the roses by the way, patient of ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... for reflection; he rose soon, took leave of the company, and gave himself up, in the solitude of his own room, to the torrent of thought and feeling which that night's conversation had let loose. So, then, it was true; Emily Varnier was no fabulous being! Hallberg had loved her, his love had been returned, but a cruel destiny had separated them. How wonderfully did all he had heard ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... Shall we wait and watch, where of old we stood, The low good-night of the hill and the river, The faint light fade, and the wan stars quiver, Twain grown one in the solitude. ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... as there were not enough citizens to constitute a council, they had to add strangers to make a quorum. Angelo Morosini, podesta of Capodistria in 1646, described it as "Goddess of desolation and refuge of solitude itself." Parenzo was so severely smitten that only thirty persons remained. At Pola in 1631 there were but 300 persons left, including the garrison of foreigners, and of the citizens but three families. This was the ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... In the solitude of the room wherein he lodged he sometimes indulged in a small drama, wherein, as the hero, he would smile a slightly sad and quizzical smile, and say gently, "Child, you are Mr. MacMahon's daughter, I am but his clerk"—here the smile became more sadly quizzical—"how can I ask you ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Having received a letter from Jaubert dated Leipsic, I recollected what your Majesty had often told me of your views respecting Persia and India. I have not forgotten our conversation in Egypt, nor the great projects which you enfolded to me to relieve the solitude and sometimes the weariness of the cabinet of Cairo. Besides, I long since knew your opinion of Amedee, of his fidelity, his ability, and his courage. I felt convinced, therefore, that he had a mission to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... while others laughed, I could have wept, and would gladly have exchanged that gay scene, for the quiet of my own room. But this could not be, and I was forced to assume a serenity of feeling I was far from experiencing. Had you not been here, I should have given vent to my grief in solitude, and none would have been the wiser. As it is I must entreat that you will forgive me for (tho' unintentionally) making you suppose I do not sympathize in your happiness, but I do indeed, for I know that Harry is all that is good, and is worthy of ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... large garrisons, which employed the people in hard labors, and used them for Roman aggrandizement, but despised them too much to attempt to elevate their condition. Elsewhere the Romans depopulated, where they met with barbarian resistance; they made a solitude and called it peace—for which they gave a triumph and a cognomen to the conqueror; but in Britain, although harassed and endangered by the insurrections of the natives, they bore with them; they built fine cities like London and York, originally military outposts, and transformed much of the country ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... when "nobody is at the hall." The companions are an old decayed gentlewoman housekeeper—a far away cousin of the squire's—and a young French child, Jane's pupil, Mr. Rochester's ward and reputed daughter. There is a pleasing monotony in the summer solitude of the old country house, with its comfort, respectability, and dulness, which Jane paints to the life; but there is one circumstance which varies the sameness and casts a mysterious feeling over the scene. A strange laugh is heard from time to time in a distant part of the house—a ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... ordinary sense, he began to feel the first stirring of religion. When Fetuao, with sweet shame, laid her head against his shoulder and told him of her impending motherhood, he kissed her, comforted her, and then, rising to his feet, he sought the solitude that at such a moment he felt he could not share even with her. In one of the unfrequented corners of the bay, a narrow beach shadowed by the forest and faced by the open sea, he threw himself upon his knees with a passionate thankfulness that seemed to find its expression in this ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... "I have just returned from a night in the trenches, having come off the sick list yesterday morning. Last Sunday I was unable to leave my tent, but I had happy communion with Jesus in my solitude, and derived much pleasure from the fourteenth and fifteenth of St. John. How true is the peace of mind that cleaving to Christ brings to a man! There is nothing like ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... badly-fitting doors and in at the cracks of the small windows, the Squire ate his food with appetite, and began once again to enjoy life. In the first place, he was no longer lonely. It was impossible for his old friends and retainers to visit him in the solitude of his grand bedroom; but it was perfectly easy, not only for Squire Murphy and Squire Fitzgerald, and half the other squireens of the neighborhood, to slip into the barn and have a "collogue," as they expressed it; but also the little gossoons ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... with military trophies, and with the warlike instruments of the four quarters of the globe. We saw nothing else in the house worthy of notice. It is merely a collection of apartments of moderate size; and, empty and dirty as they were, they appeared to great disadvantage. In the midst of the solitude of desolation, some ordinary portraits of the Bouillon family still remain upon the walls, as if in mockery of ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... spirit doubled on his track it did not lead him back to solitude. Perhaps when the sun falls over the edge of polar-earth the Arctic fox laments that he must run through the night alone, for in the white livery he must assume at the year's death he feels himself beast of a different kind from the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... emphatically intervened,—Excellency Keith, with Seventy-fours in the distance, coming out very strong on the occasion,—and got her loose. Loose from Danish axe and jail, at any rate; delivered into safety and solitude at Celle in Hanover, where she now is,—and soon after suddenly dies of fever, so closing a ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Corinthians up and down the corridor, and he preferred not to hear them. To his surprise there was rather less disturbance than usual; perhaps the boys were too tired after their exciting and active afternoon to indulge in noisy skylarking. So Irving did not have to emerge from his solitude until the supper bell rang. Even then he waited until all the boys had passed his door and were clattering down the stairs. Yet as he descended, Westby's indignant ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... with my scorn, He left me to my pride; And sought a solitude forlorn, In secret, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... little, how almost nothing that is. To repeat it, the tortures of this kind of intercourse are positively the most painful of all to me, and I am only intent upon keeping to myself. I force myself to solitude, and to achieve this is my greatest care. When I was on the point of taking flight, at the end of May, Tichatschek suddenly called on me. This good man, with his splendid, childlike heart, and his amiable little head, was very agreeable to me, and his enthusiastic attachment ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... restless. He was strong enough to stand like an Indian, and tall enough to look easily over the surrounding heads. More than that, "Aida" did not interest him in itself, and at some of its most brilliant passages he was guilty of slipping away to pace the hallways in solitude, or steal to the foyer for a brief cigarette. But when the house was lighted again, he went back into the auditorium, and then his eyes never left the little dark head of the girl who sat forward in one of the lower tier of boxes, waving her big fan, and talking over her bare ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... miserable now; not lonelier actually than she had been before her marriage; but her loneliness then was to that of the present time as the solitude of a mountain is to the solitude of a cave. And within the last day or two had come these disquieting thoughts about her husband's past. Her wayward sentiment that evening concerning Fanny's temporary resting-place had been the result of a strange complication of impulses ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... of the twenty-third. He had never felt less sleepy. Nor did a book and a pipe before his gas log seem quite what he wanted. The vagabond streak in him was awake, the same potent wanderlust that as a boy had driven him to the solitude of the forests and the hills. This morning it sent him questing down Powers Avenue to that lower town where the derelicts of the city floated ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... overcome the shock of this great disappointment, I renewed gradually my acquaintance with one or two old companions, who, though of infinitely less interest to my feelings than my unfortunate friend, served to relieve the pressure of actual solitude, and who were not perhaps the less open to my advances that I was a bachelor somewhat stricken in years, newly arrived from foreign parts, and ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... significance of those words? He stops; he sits down. The summer sun sets over the fields of Georgia. Good-night, Mr. Stephens—a long good-night. Look out from your window—how calm it is! Upon Missionary Ridge, upon Lookout Mountain, upon the heights of Dalton, upon the spires of Atlanta, silence and solitude; the peace of the Southern policy of slavery and death. But look! Hark! Through the great five years before you a light is shining—a sound is ringing. It is the gleam of Sherman's bayonets, it is the roar of Grant's guns, it is the red daybreak and wild morning ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... strapped on my wrist, I saw it was two o'clock. A species of nervous dread now laid hold of me, and a thousand and one vague fancies, all the more distressing because of their vagueness, oppressed and disconcerted me. Moreover, I was impressed for the first time with the extraordinary solitude—solitude that seemed to belong to a period far other than the present, and, as I glanced around at the solitary pines and gleaming boulders, I more than half expected to see the wild, ferocious face of some robber chief—some fierce yet fascinating hero of Sir ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... future shall be, as soon as life is over and death has overtaken us. We cannot help the speculation. However bound by present duties and absorbed in present interests, often, in quiet hours, in times of solitude or bereavement, or under the sense of failing hopes or failing health, in seasons of sorrow or of sickness, the mood takes hold of us; and it may be, we know not why, our eyes turn with an anxious and a wistful look towards that inevitable end which ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... could not possibly escape. The next morning, however, he was gone, having displaced a stone that I thought him quite incapable of moving, and then digging under a wall.... Sometimes I have known a badger leave the solitude of the woods and take to some drain in the cultivated country, where he becomes very bold and destructive to the crops, cutting down wheat, and ravaging the gardens in a most surprising manner. One which I know to be now living in this manner, derives great ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... gratification in being told, "That her's was a cruel case, and that it was unjust and barbarous to force so much beauty into concealment while London was filled with her admirers; who, like her, would languish in consequence of her solitude." These things, and a thousand such, a thousand times repeated, she still listened to with pleasure; yet preserved the constancy not to shrink from her ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... got intoxicated, and some of the women—nothing less like an apostle could I have found in the streets of New York. I saw one day a hunter who had come into the woods with a motive in some degree like mine—impatience of the restraints and burdens of civilization, and pure love of solitude. He had become, not bestialized, like most of the men I saw, but animalized—he had drifted back into the condition of his dog, with his higher intellect inert. He had built himself a cabin in the depth of the woods, and there he lived in the most complete isolation from ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... close by the knees as she spoke, and expressed, in her looks and accents, the utmost terror. It was not, indeed, without reason; for the extreme solitude of the place, the violent and inflamed passions of her brother, and the desperate circumstances to which he had reduced himself, seemed all to concur to render some horrid act of violence not an improbable termination ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... in his ways. It seemed odd for a man to live alone as he lived, doing his own work except for the occasional aid of a woman whom he called Mrs. Swastika. If he had had any particular work or hobby which necessitated solitude Owen could have understood it; but Herrick seemed to spend his days as idly, as aimlessly, as ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... ministerial revolution," said the Quotidienne, "reduces itself to this, we shall retire to some profound solitude where the sound of the falling ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... in the laboratory, and hastily eaten, although his dwelling is quite near. Long watchfulness and labour seem to heighten the activity of his mind, which under its 'second wind,' so to speak, becomes preternaturally keen and suggestive. He likes best to work at night in the silence and solitude of his laboratory when the noise of the benches or the rumble of the engines is stilled, and all the world ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... grown into a tall lad with long hair of straw-coloured gold, that shone with irregular reflections like muffled moonlight on a still but gently rippling sea. He was quieter, and seemed somehow different. He was now all for his books and solitude, and sat long in the room that had been given him for a bedroom and study—that with the window looking out on the wood. It was the quietest in the house—not only because of our youthful bull of Bashan and his roaring, but because it was at the farthest end of the long ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... to the roadside, and the trees, as I said, were but few, was the village graveyard. No friend of mine, no one whom I had ever known or loved, was buried there—yet with a child's instinctive dread of death, I had ever passed its shaggy solitude (for shrubs and trees grew there wild and unattended) with a hurried step ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... a white girl in the hut of her white man, struggling for daily bread among the people who sweep the buffalo out, but open up the land with the plough, and make a thousand live where one lived before. It is peace you want, my mother, peace and solitude, in which the soul goes to sleep. Your days of hope are over, and you want to drowse by the fire. I want to see the white man's cities grow, and the armies coming over the hill with the ploughs and the reapers and the mowers, and the wheels and the ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... hands with all his fellow-workers and thanked them in his courtly way, and, pleading for solitude, went through the door of the great chamber and, guided by an attendant, reached the exit in a side street where his car awaited him. A large concourse of people stood drawn up in line on each side of the street, marshalled by policemen. A familiar crooked figure limped from the shadow of the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... to canvas; and as we have now had the same clear sky for several days, I have almost finished quite a satisfactory little study. I go forth immediately after breakfast. Miss Blunt furnishes me with a napkin full of bread and cold meat, which at the noonday hours, in my sunny solitude, within sight of the slumbering ocean, I voraciously convey to my lips with my discolored fingers. At seven o'clock I return to tea, at which repast we each tell the story of our day's work. For poor Miss Blunt, it is day after day the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... endeavoured to dress his face with tranquillity and to converse with his accustomed cheerfulness and ease. Smothered grief is one of the most deadly inmates; and it is reasonable to believe that a paroxysm of violent emotion in a moment when solitude gave an opportunity for giving a loose to reflection, operating upon a plethoric habit, occasioned his ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... truth. For that matter, a few days later her husband, who had been locked up for years, died in the asylum at Ville d'Avray, and Hortense, who had been recommended by her doctor a short period of rest and solitude, went to stay with a relation living near the village of Bassicourt, ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... of the wild" so strongly and irresistibly as on that night. Every mountain crag seemed to be calling him, and in his fancy he thought the fir trees reached their gently-waving branches, beckoning him to come into the darkness and solitude. In spite of himself, his thoughts would wander to the Michigan homeland. He wondered if the ice had broken on the lake yet, and if the blossoms had begun to come in the old orchard, and if his grandmother had filled the incubator. He felt queer with ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... comfortable saddles, with our servant and the arriero in attendance, and we have left the last of the city streets; with our face to the open country the true charm of travel comes upon us—the touch of Nature, solitude, and the far horizon which nothing else can ever supply. Thus accoutred we shall hold real converse with Nature, and with the typical people of the land over which ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... this with some remorse, one idea fixed itself on Israel's mind, one hope on his heart—that Ruth might soon bear a child. Then would her solitude be broken by the dearest company that a woman might know on earth. And, if he had wronged her, his child would ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... barn-floors—or rather threshing-floors that require no barns—on which long-horned cattle tread out, without any chance of bad weather to injure, the golden grain of the Sicilian harvest. Here lives the blue-breasted hermit bird in unmolested solitude; and, careless of solitude, the Passer solitarius utters her small twitter in the hollows—a few goats browse amongst the scanty thistles, and one or two dogs protect them. Snakes, hatched in vast number ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... propped up in his arm-chair, staring at vacancy—his solitude embittered by the recollection of what he was, and what he had been. The stately edifice of greatness, which he had spent a lifetime in erecting, had fallen like a chateau de cartes, leaving nothing behind but the stinging recollection of a glorious past. He could ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... those points. He looked sadly pale and worn. Before he opened his lips, I saw that he too had had his mind disturbed, and his patience tried, since I had left him. There was a summer-house at the end of the garden with a view over the breezy solitude of the Downs. Here we established ourselves; and here, in my headlong way, I opened the interview with the one formidable question:—"Who is to tell her of the ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... first he was inclined to treat Caroline's advances to friendship in a surly manner, but a glance at her earnest, gentle eyes made him feel ashamed of himself; and being at the same time tired of his solitude, he at length consented to play a game at bagatelle. He even went so far as to say, "Well, after all Carry, you are a good little thing; I do annoy you terribly, which is not fair, because you are so forgiving. Well, to make up for it, I'll be very ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples |
