"Vast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very bobby little craft, clambered over a huge pile of baggage, and stowed ourselves as best we could. A figure in a long white robe sat astern, tiller ropes in hand; two half-naked blacks far up towards the prow manipulated a pair of tremendous sweeps. With a vast heaving, jabbering, and shouting, our boat disengaged itself from the swarm of other craft. We floated around the stern of our ship, and were immediately suspended in blackness dotted with the stars and their reflections, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... this nature is perfectly intelligible, if we reflect on the wide dispersion of ejected matter during late eruptions, such as that of the volcano of Coseguina, in the province of Nicaragua, January 19, 1835. Hot cinders and fine scoriae were then cast up to a vast height, and covered the ground as they fell to the depth of more than ten feet, for a distance of eight leagues from the crater, in a southerly direction. Birds, cattle, and wild animals were scorched to death ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... examples: they have been thereby established as species or as varieties; and the number of times this has occurred is doubtless very great. But there are other, and equally trustworthy cases, in which, not single species, but whole groups have, by the study of a vast accumulation of materials, been proved to have no definite specific limits. A few of these must be adduced. In Dr. Carpenter's "Introduction to the Study of the Foraminifera," he states that "there is not a single specimen of plant or animal of which the range of variation has been ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... his hero, remind us of that beautiful passage in one of BLAIR'S essays: 'Life is short: the poor pittance of seventy years is worth being a villain for. What matters it if your neighbor lies in a splendid tomb? Sleep you with innocence! Look behind you through the track of time; a vast desert lies open in the retrospect; through this desert have your fathers journeyed on, until wearied with years and sorrows, they sunk from the walks of men. You must leave them where they fell, and you are to go a little farther, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... his see at Glasghu, or Glasco, where he assembled a numerous company of religious brethren, who formed their rule of life upon the model of the primitive Christians at Jerusalem. The saint's diocese was of vast extent, reaching from sea to sea, and being wild and uncultivated, afforded continual exercise for his zeal and patience; he travelled always on foot, sparing no pains to spread the light of the gospel among the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... world. But between poor Johann Schmidt and his draught of kvass there lay obstacles not encountered by the reindeer in his race for the Arctic Ocean. There was the wife, and there were the children, and there was the vast distance, so vast that it might have discouraged even the fleet-footed scourer of the northern snows. Johann Schmidt might long for his kvass, and draw in his thin, wan lips at the thought of the taste of it, and bend his black brows and close his sharp eyes as in a dream—it was ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... my bosom vast, With other lands, that, where the happy Thames Goes gliding gaily on, Which has of graceful ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... Oscar, who spoke English with a kind of dogged precision, giving equal value to all words. "It is a vast hotel where the rich spend much money. That place at the foot of the hills—do you see?—it is there they play a foolish game ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... of a vague vast scheme which was to eventuate in filling Laura's pockets with millions of money; some had one idea of the scheme, and some another, but nobody had any exact knowledge upon the subject. All that any one felt sure about, was that Laura's ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... brown village, standing on the hillside, as if it had economically crept up there among the pines, so as to leave available for cultivation every inch of the wonderful soil of the plain. Below, the vast fertile plateau, tilled like a garden, lies to the westward, while to the east the rising undulations terminate in the bare uplands of Inca. Olive-trees cover the plain like an army, trees that were planted by the Moors a ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... of fact, nothing much wrong with Stone and Robinson. They were just ordinary raggers of the type found at every public school, small and large. They were absolutely free from brain. They had a certain amount of muscle, and a vast store of animal spirits. They looked on school life purely as a vehicle for ragging. The Stones and Robinsons are the swashbucklers of the school world. They go about, loud and boisterous, with a whole-hearted and cheerful indifference to other people's feelings, treading on the toes of their ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... into his pocket, pulled his hat resolutely over his brow, and started toward Main Street, meaning to turn thence toward Cross Street, now known as Broadway. On the outskirts of the town in that direction lay the wilderness, undulating away for hundreds of miles like a vast green robe with scarce ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... of 'The Maid of Orleans', nor the splendid diction of 'The Bride of Messina'. On the stage, too, its effectiveness is somewhat impaired by its great length. But in the imaginative power whereby history is made into drama; in the triumph of artistic genius over a vast and refractory mass of material, and in the skill with which the character of the hero is conceived and denoted, 'Wallenstein' is unrivaled. Well might Goethe pronounce it 'so great that nothing could be compared ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... omnipotent! In heaven and earth below! Through all creation's vast extent Whose streams ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... the cross; but not all had been included in the Divine gift of which Jesus speaks, "Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me." We conclude that in the eternity of the past, as the Father beheld all future things as though they were present, and surveyed the vast multitudes of the human family, He discerned those who would be attracted by indissoluble union with His Son, manifest in the flesh; and whom He did foreknow, these also He did predestinate to be His ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... ancient doctrine that there was no property in an idea, showing how the far greater proportion of all property consisted of nothing more than elaborated ideas—the steamship, locomotive, telephone, the vast buildings in the world, how all of these had been constructed upon a basic idea precisely as a book is constructed, and were property only as a book is property, and therefore rightly subject to the same laws. He was carefully and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... had to put together, things that had to be arranged, things that had to be adjusted. But there was one in particular which had taken his youthful fancy, and had at the same time tried his youthful temper—a shallow tray wherein were a vast quantity of all sorts and sizes of bits of wood, gaily coloured. There were quite a hundred of those bits, and you had to fit them one into the other. When, after much trying of temper, much exercise of patience, ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... or so had gone by and summer reigned royally at Eastwich, for thus was the parish named of which the Reverend Septimus Walrond had spiritual charge. The heath was a blaze of gold, the cut hay smelt sweetly in the fields, the sea sparkled like one vast sapphire, the larks beneath the sun and the nightingales beneath the moon sang their hearts out on Gunter's Hill, and all the land was full of life and sound ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... passed the hot wave of the school-room, and the sharp air of the night struck her face, consciousness seemed to turn and come back into her again; for there over her head was the wideness of the vast, starry Arizona night, and there, before her, in Nick Bottom's somber costume, eating one of the chicken sandwiches that Mrs. Tanner had sent down to her, stood Gardley! He was pale and shaken from his recent experience; but he was undaunted, and when he ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... the farm we threw a ton of coal against it, and lit log fires and oil lamps, and were warm. Here, they try to fight it with two buckets of soft chocolate cake called Welch coal, and the result is you freeze. Cecil's studio is like one vast summer hotel at Portland Maine in January. You cannot go near it except in rubber boots, fur coats and woolen gloves. My room still is the only one that is livable. It is four feet square, heavily panelled in oak and the coal fire makes it as warm as a ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... deviates from a straight line less than the eighth of an inch in the distance of twenty miles. We, seeing only twenty miles of her course, would declare that it was perfectly straight, that it did not curve in the slightest degree; yet flying on that same course the earth makes every year her vast elliptical journey around the sun. Could we see a hundred million miles of the track, we should discern the curve very plainly. Could we see a part of the boundless future of a life whose circumstances in this little span of existence were limited and depressing, we should ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... to go about their business. But every one in this country displayed the same kind of ridiculous vanity, and in the majority of towns which they visited, it was the first great care of their chiefs, to impress on their minds an idea of their vast importance, which in many instances was contradicted by their ragged tobes and squalid appearance. Yet, if their own accounts were to be credited, their affluence and power were unbounded. All truth is sacrificed to this ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... and country were certainly right in assuming that the widow inherited the vast property of her deceased husband. But what they did not know was that a condition attached to such inheritance irritated Agnes and caused Garvington unfeigned alarm. Pine's solicitor—he was called Jarwin and came from a stuffy little office ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... north, through the principal gate Keerkhlar Kapi, which is covered with iron plates. The road leading to Tarki is rude in appearance, bordered for a few paces to the right and left with beds of madder—beyond them lie vast burying-grounds, and further still towards the sea, scattered gardens. But the appearance of the suburbs is a great deal more magnificent than those of the Southern ones. To the left, on the rocks were seen the Keifars, or barracks of the regiment of Kourin; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... elapsed since the fall of Louisburgh. The great American fortress of Louis XV. surrendered to Amherst, Wolfe, and Boscawen in 1758. A broken sea-wall of cut stone; a vast amphitheatre, inclosed within a succession of green mounds; a glacis; and some miles of surrounding ditch, yet remain—the relics of a structure for which the treasury of France paid Thirty Millions ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... stench, to the new white hospital which, through the yawning openings of its ranges of windows, disclosed the naked wards, where death was preparing to mow. In front of her on the other side of the octroi wall the bright heavens dazzled her, with the rising sun which rose higher and higher over the vast ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... corporation or body—especially when their community of descent is borne in mind—more effectually than any merely superficial separation into individuals can be held to disunite them, and that thus protoplasm must be seen as the life of the world—as a vast body corporate, never dying till the earth itself shall pass away. This came practically to saying that protoplasm was God Almighty, who, of all the forms open to Him, had chosen this singularly unattractive one as the channel through which to make Himself manifest in the flesh ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... question can hardly be duly magnified. How few organizations have ever had the power which this is destined to wield! The prayers and sympathies of the ripest and richest minds will be ours. Vast is the influence which true-hearted women will exert in the coming age. It is a beautiful coincidence, that just as the old epochs of despotism and slavery, Priestcraft and Political intrigue are dying out, just as the spiritual part of man is rising into the ascendency, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... other wayfarers, in these complex paths. The effect upon her mind was different from the effect to be expected according to modern sentimental ethics. Nettie had never doubted of the true duty, the true necessity, of her position, till she became conscious of her vast sacrifice. Then a hundred doubts appalled her. Was she so entirely right as she had supposed? Was it best to relieve the helpless hands of Fred and Susan of their natural duties, and bear these burdens for them, and disable herself, when her time came, from the nobler natural ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... from this, have we watched the great red sun sinking behind the vast stretching prairie, while all the broad west seemed like a surging flood of gold beyond an ocean of green; and often have we beheld day's glorious orb looming above the soft blue waters of the placid bay, while ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... respects but even more lonely, being in charge of a certain Scotsman named Macnab, whose army of occupation consisted of only six men and two Indian women! The forests around us were not peopled. Those vast solitudes were indeed here and there broken in upon, as it were, by a few families of wandering Red-Indians, who dwelt in movable tents—were here to-day and away to-morrow—but they could not be said to be peopled, except by deer ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... seemed to notice the extraordinary equipage and its numerous train. From this he concluded that they were invisible. The house at which they stopped appeared to be a shop, but the interior was like a vast half-ruined palace. He went with his mysterious guide through several large and dimly-lighted rooms. In one of them, surrounded by huge pillars of marble, a senate of ghosts was assembled, debating on the progress of the plague. Other parts of the building ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... flowing Kofn forms part of the north-eastern boundary of the State of Maasau. Its dark waters rush tumultuously from the gorge below the Castle of Sagan, and fling a vast enclosing arm about the bleak plains and marshes of which the wastes of ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... a vast crowd of men, and when the stage came in sight, and three persons were seen on top, with the mounted escort hastening after, the yells ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... see it all since this morning. Take my father, for instance. There was no more generous or liberal a Pa up to a certain point. He wanted me to have a comfortable room and vast quantities of good food, and he was glad to pay literary society dues, and he would stand for frat dues; but when it came to paying cab hire, you could jam an appropriation for a post-office in an enemy's district past ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... in which he is mentioned. There were two old folks with whom lived two orphan grandchildren, charming little girls. One day the youngest child was sent to drive the sparrows away from her grandfather's pease. While she was thus engaged the forest began to roar, and out from it came Verlioka, "of vast stature, one-eyed, crook-nosed, bristly-headed, with tangled beard and moustaches half an ell long, and with a wooden boot on his one foot, supporting himself on a crutch, and giving vent to a terrible laughter." And Verlioka caught sight of the little girl and immediately killed ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... of geographical Egypt consists of desert, it would be interesting if I were to tell you something about it before closing this little book. Probably the first question my readers would ask would be, "What use is it?" Why does Nature create such vast wastes of land and rock which can be of little ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... brought down to an average of five feet ten inches, and being, moreover, only a part of a race, the Abipones, of which the other families are smaller. Indeed, we can all learn by our own experience how irresistible is the tendency of the imagination to attribute vast proportions to all hardy and warlike tribes. Most persons fancy the Scottish Highlanders, for instance, to have been a race of giants; yet Charles Edward was said to be taller than any man in his Highland army, and his ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... British deserters could be efficacious; and that, moreover, the plan we proposed was inadequate in its range and object, inasmuch as it was merely prospective, confined wholly to deserters, and in no respect provided for the case of the vast body of British seamen now employed in our trade to every ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... party no concern, as the town did not present an attractive or inviting appearance from the quarantine ground; nor were our unfavorable impressions removed upon a nearer acquaintance with it two or three months afterwards. But it was evident, that in spite of the epidemic, there was a vast deal of activity ashore and afloat. Cotton, ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... were connected with the religion of the country, is of no relevancy in this matter. Every thing relating to Hindoo grandeur is more or less interwoven with religion; but we must take things as they are. We are the rulers of Hindostan; where the vast preponderance of our subjects and soldiers are Hindoos. We wish them to be Christians, but they are not so yet; and, until they become Christianized, we cannot hope or wish that they should forget the only faith which they have to raise them above the earth they tread. Their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... perhaps, no single circumstance which distinguishes our country more remarkably from all others, than the vast extent and perfection to which we have carried the contrivance of tools and machines for forming those conveniences of which so large a quantity is consumed by almost every class of the community. The amount of ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... Kent affords a vast number of trout-streams, which are nowhere surpassed in England; and fish of extraordinary size and beauty have frequently been caught in them. Some years ago, at Farningham, (a village through which a noble trout-stream takes its course), stood a flour-mill, the proprietor of which informed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... Each reassumed its former station; and directing their course to the northward, they crossed the Gulf of Mexico, entered North America, and steered directly for the Polar regions, which gave me the finest opportunity of viewing this vast continent that can ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... getting married; Stout, sinewy, and hardy chaps, Who'd take and pay back adverse raps, Nor ever think of such a thing As squaring off outside the ring, Those little disagreements, which Make wearers of the long robe rich. Such were the men, and such alone, Who quarried the vast piles of stone, Those mighty, ponderous, cut-stone blocks, With which Mackay built up the Locks. The road wound round the Barrack Hill, By the old Graveyard, calm and still; It would have sounded snobbish, very, To call it then a Cemetery— Crossed the Canal below the Bridge, ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... that an arrangement like that here considered as typical is natural to some flowers in their adult state, and to a vast number in their immature condition. It would be no extravagant hypothesis to surmise that this was the primitive structure of the flower in the higher plants. Variations from it may have arisen in course of time, ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... passed the iron gates on our way back to town, we saw window after window light up with a golden radiance. I wondered which part of that vast edifice hid the ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... is thrown into the hands of the press. But the more power is seized by the press, the more Parliament is degraded, and the less is the chance of recovery. The situation presents little difficulty to Mr. Syme. Every newspaper reader, he declares, "becomes, as it were, a member of that vast assembly, which may be said to embrace the whole nation, so widely are newspapers now read. Had we only the machinery for recording the votes of that assembly, we might easily dispense ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... few harmless fireworks effected the same purpose as a storm of shot and shell. All that vast throng melted away, and only a few of the braver sort held post till morning. But before going they inflicted one great loss, mortally wounding the gifted Captain Peebles, the only officer who knew the working of a Maxim gun, then new ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... scant area and its forty million souls. He smiled. An empire opened within range of his vision. He had had to go to Europe to appreciate his own country. Old, old peoples over there. Outworn, bewildered aristocracies and vast populations troubled with the specter of want, swarming like rabbits, pressing always close upon the means of subsistence. No room; no chance. Born in social stratas solidified by centuries. No wonder Europe was full of race ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... vast empire in the New World, Honduras became an independent nation in 1821. After two and a half decades of mostly military rule, a freely elected civilian government came to power in 1982. During the 1980s, Honduras proved a haven for anti-Sandinista contras ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... John Zisca, and ran through Neal's History of the Puritans, and Calamy's Non-Conformists' Memorial, having like thoughts and passions with them—but then Spinoza became his God, and he took up the vast chain of being in his hand, and the round world became the centre and the soul of all things in some shadowy sense, forlorn of meaning, and around him he beheld the living traces and the sky-pointing proportions ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... chief of a meteorological station ventured on a decided answer to this question, notwithstanding the sarcasms that his solution provoked. This was a Chinaman, the director of the observatory at Zi-Ka-Wey which rises in the center of a vast plateau less than thirty miles from the sea, having an immense horizon and wonderfully pure atmosphere. "It is possible," said he, "that the object was ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... forest of green rushes, water-lilies, flags, and many other aquatic plants, forming a wall of verdure—the enormous quantity of fish of every kind is almost incredible. Nor is this extraordinary, for the waters of at least a dozen streams from the mountains, which swarm with life, fall into these vast reservoirs, and they are only fished once in every five years. This is a delectable spot for fishermen; but, on the other hand, as the value of these sheets of water is well understood by their proprietors, they are sharply looked after ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... home. After disposing of all his property, reserving nothing but his armor and trusty sword, he again returned to the spot where he had been favored with the divine message. There he saw a mysterious white cloud, which seemed to beckon him onward. Titurel followed it, passed through vast solitudes and almost impenetrable woods, and eventually began to climb a steep mountain, whose ascent at first seemed impossible. Clinging to the rocks, and gazing ever ahead at the guiding cloud, Titurel came at last to the top of the mountain, where, in a beam of refulgent ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... vast deal may be done by those who dare to act. You and I need not be afraid. If we set the example, many will follow it as far as they can; though all have not our situations. We have carriages to fetch and convey her ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... 16th the cessation of hostilities was proclaimed in Barry's home city—Philadelphia—to "a vast concourse of people, who expressed their satisfaction on the happy occasion by repeated shouts. The State flag was hoisted and the bells were rung and a general joy diffused ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... the other hand, every man of the many who still stand ready to indorse everything signed by a D.D.—without even adding the commercial E.E., for Errors Excepted—is in part the victim of the over-influence they obtained. Yet there was a kind of democracy in that vast influence also: the Puritans were far more thorough Congregationalists than their successors; they recognized no separate clerical class, and the "elder" was only the highest officer of his own church. Each religious society could choose and ordain its own minister, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ye waters vast, Who answer all that look on you With shadows of themselves, that last As long as they, and are as true— Where ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... last year's terminus, Diogo Cam chanced upon a vast embouchure, and, surprised by the beauty of the scenery and the volume of the stream, he erected his stone Padrao, the first of its kind. Finding the people unintelligible to the interpreters, he sent four of his men with a present of hawk's bells (cascaveis) and blue glass ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... South America, Brazil overcame more than half a century of military intervention in the governance of the country when in 1985 the military regime peacefully ceded power to civilian rulers. Brazil continues to pursue industrial and agricultural growth and development of its interior. Exploiting vast natural resources and a large labor pool, it is today South America's leading economic power and a regional leader. Highly unequal income distribution and crime ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Toward 1224 the Brothers Minor desired to draw nearer and build a vast convent near the walls of Paris in the grounds called Vauvert, or Valvert (now the Luxembourg Garden), (Eccl., 10; cf. Top. hist. du vieux Paris, by Berty and Tisserand, t. iv., p. 70). In 1230 they received at Paris from the Benedictines of Saint-Germain-des-Pres a certain number of ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... two players, once very fashionable in France and of some repute in England; but now quite obsolete. Like Quadrille, it is encumbered with a vast number of rules and maxims, technical terms and calculations; all too long ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... a great cataract like Niagara to our mind. Here we stand and behold the mighty waters rushing down. Oh! the mighty rushing waters, who can measure them! What a vast, inexhaustible supply! Water upon water dashing down. For ages this has gone on. Hundreds of years, more than that, thousands of years have witnessed the same mighty waters. Every day, every hour, every minute, every second, every fraction ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... of Persia, its extent, the altitude of its plateau above the sea level, its vast deserts and its mountain ranges, give the country a good selection of climates, temperatures and vegetation. We have regions of intense tropical heat and of almost arctic cold, we have temperate regions, we have healthy regions, and regions where everybody is fever-stricken. Regions ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Association feels the pressure of the hard times. It owes a debt of nearly $100,000, and needs four times as much to sustain the work now in hand. Nevertheless, there is no cause for discouragement in all this. There is vast wealth in the nation, and a large share of it is in the hands of those who are more or less directly connected with the Christian Church, and who are liberal in their gifts when worthy objects are fairly brought to their attention. It is true that there are those whose resources ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... divided into three parts, it was rather customary to consider Africa, especially Egypt and the countries about the Nile, as belonging to Asia. To connect Africa with Europe could only have been an idea of those who divided the earth into an eastern and a western half, and did not know the vast extent of Africa to the south. [122] Fretum, &c.; that is, the Fretum Herculeum, or the Straits of Gibraltar. It is clear that Sallust wants to state only the northern frontier of Africa on the Mediterranean, and the ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... many lesser streams water the continent. The greatest is the Congo in the center, with its vast curving and endless estuaries; then the Nile, draining the cluster of the Great Lakes and flowing northward "like some grave, mighty thought, threading a dream"; the Niger in the northwest, watering the Sudan below the Sahara; and, finally, the Zambesi, with its greater ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... of most of her descriptions as to render them sometimes a little lifeless, and oblige her to depend too solely upon her powers of landscape painting with the pen. We miss the human element, as we do in the vast, however luxuriant, pictures of Bierstadt and Moran—artists who preceded her on the same sketching-ground. Not that she fails to make the most of what Nature places before her. Rather, she makes too much of it, and lavishes whole pages on truthful, minute and vivid, but bewildering, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... The view is tenable that theology led the way. Probably this is a case of alternate and reciprocal debt. Quite certainly the evolutionist method in theology, in Christian history, and in the estimate of scripture, has received vast reinforcement from biology, in which evolution has been the ever present ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... stood holding to the tent rope, looking this way and that for the sign of some living thing. Before her stretched one vast plain of gravel, miles upon miles of it receding into nothingness, on each side the same, behind her tent above, the palm trees waving gently in the evening breeze, and above again, a sky such as is to be seen only in ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... Spanish and French were in control of the Missouri country, Boone continued to hold his land safely; but when Napoleon sold the vast territory to the United States Boone once more suffered a heavy loss, for his own government refused to recognize his claim to any part of the region. It seemed almost as if the closing days of the great scout were ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... good his promise to lend effective aid to the Irish princes, O'Neill would have driven Elizabeth from Ireland, and a sovereign State would today be the guardian of the freedom of the western seas for Europe and the world. It took "the best army in Europe" and a vast treasure, as Sir John Davies asserted, to conquer two Ulster clans three hundred years ago. The naked valor of the Irishman excelled the armed might of Tudor England; and the struggle that gave the empire of the seas to Britain ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... A vast, curving whiteness hung catercornered in the sky. It was the planet's icecap, upside down. Patrolman Willis had possibly cut it a trifle ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... creepers climbed, divided the lawn and its magnificent Wellingtonias from the meadow. There was little grass to be seen, for it was at this time one vast profusion of delicate ixias of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... Why must we flee? Here too our love for freedom can be nourished; Here also is a field for thought and action, As vast as any that your ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... were safe for another dive int' saut water; but i'stead a comes down plump on t' back o' t' whale. Ay! yo' may stare, master, but theere a were, an' main an' slippery it were, only a sticks my harpoon intil her an' steadies mysel', an' looks abroad o'er t' vast o' waves, and gets sea-sick in a manner, an' puts up a prayer as she mayn't dive, and it were as good a prayer for wishin' it might come true as iver t' clargyman an' t' clerk too puts up i' Monkshaven church. Well, a reckon it were heerd, for all a were ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... judgment of their God:'—then will he find, as Jeremiah did, that too many of these great and wealthy worshippers of mammon have utterly broken the yoke, and burst the bonds, of all moral law of right and wrong: heaping up vast fortunes amid the ruin of those who have trusted them, and the tears of the widow and the orphan, by means now glossed over by fine new words, but called in plain honest old English by a ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... stream here, winding interminably between low cut banks, edged with dangling grass-roots on the one side and mud-flats on the other. From the canoe he could see nothing above the banks. Landing to take a survey, Stonor beheld a vast treeless bottom, covered with rank grass, and stretching to low piny ridges several miles back on either hand. No tell-tale thread of smoke on the still air betrayed the camp of the man he ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... writing these words I learn that the director of the Tate Gallery has been unable to find, in his series of vast rooms, space for two small and fine works by Cezanne. It is some consolation to know that he has found space for more than twenty by ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... be required for other service just at present, why should not we all take a cruise in her round the island and over to Jamaica, from whence we might even go on to some of the other islands? I am sure that the trip would do your mother and sister a vast amount of good. Have you ever been out ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... our knowledge, had advanced too far to allow the couvade to grow up fresh among them, they at least practised it with some consciousness of its meaning; it had not fallen out of unison with their mental state. Here we find, covering a vast compact area of country, the mental stratum, so to speak, to which the couvade most nearly belongs. But if we look at its appearances across from China to Corsica the state of things is widely different; no theory of its origin can be drawn from the Asiatic and European accounts ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... swiftly built in the Northwest. The Southwest, too, was growing fast. The acquisition of the Louisiana territory,—through an exigency of Napoleon's politics, and the wise inconsistency of Jefferson—had opened another vast domain. At the North, commerce, set free again, spread rapidly, and a new era of manufactures was opening. The South—more diffusely settled, with less social activity, with a debased labor class—caught less of the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... several of the courtiers wore derby hats, and one was in a sack coat and a topper. I am not sure what the fairer reader will think if I tell that one of the ladies had on a dress with a white body and crimson skirt and sleeves, and a vast black picture-hat, and wore it with a charming ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... We passed over vast and gloomy forests, where the solemn pines bowed slightly as the seven Winds swept by; and over green meadows, where flocks of sheep lay huddled together, fast asleep. As we went further and further eastward, the darkness began ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... the world as composed of Protestants, latitudinarians, politicians, statesmen, and fashionable dunces, are in a great measure acquainted with these facts; but knowing the rapidly increasing power of papal Rome, and the vast influence already wielded in this happy land by its priesthood, they prefer to float along with the tide, rather than vigorously resist this blasting system of ignorance, superstition, and crime which, stealthily approaching from the ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... wooden table was set ready for supper. On a very ancient-looking black oak stand—cupboard below and shelves above—was ranged a vast assortment of crockery ware, and on the walls hung potbellied metal jugs and cans which shone ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... aeroplanes were in constant action; they fought, they were shot down, they had their share of accidents. Not only did the repair department make good every loss, but after three weeks of the offensive the army was fighting with fifty more machines than at the outset. One goes through a vast Rembrandtesque shed opening upon a great sunny field, in whose cool shadows rest a number of interesting patients; captured and slightly damaged German machines, machines of our own with scars of battle ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... last two or three years the King of Spain had been in very weak health, and in danger of his life several times. He had no children, and no hope of having any. The question, therefore, of the succession to his vast empire began now to agitate every European Court. The King of England (William III.), who since his usurpation had much augmented his credit by the grand alliance he had formed against France, and of which he had been the soul and the chief up to the Peace of Ryswick, undertook ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... less than nine, owing to 'excessive Military drain' ... On the following day (April 22) a despatch was sent out to the Viceroy, showing that there appeared a deficiency of not less than 5-1/4 crores. This vast error was evidently due to an underestimate of war liabilities, which had led to such mis-information being laid before Parliament, and to the sudden discovery of inability to ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... approximate closely, and keep a course almost parallel. The banks of the Rahad are in many places perpendicular, and are about forty-five feet above the bed. This river flows through rich alluvial soil; the country is a vast level plane, with so trifling a fall that the current of the river is gentle; the course is extremely circuitous, and although, when bank full, the Rahad possesses a considerable volume, it is very inferior as a Nile tributary to any river that I have visited ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... matter of Horror. 'Tis said, Wo to the Inhabiters of the Earth and of the Sea. The Earth still means the False Church, the Sea means the Wide World, in Prophetical Phrasaeology. There was yet left a vast party of Men that were Enemies to the Christian Religion, in the power of it; a vast party left for the Devil to work upon: Unto these is a Wo denounced; and why so? 'Tis added, For the Devil is come ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... essential to general prosperity everywhere, and especially so in republics, where birth, education, or previous condition does not enter into account in giving suffrage. Next to the public school, the post-office is the great agent of education over our vast territory. The rapidity with which new sections are being settled, thus increasing the carrying of mails in a more rapid ratio than the increase of receipts, is not alarming. The report of the Postmaster-General herewith attached shows that there was an increase of revenue in his Department ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... that Crasweller did not see the smoke; but to my eyes, as we progressed, it became nearer, till at last the hull of the vast vessel became manifest. Then as the carriage passed on into the street of Gladstonopolis at the spot where one side of the street forms the quay, the vessel with extreme rapidity steamed in, and I could see across the harbour that she ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... extraordinary effect on the character and on others. It is associated with a well-trained mind and one gifted with self-control. One of the richest voices to which I ever listened was that of the poet TENNYSON. I can remember another man of marvelous mind, vast learning, and aesthetic-poetic power who also had one of those voices which exercised great influence on ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... ready as daring men are to decide and punish. Had ye but our might, ye would long ago have shattered the vast globe, and reduced it to a chaos. Are you not a proof of this yourself, since you so madly abuse the power which you have over me? Go to; go to. The man who does not bridle himself resembles the wheel which rolls down the steep: ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... in clouds and dreams I felt those souls In the abyss, each fire hid in its clod, From which in clouds and dreams the spirit rolls Into the vast of God. ...
— By Still Waters - Lyrical Poems Old and New • George William Russell
... with my hopes and fancie More than the worlds most pretious Empire in Our first embrace. I should runne back into An Infant once agen, and by degrees And tyme grow up to meet so vast a happines. Ages in expectation spent were poore And easy sufferings weigh'd against this triumph! Methinkes I am not man but something of A more exalted essence: humane nature Hath not capacity to understand And owne theis ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... months immediately following demobilisation I was frequently stimulated by glittering visions of vast wealth presently to be showered upon me from the swelling coffers of a grateful Admiralty. During periods of more or less temporary financial embarrassment I would mention these expectations to my tailor and other restless tradespeople of my acquaintance. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... defined territory lying mostly within the Arctic circle to the NE. of North America, from which it is separated by Davis Strait and Baffin Bay; the area is variously estimated from 512,000 to 320,000 sq. m.; the land lies submerged beneath a vast plain of ice, pierced here and there by mountain tops, but it is conjectured to consist of one large island-continent engirt by groups of smaller islands; only on the S. coast, during the meagre summer, is there any appearance of vegetation; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and society, especially in the Southern nations, stand in violent contrast with the multitudinous detail, the secular stability, and the vast average of comfort of the Western nations. Life in the East is fierce, short, hazardous, and in extremes. Its elements are few and simple, not exhibiting the long range and undulation of European existence, but rapidly reaching the best ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... shell; and last of all, a prodigious sea-pie was presented, with an infinite volume of pancakes and fritters. That everything might be answerable to the magnificence of this delicate feast, he had provided vast quantifies of strong beer, flip, rumbo, and burnt brandy, with plenty of Barbadoes water for the ladies; and hired all the fiddles within six miles, which, with the addition of a drum, bagpipe, and Welsh harp, regaled the guests ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... was to introduce and recommend them to such other princes as they had a mind to see: and after many days' journey, they came to towns, and cities, and to commonwealths, that were both happily governed and well peopled. Under the equator, and as far on both sides of it as the sun moves, there lay vast deserts that were parched with the perpetual heat of the sun; the soil was withered, all things looked dismally, and all places were either quite uninhabited, or abounded with wild beasts and serpents, and some few men, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... South Sea on the 28th November, 1620, and proceeded through that vast expanse, to which he gave the name of the Pacific Ocean, for three months and twenty days, without once having sight of land. During a considerable part of this period they suffered extreme misery from want of provisions, such as have been seldom heard of. All their bread and other provisions were ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... soft egg in a vast globe of elastic gelatine. Two creatures swam menacingly through the resisting globe toward him. The gelatine fought against them, but they came on. One was near, and made a mystic pass. He screamed at it, and the gelatine grew stronger, throwing ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... hygienic uncomfortable room on Tavistock Place trying to keep his attention on the "tick, tick, tick, tick" of his two-dollar watch, but really cowering before the vast shadowy presences that slunk in from the ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... remarkable churches in Europe, being nearly 400 feet long by 170 feet in width across the nave, which, inclusive of that covered by the western towers, has seven bays, and three aisles on either side. This multiplication of aisles gives a vast intricacy and picturesqueness to the cross views of the interior; but there is a poverty of detail, and a want of harmony among the parts and of subordination and proportion, sadly destructive of true architectural ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... without any ambiguity saluted illustrious spouse of Jove that art to be; if aught of this hath any charms for thee.[64] Thence madly rushing along the seaside track, thou didst dart away to the vast bay of Rhea, from which thou art tempest-driven in retrograde courses: and in time to come, know well that the gulf of the deep shall be called IO-nian, a memorial of thy passage to all mortals. These hast thou as tokens of my intelligence, how that it perceives somewhat ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... is beginning upon the earth; the great floods have dried up; the rivers are slowly shrinking; the water is penetrating farther and farther into the cooling crust of the earth; and what was ample to drench and cover its surface, even to make a Noah's flood, will be but a drop in the bucket to the vast interior of ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... panorama to be seen from the top of that hill is absolutely the finest in the Forest—a vast champaign, stretching far away to the white walls, tiled roofs, and ancient abbey-church of Romsey; here a glimpse of winding water, there a humble village—nameless save for its inhabitants—nestling among the trees, or basking in the broad ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... of objects and acts may be found to possess occasionally the value of erotic symbols, such symbols most frequently fall into certain well-defined groups. A vast number of isolated objects or acts may be exceptionally the focus of erotic contemplation, but the objects and acts which frequently become ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... first sight. The transitions in real life from well-spread boards to death-beds, and from mourning-weeds to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling; only, there, we are busy actors, instead of passive lookers-on, which makes a vast difference. The actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... of Islands. Next day, on the beach, he read several proclamations, one of which asserted that all British subjects, even though resident in New Zealand, were still bound to obey British laws; and another declared that as white men were tricking the Maoris into selling vast tracts of land for goods of little value, all such bargains made after that date would be illegal, while all made before that date would be inquired into before being allowed. It was declared that if the Maoris in future wished to sell their land the ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... British people be told what their army is doing. Let Lord Kitchener announce its deeds, its courage, its vast unselfishness. Let him put the torch of publicity to the national pride and see it turn to a white flame of patriotism. Then it will be possible to tear the recruiting posters from the walls of London, and the remotest roads of England ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for, with such a face and figure, she would make a capital lady abbess, especially in Italy, to which country she would probably be sent; ladies of her hair and complexion—to say nothing of her height—being a curiosity in the south. With a little care and management she could soon obtain a vast reputation for sanctity; and who knows but after her death she might become a glorified saint—he! he! Sister Maria Theresa, for that is the name I propose you should bear. Holy Mother Maria Theresa—glorified and celestial saint, I have the honour of drinking to your health," and ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... horizon, the sun was shining, and the whole southeastern sky seemed aflame with bands and balls of fire. A vertical ribbon of gradually diminishing lustre, scarcely wider than the sun, was rising into the heavens to meet a vast semi-circle of rainbow beauty arched above the natural sun. Where the strange halo cut the vertical flame and the horizon on either side three mock suns marked the intersection. Above the natural sun and beneath the halo, four other mock suns studded ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... lay, brightened under an advancing lantern, and I heard the steps of two men coming down the hall. It was a steady if not rapid approach, and I was quite prepared for their presence when they finally reached the doorway opposite and stopped to look in at what must have appeared to them a vast and empty space. They were officials, true enough—one hasty glance through the balustrade assured me of that. I even knew one of them by name—he was a sergeant of police and a highly trustworthy man. But how they had been drawn to this place ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... Now death—the vast baffling mystery of death—is Fate's strongest lever to pry men from their philosophy. And death came into this boy's life before his creed was set and hard, and in those first days while he walked far afield, he turned his face to the sky in his lonely sorrow, and when he cried to ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... entail a vast amount of labour. They necessitate the cost, trouble and dirt from having fires in great excess of that required for warmth: the extra time in preparing, mixing and attending to food which has to be cooked: and the large number of greasy and soiled ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... village, nor say How oft and Methinks, and if a Scotchman out of Rob Roy should come to Riverboro and want to marry one of us girls we could not understand him unless he made motions; though Huldah Meserve says if a nobleman of high degree should ask her to be his,—one of vast estates with serfs at his bidding,—she would be able to guess his meaning in ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... this vast assemblage, actually before the assemblage came into existence, there were responsible, animating forces in play. There was also the responsibility for the use or exercise of the operating forces. ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... right vast columns of smoke were pouring above the tree tops, and fiery tongues were licking among the bushes along the borders of the plains. The situation was desperate. He looked, and his eyes rested upon a pile of large boulders several yards away. These were heaped upon a great ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... gone another hundred yards before Moise, stepping back quietly, pointed through an opening in the bushes. There, lying before them in a little glade, lay a vast, ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... the obsequies of the funeral over than my friend and I went to Dalcastle, and took undisputed possession of the houses, lands and effects that had been my father's; but his plate, and vast treasures of ready money, he had bestowed on a voluptuous and unworthy creature, who had lived long with him as a mistress. Fain would I have sent her after her lover, and gave my friend some hints on the occasion; but he only shook his head, and said that we must lay all selfish ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... "Of antres vast, and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven, And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... the Turks, a Cardinal offered a vast sum to redeem the great library founded by Matthew Corvini, a literary monarch of Hungary: it was rich in Greek and Hebrew lore, and the classics of antiquity. Thirty amanuenses had been employed in copying MSS. and illuminating them by the finest art. The ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... lanes, up and down zig-zag stairs cut in the rock, we sauntered alone, and the noise of our iron-shod heels on the pavement, was the only sound we heard. The rich abbey, it was evident, had formerly fed the town clustering round it, the inhabitants of which cultivated its vast domains under a paternal administration. These domains, it was also evident, had passed into the hands of upstart speculators, strangers to the people, and indifferent to their welfare, who did not even know how to make their wealth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... sob from some of the ladies present. After an absence of less than an hour the jury returned and handed in a written verdict; and as the fatal word "Guilty" fell from the white lips of the agitated clerk, the calmest face in that whole vast assembly was that of him whom it doomed to the ignominious death of a felon. And calm he had been ever since the dreadful morning of his arrest; for the vial of wrath had then been broken upon his head, and he had tasted the whole bitterness of an agony which can be endured but a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... like our word thunder. From this we can see that he was the thunder god. In his hand he carried a wonderful hammer which always came back to his hand when he threw it. Its head was so bright that as it flew through the air it made the lightning. When it struck the vast ice mountains they reeled and splintered into fragments, and ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren |
