"Void" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... give you credit for any philosophy of the kind. Your retrospections must be so totally void of reproach, that the contentment arising from them is not of philosophy, but, what is much better, of innocence. But with me, it is not so. Painful recollections will intrude which cannot, which ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... a friendship, presence alone is happiness; nor is absence wholly void,—for memories, and hopes, and pleasing fancies, sparkle through the hours, and you know the sunshine ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... this act to be carefully examined and considered by their own counsel, and by some of the most eminent jurists in the land, and after such examination they are unanimous in their opinion that it is unconstitutional and void.... The board of directors are trustees of this property, and are bound faithfully to discharge their trust, and to the best of their ability to protect it from spoliation and ruin. They have sought the advice of able counsel, and, after mature consideration, ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... told it to the robin; and he, being neither baker's lad, pieman, nor turnspit, and having a conscience void of offence, would listen, wholly unafraid; then, hopping nearer to Mary Antony, would look up at her, eager inquiry in his ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... the restoration of her ancient sanctuaries, and one or two additional ones. One thing that struck me as a painful void was, the absence of any public monument of the past events of the wonderful history of the Vaudois. It is true, in one sense, that the whole place is a museum of relics; that every rock has some thrilling tale, every mountain slope and hill-side graven upon it the memory ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... you pale and quiet, and strangely crowned with flowers, Lovely and secret as a child. You came with us, Came happily, hand in hand with the young dancing hours, High on the downs at dawn!) Void now and tenebrous, ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... the community the belief is that they who can steer the State along peaceful lines are mediocrities, and they who involve us in war are geniuses and earn the distinction of fame and Westminster Abbey, though it may be that they are totally void of all the essentials that are required to keep on good terms, not only with other Powers, but with our own masses. Take, first of all, the unostentatious old Scotsman, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who was regarded in the light of a mediocrity by the bellicose-minded people. Had he lived ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... those who saw him and made reports as to his conduct on the following day declared that he had apparently been quite indifferent to the disagreeable incidents of his position. But his indifference had been mere acting. His careless manner with his wife had been all assumed. Selfish as he was, void as he was of all principle, utterly unmanly and even unconscious of the worth of manliness, still he was alive to the opinions of others. He thought that the world was wrong to condemn him,—that the world did not understand the facts of his case, and that the world ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... morning and afternoon, when Laurent was absent, Therese went from the dining-room to the shop in anxiety and trouble, at a loss to know what to do to fill up the void in her existence that daily became more pronounced. When not kneeling at the feet of Madame Raquin or receiving blows and insults from her husband, she had no occupation. As soon as she was seated alone in the shop, she became dejected, watching ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... Abbey of Einsiedlen claimed The Alp our fathers and ourselves had grazed, And showed an ancient charter, which bestowed The land on them as being ownerless— For our existence there had been concealed— What was our answer? This: "The grant is void, No emperor can bestow what is our own: And if the empire shall deny us justice, We can, within our mountains, right ourselves!" Thus spake our fathers! And shall we endure The shame and infamy of this new yoke, And from ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... heaven that he invoked and made apparent! Why passed the syllables now coldly and ineffectually across the heart they could not penetrate? Why glittered they before the eye with phosphorescent lustre, void of all heat and might? I could not tell. The charm was gone. It was misery to know it. The minister having concluded, "Brother Buster was requested to engage in prayer." That worthy rose instanter. First, he coughed, then he made a face—an awful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... doctrines and injunctions about good works are real and true as samvriti but in absolute truth (paramartham) we attain Nirvana and then the world with its human Buddhas and its gods exists no more. The word sunyam or sunyata, that is void, is often used as the equivalent of paramartham. Void must be understood as meaning not an abyss of nothingness but that which is found to be devoid of all the attributes which we try to ascribe to it. The world of ordinary experience is not void, for a great number of statements can be made about ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... averaging fifty yards in breadth; we forded it at the junction, and continued to move down the Victoria, keeping all the channels, into which it had again divided, on my left. At about one mile the river there turns to the south-south-west and south, spreading over a depressed and barren waste, void of trees or vegetation of any kind, its level surface being only broken by small doones of red sand, resembling islands upon the dry bed of an inland sea, which, I am convinced, at no ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... between two millstones. The settlers revolted against its authority, and appealed to Virginia; and meanwhile Virginia, claiming the Kentucky country, and North Carolina as mistress of the lands round the Cumberland, proclaimed the purchase of the Transylvanian proprietors null and void as regards themselves, though valid as against the Indians. The title conveyed by the latter thus enured to the benefit of the colonies; it having been our policy, both before and since the Revolution, not to permit any of our citizens ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... constituted, how nervous and serious she was, how personal, how exclusive, what a force of will she had, what a concentration of purpose. Olive had taken her up, in the literal sense of the phrase, like a bird of the air, had spread an extraordinary pair of wings, and carried her through the dizzying void of space. Verena liked it, for the most part; liked to shoot upward without an effort of her own and look down upon all creation, upon all history, from such a height. From this first interview she felt that she was seized, and she ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... his earlier years of practice, while listening to Chancellor Livingston summing up a case in which eloquence was made to disguise the poverty of the cause, Hamilton scribbled on the margin of his brief: "Recipe for obtaining good title for ejectment: two or three void patents, several ex parte surveys, one or two acts of usurpation acquiesced in for the time but afterwards proved such. Mix well with half a dozen scriptural allusions, some ghosts, fairies, elves, hobgoblins, and a quantum suff. of eloquence." ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... very difficult to lay down Rules for the Acquirement of such a Taste as that I am here speaking of. The Faculty must in some degree be born with us, and it very often happens, that those who have other Qualities in Perfection are wholly void of this. One of the most eminent Mathematicians of the Age has assured me, that the greatest Pleasure he took in reading Virgil, was in examining AEneas his Voyage by the Map; as I question not but many a Modern Compiler of History, would be delighted with little more in that Divine Author, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... platform at which he had alighted, and to Lamps's room. But Lamps was not in his room. A pair of velveteen shoulders were adapting themselves to one of the impressions on the wall by Lamps's fireplace, but otherwise the room was void. In passing back to get out of the station again, he learnt the cause of this vacancy, by catching sight of Lamps on the opposite line of railway, skipping along the top of a train, from carriage to carriage, ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... from the form of man; but gather round, And prune their sunny feathers on the hands 455 Which little children stretch in friendly sport Towards these dreadless partners of their play. All things are void of terror: man has lost His desolating privilege, and stands An equal amidst equals: happiness 460 And science dawn though late upon the earth; Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame; Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, Reason and passion cease to combat there; Whilst ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... resist the execution of this decree are declared by the Committee to be traitors to the Revolution, and their orders are herewith declared null and void. ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... by us does not present himself, within the time contained in the presentation, to the prelate who must make the appointment and canonical installation, after the expiration of the said time the presentation shall be void, and no appointment and canonical installation can be made by virtue ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... the agreements, provided the Directors think proper to allow the teas to be sent to any other port, if the Pensilvanians refuse to admit the duty to be paid, or to consume them in that country, in the latter case, our bond to be void. ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... believe," Maria said, "that deep down below the surface of the land lies a sort of soil like a quicksand, and that when the river deepens its bed so that its waters do enter this soil it melts away, leaving a great void, into which the land above does sink, and ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... he would present or consider a petition which I wished to bring before the convention. He read the petition. One clause of our State law is that no woman can sign a will. Some ladies donated property to an asylum. They wrote the will and signed it themselves, and it was null and void, because they were women. That clause, perhaps, will be wiped out. Many gentlemen signed the petition on that account. Governor Wiltz, then lieutenant-governor, told me he would present the petition. He was elected president of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Barbary. The greater part of the desert, however, is seldom visited, except where the caravans pursue their laborious and dangerous route. In other parts, the disconsolate wanderer, wherever he turns, sees nothing around him but a vast indeterminable expanse of sand and sky; a gloomy and barren void, where the eye finds no particular object to rest upon, and the mind is filled with painful apprehensions of perishing with thirst. Surrounded by this dreary solitude, the traveller sees the dead bodies of birds, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the Father, rushed out of the Pleroma; and the Word then made another pair, Christ and the Holy Ghost, who bound together all the AEons, and all together they formed Jesus, the flower of the Pleroma. Meanwhile, the effort of Sophia to escape had left in the void an image of her, an evil substance, Acharamoth. The Saviour took pity on her, and delivered her from her passions; and from the smile of Acharamoth on being set free Light was born; her tears made the waters, and her sadness engendered gloomy ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... passed, excitement and the novelty of it had, until then, supported her. But at that exordium, instantly, they fell away; instantly fear, like a wave, swept over her. Instantly she felt, and the feeling is by no means agreeable, that she was struggling with the intangible in a void. But she had not intended to drown, or no, that was not it, she had not wanted to marry. Aware of the depths, not until then had she known their peril. Until that moment she had not realised their menace. Then abruptly it ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... to religion, it has appeared that the greater part of the Gypsies live without any profession of it; Tollius says, worse than heathens. The more wonderful it is, that a whole people should be so indifferent and void of religion, the more weight it carries with it, to confirm their Indian origin, when all this is found to be literally true of ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... say what he means by Tariff Reform. That is a secret which remains locked in his own breast. He condemns our Budget, he clamours for greater expenditure, and yet he puts forward no alternative proposals by which the void in the public finances may be made good. And as for his opinion about the House of Lords, he dare not state his true opinion to-day upon that subject. I do not say that there are not good reasons for Mr. Balfour's caution. It sometimes happens that the politics of a Party become involved in ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Him to give Madame de Rhetore a life of happiness. Ah! whether it be death, or the obstinate hand of a young girl madly bent on being loved, or one of the blows ascribed to chance, must we not all obey God? Sorrow in some souls makes a vast void through which the Divine Voice rings. I learned too late the bearings of this life on that which awaits us; all in me is worn out; I could not serve in the ranks of the Church Militant, and I lay the remains of an almost extinct life at the ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... with the people exceeded that of persons of more apparent consequence, who regarded every proposal of treaty which did not proceed on the basis of the Solemn League and Covenant of 1640, as utterly null and void, impious, and unchristian. These men diffused their feelings among the multitude, who had little foresight, and nothing to lose, and persuaded many that the timid counsellors who recommended peace upon terms short of the dethronement of the royal family, and the declared independence ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... bedchamber to our Lord the King, and a great man, Madge! Hie thee down when thou art dressed, child, and make up thy choicest dishes. But, good Saint Christopher! how shall I do from seven to one of the clock without eating? I will bid Cicely serve a void at ten." ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... void of Timber and leavel to a great extent; hence the wind from whatever quarter it may blow, drives with unusial force over the naked Plains and against this hill; the insects of various kinds are thus involuntaryly driven to the mound by the force ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... forward as the champion of this movement, and he put forth an argument, known as the South Carolina Exposition, in which he suggested a convention of the State of South Carolina. "The convention will then decide in what manner they [the revenue acts] ought to be declared null and void within the limits of the State, which solemn declaration would be obligatory on our own citizens." The period of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... lover. She has been stolen by the giants, owing to the wiles of her waiting-maid, Loke's helper, the evil witch Angrbode. Od seeks her, finds her, slays the evil giant who keeps her in the cave; but she is still bewitched, her hair knotted into a hard, horny mass, her eyes void of brightness. Unable to gain recognition he lets her go, and she is made by a giantess to herd her flocks. Again found by Od, and again refusing to recognise him, she is let go again. But this time she flies to the world of men, and takes service with Od's mother and father. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... brethren, ever have 'Think-well' written on our forehead?—Well, with God all things are possible. With God, with a much meditating mind, and a true and humble and tender heart, and a pure conscience, a conscience void of offence, working together with Him—He, with all these inheritances and all these environments working together with Him, will at last enable us, you and me, to lift up such a clear and transparent forehead. But not without our constant working together. ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... done an ill deed is the very heaviest calamity that an ill deed ensures, and that in life there is no single secret of happiness comparable to the certain blessing brought with it by a conscience void of all offence. ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... give me passage. Arise! Do not come by grief at my hands.' Hanuman said, 'I have no strength to rise; I am suffering from illness. If go thou must, do thou go by overleaping me.' Bhima said, 'The Supreme Soul void of the properties pervadeth a body all over. Him knowable alone by knowledge, I cannot disregard. And therefore, will I not overleap thee. If I had not known Him from Whom become manifest all creatures, I would have leapt ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... fire and her ears rung with a terrible cry. Often did she clutch at her throat, and often did she drag out her hair by the roots and groan in wretched despair. There on that very day the maiden would have tasted the drugs and perished and so have made void the purposes of Hera, had not the goddess driven her, all bewildered, to flee with the sons of Phrixus; and her fluttering soul within her was comforted; and then she poured from her bosom all the drugs back again into the casket. Then she kissed her ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... sometimes forgot myself to happiness. Felicity, how transient!—transient as the day-dreams that played upon my fancy in the bright morning of love. Alas! not all creation's charms could soothe me to repose. I wandered in search of that which change of place cannot afford. There was an aching void in my heart—an indescribable sadness over my spirits. Sometimes I had recourse to books; but how few were in unison with my feelings, or touched the trembling chords of my disordered mind! Commonplace ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... contract, and so I by water with my Lord Brouncker to Arundell House, to the Royall Society, and there saw an experiment of a dog's being tied through the back, about the spinal artery, and thereby made void of all motion; and the artery being loosened again, the dog recovers. Thence to Cooper's, and saw his advance on my wife's picture, which will be indeed very fine. So with her to the 'Change, to buy some ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... prize. The greater heart in thy appeal to heads They see, thou Captain of our civil Fort! By more elusive savages assailed On each ascending stage; untired Both inner foe and outer to cut short, And blow to chaff pretenders void of grist: Showing old tiger's claws, old crocodile's Yard-grin of eager grinders, slim to sight, Like forms in running water, oft when smiles, When pearly tears, when fluent lips delight: But never with the slayer's malice fired: As little as informs an infant's fist Clenched ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... toward the zenith. Stars faded, winked out, vanished. Silver and purple in the sea gave place to livid gray. Almost visibly the routed night rolled back over the western rim of the world. Shafts of supernal radiance lanced the formless void between sky and sea. Swollen and angry, the sun lifted up its enormous, ensanguined portent. And the discountenanced moon withdrew hastily into the immeasurable fastnessness of a cloudless firmament, yet failed therein to find complete concealment. Keen, sweet airs of dawn raked the decks, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... poet of Prometheus Unbound was not that beautiful and ineffectual angel of Matthew Arnold's fancy, beating in the void his luminous wings. A great moral purpose looked forth from Shelley's work, as it does, Browning would add, from all lofty works of art. And it may be remarked that the criticism of Browning's own writings which considers not only their artistic methods and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... now confess it. For be ye well assured that if any persons are joined together otherwise than in a state of absolute chemical and bacteriological innocence, their marriage will be septic, unhygienic, pathogenic and toxic, and eugenically null and void. ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... the curtain. Cicero on the other hand had been nurtured in a creed and philosophy alike outworn. The blight of finality had fallen upon the moral world, and the physical universe still guarded jealously her mighty secrets. To the eyes of Cicero the mirror of nature was blank void and darkness, while Cardan, gazing into the same glass, must have been embarrassed with the number and variety of the subjects offered, and may well have felt that the longest life of man ten times prolonged would rank but ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... these things take effect in us; in our Spirituality and Heavenly-mindedness; in our Conformity to the Divine Nature and Nativity from above. For whoever professes that he believes the Truth of these things and wants the Operation of them upon his Spirit and Life doth, in fact, make void and frustrate what he doth declare as his Belief. He doth receive the Grace of God in vain unless this Principle and Belief doth descend in his Heart and establish a good Frame and Temper of Mind and govern in all Actions of his Life and Conversation."[56] This translation ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... laughed. Then he thought awhile and bent his broad brows; but soon his face cleared, for he had found a remedy. The King, he said, was surely Eleanor's cousin and within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, so that the marriage was null and void; and the Pope would be obliged against his will to adhere to the rule of the Church and pronounce it so. They were cousins in the seventh degree, he said, because the King was descended from Eleanor's great-great-great-great-grandfather, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... rather pure Ethereal stream, Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun, Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest The rising World of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless Infinite! Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight, Through utter and through middle Darkness borne, With other notes than to the Orphean lyre, I sung ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... assuming the government, was to issue a declaration, through the council of Holland, that the privileges and constitutions, which he had sworn to as Ruward, or guardian, during the period in which Jacqueline had still retained a nominal sovereignty, were to be considered null and void, unless afterwards confirmed by him as count. At a single blow he thus severed the whole knot of pledges, oaths and other political complications, by which he had entangled himself during his cautious advance to power. He was now untrammelled ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his wife, laying her hand upon his arm, and speaking in a low, impressive voice—"Do you really believe that you can give satisfaction to Mr. Jasper in all things, and yet keep your conscience void of offence before God and man? Think of his character and requirements—think of the kind of service you have, in too many instances, rendered him—and then say whether it will be possible to satisfy him ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... beguiled by prejudice and built opinion on the basis of error. If this country should not in the event perform everything which has been requested in the late memorial to Congress, then will my belief become vain, and the hope that has been excited void of foundation. And if (as has been suggested for the purpose of inflaming their passions) the officers of the army are to be the only sufferers by this revolution; 'if, retiring from the field, they are to grow old ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... exceeding chagrin, never knew I a sorer, because of this correspondence and of these verses." And the nurse made answer to her "O my lady, thou art in thy dwelling and thy palace and thy heart is void of care; so return to him a reply and reck not." Accordingly, the Princess called for ink-case and paper and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... speak in this way," said Mrs Oliphant, very gravely and sadly; "you should go on your knees and humble yourself in the dust, not before poor sinners, such as I and my child are, but before Him who alone can pardon your sin. I think you are deceiving yourself. I fear so. It is not that Mary is void of pity. She does not take upon herself to condemn you—it is not her province; but that does not make her feel that she can look upon you as one who could really make her happy. Alas! it is one of the miserable things connected with the drink, that those who have become its slaves cannot be ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... looked past us into the void. "I should like to have had Adrian's last words," she whispered. Then bringing herself back to earth, she begged Jaffery's pardon very touchingly. Adrian's implied intention was a command. She too approved the change. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... Power that drives all mortal things, Upbuoys all being's wanderings, Moved in the void his ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... it should please his Majesty's policy to marry his brother to a royal personage, such as Queen Mary of Scotland, the first marriage would be proved null and void, because the King would command that it should be so, and my daughter would be a dishonoured woman, fit for ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... of the act was contested, and, after solemn arguments, it was deliberately held by the Supreme Court that the provincial charter was a contract within the meaning of the Constitution (Art. I. Section 10), and that the emendatory act was utterly void, as impairing the obligation of that charter. The college was deemed, like other colleges of private foundation, to be a private eleemosynary institution, endowed by its charter with a capacity to take property unconnected with the Government. Its funds were bestowed upon the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... ingenuous admirer. Edwin stammeringly and hesitatingly gave a preliminary sketch of his life; how he had been censured by Convocation and deposed from his See by his Metropolitan; how the Privy Council had decided that the deposition was null and void; how the ecclesiastical authorities had then circumvented the Privy Council by refusing to pay his salary to the Bishop (which Edwin considered mean); how the Bishop had circumvented the ecclesiastical authorities by appealing to the Master ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Mountains make a background against which blue sky can be seen; between them and the eye are so many miles of visible atmosphere, domesticated, brought down to the regions of earth, not resting overhead, a vagueness and a void. Air, blue in full daylight, rose and violet at sunset, gray like powdered starlight by night, is collected and isolated by a mountain, so that the eye can comprehend it in nearer acquaintance. There is nothing so refined as the outline ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... established by the compromise measures of 1850" The "Missouri Compromise," therefore, was not repealed by that bill—its virtual repeal by the legislation of 1850 was recognized as an existing fact, and it was declared to be "inoperative and void." ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... law of Congress not made in pursuance of, or in unison with the Constitution, is an illegal and void law." Coke declared an Act of Parliament against Magna Charta was null ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... hour draws near, howe'er delayed or late, When, at the Eternal Gate, We leave the words and works we call our own, And lift void hands alone. ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... afternoon, at night I lay awake thinking of what I might do to obtain a better result. But my efforts availed me nothing, it was like one who, falling, stretches his arms for help and grasps the yielding air. How terrible are the languors and yearnings of impotence! how wearing! what an aching void they leave in the heart! And all this I suffered until the burden of unachieved ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... living only to eat and to breed, localized, dependent upon place and clime, shaped to specific ends like machines,—to fly, to swim, to climb, to run, to dig, to drill, to weave, to wade, to graze, to crush,—knowing not what they do, as void of conscious purpose as the thorns, the stings, the hooks, the coils, and the wings in the vegetable world, making no impression upon the face of nature, as much a part of it as the trees and the stones, species ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... Church doctrines are a powerful weapon; they were not sent into the world for nothing. God's word does not return unto Him void: If I have said, as I have, that the doctrines of the Tracts for the Times would build up our Church and destroy parties, I meant, if they were used, not if they were denounced. Else, they will be as powerful against us, as they ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... the ship tremble while she rolled under the weight of the seas toppling on her deck. At times she soared up swiftly as if to leave this earth for ever, then during interminable moments fell through a void with all the hearts on board of her standing still, till a frightful shock, expected and sudden, started them off again with a big thump. After every dislocating jerk of the ship, Wamibo, stretched full length, his face on the pillow, groaned slightly ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... no, they will follow more assiduously than ever; for what is there to oppose them, where neither business occupies the time, nor hope the imagination? where the past has left nothing but resentment, and the future opens only to a dismal, uninteresting void? No stranger to life, I knew human nature could not exist on such terms; still less a stranger to books, I respected the voice of wisdom and experience in the first of moralists, and most enlightened of men, [Footnote: Dr Johnson.] and reading the ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... thence, I stept in to it, meaning to sit there; 30 But scarcely had I measured twenty paces— My body bending forward, yea, o'erbalanced Almost beyond recoil, on the dim brink Of a huge chasm I stept. The shadowy moonshine Filling the void so counterfeited substance, 35 That my foot hung aslant adown the edge. Was it my own fear? Fear too hath its instincts![860:1] (And yet such dens as these are wildly told of, And there are beings that live, yet not for the eye) ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... wants to see Mr. Grail,' she whispered, with the momentary excitement which any little out-of-the-way occurrence produces in those who live a life void of surprises. And she glanced at Gilbert, who had heard ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... was married, and went away, and she feared to ask the Missie Ammal to come again, lest people should notice it and talk. So the years passed emptily, "and oh, my heart was an empty place, a void as empty as air!" And she stretched out her arms, and clasping her hands she looked at the empty space between, and then at me with inquiring eyes, to see if ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... seem to have sustained a personal bereavement; when an enterprise succeeds, they have gained a mere instalment of what is to come; but if they fail, they at once conceive new hopes and so fill up the void. With them alone to hope is to have, for they lose not a moment in the execution of an idea. This is the lifelong task, full of danger and toil, which they are always imposing upon themselves. None enjoy their good things less, because they are always ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... wall of the said church of Saint Nicholas de Villeneuve-le-Roy, in such place as is expedient. And the deed of contract for private sale, made between the late spouse of the said Sieur de Saint-Faust de Lamotte and the above-named Derues and his wife, is hereby declared null and void, as having had no value in absence of any payment or realisation of contract before a notary; and the pretended agreement of the twelfth day of February last, as also all other deeds fabricated by the said Derues or others, named in the above action, as also any which may hereafter be ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... iron, the object being to erect the ring truly circular. Before shoving, a 1-1/4-in. turn-buckle was also placed on the horizontal diameter in order to prevent the spreading of the iron, previous to filling the void outside with grout. The approach of the supports for the upper floor of the trailing platform necessitated the removal of these turnbuckles from all but the three leading rings, but if the iron showed a tendency to continue distortion, they were re-inserted ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... the wretched find, Are rapture to the dreary void, The leafless desert of the mind, The waste of ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... following effect: viz., to "henceforth faithfully support and defend the Constitution and the Union of the States thereunder," and to abide by all laws and proclamations "made during the existing rebellion, having reference to slaves, so long and so far as not modified or declared void by decision of the Supreme Court." Those excepted from the benefits of the pardon were first the civil and diplomatic officers of the Confederate Government; second, those who left judicial stations in the United-States Government to aid the rebellion; third, military officers ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... and his confederates; so that he began to entertain suspicion of Mr. Jennings, who he could not help thinking had been at the bottom of them all, and spirited up principles of rebellion in the school, with a view of making himself independent. Possessed with this chimera, which was void of all foundation, the German descended so low as to tamper in private with the boys, from whom he hoped to draw some very important discovery; but he was disappointed in his expectations; and this mean practice reaching the ears of his usher, he voluntarily resigned ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... know him nor do I feel any aching void in consequence," I replied, pointedly interpolating, in two places, the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the popular party. In November, 1673, Pepys was more successful, and was elected for Castle Rising on the elevation of the member, Sir Robert Paston, to the peerage as Viscount Yarmouth. His unsuccessful opponent, Mr. Offley, petitioned against the return, and the election was determined to be void by the Committee of Privileges. The Parliament, however, being prorogued the following month without the House's coming to any vote on the subject, Pepys was permitted to retain his seat. A most irrelevant matter ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... while, the moon was circling about him twenty five hundred miles an hour, and he was whirling with the revolving earth a thousand miles an hour, and spinning around the sun over thirty thousand miles an hour, and swooping with the whole solar system through the blue void with a still swifter gyre in a yet vaster cycle! This is demonstrated physical fact. Its harmonic correlate in the spiritual sphere would be nothing less than a lease of eternal existence for the soul which sees endless ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... his chair. When she reached him, she observed he was awake, but he did not seem to recognise her. A dreadful feeling came over her. She took his hand. It was quite cold. Her intellect for an instant seemed to desert her. She looked round her with an air void almost of intelligence, and then rushing to the bell she continued ringing it till some of the household appeared. A medical man was near at hand, and in a few minutes arrived, but it was a bootless visit. All was over, and all had been over, he ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... been quoting adds the following remarks:—"Born for the most part in the rites of the Greek Church, and circumcised the moment they are bought, they are considered by the Turks themselves as renegades, void of faith and of religion. Strangers to each other, they are not bound by those natural ties which unite the rest of mankind. Without parents, without children, the past has nothing to do for them, and they do nothing for the future. ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... void, dark, and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet or relief In word, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... justified amongst us the flattering reports we had received of him in the European prints; and our theatrical amateurs will feel a disagreeable void in their pleasures when he leaves us. He is engaged on very liberal terms for a few nights in Philadelphia, by Mr. Warren, who lately made a journey to New-York for the express purpose of witnessing his extraordinary powers. Thence it is said, he will proceed to Boston ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... to throw each a stone or brick near the spot, so that in the course of a little time a pile equal to a good wagon-load is collected. The sight of these flags and piles of stones imparts a certain melancholy, not perhaps altogether void of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... cultivating. And last in Duane's thoughts that night was Miss Longstreth. He could not help thinking of her—how strangely the meeting with her had affected him. It made him remember that long-past time when girls had been a part of his life. What a sad and dark and endless void lay between that past and the present! He had no right even to dream of a beautiful woman like Ray Longstreth. That conviction, however, did not dispel her; indeed, it seemed perversely to make her grow more ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... twinkling as usual with pleasure-sails, but sinister with strange instruments of warfare, than he began the attack. "What am I to do with myself?" was the instant question; "what means can I find of occupying this dreadful void of leisure?" To which the obvious reply was: "First of all, you must exhibit to me the famous attractions of Cowes!" "There are none," he replied in comic despair, but we presently invented some, and my visit, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... a time, as old stories rehearse, A friar would need show his talent in Latin; But was sorely put to 't in the midst of a verse, Because he could find no word to come pat in; Then all in the place He left a void space, And so went to bed in a desperate case: When behold the next morning a wonderful riddle! He found it was strangely fill'd up in the middle. CHO. Let censuring critics then think what they list on't; Who would not write verses with such ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... enforcing a just claim against a powerful debtor has always the resource of bringing down upon him a fearful curse by committing suicide before his door. The Rajput chief pretends that the bond is illegal and void, being founded upon an obsolete custom disallowed by the English rulers; but in truth he has brought himself to believe that the blood penalty will not really be paid, and he is struck with horror when the Bhat, after formal and ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... didst teach all lovers speech, And Life all mystery, So shalt Thou rule by every school Till love and longing die, Who wast or yet the lights were set, A whisper in the Void, Who shalt be sung through planets young When this is ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... place before you a living, thinking being; to make therein a little hole, nothing but a little hole, and to see that red liquid flow which is the blood, which is the life; and then to have before you only a heap of limp flesh, cold, inert, void ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... always date the New Year from the day of my first draught. Messer Roberto di Lincoln, with his summer alb over his shoulders, is the true chorister for the bridals of earth and sky. There is no bird that seems to me so thoroughly happy as he, so void of all arriere pensee about getting a livelihood. The robin sings matins and vespers somewhat conscientiously, it seems to me—makes a business of it and pipes as it were by the yard—but Bob squanders ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... statesmen among his contemporaries of greater power and of more brilliant achievement. There has been, I believe, no statesman of sounder judgment and more disinterested patriotism; there have been very few whose departure has left a void in ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... It is so easy to go astray in the seductive paths of the world. Without doubt, for a soul somewhat advanced in virtue, the sweetness offered by the world is mingled with bitterness, and the immense void of its desires cannot be filled by the flattery of a moment; but I repeat, if my heart had not been lifted up towards God from the first moment of consciousness, if the world had smiled on me from the beginning ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... presented to our minds in the union of a Material universe and a Spiritual universe,—a creation visible, ponderable, tangible, terminating in a creation invisible, imponderable, intangible; completely dissimilar, separated by the void, yet united by indisputable bonds and meeting in a being who derives equally from the one and from the other! Let us mingle in one world these two worlds, absolutely irreconcilable to your philosophies, but conjoined by fact. However abstract man may suppose ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... "Discours prononce par l'ordre du roi et en sa presence, le 22 fevrier 1787," by M. de Calonne, controleur-general, p.22. "What remains then to fill this fearful void (in the finances)? Abuses. The abuses now demanding suppression for the public weal are the most considerable and the best protected, those that are the deepest rooted and which send out the most branches. They are the abuses which weigh most heavily on the working ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Darrell, don't say so! It was such a blessing to think, when my son was lost to me, that I might fill up the void in my heart with an innocent, loving child. Don't talk of my abilities. If you, whose abilities none can question—if you had longed and yearned for such a comforter—if you had wished—if you wished now this ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that God would yet our severed loves unite, I had not lived for life to me is void of all delight. I swear there's nothing in my heart but love of thee alone, By God, who reads the heart and brings ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... the Africans was promoted, as had been asserted, by their intercourse with the Europeans, was void of foundation, as had appeared from the evidence. In manners and dishonesty they had indeed assimilated with those who frequented their coasts. But the greatest industry and the least corruption of morals were in the interior, where they were out of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... incalculable influence over the souls of men, the clergy were an important factor in the civil life of Roman Catholic countries. Education was mostly under their auspices; they conducted the hospitals and relieved the poor. Marriages were void unless solemnized in the orthodox manner, and, in the eye of the law, children born outside of Christian wedlock might not inherit property. Heretics who died unshriven, were denied the privilege of burial in ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the consequences, he continued to prosecute it, and twelve months (May 1835) after he first began, the cough had increased much in severity. The expectoration was diminished, and had become more difficult to void from the bronchi, and the breathing was more oppressive, accompanied by a painful tightness across the chest in the morning. The body was considerably reduced in bulk to what it previously had been. The pulse ranged from 80 to 90; the appetite was impaired, and there was in the morning a tendency ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... impossible it was for a lay king, like the sovereign ruling at Tanis, to submit to such restraints beyond a certain point; his patience would soon have become exhausted, want of practice would have led him to make slips or omissions, rendering the rites null and void; and the temporal affairs of his kingdom—internal administration, justice, finance, commerce, and war—made such demands upon his time, that he was obliged as soon as possible to find a substitute to fulfil his religious duties. The force of circumstances therefore ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... suff'rance is the badge of all our tribe; You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, And spet upon my Jewish gaberdine, And all for use of that which is mine own. Well then, it now appears you need my help; Go to, then; you come to me, and you say 'Shylock, we would have moneys.' You say so: You that did void your rheum upon my beard, And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur Over your threshold; moneys is your suit. What should I say to you? Should I not say 'Hath a dog money? Is it possible A cur can lend three thousand ducats?' Or Shall I ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Comas director—was like a rencontre in the void of space; on the water side of the dam the mists matched the hue of the glassy surface and the blending masked the water; on the other side, the fog filled the deep gorge where the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day |
