"Wildness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the crag of Bala Bala. Matthews looked down as from the prow of a ship into the tumbled country below him, through which a river flashed sinuously toward the faraway haze of the plains. The sound of water filling the still clear air, the brilliance of the morning light, the wildness and remoteness of that mountain eyrie, so different from anything he had yet seen, added a last strangeness to the impressions of which the young man had ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the lassitude that suddenly took possession of that adorable face, the only thing that remained expressive and brilliant was the eyes, eyes in which the factitious gleam of the Jenkins pills was heightened by the constitutional wildness. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... a sombre almost savage wildness about Yessney that was certainly not likely to appeal to town-bred tastes, and Sylvia, notwithstanding her name, was accustomed to nothing much more sylvan than "leafy Kensington." She looked on the country as something excellent and wholesome in its way, which was apt to ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... came and went quickly; her heart fluttered with a sudden wildness. "Grandmother," she pleaded, hesitatingly, "oh, Aunt Matilda—just for this once, couldn't I have grey alpaca instead of brown? I hate ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... of passion past when Agnes, recovering herself, started from my arms with horror. She called me infamous Seducer, loaded me with the bitterest reproaches, and beat her bosom in all the wildness of delirium. Ashamed of my imprudence, I with difficulty found words to excuse myself. I endeavoured to console her; I threw myself at her feet, and entreated her forgiveness. She forced her hand from me, which I had taken, and would ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... fortune ever befell a bookish man, I should choose this lodge for my own residence, with the topmost room of the tower for a study, and all the seclusion of cultivated wildness beneath to ramble in. There being no such possibility, we drove on, catching glimpses of the palace in new points of view, and by and by came to Rosamond's Well. The particular tradition that connects Fair Rosamond with it is not now in my memory; but if Rosamond ever lived ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he spoke to her; but, with his thick, short-cropped hair standing on end, a bare head only added to the wildness of his appearance. ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... when we see a wild young man, we say, and justly: "Poor fellow! there are great excuses for him, he has been so badly brought up." True, but his wildness will ruin him all the same, whether it be his father's fault or his own that he became wild. If he drinks he will ruin his health; if he squanders his money he will grow poor. God's laws cannot stop for him; he is breaking them, and they will avenge themselves on him. You see ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... is now," thought Nora, who did not speak. "They are all prim and proper; there's not a single wildness allowed to come ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... while on all sides are broken ridges and chasms and ravines, with masses of piled-up rocks and uprooted trees, with clouds of drifting snow flying through the air, and the hurricane's roar battling through the forest at our feet adding to the wildness of the scene, which is unrelieved by the slightest vestige of animal or ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... woman in Joan had not been hurt by her experiences, because it was only the wildness of youth that had carried her to the verge of making mistakes and then sent her reeling back, she reacted quickly. She was no longer the reckless, heedless Joan—the change made Martin frown. He put full value on her cropped hair and thin body—he had grappled with the scourge, ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... known any. And there- fore we applaud not the judgment of Machiavel, that Christianity makes men cowards, or that with the con- fidence of but half-dying, the despised virtues of patience and humility have abased the spirits of men, which Pagan principles exalted; but rather regulated the wildness of audacities in the attempts, grounds, and eternal sequels of death; wherein men of the boldest spirits are often prodigiously temerarious. Nor can we extenuate the valour of ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... away from home on the Island of Maui, where he had gone to bargain with the Sun, a storm arose. The angry waters roared about the mouth of Hina's cave. They hissed and tossed in ugly blackness down the narrow river gorge; but Hina heard naught of the wildness without. Being used to the noisy cataract, her slumbers were not disturbed by the ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai
... are wharfs where blackfaced men with blue stockings, caps, and gold earrings chatter the patois and smoke their pipes. In the busy time of year there are ten thousand men in the town and it is a scene of constant revelry and wildness. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... extravagances in The Ancient Mariner; the Monthly borrowed Southey's figure of the Italian and Flemish painters, and called The Ancient Mariner "the strangest story of a cock and bull that we ever saw on paper ... a rhapsody of unintelligible wildness and incoherence." The belated review in the British Critic was probably written by Coleridge's friend, Rev. Francis Wrangham, and was somewhat more appreciative than the rest. For further details, consult Mr. Thomas Hutchinson's reprint ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... before they can arrive at the same beauty; it has been observed, that Pere-La-Chaise is not kept in such nice order as those in England, and the remark is just, but I am not quite sure but that I prefer the degree of wildness which there is in the former, and although it may not be so neat and trim as the latter, yet on the whole there is infinitely more of the sublime, aided no doubt from the extreme beauty of the position, and the greater number of splendid monuments, than an infant establishment can ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... in these two families you have typically Use opposed to Beauty in wildness; it is their wildness which is their virtue;—that the thyme is sweet where it is unthought of, and the daisies red, where the foot despises them: while, in other orders, wildness is their crime,—"Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... than its detail, when detail had to be considered. The Italian garden round the house with its formal masses of contrasting colour, its pleached alleys, and pergolas, its steps, vases, and fountains, was as good in its way as the glorious wildness of the Chase. One might have applied to it the Sophoclean thought—"How clever is man who can make all these things!"—so diverse, and so pleasant. And indoors, Duddon was oppressive by the very ingenuity of its refinement, the rightness of every touch. No overcrowding; no ostentation. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... here alone in this old house until you don't see things clearly. Dear Peter, don't you know? You can't go out and talk like that to white folks and—and not have some terrible thing happen to you! Oh, Peter, if you would only marry me, it would cure you of such wildness!" Involuntarily she got up, holding out her arms to him, offering herself to his needs, with her frightened eyes fixed ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... be atoned for. Many a wrong had been done, and the French nation had, no doubt, a right to be angry and to rage as does the lion for a long time kept in subjection, when at last, touched too much by the iron of its keeper, it rises in its wildness, and with withering greed, tears him in pieces from whom it has suffered so long and so much. The French people rose just as the incensed lion does, and determined to wreak their vengeance on their keepers, ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... everything but himself. He blamed the girl. A girl with a face like that had absolutely no right to be loitering in a spot of such enchantment. He blamed the mystery of her gown. Mystery always did for him. He blamed the river and the sylvan wildness all around him and ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... attached to Oriental literature, equal to that produced by Mr Galland's first translation of the Arabian Tales; in which, retaining on the one hand the splendour of Eastern costume, and on the other the wildness of Eastern fiction, he mixed these with just so much ordinary feeling and expression, as rendered them interesting and intelligible, while he abridged the long-winded narratives, curtailed the monotonous reflections, and rejected the endless repetitions of the Arabian original. The tales, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... these feelings made in her conduct and appearance, bore no such construction to the careless observer. Her gay freaks were quite gone, her wildness, her invention. Her dress was uniform, her manner much subdued. Her chief interest seemed to be now in her studies, and in music. Her companions she never sought; but they, partly from uneasy, remorseful feelings, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... with woful concernment Eager to wrap him in fire and accomplish the rites of departure? But with the sanction of Gods ye uphold the insensate Achilles, Brutal, perverted in reason, to every remorseful emotion Harden'd his heart, as the lion that roams in untameable wildness; Who, giving sway to the pride of his strength and his truculent impulse, Rushes on sheep in the fold, and engorges his banquet of murder; So has the Myrmidon kill'd compassion, nor breathes in his bosom ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... word for nature," he said, "for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, to regard man as an inhabitant, a part and parcel of nature, rather than as a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement; if so, I may make an emphatic one, for there ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... month be indulged in, in the interest of health? It serves at least to break the round of habit. Such also was the opinion of Horace. Although the most moderate of men, he found it pleasant to commit an occasional wildness ("dulce est desipere in loco"). With age these outbursts had become less frequent, yet he still loved to break the sage uniformity of his existence by some pleasure jaunt. Then he returned to Praeneste, to Baiae, or to Tarentum, which he had loved so much in his youth. Once he was unfaithful ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... characteristic and original way she had of inclining her head, her long, light-brown hair, the golden sheen of her slightly sunburnt neck and shoulders, and especially her straight nose—all these held me fascinated. Although in her sidelong glances I could read a certain wildness and disdain, although in her smile there was a certain vagueness, yet—such is the force of predilections—that straight nose of hers drove me crazy. I fancied that I had found Goethe's Mignon—that queer creature of his German imagination. And, indeed, there was a good deal of similarity ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens. This was, however, the character rather of his inclination than his genius; the grandeur of wildness, and the novelty of extravagance, were always desired by him, but not always attained. Yet, as diligence is never wholly lost, if his efforts sometimes caused harshness and obscurity, they likewise produced in happier moments sublimity and splendour. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... him for some time. This youth had led a somewhat irregular life both in Spain and in this country, and had become involved in several more or less serious affairs; more, so Gallito averred, from a certain wildness and recklessness of nature than from any criminal instincts. Several of his companions had been arrested and, fearing that he would be also, he had fled to Colina and begged Gallito to shelter him until it was safe for him to go to work in ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... manners or unused element may at first trouble him, and to meet the nature and beauty with which it is filled: we cannot doubt that such a reader will be intensely touched by finding, amidst all its wildness and remoteness, such a startling realism, such subtilty, such close sympathy with all the passions that may move ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... mothers, they united some of the good and not a few of the bad qualities of both, mentally as well as physically—combining the light, gay-hearted spirit and full, muscular frame of the Canadian with the fierce passions and active habits of the Indian. And this wildness of disposition was not a little fostered by the nature of their usual occupations. They were employed during a great part of the year in navigating the Hudson's Bay Company's boats, laden with furs and goods, through the labyrinth of rivers and lakes that stud and intersect the whole ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... boat, when old Mr. Rarx began to be delirious, and to cry out to me to throw the gold overboard or it would sink us, and we should all be lost. For days past the child had been declining, and that was the great cause of his wildness. He had been over and over again shrieking out to me to give her all the remaining meat, to give her all the remaining rum, to save her at any cost, or we should all be ruined. At this time, she lay in her mother's ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... in spite of herself. She saw him one night coming out of a public-house, singing a drunken song. It was a terrible blow to her; she had to question herself much, and to make great efforts to understand a man's nature. She had thought him incapable of such things. The vague stories of earlier wildness she had held no account of. When a woman says 'Oh, that is past,' she means 'It does not ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... or mountain-stag; the last of which, as I was informed by a peasant who was driving a car of oxen, frequently descended to feed in the prairie and were shot for the sake of their skins, for the flesh being strong and disagreeable is held at no account. But notwithstanding the wildness of these regions, the handiworks of man were visible. The sides of the gorge though precipitous were yellow with little fields of barley, and we saw a hamlet and church down in the prairie below, ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... tail—his tail, but a short brush of a thing, scarcely reaching to his hocks. Horns, he had, too—black horns, long and strong, and tapering to a sharper point than is the case with horned cattle, generally speaking. But the feature to which the monster chiefly owed his singular wildness of appearance was his mane, which, in shaggy luxuriance, flowed from neck, shoulders and breast, covering the legs to the knees, and veiling the face almost to ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... had printed a "Letter from the Country," in which the following passage occurs: "Can any wise people think it possible, that the Crown should be so mad as to choose ministers, who would not support public credit? ... This is such a wildness as is never ... to be met with in the Roman story; except in a devouring Sejanus at home, or an ambitious Catiline at the head ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... accomplished, charming, and tender-hearted. But he was weak of will, merely passive in endurance, and quite without energy. He had a graceful, fanciful, but almost weak intellect. I mean, it just bordered on mental deficiency; and at times his dreamy eyes took a wildness that was said to make him painfully like his mother in her last days. He was an absurd but gracefully romantic idea of his family consequence. He was very handsome, and very like the miniature of the late Duke. It was most desirable that his cousin should not meet him, especially ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... "how great a lion Louis is getting to be. He painted a picture of me just as I looked that dreadful morning when I stood in the sunshine and felt that I was blind. It is a strange, wild thing, but its wildness is relieved by the angel-faced boy who looks up at me so pityingly. Louis is perfect, but Maude—oh! I can scarce believe that she ever wore that expression of fierce despair. Strange as it may seem, this picture took the fancy of the excitable French, and ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... top,—the water surged in and out with a thunderous, muffled sough and moan, like a Titan under the earth, pinned down eternally in pain. It was awfully impressive,—so impressive that I reflected neither upon it nor on myself. With this immitigable, adamantine wildness about me, and that abysmal, booming stifle of plaint, to which all the air trembled, sounding from below, I became another being, and the very universe was no longer itself; past and future were not, and I was a dumb atomy creeping over the bare peaks of existence, while out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... contrast of whose polished ebony and whose crimson turban had been at first a source of satisfaction to her, she made arrangements for the production of a crackling flame. This old woman's name was Azarina. The Baroness had begun by thinking that there would be a savory wildness in her talk, and, for amusement, she had encouraged her to chatter. But Azarina was dry and prim; her conversation was anything but African; she reminded Eugenia of the tiresome old ladies she met in society. She knew, however, how to make a fire; so that after she had laid the logs, Eugenia, who ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... he did, without being pressed to stay, he was discovered prancing and gesticulating in the neighbourhood of Callista's prison, so as to excite the attention of the apparitor, or constable, who guarded the entrance, and who, alarmed at his wildness, sent for some of his fellows, and, with their assistance, repelled the intruder, who, thereupon, scudding out at the eastern gate, was soon lost in the passes ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... up, and when she often showed an obstinacy and wildness strange in a girl, her mother would say, with tears ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... and round the fast increasing crowd like a child gone insane. Presently the uselessness of his action made him think of Mother and Fanny. At once he darted off to the spot where he had seen them last, and in his wildness to find them ran past them two or three times, till Fanny saw him and in amazement cried, "Johnny! John! What on earth is ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... rather condescending attitude towards patriotism he had been adopted as the national poet, and seemed since the war of seventy to be one of the most significant glories of national unity. The enthusiastic seemed in the wildness of the Walpurgisnacht to hear the rattle of artillery at Gravelotte. But one mark of a writer's greatness is that different minds can find in him different inspirations; and Professor Erlin, who hated ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... carrying in their hands a cup of gold or silver, in token of the privilege claimed by the City for the lord mayor to officiate as chief butler at the king's coronation. On the return of Edward I. from the Holy Land the citizens, in the wildness of their loyalty, threw, it is said, handfuls of gold and silver out of window to the crowd. It was on the return of the same king from his Scotch victories that the earliest known City pageant took place. Each guild had its show. The Fishmongers had gilt salmon and sturgeon, drawn by eight ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... resemblance to something else—a human face or an animal—than by a beautifully proportioned and irregular crag. The uncultivated human being, again, loves geometrical forms in nature, such as the crystal and the basalt column, or the magnified snowflake, better than it loves forms of lavish wildness. We gather about our dwellings flowers which please by their sharply defined tint, and their correspondence of petal with petal; and yet there is just as precisely ordered a structure in natural objects, which appear to be fortuitous in shape and outline, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the adorable wildness of you, you untamed thing! There were never any shades in you; kiss or kill was your motto, Alice. I felt from the first moment I saw you that you would love me ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... with both eyes at once; even he is unable to withstand the soporific influence of the place, and is gradually falling asleep. But now, he starts into full wakefulness, recoils a step or two, and gazes out before him with eager wildness in his eye. Is it a job, or a boy at marbles? Does he see a ghost, or hear an organ? No; sight more unwonted still—there is a butterfly in the square—a real, live butterfly! astray from flowers and sweets, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... upon their course, until they came to the brow of a steep descent, down which the path ran in a zigzag manner, through a dark, gloomy ravine, now rendered intensely so to our travelers, by the hour, their thoughts, the wildness of the scenery around, and the dense growth of cedars covering the hollow, whose untrimmed branches, growing even to the ground, overreached and partly obstructed their way. By this time only one or two stars were visible in the heavens; and they shone with pale, faint ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... me suspiciously. I think some of the wildness of the woods must still hang about me.—Anyway, I walk along on air, I fear nothing. I could hug all the passers-by. My book is at the publisher's! I could beg, I think, if I had to, and do it serenely, exultingly. I have only a dollar—but have I ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... But the wildness of the gorge was beginning to soften, the two walls of rock to grow lower; they passed between two peaceful hills, with gentle slopes covered with thyme and lavender. It was the desert still, there were still bare spaces, green or violet hued, from which ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... up from the darkness came music. It was human music, but of a wildness and a weirdness that startled the boy as it fluttered and danced across the dull red waters of the swamp. He hesitated, then impelled by some strange power, left the highway and slipped into the forest of the swamp, shrinking, yet following the song hungrily and half forgetting his fear. ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... have, in the sub-typical group, the bison, "wild, revengeful, and shewing an innate detestation of man." In equus, we have, in the same situation, the zebra, which actually shews the stripes of the tiger, and is as remarkable for its wildness as its congeners, the horse and ass, are for their docility and usefulness. To quote again from Mr. Swainson, "the singular threatening aspect which the caterpillars of the sphinx moth assume on being disturbed, is a remarkable modification of the terrific or evil nature which is impressed ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... struck those matches with his hairy hands and let them flare in the straw, till the little red flames ran and licked, rustled and licked, and there was nothing to do but watch them lick and burn. Nor of that sudden wildness of dumb fear that rushed into the heart of the crouching creature, changing the madness of his face to palsy. Nor of the recoil from the burning stack; those moments empty with terror. Nor of how terror, through habit of inarticulate, emotionless ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the two," said Luca di Savelli; "but methinks, in his wildness, the Tribune hath committed one error of which we may ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ladies was so welcome, To handsome Christian ladies so attached, That once a report spread—but 'tis not pleasant To bring that up. Let us be satisfied That we have got him once again—have got him With all the faults and freaks, the starts and wildness Of his warm gentle heart—Oh, Nathan must Give him the maid—Dost ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... inherent in the Aryan nature. Their taste for beauty, especially in form and colour, has always been exquisite; their delight in gardens, in music, and poetry has had a certain refinement, and with many terrible faults—in especial falsehood and cruelty, the absence of the Turkish stolidity, the Arab wildness, and the Hindoo pride and indolence—has always made them an attractive people. Their Mahommedanism, too, is of a different form from that of the Arab and Turk. Theirs is the schismatical sect of Ali, which is less rigid, and ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... rhetorical skill, and delivered with the emphasis and inflection of a great orator. One critic thought it a revelation to find a man who could be eloquent with studied composure, who could be fervid without wildness, and who could hold imagery and metaphor to the steady place of relentless logic without detracting from their special ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of the strange turn my phrensy took. I look back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of Envy. For while it lasted I had many many hours of pure happiness. Dream not Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of Fancy, till you have gone mad. All now seems to me vapid; comparatively so. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the band of Mohawks, old Hendrik on horseback at their head, marched steadily on, warily watching the woods and thickets for their enemies. They, at least, were in thorough keeping with the wildness of the scene, with their painted bodies, their fierce eyes and their glittering tomahawks. But around Robert and Tayoga were the young Philadelphians, trained, alert men now, and following them was the stream of New York and ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... schorl, chlorite, and hornblende. No great elevation is attained—nothing above 160 feet; the grandeur of the coasts, which certainly does not equal that of North Cornwall, consists in their rugged wildness and the fantastic weathering of their crags. Contorted formations, logans and rock-basins, reveal the decomposition of softer measures that has been proceeding for ages. The isles lie about 27 miles west of Land's End, but the ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... natures, there is no sharp line of division, but the most gradual of transitions; a touch here, a trait there, and you are surprised to find the change complete. It was perfectly wonderful, again, to see the combination of wildness and infancy, of terrible and tender, in the young ones, looking up in baby curiosity at the lion-cub, while they held on to breast and dug, and cuddled ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... influence of a new soil. At the top of the hill he saw over into vineyards, and a new strange valley with a winding river, and jumbled, entangled hills. Strange wild country so near the town. It seemed to keep an almost virgin wildness—yet he saw the white ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... sigh—evidently a sigh of relief—and said nothing; but his eyes lost something of their wildness, his countenance cleared visibly, and its drawn look relaxed a little. We all went to our cabin, and the boys cooked him the best dinner the camp could furnish the materials for, and while they were about it Hillyer and I outfitted ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the attempt. The conception is entirely worthy of that Imperial levity with which the war began. But the madcap menace of the French Empire cannot be the measure of German justice. It is for Germany to show, that, notwithstanding this wildness, she knows how to be just. Dismemberment on this account would be only another form of retaliation; ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... stories to tell when we get back," said Rob, "and I don't believe they'll believe half of them, either, about the wildness of this country and the tameness of it. ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... the past Across her mind are flitting fast, Each with a keen, envenomed dart That poisons brain and tortures heart. With breath too quick to lift a sigh, With marble firmness on her brow, With glassy wildness in her eye, She seeks the river's margin now. She springs into a birch canoe, All beaded with the morning dew, And clasping close her mother's pride, Soon gains the middle ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... hours. Our talk—or, rather, my friend's talk—lulled and soothed at last into a calmer flow, almost solemn in its tone, and yet fretted with an occasional wildness ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... from all society, and most of all from the spot where her presence seemed yet to linger. He discovered wild and solitary Culm Rock, and purchased the old stone house. Here, he thought, with the everlasting sound of the sea in his ears, with all the wildness and barrenness about him, and apart from the rest of mankind, he would bury himself, and forget all the bright and happy days which had passed. He left his friends without giving them any clew to his whereabouts, and with faithful old Hagar, who persisted in following him, took up his abode by the ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... and now she turned to him and laid her hand upon his sleeve. There was an intensity, almost a wildness in her expression. "Ah," she cried, "you have missed the photographs. I was afraid of that, but I couldn't get here sooner. I telephoned twice, but I could not reach you. You know that I could not have dreamed of coming here, here to your apartment except for ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... loathsome, contorted countenance, with much the same feeling as one might be supposed to gaze upon a serpent coiling itself around the body, whose deadly fangs, either sooner or later, would assuredly give the fatal stroke of death. She noted the sudden start of Girty, and the wildness with which he peered around him, with feelings of hope and fear—hope, that rescue might be at hand—fear, lest something more dreadful was about to happen. At length Girty started again, and turned his head toward Ella so suddenly, that she had not ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... that is indeed eternal is the influence of desolation; one is apt to be surprised, and by no means agreeably, to find, crouched behind some projecting rock, a piece of architecture which is neat in the extreme, though in the midst of wildness, weak in the midst of strength, contemptible in the midst of immensity. There is something offensive in its neatness: for the wood is almost always perfectly clean, and looks as if it had just been cut; it is consequently raw in its color, and destitute of all variety of tone. This is especially ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... cottager's wife blessed him when he flung his bright smiles around him as he passed along. At no place was he more welcome than at the rectory, nor was there any house in which he felt so happy, not even excepting his own home. With all his wildness he felt the most sincere love and respect for Mr and Mrs Oliphant, and rejoiced in a day spent with their children. And there was one of these towards whom he was drawn with feelings of peculiar tenderness. He was not conscious of it, and would have laughed at the ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... hills. Curious these were, rather than impressive, for their outlines lacked beauty, and the pink fields—on their summits suggested the handkerchiefs of a giant spread out to dry. An occasional outcrop of rock, an occasional wood, an occasional "forest," treeless and brown, all hinted at wildness to follow, but the main colour was an agricultural green. The air grew cooler; they had surmounted the last gradient, and Oniton lay below them with its church, its radiating houses, its castle, its river-girt peninsula. Close to the castle was a grey mansion, unintellectual ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... my range seems to possess attractions for all comers. Here one may study almost the entire ornithology of the State. It is a rocky piece of ground, long ago cleared, but now fast relapsing into the wildness and freedom of Nature, and marked by those half-cultivated, half-wild features which birds and boys love. It is bounded on two sides by the village and highway, crossed at various points by carriage-roads, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... states that the only two land-birds, a thrush and a bunting, were "so tame as to suffer themselves to be caught with a hand-net." From these several facts we may, I think, conclude, first, that the wildness of birds with regard to man, is a particular instinct directed against him, and not dependent upon any general degree of caution arising from other sources of danger; secondly, that it is not acquired by individual birds in a short time, even when much persecuted; but that in the course of successive ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... beef or "razor-backs," and deer which they kill in the woods. The heat, the poor grass, their brutality, and the pest of the flies kill their ponies, and, as a rule, they lack dash and are indifferent riders, but they are picturesque in their unkempt, almost unearthly wildness. A strange effect is added by their use of large, fierce cur-dogs, one of which accompanies each cattle-hunter, and is taught to pursue cattle, and to even take them by the nose, which is another instance of their brutality. Still, as ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... sketched the scenery of this part of Ireland with a free, bold hand. It is not so grand or so wild as the scenery of Western Donegal, but it has both a wildness and a grandeur of its own. Sir Henry Burke's seat of Marble Hill, as seen in the distance from the road, stands superbly, high up on a lofty range of wooded hills, from which it commands the country for miles. And no town I have seen in ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... riddles. For one, her presence in the Danish camp,—for surely, as a chieftain's daughter, she would have been sent on to the care of the Lady of Northampton! Was it not thoroughly in accordance with her elfish wildness to have chosen man's attire and the roughness of camp-life in order to remain near her lover? Her lover! The young noble's lips curled as he glanced at the warrior beside him, at the coarse face under the unkempt ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... chubby, and the small, scrutinizing eyes absolutely sparkle with malice. Here, you say at last, is no poet, indeed, but an unusually cultivated banker or surprisingly adroit solicitor. Here the hair, retreating from the great forehead, begins to curl and roll with a distinguished wildness; here the long mouth, like a slit in the face, losing itself at each end in whisker, is a symbol of concentrated will power, a drawer in some bureau, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... grown sleek at Rosny, and losing something of the wildness which had marked him, presented in the dress M. de Rosny had given him a very creditable appearance; being also, I fancy, the only equerry in Blois who could write. A groom I engaged on the recommendation of M. de Rambouillet's ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... Francisco has not been able to convince the ex-commandante of the power of the great United States. He knows not it can cancel or reject his title to the thousands of rich acres where his cattle graze and his horses sweep in mustang wildness. Even from his very boundaries the plough can now be seen breaking up the breast of the virgin valley. The Don will take no heed. He is blinded by prejudice. Maxime promises the good priest to visit him. He wonders if the savage Don would decline a word. If the frightened, faded ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... abound in all parts of Ceylon, but they are only to be seen in their native wildness in the vast solitudes of the northern and eastern provinces, where rivers, lagoons, and dilapidated tanks abound. In these they delight to immerse themselves, till only their heads appear above the surface; or, enveloped in mud to protect ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... wildness Arlee had carried the last candle to the open hamper and the garments there caught instant fire. She was oblivious of the sparks falling about her, oblivious of the increasing peril. When Kerissen ran to the door, tearing open the bolts, furiously ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... I did not want A letter now! [She reads in great agitation, exclaiming, while her eyes are fixed on the paper.] My husband! doom'd to die! Retaliation! [She looks forward with wildness, consternation and horror. To die, if Andre dies! He dies to-day!— My husband to be murdered! And to-day! To-day, if Andre dies! Retaliation! O curst contrivance!—Madness relieve me! Burst, burst, my brain!—Yet—Andre is not dead: My husband lives. [Looks at the letter.] "One man has power." ...
— Andre • William Dunlap
... suppers, balls, and the like. He was besieged with invitations, sought for by the gayest and the greatest; "Jamie" Dodge conferred upon him the appropriate title: of "The Belle of New York." In his letters home he describes in detail many of the festivities and the wildness with which he has flung himself into them, dilating on his splendid renewal of health, his absolute immunity from fatigue. He attributes this to his indifference to diet and regularities of meals and sleep; but we may guess that it was due to a reaction from having shifted his burden to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of English-speaking stock and those of Dutch, German, and Scandinavian origin, who were associated with them, were still clinging close to the eastern seaboard, the pioneers of Spain and of France had penetrated deep into the hitherto unknown wildness of the West and had wandered far and wide within the boundaries of what is now our mighty country. The very cities themselves—St. Louis, New Orleans, Santa Fe, N. Mex.—bear witness by their titles to the nationalities ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... life upon the stage. When you read of Edmund Kean as, alas! he was later on in life, with mental and physical powers impaired, think of the description those gave of him who knew him best in his earlier years; how amidst all the wildness and half-savage Bohemianism, which the miseries of his life had ensured, he displayed, time after time, the most large-hearted generosity, the tenderest kindness of which human nature is capable. Think of him working ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... humble dwellings remind the contemplative spectator of a production of Nature, and may (using a strong expression) rather be said to have grown than to have been erected—to have risen, by an instinct of their own, out of the native rock—so little is there in them of formality, such is their wildness and beauty." ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... march they encountered a tribe of Indians in all their native wildness. They were very friendly though they had apparently never seen a white man before. Perhaps their friendliness was because they had never yet met any of the pale faces, from whom they subsequently suffered ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... about the old peasant, despite his wildness, that Prescott went with him without objection. Both moving softly, they stepped into another field, the guide going forward as one who knew ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... for battle. If no recruiting officer made his appearance, they met of their own accord in free bands, with the view of pillaging the more peaceful districts and even of capturing and occupying towns, quite after the manner of the Campanians. The wildness and insecurity of the inland districts are attested by the fact that banishment into the interior westward of Cartagena was regarded by the Romans as a severe punishment, and that in periods of any excitement the Roman commandants ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... in our own lark song; something that fills the sympathetic listener with delight, that satisfies his whole being; a siren strain that he longs to listen to forever. The whole breadth and grandeur of the great West is in this song, its freedom, its wildness, the height of its mountains, the sweep of its rivers, the beauty of its flowers,—all in the wonderful performance. Even after months of absence, the bare memory of the song of the mesa will move its lover to an almost painful yearning. Of him, indeed, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... chasing butterflies, plucking convolvulus, wetting their pink, open-work stockings in the tall grass, fresh, wild, without malice, all received, to some extent, the kisses of all, with the exception of Fantine, who was hedged about with that vague resistance of hers composed of dreaminess and wildness, and who was in love. "You always have a queer look about you," said Favourite ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... shoot on them. Every stone, every tree there is eloquent of Chekhov's creative energy. That same autumn he bought the little property of Kutchuka. It was twenty-four miles from Yalta, and attracted him by its wildness and primitive beauty. To reach it one had to drive along the road at a giddy height. He began once more dreaming and drawing plans. The possible future began to take a different shape to him now, and he was already ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... Coburg, as chief of the Coburg family figuring in the place of her parents, and giving her away at the altar. That with such a father, such a mother, and with a husband of such a past reputation for dissipation and wildness, the little princess should have found happiness in marriage, is, to say the least, surprising. But the duke seems devoted to his little wife, while she on her side is completely wrapped up in her husband, and thinks him perfect, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... bittern, the sandpiper, awaken quite a different train of emotions from those awakened by the land-birds. They all have clinging to them some reminiscence and suggestion of the sea. Their cries echo its wildness and desolation; their wings are ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... us talk at all. Let us bide still, and get ourselves refreshed by the sweetness and the wildness ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... her mother's race and from her country of the Marches. He knew more about Nina than Tanqueray had ever known. He knew the Lemprieres, a family of untamed hereditary wildness. He knew Nina as the survival of a hereditary doom, a tragedy untiring, relentless, repeated year after year and foreseen with a terrible certainty. He knew that it had left her with her bare genius, her temperament and ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... remained here during my absence, in anxious expectation of my return with some tidings of her sister. I had none to communicate. For a time I was breathless with my speed. This, and the tremors that shook my frame, and the wildness of my looks, alarmed her. She immediately suspected some disaster to have happened to her friend, and her own speech was as much overpowered by emotion as mine. She was silent, but her looks manifested her impatience to hear what I had to communicate. I spoke, but with so much precipitation ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... said the other. "Yes, that's it, Milburgh. He used to talk about you! That lovely man—here!" He clutched the clergyman's sleeve and Milburgh's face went a shade paler. There was a concentrated fury in the grip on his arm and a strange wildness in the man's speech. "Do you know where he is? In a beautivault built like an 'ouse in Highgate Cemetery. There's two little doors that open like the door of a church, and you go down some steps ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... Menzies, of the Loyal American Legion, writes on March 2d, 1784: "I drew Block No 10 for the Corps under my command, which commences 48 miles above St. Anns, so that whatever becomes of me, it would be wildness to think of carrying my ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... disconsolate lady on horseback, did the same himself, and in a short time arrived at Compostella, neither he nor she speaking a word. Deep affliction was imprinted in both their countenances; but the princess had a wildness in her eyes and air, that discovered the distraction of her mind. Thibault placed her in an abbey, and went and prostrated himself at the feet of the altars; not with the design he went for, but to beg of heaven to enable him to undergo so terrible an adventure. This act of piety ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown |
