"Withering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apparent, abandoned, as they then were, alike by man, beast, and bird. No living thing remained in these valleys, for water, that element so essential to life, was a want too obvious in the dismal silence, (for not an insect hummed,) and the yellow hues of withering vegetation." On the next page of the journal, under the events of the following day, what a contrast appears:—"The evening was beautiful; the new grass springing in places where it had been burnt, presented a shining verdure in the rays of the descending sun; the songs of the birds accorded ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... will persuade America by the eloquence of American principles. In one of the fierce Western battles among the mountains, General Thomas was watching a body of his troops painfully pushing their way up a steep hill against a withering fire. Victory seemed impossible, and the General—even he a rock of valor and patriotism—exclaimed, "They can't do it; they'll never reach the top!" His chief-of-staff, watching the struggle with equal earnestness, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... pleasant month of June, sometime, maybe six or eight days, after the birth-day of our good old King George the Third—for I recollect the withering branches of lily-oak and flowers still sticking up behind the signs, and over the lampposts,—that my respected acquaintance and customer, Peter Farrel the baker, to whom I have made many a good suit of pepper-and-salt clothes—which he preferred from their not dirtying ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... out a long withering, wiry note ringing through the leaves and along the brick pavement, and the next instant the leaders were gathered up, the wheel-horses hauled taut, the hub of the front wheel of the coach halting within an inch of the horse-block ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... company felt that way about it, for Dane was not popular. She gave no handle for an active grievance, to be sure. She wasn't superior in the sense in which Dolly used the word. She didn't look haughty nor say withering things to people, nor tell passionately-believed stories designed to convince her hearers that her rightful place in the world was immensely higher than the one she now occupied. One didn't hear her exclaiming ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the utmost reach Of suns, their legions withering at His nod, Died into day hearing the voice of God; And seas new made, immense and furious, each Plunged and rolled forward, feeling for a beach; He walked the waters with effulgence shod. This being made, He yearned for worlds to make From other chaos out beyond our night— ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... as it were, and any extension of their territory impossible by reason of the insurmountable barrier around them, they had led an untroubled life, all unknowing of the fearful forces beneath their feet. But now they found the foundations of the rocks beneath breaking up; that withering, incessant shower of ashes and scoriae destroyed all their crops; the mild and delicate air changed into a heavy, sulphurous miasma; while overhead the beneficent face of the bright-blue sky had become a horrible canopy of deadly black, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Daisy. She flounced her full skirts, cast a withering glance at young Bell, and once more looked out of the ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... Bob Quirk, giving me a withering look; "what is sixty-five thousand dollars on ten thousand beeves, within an hour of delivery and at thirty-seven and a half a head? You all know that the old man has strained his credit on this summer's drive, and he's got to have the money when he goes home. A fifteen or twenty ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... of Greek dwellers at Corinth, and some settlements of various nationalities, including one of Jews, were living there. A few miles away, at the shrine of Poseidon, were held the athletic Isthmian games, and still by the sea-shore there grow the pine trees, such as furnished the quickly withering wreaths which were given to ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... was hopelessly roused. "Never did that before," gurgled out of his net, just as we were dropping off once more; but a withering request from the Dandy to "gather experience somewhere else," silenced him till dawn, when he had the wisdom to rise without ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... alone. A maid had, indeed, a hard time to live in colonial days, did she persevere in her singular choice of remaining single. Perhaps the colonists "proverb'd with the grandsire phrase," that women dying maids lead apes in hell. Maidens "withering on the virgin thorn," in single blessedness, were hard to find. One Mistress Poole lived unmarried to great old age, and helped to found the town of Taunton under most discouraging rebuffs; and in the Plymouth church record of March ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... flowerlike that it is always a little fresh surprise to see them blooming in winter. Their tenderness, their down, their colour, their fulness—which is like that of a thick rose or of a tight grape—look out of season. Children in the withering wind are like the soft golden-pink roses that fill the barrows in Oxford Street, breathing a southern calm on the north wind. The child has something better than warmth in the cold, something more subtly out ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... This dessication or withering takes place everywhere; but in some places the surplus of fruit, which the tree is unable to nourish, is alone subject to it. In others, as Araquita and Caucagua, it withers in proportion to the northerly rains. An unsuitable soil occasions another kind of decay. The pods become stinted, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... for the prisoner turned to me with a bow. "Yes, sir," he said with dignity, "I am M. de Pavannes. I have not the honour of knowing you, but you seem to be a gentleman." He cast a withering glance at the captain as he said this. "Perhaps you will explain to me why this violence has been done to me. If you can, I shall consider it a favour; if ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... prone on the ground then and poured a withering fire into the fort and trenches, which quickly ...
— The Battle of Bayan and Other Battles • James Edgar Allen
... laughing devil in his sneer, That caused emotions both of rage and fear: And where his frown of hatred darkly fell, Hope, withering ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... morning dawned after a restless, sleepless night. Phantoms of terror haunted her couch. The agonies of anticipated remorse had cast a withering shadow on her thoughts. She could not believe her own depravity in entertaining for a moment such a ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the corrupt jury, to bribe the hangman, and to erect the infamous gallows, would hesitate to inflict so horrible a doom: not, I am well aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but with the fear before it of the withering scorn of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that we were sitting down in some safe place, instead of travelling on horseback over this withering tract, and that I had the map before me to make you understand ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... are, first the hospice of the French Jesuits, now officers' quarters; then a long white shed, the soldiers' hospital; and highest (1,700 feet) the box which lodges their commandant. Even the seldom-seen 'Sugarloaf' was fairly outlined against the mild blue vault. Although the withering hand of summer was on the scene, the old charnel-house looked lovely; even the low lines of the Bullom shore borrowed a kind of beauty from the air. The hues were those of Heligoland set in frames of lapis lazuli above and ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... they had worked reasonably hard already, their faces grew gaunter and harder under the strain, and as yet they had come upon little sign of any richer ore. In the meanwhile it was very hot, and all day the withering sprays of the fallen firs emitted heavy, honey-like odors under the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... disappointment, and the barrenness of his future. The hot sun beat down upon the shadeless prairies with the intensity of a living flame. But it seemed as nothing to the heat of his own passion—his own fiery rebellion against the decree of destiny—altogether powerless against the withering despair that had choked all the aspirations and ambitions which, his whole life long, he had cultivated and nourished in the soil ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... through the withering cold and powdery snow moved the black figure of despair tottering slowly away from the sound of rifles which grew fainter at each step. He chattered and mumbled, half to himself, half to the unseen influences of nature, while the ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... that bears the band of shame within her breast, And wanders through the mocking land, denied a place of rest? What one is this, your hue and cry pursue with withering hate, Until her best hope is to die, nor meet ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard
... later—had begun. Bright treated them with characteristic contempt. He inveighed with all his force against the men who were going about declaring that Mr. Gladstone was unfit to be the leader of the party, and, with that accent of withering scorn which was one of his most formidable weapons as an orator, he cried, "If they have another leader who can take Mr. Gladstone's place, why do they not let us see him? Where have they been hiding him until now?" That single ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... noticed, here and there, gray hairs among his black ones. Tiredness was written on Kamala's beautiful face, tiredness from walking a long path, which has no happy destination, tiredness and the beginning of withering, and concealed, still unsaid, perhaps not even conscious anxiety: fear of old age, fear of the autumn, fear of having to die. With a sigh, he had bid his farewell to her, the soul full of reluctance, and full of ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; Another race the following spring supplies; They fall successive, and successive rise: So generations in their course decay; So flourish these when ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Brussels carpet, and even the oilcloth around the toilette-table was remembered. They saw that the round table was covered with a red tablecloth, and that writing materials were there, a pair of stays, a pair of tan gloves, and some withering flowers. They saw the ball-dress that Lady Helen had worn thrown over the arm-chair; the silk stockings, the satin shoes—and a gleam of sunlight that found its way between the blinds fell upon a piece of white petticoat. Lady Helen lay in the ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... intensive thrift and caution—a most domesticated civilization in the most thickly- populated workshop in Europe, counting every blade of grass and every kernel of wheat and making its pleasures go a long way at small cost; a hothouse of a land, with the door about to be opened to the withering blast of war. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... of the world, to win which we are bidden to sacrifice our moral manhood; this frown of the world, whose terrors are more awful than the withering up of truth and the slow going out of light within the souls of us? Consider the triviality of life and conversation and purpose, in the bulk of those whose approval is held out for our prize and the mark of our high calling. Measure, if you can, the empire ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... La Cibot, with a withering look at Pons. "You may keep well for all the harm I wish you. When you can speak to me pleasantly, when you can believe that what I do is done for the best, I will come back again. Till then I shall stay in my own room. You were like my own child to me; did anybody ever see a child revolt ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... as we walked through it, with a brittle dryness that testified how perfectly parched-up was everything. A single spark would instantly have wrapped the whole face of the country in one sheet of fire. Slight blasts of heated withering air, as if from an oven, would occasionally strike the face as we walked along; sometimes they were loaded with those peculiar and most agreeable odours that arise from different kinds of gums. Still the white eucalyptus and the palm, wore in comparison with the other vegetation, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... a pernicious one. He who for ever thinks, that his "charity must begin at home," is in great danger of becoming an indifferent citizen, and of withering those feelings of philanthropy, which in all sound estimation constitute the crowning glory of man. He will perhaps have a reasonable affection towards what he calls his own flesh and blood, and may assist even a stranger ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... driver of the green taxi, saw that. And he was so fearful lest the driver of the red omnibus should lose one withering participle of the apostrophe he had provoked, that he could not be bothered with the exigencies of traffic and the Rule of ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... acts of mutual kindness, and he now stood forth to avenge them with a good will. The friends of Verres tried to procure a Praevaricatio, or sham accusation, conducted by a friend of the defendant, but Cicero stopped this by his brilliant and withering invective on Caecilius, the unlucky candidate for this dishonourable office. The judges, who were all senators, could not but award the prosecution to Cicero, who, determined to obtain a conviction, conducted it with the utmost despatch. Waiving his right to speak, and bringing on the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... meprisable." The spelling in her tumultuous notes threw a light upon that of very fine ladies in the seventeenth century. She made no effort to be exact, and much of her correspondence was made obscure by initials, which she expected her friends to interpret by divination. From a withering denunciation of the Government she expressly excepts Mr. John Burns and "that much-abused Mr. Birhell, whom I like." From about 1899 to 1903, I think that Lord Wolseley was the friend who occupied most of her thoughts. In her letters of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the painted wooden altar. He knelt down and endeavored to collect his thoughts, but the rude surroundings of this rustic sanctuary did not tend to comfort his troubled spirit, and he became conscious of a sudden withering of all religious fervor. He turned and left the place, taking a path that led through the forest. It did not interest him more than the village; the woods spoke no language which his heart could understand; he could not distinguish an ash from an oak, and all the different ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... with withering scorn. 'But, then, I thought you were trying to catch him. He tells me now you won't have him, and you won't tell him where you are going. I call it sheer insolence. Where do you hail from, girl, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... let me pluck that silver hair Which 'mid thy clustering curls I see; The withering type of time or care Has nothing, sure, to do with thee. The Grey Hair. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... stars would not have been divided into the signs of the Zodiac but for the fanciful eye of astrologers. Automata might arise and be destroyed without any value coming or going; only a form-loving observer could say that anything fortunate or tragic had occurred, as poets might at the budding or withering of a flower. Some of nature's automata, however, love themselves, and comment on the form they achieve or abandon; these constellations of atoms are genuine beasts. Their consciousness and their interest in their own individuality rescues that individuality from the realm ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... emblems of mourning turned her childish mind away from the object of her journey, and left her as unconscious as the young girl herself that the mortgage had extended from the land to the lives of herself and her husband, and that in that promise it had laid its withering hand on the future of her ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... have found the garden—except, perhaps, for the big yellow pumpkins that lay about unprotected by their withering vines—and I felt very little interest in it when I got there. I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... the fig-tree? It was not in the least to blame; and it seems most unreasonable to have expected it to bear figs out of season. Instead of withering it away, it would have been as great a miracle, and far more beautiful, and, one would think, of more beneficent influence, to have made it suddenly rich with ripe fruit. Then, to be sure, it might have died joyfully, having answered so good a purpose. I have been reminded of this ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... longer had she sung:—but with a frown, Revenge impatient rose: He threw the blood-stained sword in thunder down; And with a withering look The war-denouncing trumpet took And blew a blast so loud and dread, Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe! And ever and anon he beat The doubling drum with furious heat; And, though sometimes, each dreamy pause between, Dejected Pity, at his side, Her soul-subduing voice applied, Yet still ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of home truths in language that it seemed there was no possibility of misunderstanding; and they had done all this so convincingly that the dormant spirit of good that was in him had been effectually awakened. The withering scorn with which his sister had commented upon his behaviour in general and the offensive and contemptible traits of character that he had flaunted so flagrantly in all our faces had scorched and shrivelled his boyish soul; the picture of himself as others saw ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... old servant, though bare and withering like the scathed oak, was inexpressibly welcome to one who so deeply suffered from the crimes of duplicity. Williams soon recovered his strength under the care of his dear old master; and though the mountain ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... and patches on my tattered uniform, for steering me clear of the camp followers; but more than all for the cheery words of solace for those 'gone West,' for the blessed face of a woman from the homeland in the midst of withering blight and desolation—for these I am indebted to ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... helpless hands were frozen: For she, the woeful mother, had gone mad, And laid it down, regardless of its fate And of her own. Yet had she many days Of sorrow in the world, but never wept. She lived on alms; and carried in her hand Some withering stalks, she gathered in the spring; When they asked the cause, she smiled, and said, They were her sisters, and would come and watch Her grave when she was dead. She never spoke Of her deceiver, father, mother, home, Or child, or heaven, or hell, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... wolves! O grant my prayer, That I may see, before I die, the seed Of Irij hurl just vengeance on the heads Of his assassins; hear, O hear my prayer." —Thus he in sorrow for his favourite son Obscured the light which might have sparkled still, Withering the jasmine flower of happy days; So that his ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... seemed to leap upon them from almost every angle. Some of the enemy machine-guns were captured by our troops, who used them with deadly effect upon the then retiring foe. All the objectives were obtained with clock-like precision. Again and again the victorious troops were subjected to withering counter-attacks, and shells fell around them like hail. There was no faltering. They held the recovered ground in the face of a merciless tornado ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... sunlight. Her eyes sparkled, but there was no triumph in the girl's fine, resolute face. This man might lay his father's wealth at her feet, borrowed plumes in which he was quite content to shine; his heart—and a smile of withering scorn crossed her red lips. She would be a little dearer than his horse: dogs the fastidious man could not endure. Practically his wooing ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... haste to be rich, that has taken hold of the heart and life of too many professedly Christian parents. There is no time for God's Word or earnest prayer with and for the children. There is often little if any religious instruction or Christian example. The little ones breathe in a withering, poisonous, materialistic atmosphere. The germs of the divine life, implanted in baptism, either lie dormant, or are blighted after their first manifestations. They grow up with the idea that the great object of life is to gain the most, and make ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... abruptly, "your doll-baby face does your intelligence an injustice—Miss Smith, I apologize." And before the astonished and indignant Alicia could summon a withering retort, he added heartily: "This whole place is quite the real thing, you know—almost too good to be true and too true to be good. Would you mind telling me how you happened to think of letting me ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... mischief. If the flames are once fairly kindled in dry weather, they will spread in all directions as the wind varies, burning sometimes for weeks together, until they have swept over miles of woodland, withering the verdure, destroying the wood already cut, and greatly injuring many trees which they do not consume. Several years since, in the month of June, there was quite an extensive fire on the eastern range of hills; it lasted for ten days or a fortnight, spreading several miles ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... more so. The air overhead in its upper chambers were hurtling with the obscure sound; was dark with sullen fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty years. The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had re-opened the wounds of France. Crecy and Poictiers, those withering overthrows for the chivalry of France, had been tranquillized by more than half a century; but this resurrection of their trumpet wails made the whole series of battles and endless skirmishes take their stations as parts in one drama. The graves that had closed sixty years ago, seemed to fly open ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... but that he had taken no active part in affairs for about ten years, he concludes, in a clever vein of compliment, thus: "If you graciously please to extend indulgence to your suppliant in taking me out of this withering durance, you will find mercy will establish you more than power, though all the days of your life were as pregnant with victories as your twice-auspicious Third of September." The appeal to Cromwell's magnanimity was successful. Cleveland was released, came to London, and lived ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... these pictures is undoubted; wherever they hang, and they hang everywhere, except in the New English Art Club, couples linger. "How charming, how beautifully dressed, how refined she looks!" and the wife who has not married a man a la hauteur de ses sentiments casts on him a withering glance, which says, "Why can't you afford to let me be painted ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... If it goes on, my aunt will have an administration as important as that of a European state. Oh! you are happy here, you people; you are busy. I amuse myself! And if you knew how it wearies me! I am withering, consuming myself, ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... it's form that of the red currant common to our gardens. the perianth of the fructification is one leaved, five cleft, abreviated and tubular, the corolla is monopetallous funnel-shaped; very long, superior, withering and of a fine orrange colour. five stamens and one pistillum; of the first, the fillaments are capillare, inserted into the corolla, equal, and converging; the anther ovate, biffid and incumbent. with rispect to the second the germ is roundish, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... regard such visions have for ever fled and all is cancelled but being aware that tender relations are in contemplation beg to state that I heartily wish well to both and find no fault with either not the least, it may be withering to know that ere the hand of Time had made me much less slim than formerly and dreadfully red on the slightest exertion particularly after eating I well know when it takes the form of a rash, it might ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... which something could be written, two stanzas on the 'shadow of the chrysanthemums,' and the 'dream about chrysanthemums' must be tagged on as numbers ten and eleven. While the last section should be 'the withering of the chrysanthemums' so as to bring to a close the sentiments expressed in the foregoing subjects. In this wise the fine scenery and fine doings of the third part of autumn, will both alike be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a dark and misty Sunday morning in July, his regiment was ordered to charge across the river Ourcq and take the hill beyond, from where the enemy's machine guns were pouring down a withering rain of bullets. His own battalion, he learned, was not to be in the lead. So he promptly asked and obtained permission ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... turned towards them, a little drooping, his hands in their own natural position on breast and neck. A faint pink-tinted wrapper lay in soft folds about him, with its white frills at neck and wrists,—on his breast a bunch of the first snowdrops spoke of the "everlasting spring, and never withering flowers!" ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... only as memories: she judged them as we judge transient and departed things. All existence seemed to beat with a lower pulse than her own, and her religious faith was a solitary cry, the struggle out of a nightmare in which every object was withering and shrinking away from her. Each remembered thing in the room was disenchanted, was deadened as an unlit transparency, till her wandering gaze came to the group of miniatures, and there at last she saw something which had gathered new breath and meaning: it was the miniature of Mr. Casaubon's ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... on the road, and if he don't slip you one with a shovel for your withering ignorance he'll tell you just what I'm telling you now. Yes, you and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... did that, did you?" interposed Isobel, contemplating him steadily. "Well, I am glad to know who could have been so cowardly," she added with withering contempt. "Now I begin to wonder whether a letter which some years ago, I brought to the Abbey House to be forwarded to Godfrey, was ever posted to him who did not receive it, or whether, perhaps, it fell into the ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... and although the plunging fire scathed and devastated the dark ranks of the Guards, on they came,—Ney himself, on foot, at their head. Twice the leading division of that gallant column turned completely round, as the withering fire wasted and consumed them; but they were ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... these things! for—light as is the task to traders in death's dark trappings; painful and soul-subduing are those withering details to the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... after phasis, by unalterable laws, towards prescribed issues? How often must we say, and yet not rightly lay to heart: The seed that is sown, it will spring! Given the summer's blossoming, then there is also given the autumnal withering: so is it ordered not with seedfields only, but with transactions, arrangements, philosophies, societies, French Revolutions, whatsoever man works with in this lower world. The Beginning holds in it the End, and all that leads thereto; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... degree)—true yellow fever, which is no more than the highest grade of malarious disease; but this has never occurred in European towns, unless during the driest seasons—seasons actually blighted by drought, when hot withering land winds have destroyed surface vegetation, and as in the locality of Gibraltar, have left the low-lying becalmed, and leeward town to corrupt without perflation or ventilation amidst its own accumulated exhalations. I know not how I can ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... wife, whose existence he had not noticed hitherto, more agreeable than Lady Dunstable's table with its racked countenances, and its too ample supply of pencils and paper. A deadly crime! When Lady Dunstable, on the stroke of midnight, swept through the rooms to gather her guests for bed, she cast a withering glance on Doris and ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... turnpike, behind which is a grove swarming with rebel troops. Our boys are almost on the road, when, at a distance of less than thirty yards, they find themselves confronted by overwhelming numbers, who pour a withering fire into their ranks. The Seventy-seventh receives the fire nobly, and, although far ahead of all the other regiments, stands its ground and returns the fire with spirit, although it is but death ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... them back to Merrytown the day after commencement. At last he stood in the doorway of the Nu Delta house and welcomed his father, but he had forgotten all about that youthful dream. He was merely aware that he was enormously glad to see the "folks" and that his father seemed to be withering into an ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... private charge uttered in a tone of withering scorn was that the President failed to respond as a man would to the national insult offered by Germany in sinking the Lusitania because there was something womanish about him and he would tell, to prove ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... enemy's horse suddenly appeared on the flank of the column of Infantry compelling them to form square to resist cavalry, and thus the brave little party were placed in a precarious position, being cut off from their supports. A withering volley from the right and rear face of the square, followed by a rapid file-firing from the standing ranks, emptied quite a number of saddles and drove the ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... bold myriads on the withering heath Stay the fell SYROC'S suffocative breath; 65 Arrest SIMOOM in his realms of sand, The poisoned javelin balanced in his hand;— Fierce on blue streams he rides the tainted air, Points his keen eye, and waves his whistling hair; While, as he turns, the undulating ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... welded into the past, My love of you with the purple Indian dusk, With its clinging scent of sandal incense and musk, And withering jasmin flowers. My eyes grow dim and my senses fail at last, While the lonely hours Follow each other, silently, one by one, Till the night is ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... and fiercely heaved his bosom in his shame, And his red glance fell on Karna like a tongue of withering flame! ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... never," laughed Bessie, casting a backward and withering glance at the aliens as she moved away with her trayful of scarlet blossoms to the branchers' table, where another relay of workers twisted green leaves among the scarlet and tied them ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... - That by custom of this clime, Even from immemorial time, We, or our forefathers old (As in Withering's list enrolled) Have in occupation been Of all nooks and corners green Where the swelling meadows sweet With the waving woodlands meet. There we peep and disappear, There, in games to fairies dear All the spring-tide hours we ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... of his wife, who seemed to be the chief partner in the firm, and we were glad to accept his offer; while the incapacitated man whom we had rejected acquiesced in the new arrangement with a bow so little withering, and with such genuine politeness, that, in spite of his over-much wine, he won my heart. The landlord himself did not profess to know the glacieres; but he knew the man who lived nearest to them, and proposed to lead us to his friend's chalet, whence we should doubtless ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... French public does nothing at such a time; it remains absorbed in its concerts at Paris, where everyone knows everyone else so well that they are not able and do not dare to criticise freely. And so our art is withering away in an atmosphere of coteries, instead of seeking the open air and enjoying a vigorous fight with foreign art. For the majority of our critics would rather deny the existence of foreign art than try to understand it. Never have I regretted their ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... brides? They say holy Church is His Bride, and she is one. Then how can all the vestals in all the convents be each of them His bride? I suppose I cannot understand as I ought to do. Perhaps I should have understood better if that might have been had been—if I had not stood withering all these years, taught to crush down this poor dried heart of mine. They will not let me have any thing to love. When Mother Ada thought I was growing too fond of little Erneburg, she took her away from me and gave ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... you petty spirits of region low, Offend our hearing; hush! How dare you ghosts Accuse the thunderer, whose bolt, you know, Sky-planted batters all rebelling coasts? Poor shadows of Elysium, hence, and rest Upon your never-withering banks of flowers. Be not with mortal accidents opprest: No care of yours it is; you know 'tis ours. Whom best I love I cross; to make my gift, The more delay'd, delighted. Be content; Your low-laid son our godhead will uplift. His ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... is far better than that calm and withering heat—this rouses me," said Amine, as she cast her eyes up, and watched the forked lightning till her vision became obscured. "Yes, this is as it should be. Lightning, strike me if you please—waves wash me off and bury me in a briny tomb—pour the wrath of the whole elements ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... long, lazy days on the Palomar. June had cast its withering smile upon the San Gregorio and the green hills had turned to a parched brown. Grasshoppers whirred everywhere; squirrels whistled; occasional little dust-devils whirled up the now thoroughly dry ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... the Psammead with withering irony, 'not at all! Of course not! Quite the contrary! Exactly so! Only she happened to wish that she might soon find herself in your country. And soon may mean ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... in most cases to have been brought into action by the impulse of private malice. They occasioned mortality of greater or less extent in man and beast. They blighted the opening prospect of a plentiful harvest. They covered the heavens with clouds, and sent abroad withering and malignant blasts. They undermined the health of those who were so unfortunate as to incur their animosity, and caused them to waste away gradually with incurable disease. They were notorious two or ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... exclaimed Elise, with a withering glance. "The idea of anybody being in such company as ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... mother,—Madame Grandet rapidly approached her end. Every day she grew weaker and wasted visibly, as women of her age when attacked by serious illness are wont to do. She was fragile as the foliage in autumn; the radiance of heaven shone through her as the sun strikes athwart the withering leaves and gilds them. It was a death worthy of her life,—a Christian death; and is not that sublime? In the month of October, 1822, her virtues, her angelic patience, her love for her daughter, seemed to ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... cast a withering look at his clerk, but the mischief was done: denial was useless. He seemed fated to blunder in this affair. "Well, yes," he declared, "it's true. Valorsay HAS defrauded me, and I have sworn to have my revenge. I won't rest until ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... I had been chasing Cuthbert. I had a store of withering phrases burning to be poured over his unmentionable head. ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... along the line. Moments are ages now. Seconds are years. How fast men live when everything is at stake! Ah! but how fast they die down in that ravine! Up, down, across, through, over it, drive the withering blasts, cutting, tearing, sweeping through the column, which shakes, wavers, totters, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... there. A fine, big, strapping young woman she was, with a strong face, and a pair of fearless, black eyes. She sat bolt upright against the log wall, talking to Mary Lauchie, a sweet, pale-faced girl; and occasionally casting a withering glance in the direction of the bench behind the stove, where the Weaver was alternately striving to efface himself and to attract ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... coolly. "Isn't that just what is the matter? The sex-imagination often outlives the withering of the sex-glands. Come now, admit it. Forget that you are a pastel-tinted remnant of the old order and ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the abruptness and monotony in the Inferno, are excessive: but the interest never flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power is in combining internal feelings with external objects. Thus the gate of hell, on which that withering inscription is written, seems to be endowed with speech and consciousness, and to utter its dread warning, not without a sense of mortal woes. This author habitually unites the absolutely local and individual with the greatest wildness and ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... personal prejudices, and galling hatreds against conspicuous sinners, not Sin—which so widely prevail among men of warped understandings and unchristian and uncharitable hearts. No; the superstitions and dogmas concerning Sin had not laid their withering maxims upon our hearts. We perceived how that evil was but good disguised, and a knave a saint in his way; how that in other planets, perhaps, what we deem wrong, may there be deemed right; even as some substances, without undergoing any mutations in themselves ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Halliwell and Mrs. Cravens, but that one is a mental vacuum and the other a ripsnortin' old virago is established beyond the peradventure of a doubt. Everybody connected with the Karnival is doing the Artful Dodger act to escape the withering storm of indignation which the pitiful episode called forth from the American people. The most encouraging feature of the whole affair is the withdrawal of several of Chillicothe's society girls from the contest because of the gratuitous ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the year we put the bottom paddock under potatoes. Dad was standing contemplating the tops, which were withering for want of rain. He shifted his gaze to the ten acres sown with corn. A dozen stalks or so were looking well; a few more, ten or twelve inches high, were coming in cob; the rest had ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... very bad, O'Brien," said another scribe mournfully. "Forgive him, Senator. I will have something to say to him later." Withering glances were cast at the unlucky one, who seemed about to sink under the table, and the wind outside howled dismally, and rattled the ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... dwell upon the dead! Poor wretched Outcast! I will weep for thee, And sorrow for forlorn humanity. Yes I will weep, but not that thou art come To the stern Sabbath of the silent tomb: For squalid Want, and the black scorpion Care, Heart-withering fiends! shall never enter there. I sorrow for the ills thy life has known As thro' the world's long pilgrimage, alone, Haunted by Poverty and woe-begone, Unloved, unfriended, thou didst journey on: Thy youth in ignorance and labour past, ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... accordance with an old custom, he might have required that they should pass through his chapel yard on the Raise before leaving the parish, but he had waived his right to this tribute to episcopacy. After offering a suitable blessing, he turned away, not without a withering glance at the weaver, who was muttering rather too audibly an adaptation ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... gone for the bust, Henry took a humbler tone, and in a low voice began to excuse his absence; and I think he would have told the real truth, if he had been encouraged a little; but he was met with a cold and withering assurance that it was a matter of no consequence. Henry thought this unfair, and, knowing in his own heart it was ungrateful, he rebelled. He bit his lip, sat down as gloomy as the grave, and resumed his work, silent ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... a pleading look on the twins, but when Lucian granted him only a withering smile, and Julian with his cane in his folded arms said majestically, "Go, you hopeless ass," ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... or what he had done, he knew not; but never had he seemed so aged by a score of years as he was represented in the glass in that cold grey morning light. While his soul was what it was, why should he have been encumbered with that withering carcase, without the ability to shift it off for another, as his ideal Beloved had ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... crisis in the Church's history, these Councils were actually held, and presided over by the Pope, either in person or by his duly appointed representatives, for the purpose of clearing up and adjusting disputed points, or to smite, with a withering anathema, the various heresies as they arose, century after century. But in the meantime, the Church, which had been planted "like a grain of mustard seed, which is the least of all seeds" (Mark iv. 31), was fulfilling the prophecy that had been made in regard to her, and "was shooting out great ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... Burke, who received a ball in the knee. He fell from his horse, but the mishap was for the moment kept from the men. Lieut.-Col. Fowler assumed command, and before the Rebel regiment had time to reload, four hundred smooth bores sent a withering volley crashing through their ranks. This ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... In habit it is similar to C. Berlandieri. A plant 8 in. across bears about twenty short branches, each of which, under careful cultivation will produce several flowers in the months of May and June, and these, when expanded, last about eight days before withering; they close every afternoon, opening about ten o'clock in the morning. The petals are arranged in a single series, spreading so as to form a shallow cup, and are notched on the edges near the upper end. They are coloured a deep purple-lilac on the upper half, the lower ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... manner the great doctrines of the Gospel, but occasionally indulging in volcanic outbursts of indignation against the hierarchical corruptions of his day, and pouring out upon them the lava-tides of withering rebuke. ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... placed on her brow She has flung on a distant foot-stool now; The flowers, exhaling their fragrance sweet, Lie crushed and withering at her feet; Gloves and tablets she has suffered to fall— She seems so weary after ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... face into a very grave and confidential twist, when Mrs. Paget's equerry, the young gentleman before mentioned, offered his arm, and, giving Frank a withering look, warned the lady of ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... state, might have got along without work, or only such slight employment as a perfect garden with no weeds in it demanded. But as soon as they had sinned, the best thing for them was to be turned out where they would have to work. We know what a withering thing it is for a man to have nothing to do. Old Ashbel Green, at fourscore years, when asked why he kept on working, said: "I do so to keep out of mischief." We see that a man who has a large amount ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... all Britain had been raised with stirring and thrilling power for justice and humanity. The testimony of an eye witness is to the effect, that never did the grand old man seem in finer form. His undimmed eye flashed as he spoke with withering scorn against hypocrisy and with hottest hate against wrong. His natural force was not abated, his health robust, and his conviction unsubdued. His deeply lined and pale face was transfigured with the glow of righteous ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... look of withering contempt, and flung my bait out with a splash that must have scared all the crabs out of ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... thee In the furnace dark and still. There, with dreariest mockery, 39 Making thee eat, against thy will, Blackest Pennsylvanian stone; But thou dost avenge thy doom, For, from out thy catacomb, Day and night thy wrath is blown In a withering simoom, And, adown that cavern drear, Thy black pitfall in the floor, Staggers the lusty antique cheer, Despairing, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... grow again and leave their nest. 'Oh!' saith the Psalmist, 'that I had a dove's Pinions to flee away, and be at rest!' And who that recollects young years and loves,— Though hoary now, and with a withering breast, And palsied fancy, which no longer roves Beyond its dimm'd eye's sphere,—but would much rather Sigh like his son, than cough like ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... was evidently more the effect of accident, than of design. Willoughby started, as he caught the first glance of his beloved parent's face; and he felt a chill pass over his whole frame. There she sat upright, motionless, tearless, without any of the alleviating weaknesses of a less withering grief, her mild countenance exposed to the light of the lamp, and her eyes riveted on the face of the dead. In this posture had she remained for hours; no tender cares on the part of her daughters; no attentions from her domestics; no outbreaking of her own sorrows, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... Peking and elsewhere such as startled even itself. Of all branches of education, the science of gauging people and events by their relative importance defies study most insolently. For three or four generations, society has united in withering with contempt and opprobrium the shameless futility of Mme. de Pompadour and Mme. du Barry; yet, if one bid at an auction for some object that had been approved by the taste of either lady, one quickly found that it were better to buy half-a-dozen Napoleons or Frederics, or Maria Theresas, or ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... summer, and in its uncertainty inclines now to the one and now to the other, and now to both at once—wooing summer in the sunshine, and lingering still with winter in the shade—it was, in short, on one of those mornings, when it is hot and cold, wet and dry, bright and lowering, sad and cheerful, withering and genial, in the compass of one short hour, that old John Willet, who was dropping asleep over the copper boiler, was roused by the sound of a horse's feet, and glancing out at window, beheld a traveller of goodly promise, checking ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... that fervent prayer, reef, and come home to her? Then I need not have written this history, and all would have been well in Dreamland. But he didn't. He heard nothing but the sibilant waters as they rushed under his keel: he thought of nothing but the rose that was withering in the secret locker of his cabin, and of the wound in his heart that was gaping and as fresh as ever. So the night-winds hurried him onward, and the darkness absorbed the outlines ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... Yet trusting more to the dog than to ourselves, we at length came in sight of the scene of our former exploits. All was quiet and still in the vicinity. Not a twig moved, unless displaced by a gaudy-colored parrot, too lazy, under the withering influence of the ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... response. Indeed it may be said that there is no other method by which the moment of cessation of vitality can be so satisfactorily distinguished. Ordinarily, we are able to judge that a plant has died, only after various indirect effects of death, such as withering, have begun to appear. But in the electric response we have an immediate indication of the arrest of vitality, and we are thereby enabled to determine the death-point, which it is impossible to do by ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... spreads a gracious shade We placed him, wrapped and pillowed; and he heard The charm of birds, the whisper of the vines, The ripple of the blue Propontic sea. Placid and pleased he lay; but we were sad To see the snowy hair and silver beard Like withering mosses on a fallen oak, And feel that he, whose vast philosophy Had cast such sacred branches o'er the fields Where Athens pastures her dull sheep, lay fallen, And never more should know the spring! Confess You too had ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... made his name famous, down to his untimely death. The letterpress description of 'Foreign Affairs' was written by Mr. Percival Leigh, who—also after an interval—steadily contributed. Mr. Douglas Jerrold began to wield Punch's baton in No. 9. His 'Peel Regularly Called in' was the first of those withering political satires, signed with a 'J' in the corner of each page opposite to the cartoon, that conferred on Punch a wholesome influence in politics. Mr. Albert Smith made his debut in this wise:—At the birth of Punch had just died a periodical called (I think) ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... if a spell had loosened them, down came a little shower of withering rose-leaves from the Maypole. Alas for the young lovers! No sooner had their hearts glowed with real passion than they were sensible of something vague and unsubstantial in their former pleasures, and felt a dreary presentiment of inevitable change. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... divided, or ought to have divided, her from us, considerably passed the line of demarcation. Lady de Brantefield, with all the pride of all the De Brantefields since the Norman Conquest concentrated in her countenance, threw an excommunicating, withering look upon the arm—but the elbow felt it not—it never stirred. The lady seemed not to be made of penetrable stuff. In happy ignorance she sat fanning herself for a few seconds; then suddenly starting ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... temptation to seize the phlegmatic page by the collar, and give him such another shaking as he would not get over for a week to come; but suddenly recollecting he was Leoline's brother, and by the same token a marquis or thereabouts, he merely paused to cast a withering look upon him, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... hundred yards of the position occupied by Couch's division, which was lying down in the weeds and partially screened by them. A blast of bugles—a roll of drums—a few sharp words of command; and up rose the before-dormant mass to their feet. A scorching, withering fire of small-arms, delivered by companies from left to right, and with the greatest deliberation, was sent directly into the faces of the advancing rebels—such a close and deadly fire as seems almost as impossible ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... their tail-feathers are fixed in a radiating position, but they can depress and elevate them. I remember in a pigeon-book seeing withering contempt expressed at some naturalist for not knowing this important point! Page 111 (156/2. The reference is to the original little green paper books in which the lectures first appeared; the paging in the bound volume dated 1863 is slightly different. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Doctor calls "our weaning," and learned that dinners with circuitous courses and divers other Continental and English refinements, well enough in their way, cannot be accomplished in families with two or three untrained servants, without an expense of care and anxiety which makes them heart-withering to the delicate wife, and too severe a trial to occur often. America is the land of subdivided fortunes, of a general average of wealth and comfort, and there ought to be, therefore, an understanding in the social basis far more simple ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the one catholic opinion that certain doctrines were not to be tolerated:" the only points of difference between them were "what those doctrines were," and how far intolerance might be carried. The withering lines are familiar to us, in which Milton denounces the "New Forcers of Conscience," who by their intolerance and "super-metropolitan and hyperarchiepiscopal tyranny," proved that in his proverbial words, "New Presbyter is but old ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... reading the records she has carved on the rocks, reconstruct, however imperfectly, the landscapes of the past, we also learn that as these we now behold have succeeded those of the pre-glacial age, so they in turn are withering and vanishing to be succeeded by others ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... world many a deep tragedy enacted in the heart of a poor, forgotten, uncared-for boy . . . But I thank God, that though I felt and suffered, the scathing blast neither blunted my perceptions of natural and moral beauty, nor, by withering the affections of my heart, made me a selfish man. Often when I look back I wonder how I bore the burden—how I did not end the evil day ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... was divided into the great Sheikhs and the little Sheikhs, and among the latter was the Sheikh Khottar. The proximity of this village to Beirut, its elevated position, cool air, and fine fountain of water, made it a favorite summer retreat for the missionaries from the withering heats of the plain. Sheikh Khottar and his wife the Sitt, having both died, their orphan son Selim and daughter Abla, called the Sitt (or lady) Abla, were placed under the care of other members of the family of Telhuk. The missionaries opened a school for boys and Selim attended ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... in tomorrow morning's paper, of convincing him (the "Gazette") that he (the "Tea-Pot") both can and will be his own master, as regards style; he (the "Tea-Pot") intending to show him (the "Gazette") the supreme, and indeed the withering contempt with which the criticism of him (the "Gazette") inspires the independent bosom of him (the "TeaPot") by composing for the especial gratification (?) of him (the "Gazette") a leading article, of some extent, in which the beautiful vowel—the emblem of Eternity—yet so offensive ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe |
