"Desert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was to make a voyage of discovery to Tabor Island, although Harding could not approve of a voyage simply for curiosity's sake, for there was evidently nothing to be found on this desert and almost arid rock. A voyage of a hundred and fifty miles in a comparatively small vessel, over unknown seas, could not but cause him some anxiety. Suppose that their vessel, once out at sea, should be unable to reach Tabor Island, and could not return to Lincoln Island, ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... a smile.) Lawyer! I cannot bear that name; it conveys the idea of an entangled net, or of a deceitful guide, that will lead you out of the way into the pathless desert. We should not be called Lawyers, ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... through the very middle of the salt-sea billows, rise up, in shining columns, fountains of fresh water.[Footnote: See Mr. Yates's 'Annotations upon Fellowes's Researches in Anatolia,' as one authority for this singular phenomenon.] In the desert of the sea are found Arabian fountains of Ishmael and Isaac! Are these fountains poisoned for the poor victim of fever, because they have to travel through a contagion of waters not potable? Oh, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... emphatically declined to adopt. Death would be preferable to that. He would not desert those who had so nobly ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... a preacher. Many years afterward he wrote of that disappointment as follows: "For five years I saw myself sitting idly by the wayside, hopeless and discouraged. I felt somewhat like a traveler, parched with thirst, on a wide and weary desert, who sees the mirage of green trees and springs of cool water that has mocked his vision, slowly fade away out of his sight. So seemed to perish my castles in the air. At that time making proclamation of the ancient gospel was too vigorous a work, and too full of hardship ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... pastors were Claude Brousson, who took part in the sufferings at the general persecution of the Protestants; Jean Cavalier, the soldier-pastor who led his flock to battle, and who now sleeps in an English graveyard; and Antoine Court, who formed this "church in the desert," into a more compact body. The first of these pastors was hanged for "heresy" at Montpellier, in 1698; but he, together with his successors, labored so devoutly and so ardently, that the persecuted remnant rose from the dust and proved themselves valiant for the truth as they ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... bitterly with flowing tears Above his seer when from him disappears The last faint breath; and then in deepest woe He cries: "And through that desert must I go? Heabani, thou to me wast like the gods; Oh, how I loved thee! must thou turn to clods? Through that dread desert must I ride alone; And leave thee here, Heabani, lying prone? Alas, I leave thee in this awful place, To find our Khasisadra, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... out of their power to overcome, or by a milieu and environment, the control and subjugation of which required faculties and abilities they did not possess, we see, as it were, ethnic children; that in the nursery, the asylum, the jail, the mountain fastnesses of earth, or the desert plains, peopled by races whose ways are not our ways, whose criteria of culture are far below ours, we have a panorama of what has transpired since, alone and face to face with a new existence, the first human beings partook of the fruit ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Dead Sea) it is a positive evil, a blot upon the harmony and adaptation of the surface of the earth. Again, he might say—"If rain did not fall here, but the clouds passed over us to some other regions, this verdant and highly cultivated plain would become a desert." And there are such deserts over a large part of the earth, which abundant rains would convert into pleasant dwelling-places for man. Or he might observe some great navigable river, and reflect how easily rocks, or a steeper channel in places, might render ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... me I must never run; The Rebel boys were brothers;— To stand forever by our flag, The Louisiana colors! And then she said, 'If you desert, You'll go to the Old Baily!' Says I, 'My love, when I can't shoot, I'll use my ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... All night the gale raged, and in the morning, Ben's boat lay empty and broken on the shore. His mates shook their heads when they saw the wreck, and drew their rough hands over their eyes; for Ben was a good seaman, and they knew he never would desert his boat alive. They looked for him far and wide, but could hear nothing of him, and felt sure that he had perished in the storm. They tried to comfort poor Hetty, but she would not be comforted. Her heart seemed broken; and if it had not been ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... for he it was, was dressed in the very extravagance of the fashion,—not so much from vanity, as from that delicate instinct of self-respect which would keep some men spruce and spotless from one year's end to another upon a desert island; "for," as Frank used to say in his sententious way, "Mr. Frank Leigh at least beholds me, though none else be by; and why should I be more discourteous to him than I permit others to be? Be sure that he who is a Grobian in his own company, will, sooner or later, become a Grobian in ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... of the country at that season is very dreary. Some trees retain their freshness in the hottest weather; but not a blade of green grass is to be seen, and the ground is scorched, scarred, and baked, as if it had been turned into a desert. ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... burst upon Smith the Silent all at once, like a rainbow or a sunrise in the desert. He would never say she had been thrust upon him. She was acquired, he said, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... were I to live for another ten years, and still another, I would believe in it still. But the stars were against us. We met too late. We met when she had long been engaged to a friend of her youth, a man noble and true, to whom she owed much, and whom she felt it a kind of murder to desert. It was one of those fallacious chivalries of feeling which are the danger of sensitive and imaginative minds. Religion strengthened it, as it is so apt to strengthen any form of self-destruction, short of technical suicide. There was but a month to their ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... to do something which involved his wading into a river. Instantly a dozen Colmans plunged into the water. Instances of extraordinary penance abound, beside which the austerities of Simon Stylites almost pale. The Irish saints' love of solitude was also a very marked characteristic. Desert places and solitary islands of the ocean possessed an apparently wonderful fascination for them. The more inaccessible or forbidding the island the more it was in request as a penitential retreat. There is ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... in the summer of 1812, when, we are told, the condition of the people had been infinitely ameliorated by the Prussian and Russian governments, M. de Pradt, Napoleon's ambassador, found the nation in a state of semi-barbarity, agriculture in its infancy, the soil parched like a desert, the animals stunted, the people, although of good stature, in a state of extreme poverty, the towns built of wood, the houses filled with vermin, and the food revolting. This picture will not escape the suspicion of being overdrawn. But J.G. Seume, who ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... your souls," so writes the Apostle. "As those who watch." Behold the shepherd, as he tends the flock, sleeplessly gazing for the approach of lion, or wolf, or bear, or prowling Bedouin of the desert. So must the preacher sweep the horizon by day; so listen to the speaking silences ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... from his head. It was the busiest hour of the day. What with the hum of human voices, the lowing of cattle, the squeaking of pigs, and the laughter caused by the merry-andrew, the marketplace was in very great confusion. But the stranger seemed not to notice it any more than if the silence of a desert were around him. He was rapt in his own thoughts. Sometimes he raised his furrowed brow to heaven, as if in prayer; sometimes he bent his head, as if an insupportable weight of sorrow were upon him. It increased the awfulness of his aspect that there was a motion of his head and an almost continual ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... person, his solitary saunterings, his escape from the stings of reflection into socialities, and his distempered joy in the company of beauty, all spoke, as plainly as with a tongue, of a sinking heart and a declining body. Yet though he was sensible of sinking health, hope did not at once desert him: he continued to pour out such tender strains, and to show such flashes of wit and humour at the call of Thomson, as are recorded of no other lyrist: neither did he, when in company after his own mind, hang the head, and speak mournfully, but talked and smiled and still charmed ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... so far won the fight for the egrets that Florida had been swept almost as bare of these birds as the Colorado desert. ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... World War II, a syndicate composed of underworld big-shots from Chicago, Detroit and Greenpoint planned to build a new Las Vegas in the Nevada desert. This was to be a plush project for big spenders, with Vegas and Reno reserved for ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... read, but the confidence of his pulpit tone, which was one of the secrets of his power, would now and then desert him, and he would look up to me as if waiting for an ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... hastes her earliest wreaths to bring, With all the incense of the breathing spring! See lofty Lebanon his head advance, See nodding forests on the mountains dance: See spicy clouds from lowly Saron rise, And Carmel's flowery top perfumes the skies! Hark! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers; 'Prepare the way! a God, a God appears:' 30 'A God, a God!' the vocal hills reply, The rocks proclaim the approaching Deity. Lo, Earth receives him from the bending skies! Sink down, ye mountains, and ye valleys, rise; With heads declined, ye cedars, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... the desert stillness of the Schoenstrom station. The train creaked, banged, swayed. The air was nauseatingly thick. Kennicott turned her face from the window, rested her head on his shoulder. She was coaxed from her unhappy mood. But she came out of it unwillingly, and when Kennicott was ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... rather lonely here—all our kindred dead—nobody to be seen but little ugly dwarfs. And I really like these little sailors, and shall be sorry to part with them. No, here I shall remain, wife and I, and here we shall end our days. We are the last of the giants—let us not desert our native soil." ...
— The Last of the Huggermuggers • Christopher Pierce Cranch
... not a single man of her crew has ever turned up anywhere. If any one of them had been picked up by another ship, the matter would have been reported as soon as the ship reached port. Of course, there's a bare chance that some of them might have reached a desert island and still be alive. But that's so unlikely that it might as well be ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... to desert his couch at evening. Up to this point he had been ignored by the nightly visitors, but now they made a place for him in the circle about the sputtering lamp. It seemed, also, that, with his active presence, the talk began to ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... going to quit," he announced doggedly. "I never gave up anything yet. You talk as if it didn't matter! Maybe it doesn't to you, but it does to me. You don't know how much I care. I can't tell you, either. This talk isn't my line. Look here, though. About ten years ago, down in the desert of the Southwest, my horse broke his leg, and I was set afoot. I nearly died of thirst before I got out. All those blistering days, while I stumbled along in that baking hell, I kept thinking of a cool ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... as you might think. A great many of the cottages were closed. The few people we did talk to had their plans already made. Don't look so disappointed, Sahwah. If we were out in the middle of the desert or shipwrecked on a lonely island there wouldn't be any possibility of an audience, and yet we would be having a celebration for our own benefit ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... Eritrea hot, dry desert strip along Red Sea coast; cooler and wetter in the central highlands (up to 61 cm of rainfall annually); semiarid in western hills and lowlands; rainfall heaviest during June-September ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... progress towards Dick's lodgings, Edward reverted to James Reddy's wretched condition, and found it was but some petty debt for which he was arrested. He lamented, in common with Dick and Tom, the infatuation which made him desert a duty he could profitably perform by assisting his father in his farming concerns, to pursue a literary path, which could never be any other to ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... shelters described in the following pages are, all of them, similar to those used by the people on this continent or suggested by the ones in use and are typically American; and the designs are suited to the arctics, the tropics, and temperate climes; also to the plains, the mountains, the desert, the ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... melancholy face, his coat older than anything but its fashion, with one hand idle in his pocket, and with the other picking his useless teeth; and, though the Mall was crowded with company, yet was poor Jack as single and solitary as a lion in a desert. ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... Government house. Yet shortly before, this very Governor of Valparaiso had rightly branded those who abandoned the Chilian flag for that of Peru, as "deserters;" but now he received the man who had not only first set the example, but had also induced others to desert—with the honours of a Sovereign Prince! The patriots were eager that I should arrest General San Martin, and there were those in power who would not have complained had I done so, but I preferred to leave the Government to ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... of truth say, "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for holy men, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice, ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... painted in 1810 by Robert Lefebvre, hung above the work-table, and when visitors were announced, Adeline threw into a drawer an Imitation of Jesus Christ, her habitual study. This blameless Magdalen thus heard the Voice of the Spirit in her desert. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... of excellence as applied to woman has been a mistaken one; and, in consequence, though the girls are beautiful, the matrons are faded, overworked, and uninteresting; and that such a state of society tends to immorality, because, when wives are no longer charming, men are open to the temptation to desert their firesides, and get into mischief generally. He seems particularly to complain of your calling ladies who do nothing the 'fascinating lazzaroni ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Percivals were so well known through this neck of the woods. But I'll tell you what I honestly believe: Price's cavalry is scouting all through the central and southern parts of the State, shooting Union men and picking up recruits, and as soon as we begin to hear of them, I think you had better desert me and join them; that is, unless you have come to your senses, and made up your mind that you had better cast your lot with the loyal people of ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... completely bewildered, and scarcely know what to think; perhaps the crew has mutinied, and turned Captain Littlestone adrift on a desert island. ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... desire to go forward, but, perhaps because he was only a boy, he did not feel that same wish so completely and passionately. There were other ideas in his mind, and uppermost among them was the feeling that one can not desert a well-loved friend. Just as the foremost wagon creaked into motion and rumbled forward into the dark, his resolution found its way ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... at Space Academy. Excited, and anxious to begin their new life, they assembled for their antibiotic shots and the last medical check by the Solar Guard doctors. There were crystal miners from Titan, farmers from Venus, Mars, and Earth, prospectors from the New Sahara desert of Mars, engineers from the atmosphere booster stations on Ganymede, and just plain citizens who wanted a new life on the distant satellite of Wolf 359. All had gathered for the great ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... from the Hartfield storeroom must have been poison. She understood it all; and as far as her mind could disengage itself from the injustice and selfishness of angry feelings, she acknowledged that Jane Fairfax would have neither elevation nor happiness beyond her desert. But poor Harriet was such an engrossing charge! There was little sympathy to be spared for any body else. Emma was sadly fearful that this second disappointment would be more severe than the first. Considering ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Montcalm, when urged to attack him, is said to have answered: "Let him amuse himself where he is. If we drive him off he may go to some place where he can do us harm." His late movement, however, had a discouraging effect on the Canadians, who now for the first time began to desert. His batteries, too, played across the chasm of Montmorenci upon the left wing of the French army with an effect ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... your desert speaks loud; and I should wrong it, To lock it in the wards of covert bosom, 10 When it deserves, with characters of brass, A forted residence 'gainst the tooth of time And razure of oblivion. Give me your hand, And let the subject see, to make them know ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... votes; invite them to dinner and if necessary they will rescind them; but cultivate them, remember their wives at assemblies and call their daughters, if possible, by their right names; and they will not only change their principles or desert their party for you; but subscribe their fortunes if necessary and lay down ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... examined.[1638] These delays augured ill for the Senator. It appeared that a Democratic member of his own committee had left him, and on the day fixed for consideration other Democrats, while calmly discussing the matter, disclosed a disposition to desert. Alarmed at their loss Conkling suddenly moved to recommit, which was carried by a viva voce vote amidst shouts of approval and whispered assurances that further action should be deferred until a Democratic Senate ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... aside. Even my love for the sea had vanished, and I had begun to hate it. During the first few years of my ministry I spent hours by the cliffs and shores, or out on the heaving waters. Then the loneliness of the desert and barren wastes repelled me, and I had begun to loathe it. Altogether I was soured and discontented, and I had a dread consciousness that my life was a failure. All its possibilities had passed without being seized and utilized. I was the barren fig tree, fit only to be cut ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... the Southern view, alarmingly great, including at least a million square miles of territory. Except along its river boundaries it was little known. Its value was underrated, and a large portion of it was designated on our maps as the Great American Desert. At the time Texas was annexed, and for several years afterwards, not a single foot of that vast area was organized under any form of civil government. Had the Southern statesmen foreseen the immense wealth, population, and value of this imperial domain in the five great States and four ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... build, ye build, but ye enter not in, Like the tribes whom the desert devoured in ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... were defying his Land Committees, jailing his comrades.... In Petrograd the bourgeoisie, in alliance with the Germans, were sabotaging the food and ammunition for the Army.... He was without boots, or clothes.... Who forced him to desert? The Government of Kerensky, which you have overthrown!" At the end there ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... uneasy tread; but, the moment the doctor entered the room, he was as gay as a Broadway beau. Somers had vainly attempted to persuade him to make his own escape, and leave him to his fate; but the brave fellow steadily refused to desert him under any circumstances that could possibly ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... at first be taken for granted while his experience is nil. He dreams, probably, of majestic storms, or heavenly calms, of coral islands, and palm groves, and foreign lands and peoples. If very imaginative, he will indulge in Malay pirates and wrecks, and lifeboats, and desert islands, on which he will always land safely, and commence a second edition of Robinson Crusoe. But he will scarcely think, till bitter experience compels him, of very long watches in dirty unromantic weather, of holy-stoning the ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... every day and enlisted anew, only to desert with his gun each time. Finally he enlisted twice in one day, and the next day three times, bringing to Sam a gun for each enlistment. By the end of the week Sam had an armory of ten new rifles, with a store of ammunition ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... and are constantly hitching up; or his frayed jacket and crumpled linen harrow his soul, and quite unman him. He treads on the train of a lady's dress, and says, "Thank you", sits down on his hat, and wishes the "desert ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... reached was Etham. This was a district of country just on the edge of the desert. From this point there were three routes to Palestine. The Israelites, by divine direction, took the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... presentation of his hero in the very interesting romance published by his old secretary Weber,—one of the best of all the English verse romances and the first English poem to show a really English patriotism,—he owed nothing but suggestion. The duel at the Diamond in the Desert is admittedly one of the happiest things of the kind by a master in that kind, and if the adventures in the chapel of Engedi are both a little farcical and a little 'apropos of nothing in particular,' the story nowhere else halts or fails ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... accounts of another party ascending the Ohio; and of six hundred Chippewas and Ottawas marching down Scioto Creek to join the hostile camp. Still, notwithstanding the accumulating danger, it would not do to fall back, nor show signs of apprehension. His Indian allies in such case might desert him. The soldiery, too, might grow restless and dissatisfied. He was already annoyed by Captain Trent's men, who, having enlisted as volunteers, considered themselves exempt from the rigor of martial law; and by their example of loose and refractory conduct, threatened to destroy the subordination ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... of them are thus debauched. Many marry poor young men, but such is not usually the case; a poor young man seeks a wife with a small dowry. They have little hope of wedded life—it will never offer itself to them. Their shop-life is dreary, monotonous, and sometimes exacting. If they will desert it, pleasure presents an enticing picture; a life of idleness, dancing, and a round ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... have things as you want them, but in real life you get tangled up in what other people want, and with duty and common sense; and when you determine to follow your—" Margaret Elizabeth was going to say "heart," but changed to "intuitions," "you are left high and dry on a desert island." ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... Nicolo Piccini, who, mostly forgotten in his works, is principally known to modern fame as the rival of the mighty Gluck in that art controversy which shook Paris into such bitter factions. Yet, overshadowed as Piccini was in the greatness of his rival, there can be no question of his desert as the most brilliant ornament and exponent of the early operatic school. No greater honor could have been paid to him than that he should have been chosen as their champion by the Italianissimi of his ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... an intense, glowing epic of the great desert, sunlit barbaric, with its marvelous atmosphere of ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... who from that moment admit no evidence into their minds except the evidence that supports their view. Hugh saw that life must be, for him at all events, a pilgrimage, in which, so long as his open-mindedness, his candour, his enthusiasm did not desert him, there were endless lessons to be learnt by the way. And thus he came back gratefully and wearily to his old life, his old friendships. His college became to him a very blessed place; apart from the ordinary social life, from the work and the games which formed a background ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... are told, that the nation is exhausted and dispirited; that we have neither influence, nor riches, nor courage remaining; that we shall be left to stand alone against the united house of Bourbon; that the Austrians cannot, and that the Dutch will not, assist us; that the king of Sardinia will desert his alliance; that the king of Prussia has declared against us; and, therefore, that by engaging in the support of the Pragmatick sanction, we are about to draw upon ourselves that ruin which every other power has ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... to succeed, for it is well planned," said Petronius. "It was impossible to plan better. Thou must feign suffering, and wear a dark toga. Do not desert the amphitheatre. Let people see thee. All is so fixed that there cannot be failure. But—art thou perfectly ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... a blow to find that she must part from her servant-woman, who, as well as her husband Gervas, was a native of Hull. Not only were they both unwilling to leave, but the inland country was to their imagination a wild unexplored desert. Indeed, Colet had only entered Mrs. Talbot's service to supply the place of a maid who bad sickened with fever and ague, and had to be sent back to her ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he replied. 'But consider. For the enemy to attack towards the Somme would be to fight over many miles of an old battle-ground where all is still desert and every yard of which you British know. In Champagne at a bound he might enter unbroken country. It is a long and difficult road to Amiens, but not so long to Chilons. Such is the view of Petain. Does it ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... him, then, and say I wish to see him. We must lay these discoveries before him—though no doubt he has already made them for himself. Tell him he must not desert us—that without him, we ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... from the East of all the troops that could be spared, the attack that was launched in October would have taken place in March. We could then have advanced up the Euphrates, and it would have been entirely practical to cross over the desert in the cars ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... moment that they alone were the only human living creatures on that uncanny island. A sense of desolation came upon them and made them feel as if they were far, far from human beings, buried as in the heart of a mighty desert. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... Fabric Rolls, if they "do not entirely desert us," give us but meagre help, so that the exact date and cost of each detail is only to be guessed at. Stapledon probably intended, as early as 1325, to begin the work of recasting the nave. In that year he made purchases of "15 great ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... merge into what is now Chobham Common. It must have covered many more miles than the maps allow it to-day. Chobham Ridges stretch from its south-west corner, a long, sandy scar of three miles, overlooking the Bisley rifle ranges and the desert ground behind them. You are sure to be invited to admire Chobham Ridges, and no doubt twenty years ago it was fine wild country. But frequent notice-boards observing that when the red flag is flying it is dangerous to walk any further, barbed wire, excavations of gravel, and ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... instead of advancing his suit, he had contrived to effect a serious breach with the cardinal, and been abruptly ordered back to the camp. Once more he appeared at Madrid; but this time it was not to plead desert and demand honours. ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He was in this man's power, and he knew it. But the German was ready enough to do his part. For months he had been doing this very thing, starting through the desert toward the south slackers and fugitives of all descriptions. He gathered together the equipment, a map with water-holes marked, a canteen covered with a dirty plaid-cloth casing, a small supply of condensed ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... himself left alone, he called out to the other parrots, "Don't fly away and leave me alone when the Raja's son shoots. If you desert me like this, I ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... general was miserable, that of the capital was still worse. "Where is Paris," exclaims Petrarch, "that metropolis, which, though inferior to its reputation, was, nevertheless, a great city?" He tells us that its streets were covered with briars and grass, and that it looked like a vast desert. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... me back up the river to Zacapa, desert dry and stingingly hot with noonday. Report had it that there was a good road to Jocotan by way of Chiquimula, but the difference between a "buen camino" and a mere "road" is so slight in Central America that I concluded to follow the more ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... outermost gates Of the City Celestial he waits, With his feet on the ladder of light, That, crowded with angels unnumbered, By Jacob was seen, as he slumbered Alone in the desert ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... repugnance the disgusting libertinism of my protector inspired, daily become more painful.—And, indeed, I soon did recollect it as such with agony, when his sudden death (for he had recourse to the most exhilarating cordials to keep up the convivial tone of his spirits) again threw me into the desert of human society. Had he had any time for reflection, I am certain he would have left the little property in his power to me: but, attacked by the fatal apoplexy in town, his heir, a man of rigid morals, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... had walked on for a long, anything but weary time, I saw the level horizon line before me broken by a rock, as it seemed, rising from the plain of the desert. I knew it was the monastery. It was many miles away, and as I journeyed on it grew and grew, until it swelled huge as a hill against the sky. At length I came up to the door, iron-clamped, deep-set in a low thick wall. It stood wide open. I entered, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... lot, fillingstation, artistic billboard, all alike to the greedy fingers. Like thumb and index they formed a crescent, a threatening semicircle, reaching forward by indirection. Northward and southeastward, the two aqueducts kept the desert from reclaiming its own; for fifty years the city had scraped up, bought, pilfered or systematically robbed all the water it could get; through the gray, wet lines, siphons, opencuts, pumps, lifts, tunnels, the metropolis sucked life. Now the desert had an ally, the grassy fingers ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... "recognize facts. Within three weeks I shall be the undisputed ruler of Earth. Whether of a desert or of a cowed and submissive subject-population, rests with the Earth men. I have never been on Earth, for I was born on Eros. My mother died at my birth. I have never seen another ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... yea, he plucketh the red cup that is full of honey, and beareth it away; away across the desert, away till the flower be withered, away till the desert ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... The number of your hosts united is, A hundred and fifty thousand horse, Two hundred thousand foot, brave men-at-arms, Courageous and [221] full of hardiness, As frolic as the hunters in the chase Of savage beasts amid the desert woods. ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... surface yields back to man, in manifold, the toil of his brain and hand. Its boundaries are of the simplest description, and it is as well to begin with them. It has on the north a huge forest, on the west a huge mountain, on the south an immense desert, on the east an immense marsh. From the forest to the desert there lies a distance varying from 40 to 150 miles, and from the marsh to the mountain, 800 miles of land lie spread in every varying phase of undulating fertility. This is the Fertile Belt, the land of the Saskatchewan, the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... is lost, wasted, and so are the beams of the sun, the moon, and the stars; and so are the sweet fruits that grow spontaneously about the earth, and the beautiful flowers that waste their fragrance on the desert air. This must not ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... million inhabitants and without seaboard. A peasant people devoted to agriculture and to nature, to the forest and cattle, to songs and tales. A past full of glory, of blood and sins. A present full of tears, pains and hopes. A king carried on a stretcher through the rocky desert of Albania,—a loyal parliament which refused to make a separate peace with the enemy even in the darkest hour of national tragedy,—an honest government which did everything possible to save the country, and which, when the country was nearly ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... area as the level land, and between the two is the hilly land that we are now cultivating to its great detriment, visibly reducing the earth's resources by bringing about rapidly that condition which has led to the saying in the Old World: "After man, the desert." The Roman Empire, where men have had possession for two thousand years, proves, "After man, the desert." It is equally proven in much of China, but it can be prevented if these hill lands are put to trees. But we cannot afford to put those lands ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... news; it is therefore civil to ask a Spaniard if his lady-wife goes on without novelty, and to express your profound gratification on being assured that she does. Their forms of hospitality are evidently Moorish, derived from the genuine open hand and open tent of the children of the desert; now nothing is left of them but grave and decorous words. In the old times, one who would have refused such offers would have been held a churl; now one who would accept them would be regarded as ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... prospects, and brings a still more new horizon, if I may so speak, to view. And it may be added, that to the production of the emotions I allude to, beauty of landscape is scarcely necessary. We strain forward incited by curiosity, as eagerly over an untrodden heath, or untraversed desert, as through valleys of surpassing loveliness, and amid mountains of unexplored grandeur; or perhaps, I should say, more eagerly, for there is nothing on which the mind can repose, nothing to tempt it to linger, nothing to ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... I have pursued. I have proved to the foolish world that a Jewess may very well be a princess and worthily represent her exalted rank, notwithstanding her oriental blood and curved nose; but in order to be able to prove it to the world, I had to give up my religion and to desert my people. It is your mission to finish the work I have commenced, and to secure to the Jews a distinguished and undisputed place in society. You shall be the mediator between the aristocracy of blood and of pedigree and the aristocracy of money—the mediator between the Christians ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... amid the trees of the garden comes the voice of God. And lo! in an enigma mysterious and dark a new dispensation of prophecy begins. Victims bleed; altars smoke; the tabernacle arises amid the white tents of the desert; the temple ascends all glorious on the heights of Mount Zion; prophet after prophet declares his message. At length, in the fulness of time, the Messiah comes; and, in satisfying the law, and in fulfilling all righteousness, and in bringing life and immortality to light, abundantly shows ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... of the past, with its stories and dreaming traditions.... The Caucasus contained my world, and I peacefully slept in that night. I thought to be famous in Daghestan—the height of glory. And what then? History has peopled my former desert with nations, shattering each other for glory; with heroes, terrifying the nations by valour to which we can never rise. And where are they? Half forgotten, they have vanished in the dust of ages. The description of the earth shows me that the Tartars occupy a little corner of the world; that they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... one day both of us, Mr. Maxwell and I, wanted to go out hunting. We proposed to ourselves but the one holiday during this period of intense labour; but I was assured, as was he also, by a publican who was working for us, that if we committed such a crime he and all Beverley would desert us. From morning to evening every day I was taken round the lanes and by-ways of that uninteresting town, canvassing every voter, exposed to the rain, up to my knees in slush, and utterly unable to ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... here, and she is not called. Gentlemen, I say so much for the affidavit of Lord Cochrane, which is a vital part of this subject, and upon which, I observe with great regret; but if I forbore the observations, I should desert the duty which I owe the public. Gentlemen, there is indeed but little more for me to trouble you with, I think; but there was an observation made by my learned friend, which is very important; they cross-examined Mr. Wright, whom I put up to prove the affidavit, ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... distinguished cousins at Lancilly. He did not mind that much; the idea of the Sainfoy family was not very attractive to him: he thought they might interfere with the old freedom of the country-side; and even to please his father he could not desert his little uncle in a difficulty. He poured out some of his irritation on the Prefect's pet gendarme, whom he caught stealing round by the wood where, hidden behind a pile of logs in an old stone hovel, the four Royalist gentlemen were finding this official visit considerably ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... enthroned. Around him spread a shoreless ocean of molten fire. No wave agitated its placid bosom—no sound—no wind breathed over its fearful stillness. A lone rock, cold, barren, and dismal, yet like an oasis in a desert, lifted its gray summit from the sluggish surface. Upon this he stood, rigid and motionless, like a marble statue on its pedestal; and, ever and ever, around and above him, rushed to and fro shadowy ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... words, but generally more counsel than comfort—always, however, the best she had, which was of Polonius' kind, an essence of wise selfishness, so far as selfishness can be wise, with a strong dash of self-respect, nowise the more sparing that it was independent of desert. The good man would find it rather difficult to respect himself were he to try; his gaze is upward to the one good; but had it been possible for such a distinction to enter Miss Vavasor's house, it would have been only ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the sufferer for the sins of all, which is the doctrine of those who maintain universal redemption, it is not surprising to see men that are sinners making it a duty to assemble in large meetings, and invent the means of rendering themselves miserable. These gloomy notions have banished men to the desert. They have fanatically renounced society and the pleasures of life, to be buried alive, believing they would merit heaven if they afflicted themselves with stripes and passed their existence in mummical ceremonies, ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... single moment his self-possession seemed to desert him. He looked into the cold, incurious face of the man in an officer's uniform who was already moving away, as though he had seen a ghost. His hesitation was a ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cactus, but you may not see a single true lily, and only a very few liliaceous plants of any kind. Not even in the cool, fresh glens of the mountains will you find these favorite flowers, though some of these desert ranges almost rival the Sierra in height. Nevertheless, in the building and planting of this grand Territory the lilies were not forgotten. Far back in the dim geologic ages, when the sediments of the old ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... the Desert, and bands of horsemen belonging to that wild nation known as the Karismians, were employed on this service; and the Crusaders found themselves exposed to dangers against which it seemed impossible to guard. As wild animals prowl around the habitations of men on the watch for prey, ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... insists now that we are engaged, and that he never really wanted to break it. He has shown me positively that it is my money that attracts him, and if it were not that I don't want to seem to desert him now, ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... the stool for Miss Riley's august feet, and was busily engaged in changing five shillings into small silver for a desperate victim of loo—when Mrs. Clanfrizzle's third, and, as it appeared, last time, of asking for the kettle smote upon his ear. His loyalty would have induced him at once to desert every thing on such an occasion; but the other party engaged, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... some," said Saffredent, "who do the very opposite, and flee opportunities for sin as carefully as they are able; nevertheless, concupiscence pursues them. Thus the good Saint Jerome, after scourging and hiding himself in the desert, confessed that he could not escape from the fire that consumed his marrow. We ought, therefore, to recommend ourselves to God, for unless He uphold us by His power, we are ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... store of delicious wild honey. It was, as in this case, usually a partially decayed tree where the wild bees had swarmed, and where stores of honey were concealed. Sometimes the bees had filled the cavities of the tree so full that they were forced to desert it and find new quarters; but it was evident that here they were ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... hundred miles long by two hundred and fifty wide, situated south of Media, having the Persian Gulf as its southern boundary, the Zagros Mountains on the west separating it from Babylonia, and a great and almost impassable desert on the east, so that it was easily defended. Its population was composed of hardy, warlike, and religious people, condemned to poverty and incessant toil by the difficulty of getting a living on ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... little {678} before, by order of the emperor Justinian, for the use of the monks, at the bottom of this mountain, in honor of the Blessed Virgin, as Procopius mentions.[2] Thither he went every Saturday and Sunday to assist, with all the other anchorets and monks of that desert, at the holy office and at the celebration of the divine mysteries, when they all communicated. His diet was very sparing, though, to shun ostentation and the danger of vain-glory, he ate of every thing that ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Johns Hopkins are especially worthy of attention as a part of his message to Americans. "It has been my fate to see great educational funds fossilise into mere bricks and mortar in the petrifying springs of architecture, with nothing left to work them. A great warrior is said to have made a desert and called it peace. Trustees have sometimes made a palace ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... their duty to his Majesty's crown and dignity."[2] In reply the Virginia press warned the negroes against British perfidy; and the revolutionary government, while announcing the penalties for servile revolt, promised freedom to such as would promptly desert the British standard. Some hundreds of negroes appear to have joined Dunmore, but they did not save ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... livelong night and day it was only this much to them—"Ah, she makes herself unhappy." If she tried to be cheerful, to dismiss all care, to take pleasure in the daylight, the flowers, the baby, she could only be this idea to them—"Ah, she bears it very well." Moreover, alone in a desert island would she have been wretched at what had happened to her? Not greatly. If she could have been but just created, to discover herself as a spouseless mother, with no experience of life except as the parent of a nameless child, would the position have caused her ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... fire and consumed them, for God had commanded Michael to do whatsoever Abraham should ask him to do. He looked again, and he saw thieves digging through a house, and Abraham said, "Let wild beasts come out of the desert, and tear them in pieces," and immediately wild beasts came out of the desert and devoured them. Again he looked down, and he saw people preparing to commit murder, and he said, "Let the earth open and swallow them," and, as he spoke, the earth swallowed them alive. Then God spoke to Michael: ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... days Odin delighted to come down now and then from his high home above the clouds, and to wander, disguised, among the woods and mountains, and by the seashore, and in wild desert places. For nothing pleases him more than to commune with Nature as she is found in the loneliness of vast solitudes, or in the boisterous uproar of the elements. Once on a time he took with him his friends Hoenir and Loki; and they rambled ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... and the quarrymen, small shot for specimens, and so forth. I had carried out my idea of a Dragoman with two servants; and the result had been a model failure, especially in the most important department. The true "Desert cook" is a man sui generis; he would utterly fail at the Criterion, and even at Shepheard's; but in the wilderness he will serve coffee within fifteen minutes, and dish the best of dinners within ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... garrisons behind in them returned to Syria. They had hitherto been in doubt whether it was more advisable to march to Parthia by the circuitous route of Armenia or by the direct route through the Mesopotamian desert. The first route, leading through mountainous regions under the control of trustworthy allies, commended itself by its greater safety; king Artavasdes came in person to the Roman headquarters to advocate this plan of the campaign. But that reconnaissance decided in favour of the march through ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... saw that she must countermand most of the orders. Still she was human, and she was a female. She could not altogether desert one so helpless, in a moment of such extreme distress. She reflected on the matter for a minute or two, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... of Garamantes, wrapped in the long bernous which then as now was the garb of the children of the desert. Tall, swarthy figures these, lissome and agile, with every muscle standing out clear through the brown skin. Strange as must have been the scene to them, there was no wonder expressed in the keen glances ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... lay a desert of sand. To the north it touched the horizon, and was only broken by the blue dot of Neuerk Island and its lighthouse. To the east it seemed also to stretch to infinity, but the smoke of a steamer showed where it was pierced by the stream of ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... hills came the half-wild cattle, stringing along at a trot, all bearing for the open space in the waste of the chaparral where the rodeo occurred, while behind them followed the cowboys—gay desert figures with brown, pinched faces, long hair, and shouting wild cries. The exhilaration of the fine morning, the tramp of the thousands, got into the curls of the three little Misses Golden-hairs, and they scurried away, while I followed to feast ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... place as the Pein, visited by Marco Polo. After marching back along the Keriya River for four days, I struck to the south-west, and, after three more marches, arrived in the vicinity of Lachin-Ata Mazar, a desolate little shrine in the desert to the north of the Khotan-Keriya route. Though our search was rendered difficult by the insufficiency of guides and the want of water, I succeeded during the following few days in tracing the extensive ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa |
