"Isolation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... found "Cowboy Songs" diverting, it is believed, will make welcome "The Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp." Many of these have this claim to be called songs: they have been set to music by the cowboys, who, in their isolation and loneliness, have found solace in narrative or descriptive verse devoted to cattle scenes. Herein, again, through these quondam songs we may come to appreciate something of the spirit of the big West—its ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... whom others amuse, engage soothe, whom solitude harasses, pains, stupefies, like the movement of a terrible glacier or the traversing of the desert; and those, on the contrary, whom others weary, tire, bore, silently torture, whom isolation calms and bathes in the repose of independency, and plunges into the humors of their own thoughts. In fine, there is here a normal, physical phenomenon. Some are constituted to live a life outside of themselves, others, to live a ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... guests, scattered far and wide over the spacious isolation of the breakfast-room, in twos and threes, and little groups, seemed, with one exception, too engrossed in the solemn British rite of beginning the day well with a good breakfast to bother their heads about the conduct of the young man at the alcove table. They were, for the most ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... leader became captives, but only after inflicting heavy loss upon the assailants. The place was untenable against superior naval appliances, and quite men enough had been sacrificed in view of the impossibility of preventing its isolation by Federal fleets. ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... materials to build the road. So in the same way we have a great many fishery stations isolated. You can not put fish hatcheries in towns. We get them as far off as practicable. The problem is to get sufficient water and isolation, and so those stations are rather difficult to reach. In those places to-day we have put motor trucks. Here with these important stations 6, 8, 9, and 10 miles and sometimes more away, it was perfectly obvious ...
— Address by Honorable William C. Redfield, Secretary of Commerce at Conference of Regional Chairmen of the Highway Transport Committee Council of National Defence • US Government
... wardrobe. My mother and my sisters, too, were there. And a great element of happiness was added to us all in the affectionate and life-enduring friendship of the family of our close neighbour Colonel Grant. But I was never able to overcome—or even to attempt to overcome—the absolute isolation of my school position. Of the cricket-ground or racket-court I was allowed to know nothing. And yet I longed for these things with an exceeding longing. I coveted popularity with a covetousness that was almost mean. It seemed to me that there would be an Elysium in the intimacy of those ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... Tenebrae, at the Sestine, for the sake of the Miserere; and that was all. My general feeling was, "All, save the spirit of man, is divine." I saw nothing but what was external; of the hidden life of Catholics I knew nothing. I was still more driven back into myself, and felt my isolation. England was in my thoughts solely, and the news from England came rarely and imperfectly. The Bill for the Suppression of the Irish Sees was in progress, and filled my mind. I had ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... because the biologists did not understand his mathematics, while the mathematicians were not interested in his biology. Had he not lived at a great centre of active thought, within the sphere of influence of the two great universities of England, it is quite likely that this condition of isolation would have been his to the end. But, one by one, men were found possessing the skill and interest in the subject necessary to unite in his work, which now has not only a journal of its own, but is growing in a way ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... from this intellectual solitude an unhappiness so profound that they are glad to be able to attribute to the mental inferiority of others the condition of moral isolation ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... isolation from him which broke her calm. It seemed profane even to look upon his suffering. She shrank away from him, and hid her face in her hands. That roused him, and in a moment the old ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... magistrates, and entrusted them with their own administration, and distributed them into a machinery which, by permitting the whole state to move, preserved a correspondence between its parts, and prevented their isolation, excited the discontent of some provinces. The states of Languedoc and Brittany protested against the new division of the kingdom, and on their side the parliaments of Metz, Rouen, Bordeaux, and Toulouse rose against the operations of the assembly which suppressed the Chambres ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... typical Pacific island problems of geographic isolation, few resources, and a small population. Government expenditures regularly exceed revenues, and the shortfall is made up by critically needed grants from New Zealand that are used to pay wages to public employees. ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... heavy burden, paused, bewildered, in the middle of a crossing—a man helped her; a child stood crying on a doorstep—a larger child soothed it; an ownerless dog looked pitifully into a woman's face—she stooped and stroked its head with her ungloved hand. The longing for the isolation of nature slowly gave place to a recognition of the community ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... the appearance and sometimes the substance of being domineering. But the consequence of the Bismarckian tradition of bullying and browbeating one's opponents has been that of intensifying the opposition to the national policy and of compromising its success. France has been able to escape from the isolation in which she was long kept by Bismarck after the war, and has gradually built up a series of understandings with other Powers, more or less inimical to Germany. The latter's standing in Europe is not as high as it was ten years ago, in spite of the increased relative efficiency of her army, ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... endeavour to discover the exact part of the heavens in which it is situated, and ascertain its distance and possibly its size. What will be the effect of the existence of this central body of the sun upon the solar system? One effect will be to do away with that isolation that up to the present has apparently existed with regard to our solar system ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... President's dullness had gained so much, fell into the background as time went on. All this was encouraged by his colleagues on the Council of Four, who, by the break-up of the Council of Ten, completed the isolation which the President's own temperament had initiated. Thus day after day and week after week, he allowed himself to be closeted, unsupported, unadvised, and alone, with men much sharper than himself, in situations of supreme difficulty, where be needed for success ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... lovely house out of the town. When you come in, you drive about, do your shopping, make calls, and go home again. You never visit the poorer streets. The people from them never come to you. You are rich, your people before you were rich, you live in a state of isolation." ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... Royale, where the patrons were not over particular in regard to the laws of fashion, and where certain ladies with light histories sought further adventures to add to their heptamerons. Now, Courtlandt thought neither of the one nor of the other. He desired isolation, safety from intrusion; and here, did he so signify, he could find it. Women gazed up at him and smiled, with interest as much as with invitation. He was brown from long exposure to the wind and the sun, that golden brown which ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... mind of the reader unites and interprets the letters into continuous thought, though they be voiceless as stones to one another. Even so may our sad and stony identities spell out a world's word which we know not of, by reason of our singularity and isolation. Moreover, in the electrotype block, the solid of which the printed page constitutes a plane presentment, all the letters are actually "united in such a manner that the whole is one." The metal that has moulded each into its significant form amalgamates them into a higher unity. So also ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... improved general hygiene, that we must look into this criticism with some care. In the first place, a large diminution in the mortality from smallpox occurred before there was any great change in the unsanitary conditions of the English towns, before there was any enforcing of the isolation of patients either in hospitals or in their own homes. Since the introduction of vaccination, measles and whooping cough still remain in the status quo ante, while smallpox has been exterminated in all ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... which I refer is that which the musician Berlioz called "isolement"—the sense of spiritual isolation, which seizes on those who experience it with a poignancy amounting to awe. Wordsworth's Ode to Immortality affords the locus classicus ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... panic seized Boyd. If his present scheme fell through, what else could he do? Whither could he turn, even for his own livelihood, except back to the hateful isolation of a miner's life? That would mean other years as black as those just ended. There had been a time when he could boldly have taken the bit in his teeth and forced Mr. Wayland to reckon with him, but since ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... melted snow. On these excursions he cut down trees that hid a view he thought she would have liked, he cut paths over which she might have walked. Or he sat idly in a flat-bottomed scow in the lake and made a pretence of fishing. The loneliness of the lake and the isolation of the boat suited his humor. He did not find it true that misery loves company. At least to human beings he preferred his companions of Lone Lake—the beaver building his home among the reeds, the kingfisher, ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation. There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come into being, or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case of individuals forming a crowd. The psychological crowd is a provisional being formed ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... had in common with his two companions, Gerrard dreaded the moment when he would step ashore on the left bank of the Bari, thence to strike southwards and take up his new work at Habshiabad. The absolute isolation from men of his own colour which this would entail was not a prospect he could face with any pleasure. From Charteris he would now be separated by the whole breadth of Agpur, unless they both journeyed ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... evening of that day the Caves seem to have exhausted their emotions, and Mr. Cave, who had been out in the afternoon, supped in a gloomy isolation that contrasted pleasantly with the impassioned controversy of the previous days. For some time matters were very badly strained in the Cave household, but neither ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... needed the ministration of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned, and irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a martyrdom hard enough to bear even when veiled by sympathizing womanhood, but now terrible in her loneliness. The primal curse had come to her in that original isolation which must have made the punishment of the first transgression so dreadful. It was, perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin that, at a moment when she most lacked her sex's intuitive tenderness and care, she met only ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... many acknowledged sufferings, is above all harmful when it cuts a nation off from others and throws it back upon itself. There may indeed be periods when such rude shocks have a bracing effect, but they are exceptional, and of short duration, and they do not invalidate the general statement. Such isolation was the lot of France during the later wars of Louis XIV., and it well-nigh destroyed her; whereas to save her from the possibility of such stagnation was the great aim ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... by her daughter Margaret, and published by Messrs. Isbister in 1889.] Mary declares that it is impossible for her to give an adequate idea of the stillness and isolation of her childish life. So intense was the silence of the Quaker household, that, at four years old, Anna had to be sent to a dame's school in order that she might learn to talk; while even after both children had attained the use of speech, their ignorance ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... mocking calls, curses were bound in a louder and louder volume of hope and praise. The negroes were on their feet, swaying in the hysterical contagion of melody, the unutterable longing of their alien isolation. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... for a great deal of this earth's isolation: that it is relatively isolated by circumstances that are similar to the circumstances that make for relative isolation of the bottom of the ocean—except that there is a clumsiness of analogy now. To call ourselves ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... his commanders, had actually rendered some of his seniors so averse to having him under them that it often resulted in his being given independent details, lonely detachment duty, "one-company posts," and similar isolation which almost any other officer would have shrunk from, but that Devers really seemed to enjoy, and, from having been so much his own commanding officer, he was all the less fitted to render prompt and cheerful ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... fetus, the investigators of this period were, almost to a man, Galenists influenced to varying degrees by Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Avicenna. Each felt compelled to challenge the immediate authority, and yet their intellectual isolation from the past was incomplete, and their views on embryogeny corresponded with more often than they differed from those of the ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... brought to the idea of such a correlation between the two impulsions that the action of the one establishes and limits at the same time the action of the other, and that each of them, taken in isolation, does arrive at its highest manifestation just because the ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... classes. In this, as in many other features of child life, the child reproduces, temporarily and in miniature, some of the earlier phases of the development of adult man. Under this interpretation, the boy's predilection for exploit and for isolation of his own interest is to be taken as a transient reversion to the human nature that is normal to the early barbarian culture—the predatory culture proper. In this respect, as in much else, the leisure-class and the delinquent-class character shows a persistence into adult life of traits ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Their voices indicated the solitude of the mountain, but without sadness; they were mysterious without being awe-inspiring. They might have uttered the dreariest commonplaces, but, in their vast isolation, they seemed musical and eloquent. Lance drew his first sigh,—they had ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Secondly, those who, in their impetuosity and despair, do, in spite of public sentiment, separate, find themselves in their new position beset with many temptations to lead a false, unreal life. This isolation bears especially hard on woman. Marriage is not all of life to man. His resources for amusement and occupation are boundless. He has the whole world for his home. His business, his politics, his club, his friendships with either sex, can help to fill up the void made by an unfortunate union ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... anything so prodigious have happened as that on her tested and proved amendment Lord Iffield had taken her back? This could not have occurred without my hearing of it; and moreover if she had become a person of such fashion where was the little court one would naturally see at her elbow? Her isolation was puzzling, though it could easily suggest that she was but momentarily alone. If she had come with Mrs. Mel-drum that lady would have taken advantage of the interval to pay a visit to some other box—doubtless the box at which Flora had just been looking. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... us, whether in childhood or age, so crushing as a sense of isolation. Who will deny it had to do with the marshalling of worlds, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... hundreds of those; and they are very real indeed; but they are almost entirely mental—or psychical, as some call them. And there are specialists on all of these. Bad habits of thought, for example, always set up some kind of disease; and there are hospitals for these; and even isolation homes." ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... absolute lack of beaten trails, and the fact that the snow lies so loosely on the ground like so much salt, no matter what its depth may be, it was necessary through all their work to snow-shoe ahead of the dog-teams. When one considers their isolation,—often traveling for days without other shelter than a tent and fur robes—it can be understood what sacrifices some of these men made to visit far-away prospectors' cabins and claims. However, no man who travels in this part of the country ever considers that there is any hardship, ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... well as for national isolation, there is no room in the modern world. Isolation spells weakness and helplessness there. The lesser neutral States must of necessity become the clients of the Great Powers and pay a high price for the ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... atmosphere and charm of a gentlewoman. It was the Caucasian in them buried here in Niggertown. It was their part of the tragedy of millions of mixed blood in the South. Their common problem, a feeling of their joint isolation, brought Peter to a sense of keen and tingling nearness ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... the last day or two had been nightmares of loneliness. He threw caution to the winds and walked hour after hour, only to find that the street crowds, people who had left a home or were going to one, depressed him and emphasized his isolation. He had deliberately put away from him the anchor that had been Elizabeth and had followed a treacherous memory, and now he was adrift. He told himself that he did not want much. Only peace, work and a place. But he had not ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with the eight hundred thousand francs* or so which were at his disposal every year. He would complete the gigantic works destined to make the Basilica a self-supporting centre, and assist in embellishing the new town in order to increase the isolation of the old one and seclude it behind its rock, like an insignificant parish submerged beneath the splendour of its all-powerful neighbour. All the money, all the sovereignty, would be his; he ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... back and forth on it, pygmies aiding in the birth of a Colossus. The night sky was dim and remote here. Despite the roar of the cableways, the whistles of foremen, the rushing to and fro of workmen, the flicker of electric lights, one could not lose the sense of the project's isolation. One knew that the desert was pressing in on every side. One knew that old Jezebel, having crossed endless wastes, having fed on loneliness, whispered threats of trouble to the narrow flume that for a moment throttled her. One knew that the Elephant ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... with Clara." Gordon touched the horses with a slight flicker of the whip. He held the lines taut as they sprang forward. His face was set ahead. James glancing at him had a realization of the awful loneliness of the other man by his side. He seemed to comprehend the vastness of the isolation of a grief which concerns one, and one only, more than any other. Gordon had the expression of a wanderer upon a desert or a frozen waste. Illimitable distances of solitude seemed ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... Grady, is based on Berehaven, Ireland, and maintains a submarine patrol off the west and south coasts of Ireland. Their service is hard; they have had a great deal of work at sea and have cheerfully met every demand made on them. Despite their relative isolation, they have maintained themselves in readiness with the aid of the submarine tender Bushnell, whose limited facilities have been utilized to the utmost. Their performances and condition of material and personnel reflect ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... record, except a transient gleam of sunshine immediately after his return home, and his present helplessness and isolation? ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... night of the sea-depths they passed into an apparently lifeless zone, where the searchlight, projected now on one side and now on another, revealed no more of the living forms which they had encountered above, but showed only a desert of solid transparent water. Here, amid this awful isolation, they experienced for the first time a feeling of dread and terror. An overpowering sense of loneliness and helplessness came over them, and only the stout heart of Cosmo Versal, and his reassuring words, kept the others from making the signal which would have caused the ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... desolation around the grimly cold volcano, alone, the old Indian made his last stand, and in a rude cabin, beside a tiny spring that seeped from under the black rock on the mountain-side, lived in splendid isolation—silent, brooding, desiring only to be left in peace with his few ponies, his small herd of cattle and the memories and traditions of ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... only horse in the field that was not free to roam and graze where he listed. A stake and a halter held him to one corner, where he was severely let alone by the other horses. He did not like this isolation. Blanco Diablo was not happy unless he was running, or fighting a rival. Of the two he would rather fight. If anything white could resemble a devil, this horse surely did. He had nothing beautiful about him, yet he drew the gaze and held it. The look of him suggested discontent, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... and, furthermore, that huge Turkish reenforcements were covering the 200 miles from the nearest railway head by forced marches in an effort to arrive at the fortress and prevent its encircling and isolation by the Russians. Both of these reports, however, ultimately were proved to be figments of the active ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... not sailed far, when his countenance changes, and he grows to a monstrous stature; the foul fiend is revealed. They are bound on a drearier voyage than that of True Thomas—to a Hades of ice and isolation that bespeaks the ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... compassion and curiosity of a surgeon about to deal with an ugly case. He saw now his enemy's hand and the strength of his enemy's cards and the cleverness of his enemy's plan, and was not in the least abashed by its audacity or his own isolation. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... own house: his present occupations allowed him no time to superintend that portion of his establishment, which belongs exclusively to men. Madame Claes suppressed the whole expense of equipages and servants, which her present isolation from the world rendered unnecessary, and she did so without pretending to conceal the retrenchment under any pretext. So far, facts had contradicted her assertions, and silence for the future was more becoming: indeed ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... moment. Her kindling of his flame of adventure had been very subtle until now. Perhaps she hadn't been sure before to-day of her standing. But this afternoon, upon the still isolation of Bald Knob, there had been many kisses exchanged, and brave vows of undying love. And no doubt she felt certain of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... as I am concerned, to this problem of living. What troubles me at present is, how is this woman feeling about my marriage with a half-breed girl? Now these letters help me; they make me certain that whatever I may be compelled to do at any future time by reason of my isolation, she will not be hard upon me, but will understand. This marriage with Peggy, for instance, looks like a betrayal of her. And though she is dead, I should hate to grieve her in the ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... picked up for merely going out for them, there would not be many left for you to choose; but, my dear father, I know no drawbacks which cannot be surmounted. Let us see what these drawbacks are. First, hard labour; occasional privation; a log-hut, till we can get a better; severe winter; isolation from the world; occasional danger, even from wild beasts and savages. I grant these are but sorry exchanges for such a splendid mansion as this—fine furniture, excellent cooking, polished society, and the interest one feels for what is going on in our own country, which is ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... slow to appreciate the real facts. His knowledge of Indian tactics was exceedingly small, and the utter isolation of his post kept him ignorant. At first he was convinced that it was merely a local disturbance and would end as suddenly as begun. Then, when realization finally came, was already too late to stop the girl. She would be already on her long journey. What could he do? What ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... "We sail on his memory into the ports of every nation," says Mr. Emerson admirably in his Introduction to Goodwin's Plutarch's "Morals." No doubt we are becalmed pretty often, and yet our old skipper almost reconciles us with our dreary isolation, so well can he beguile the time, when he chooses, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... and this isolation in the midst of Paris, Lisbeth relished with delight. And besides, she foresaw that the first passion would rob her of her slave. Sometimes she even blamed herself because her own tyranny and reproaches had compelled ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... anything to be afraid of on our roads. Our valley was in such a quiet isolation, so far away from the main roads, that even a tramp or an importunate beggar were not to be feared. The labourers going home from the fields touched their caps with a friendly "God save you kindly, Miss Bawn." The children by the cottage doors smiled at me shyly. Even ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... that old imperialist John of Gaunt, did Shakespeare reflect, not the rebellious spirit of the age of Richard II, but the boundless enthusiasm of his own times, when the defeat of Spain's mighty Armada had left England "in splendid isolation," unchallenged mistress of her own realm and of the encircling sea. For it was in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign that England found herself as a nation, and became conscious of her destiny ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... The tranquil isolation of village life in ancient India has left its mark on literature. Though the names of teachers are handed down and their opinions cited with pious care, yet for many centuries after the Vedic age we find no books attributed to ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... enough,—not for the blows; they were nothing. The plan was not alone to humiliate him beyond all measure, but to scourge his soul, ravage the sanctuary of his mother there, rend him asunder, and cast him into an unthinkable hell of isolation; for she was the bond that held him to the world, she was the human comfort and sweetness of ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... heard the opera, during a boyish holiday in London, it was at the height of its popularity, and every evening of his vacation found him enthralled in the boxes. The isolation of the frontier had but made the old music more loved, and Philip decided to make up a box party of his friends. Miss Blair had told him that she had never heard it in its entirety. She should be the guest of honor. Judge and Mrs. Latimer, Blair, the doctor ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionists, who refused to consider such co-operation, and pointed to the fact that provocateurs in large numbers associated themselves with the latter in their organizations and preached the same doctrine of absolute isolation and exclusiveness. ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... desire unsatisfied, one sees the satisfaction of another; and here we may see the altruistic stage beginning; this has two sides, the fear of causing desire in others, and the fear of causing disgust; in each case, personal isolation is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... gentle birth and breeding afforded to him in full sight of the natives of Deweshurst. If he felt all that, he must recognize how womanly and sweet Bell was, though she was not pretty and not one bit clever, and be full of gratitude to her. And gratitude combined with considerable isolation on the one hand, and on the other the constantly present possibility of agreeable encounters with a loyal old friend, might lead to anything—to a good deal more than Dora cared to say even to herself, feeling frightened at the length to which she had gone on the spur of the moment ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... spirit that had been somewhat lacking of late. Every sea voyage has its periods of depression due to monotony; they had not sighted a ship for over ten days, and this evening the glimpse of the Albatross revealed through the break in the weather had in some curious way shattered the sense of isolation and broken the monotony. The four guests of the Prince were: Madame la Comtesse de Warens, an old lady with a passion for travel, a free thinker, whose mother was a friend of Voltaire in her youth and whose father had been a member of the Jacobin ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... tiny community a world, and so its isolation made it; and yet there was among us but a half-awakened common consciousness, sprung from common joy and grief, at burial, birth, or wedding; from a common hardship in poverty, poor land, and low wages; and above all, from the sight of the Veil that hung between us ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... which was interrupted only by the echoing footsteps of the sacristan who came to light the candles. Behind me was a grave, before me a grave, only above me I saw none. At that moment I felt my loneliness and isolation. When the lights were burning and the Cathedral began to fill with people, I wrapped myself up more closely in my cloak (you know the way in which I used to walk through the suburb of Cracow), and hastened ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Chinese emigrants from the dissolving Chin empire; but economically the Liang realm was very prosperous, so that it was able to extend its influence as far as Turkestan. During the earlier struggles Turkestan had been virtually in isolation, but now new contacts began to be established. Many traders from Turkestan set up branches in Liang. In the capital there were whole quarters inhabited only by aliens from western and eastern Turkestan and from India. With the traders came Buddhist monks; trade and Buddhism ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... history behind them, and descended from such ancestors, it is not strange that the most prominent feature in the Boer character is an intense and unconquerable love of freedom. His isolation, his large farm with outstretched plains or rugged mountains, and his manner of living, all tend to nourish that love of freedom in his bosom. Above all things he wants to be free and independent. His ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... on the coast, but along the great river arteries and in the remoter districts, carrying new ideas and introducing new associations among a primitive people which had pursued for centuries a national policy of isolation. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... exciting, is it not?" She glanced over her shoulder up the ill-lighted street. Rows of shade trees cast long inky blots between the corner illuminations; the houses on either side sat well back in their yards, increasing the sense of isolation. "It is quite a ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... which enables us to communicate with objects, prevents us, on the other hand, from knowing their nature. It is an organ of relation with the outer world; it is also, for us, a cause of isolation. We never go outside ourselves. We are walled in. And all we can say of matter and of the outer world is, that it is revealed to us solely by the sensations it affords us, that it is the unknown cause of our sensations, the inaccessible excitant of our organs of the senses, and ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... the yearning for sympathy which I felt. You who were among people grim and self-contained usually, who, I trust, were falling on each other's necks in the public streets, shouting, with tears in their eyes and triumph in their hearts, can picture my isolation. ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of age to a daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria, the young prince had continued until his accession to the throne in his life of domestic retirement, study, and isolation. Europe was slumbering in a disgraceful peace. War, that exercise of princes, could not thus form him by contact with men and the custom of command. Fields of battle, which are the theatre of great actors of his stamp, had not brought ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... was exceedingly infirm in body, but preserved his intellectual faculties to the last. He was a lonely old man, even while surrounded by a splendid court. He wanted somebody to love, at least to cheer him in his isolation; for he had no peace in his family, deeply as he was attached to its members. He himself had discovered the virtues and disinterestedness of his minister Decazes, and when his family and ministers drove away this favorite, the king was devoted to him even ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... should have been placed in the apse, stands in a singular isolation which has struck many of the students in this branch of church learning. At Sens, Saint Eustace is in the choir, and by his side is the Prodigal Son. At Bourges also the Prodigal Son is in the choir. At Chartres, he is banished to the north ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... are fussily opening the robe, she manages to push her brother's gift behind the door. Then, without looking round at her husband. "It isn't a bit too long. Just the very—" Looking: "Well, it can easily be taken up at the hem. I can do it to-morrow." She abandons him to his awkward isolation while she chatters on with his sisters. "Sit down; I insist! Don't think of going. Did you see that frightful pack of people when the cab horse fell down in ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... was the brief reply. Peggy slowed down the engine. The Golden Butterfly now seemed to be gliding silently through lonely billows of white sea fog. It was an uncanny feeling. The occupants of the machine felt a chilling sense of complete isolation. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... traveler that the heritage of this land is death. There is a bearing down of one's spirit in the midst of all this loneliness and desolation that envelops everything; yet, despite the uncanny mystery of it, the sense of repression it imparts, of unconquerable isolation from all that is good and sweet and beautiful, there are those who find it possible to live in San Pasqual without feeling that ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... to play cricket in a manner to please connoisseurs. I hated the game from the very beginning, and it was pure slavery to me, and I never had the faintest desire to excel in it or even to learn it. This dislike was a misfortune, as not to love cricket is a cause of isolation for an ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... The preliminary isolation of Louisbourg was a particularly effective stroke of naval strategy. Even before 1758 began the first French fleet that left for Louisbourg had been shadowed from Toulon and had been shut up in Cartagena. A second French fleet was then sent ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... seemed as if it must be impossible to drive a hundred yards farther. Seen in the broad light of a summer afternoon it was wonderfully beautiful; but it was a wild and lonesome spot, and, given cloud or rain, its very grandeur and isolation would increase the sense ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... college days (to whom he appeared strongly attached), Mr. Dallas and his solicitor seemed to be the only persons whom, even in their very questionable degree, he could boast of as friends. Though too proud to complain of this loneliness, it was evident that he felt it; and that the state of cheerless isolation, "unguided and unfriended," to which, on entering into manhood, he had found himself abandoned, was one of the chief sources of that resentful disdain of mankind, which even their subsequent worship of him came ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... his isolation, the energy and strength of Trenck's character were only augmented by his misfortunes, and he never ceased to plot for his deliverance. Weeks passed without any fruitful event occurring in the life of the prisoner, yet help was to come to him from a source from which he could never have ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... place. The cement and panoply of affection, and good will bound them together at once in the social tie, and the union for defence. Like the gregarious tenants of the air in their annual migrations, they brought their true home, that is to say their charities with them. In their state of extreme isolation from the world they had left, the kindly social propensities were found to grow more strong in the wilderness. The current of human affections in fact naturally flows in a deeper and more vigorous tide, in proportion as it is ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... I suppose I am proud, as you often tell me; but I should like to be amongst women what he is amongst men, supported by my own strength. Even within the last three weeks I have felt myself becoming more independent in my isolation. I was afraid to go about the streets by myself at first. Now I am getting quite brave. That unfortunate woman did me good. Taking care of her, and being relied on so much by her, has made me rely on myself more. Thanks to you, I have not much loneliness to complain of. And ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... forbade him to get a divorce or to marry again. So the two decided to live together and to be man and wife in everything except the sanction of the law. The result was disastrous for a time to the woman. There is no question that the social isolation that resulted hurt her deeply. Her close friends like Spencer remained loyal, and her husband was always the devoted lover as well as ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... undesirable instinct into a habit. The boy who shows a spirit of combativeness may be cured by having a generous and congenial boy as his chum. The pupil whose social tendencies are so strong that he cannot refrain from talking may be cured by isolation. ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... indescribable horrors were occurring in the Chinese city, thousands of Chinese Christians were cruelly tortured and killed. Reports came in daily of the murder of missionaries, of railway stations destroyed, and the gradual isolation of Pekin. Missionaries and their families and native Christians took refuge in the legations, and rescue parties were sent out to bring in others, and these reported the most terrible scenes of massacre ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... had come, vaguely foreseen, sombrely eluded. A questioner was before him who, poor, unheeded, an ancient victim of vice, could yet wield a weapon whose sweep of wounds would be wide. Stern and masterful as he looked in his arid isolation, beneath all was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... This, Anne of Austria perceived; knowing herself to be very ill, and condemned by her sufferings to frequent retirement, she was distressed at the idea that the greater part of her future days and evenings would pass away solitary, useless, and in despondency. She recalled with terror the isolation in which Cardinal Richelieu had formerly left her, those dreaded and insupportable evenings, during which, however, she had both youth and beauty, which are ever accompanied by hope, to console her. She next formed the project of transporting the court to her own apartments, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... khaki of officers and men, returning from leave, relieved by the warmer colours of women who have come to say good-bye to those they love. In five hours from the time of starting one may be across that ribbon of salt water, which means much in isolation and little in distance, and ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... all street-soliciting was advocated, as well as control of restaurants, hotels or other places with reference to their use for promoting prostitution. The Committee further favored the detention and, where necessary, the isolation of all persons known to be, or suspected of being infected, and advocated the adoption of the report system in regard to early preventive treatment. The importance of early marriage was urged. Other measures recommended were the custodial care of the feeble-minded, ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... for example, many old-fashioned English liberals who denounce militarism and "treaty entanglements" with equal ardor; they want Britain to stand alone, unaggressive, but free; not realizing that such an isolation is the surest encouragement to any war-enamored power. Exactly the same type is to be found in the United States, and is probably even more influential there. But only by so spinning a web of treaties that all countries are linked by general obligations to mutual protection ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... enough to pay her own expenses if she came and yet be grateful. Yes; Kate was the solution. If she came, at one stroke, Mrs. Fisher saw, would the Wilkinses be regularized and Mrs. Wilkins be prevented from having more than her share of the rooms. Also, Mrs. Fisher would save herself from isolation; spiritual isolation. She desired physical isolation between meals, but she disliked that isolation which is of the spirit. Such isolation would, she feared, certainly be hers with these three alien-minded young women. Even Mrs. Arbuthnot was, owing to her friendship with ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... had accumulated and supplies had run low, they visited the cabin of an obscure trader. Otherwise they were cut off from the world and rejoiced in their isolation. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... eat, but a little water was given her in a birch-bark cup painted red, and she sucked up the liquid through a tube made out of the leg of a crane, a swan, or a goose, for her lips might not touch the surface of the water. After the four days she was allowed, during the rest of the period of isolation, to eat, to wash, to lie down, to comb her hair, and to drink of streams and springs. But in drinking at these sources she had still to use her tube, otherwise the spring would dry up. While her seclusion ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... in different circumstances might have been in a precarious military situation, felt reasonably secure, despite her isolation. In the early part of the war, however, events moved rapidly and not exactly to her liking. For they threatened to sweep the whole Balkans into the whirl of war, and no man could tell exactly how the various ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... vine. Many varieties of any species of grape are readily told by the size and habits of the plant. Size of vine is rather more variable than other gross characters because of the influence of environment, such as food, moisture, light, isolation and pests; yet, size in a plant or the parts of a plant is a very reliable character when proper allowances ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... reached the little green mound that lay below the Giant's Finger. Although the Grey Hill would have been small and insignificant in hilly country here, by its isolation, it assumed importance. On every side of it ran the sand-dunes—in front of it, almost as it seemed up to its very feet, ran the sea. Treliss was completely hidden, not a house could be seen. The black clouds now had caught the sea and only far away to ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Who knows whether instantaneous secession would not perform the mission of resolving certain problems otherwise insoluble? Who knows whether slavery must not disappear in this wise in the very effort that it makes to strengthen itself through isolation? Who knows whether it is not important to the prosperity and real power of the United States to escape from theories of territorial monopoly, those evil counsellors but too much heeded? Who knows, in fine, whether the day will not come, when, the questions of slavery once settled, ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... west;—dike of eighty miles long, and in some eastern parts of almost eighty broad; so elaborate is Daun's detaching quality, in cases of moment. "The King's broken Army on one side of us," calculates Daun; "Prince Henri's on the other; incommunicative they; reduced to isolation, powerless either or both of them against such odds. They shall wait there, please Heaven, till Saxony be quite finished. Zweibruck, and our Detachments and Maguires, let them finish Saxony, while Soltikof keeps the King busy. Saxony finished, how will either Prince or King attempt to recover ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "lean-to" extensions, until a certain picturesqueness was given to the irregularity of outline, and a home-like security and companionship to the congregated buildings. It typified the former life of the great capitalist, as the tall new house illustrated the loneliness and isolation that wealth had given him. But the real points of vantage were the years of cultivation and habitation that had warmed and enriched the soil, and evoked the climbing vines and roses that already hid its unpainted ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... walking across this Flowery Land came to me early in the year 1909, although for many years I had cherished the hope of seeing Interior China ere modernity had robbed her and her wonderful people of their isolation and antediluvianism, and ever since childhood my interest in China has always been considerable. A little prior to the Chinese New Year, a friend of mine dined with me at my rooms in Singapore, in the Straits Settlements, and the conversation ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... more, not less, unscrupulous in outraging the small conventions of society. And, unfortunately, Norburn was a man to encourage instead of discouraging her in this course, for conventions and respectability had always been a red rag to him. In the result the isolation of the Medland household from most of the families of their own level in the town, and from all of a higher, if there were any such, grew from day to day, until it seemed that Daisy's "We three against the world!" was to come true so far as the world meant the social circle of their neighbours. ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... treatment that he penned the lines given below, of which an eloquent critic has said that "in their sublime sadness and incoherence they sum up, with marvellous effect, the one great misfortune of the poet's life—his mental isolation— his inability to make his deepest character and thoughts intelligible to others. They read like the wail of a nature cut off from all access to other minds, concentrated at its own centre, and conscious of the impassable gulf which separates it ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... drove her needle. Omnibuses rumbled by; an occasional wagon or cart set the dust a-flying; the street venders passed, crying the praises of their goods and wares; the blue sky grew more and more intense as weeks piled up upon weeks; but the empty repetitions, and the isolation, and, worst of all, the escape of time,—she smiled at all, and sewed on and crooned on, in the sufficient thought that John would come, each time, when only hours enough ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... monarch or an English prime minister. The principles of Republican equality, of States' rights, of economy and retrenchment, of peace and local self-government seemed triumphant beyond reach of attack. While Europe resounded with battles and marches, America lived in contented isolation, free from the cares of unhappy nations living under the ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... seen him in one moment turn against herself. No!—no one was left her!... If she could only lay her head in Modeste's lap and be soothed while she crooned her old songs as in the nursery! But, whatever Marien or any one else might choose to say, she was no longer a baby. The bitter sense of her isolation arose in her. She could hardly breathe. Suddenly she pressed her lips upon the glass which reflected her own image, so sad, so pale, so desolate. She put the pity for herself into a long, long, fervent ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... for the highest development of those qualities essential to self-government, and the brightest illustration of patriotic devotion. They may not be the best informed, but learning and wisdom are by no means equivalent terms. Isolation and entire dependence upon himself; give independence of character and favor that self-inquiry which best enables man to comprehend and measure the motives of his fellow. Crowded together in cities originality is ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis |
