"May Day" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said in sudden inspiration. "Give a May Day. Try every channel with a May Day. If anyone picks up a May Day call you'll get ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne
... their own, which not rarely they could utter with striking audacity."—I could only envy these lines of gold; not one word of them had any reference to me: for I was still but a child. During a night that followed a lovely May day, the weather suddenly changed: winter, who was during the days of his dominion, watching how the warm breezes played with the flower-bells of the trees, all at once returned: with the full vigor of vengeance he came, and ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... One May day George thought he had a glimpse of Lucy. He was not certain, but he was sufficiently disturbed, in spite of his uncertainty. A promotion in his work now frequently took him out of town for a week, or longer, and it was upon his return from one of these ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... still holds the field; and in the realm of pure literature his one-volume edition of Keats is there to show his eagerness for beauty and his love of English verse. I sent him the first volume in proof, about a year before the book came out, and awaited his verdict with much anxiety. It came one May day in 1889. I happened to be very tired and depressed at the moment, and I remember sitting alone for a little while with the letter in my hand, without courage to open it. Then at ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Tomorrow will be May day—once, before the world became industrial, a day of gladness, now a day of dread, another ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... again on the edge of the moat. "Let me know," she said, "when the pennon touches the wall." The folds of white and gold with the benign countenance of the Saviour, now visible, now lost in the changes of movement, floated over their heads on the breeze of the May day. "Jeanne," said the squire, "it touches!" "On!" cried the Maid, her voice ringing through the momentary quiet. "On! All is yours!" The troops rose as one man; they flung themselves against the wall, at the foot of which that white figure stood, the staff of her banner ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... ice storms could have wrought. Between these more kindly adventurers and the pasture folk have grown up a friendly intimacy which is beginning to teach city ways to the pasture denizens. Therein lies the cause of my surprise. Under the soft mists of a cool May day I brushed the dew from the wood grasses and unrolling croziers of cinnamon fern to pause in admiration at shrubs and trees bearing calling cards. Here is a red cedar announcing on a Dennison tag, "I am Juniperus virginiana, known to ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... a very busy and quiet one for the four years following the May day when she made her choice. Study, exercise, housework, and many wholesome pleasures kept her a happy, hearty creature, yearly growing in womanly graces, yet always preserving the innocent freshness girls lose ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... This peaceful, beautiful May day, as I write this at my cabin in the woods, Correggio seems to me truly one of the world's marvelous men. He is near, very dear, and yet before him I ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... milking-pail, garlanded with flowers, between his horns, brings up the rear. The Alpadores are in their finest Sunday costume, and the sound of yodel-songs—the very voice of Alpine landscapes—echoes from every hill. Such a picture as this, under the cloudless blue of a fortunate May day, makes the heart of the Appenzeller light. He goes joyously up to his summer labor, and makes his herb-cheese on the heights, while his wife weaves and embroiders muslin in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... Again, by an equally simple shift of position, sun and moon move among men as the messengers of death; by night and by day men perish, while these heavenly bodies alternate in their presence among men.[14] Hence a text of the Veda can say in a similar mood: "May Day and Night procure for us long life" (House-book of [A]cval[a]yana, ii. 4. 14). Conversely it is a commonplace of the Veda to say that day and night destroy the lives of men. One text says that, "day and night are the encircling arms of death" ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... set on foot. Some of the earlier students were very young, but in 1858 the age of admission was raised to eighteen. From time to time the buildings have been enlarged. Mr. Ruskin instituted in 1880 a May Day Festival, to be held annually, and as long as he lived, he himself presented to the May Queen a gold cross and chain, and distributed to her comrades some of his volumes. Mr. Ruskin also presented to the college ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... leading down from the farmhouse to the spring at the bottom of the garden, and lifted her head as a young deer does when it senses something new or dangerous. Suddenly, and entirely subconsciously, she felt her kinship with life, her relation to the lovely May day which was more like June than May—and a rare thing for Kenmore—whose seasons lapsed into each other as calmly and sluggishly as did all the other happenings in that spot known to the Canadian Indians as The Place Beyond the ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... and 1894 Canada was called upon to mourn the loss of a number of her ablest and brightest statesmen—one of them the most notable in her political history. It was on a lovely May day of 1880 that the eminent journalist and politician, George Brown, died from the effects of a bullet wound which he received at the hand of one Bennett, a printer, who had been discharged by the Globe for drunkenness and incapacity. ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... midst of all this, home came Mr. and Mrs. Weston one fine May day, like swallows, to make Inna's summer complete. They arrived suddenly, as travellers often do, the letter that was sent to announce them making its appearance the morning after they were at the farm—for such things do happen now ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... thoroughly did the invading savages destroy all records, that our knowledge of the British Church in London may be compared, not inaptly, to our knowledge of Thornhill's paintings in the concave sphere of the dome. We know that they exist; but even on a bright May day ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... shawl of lilac barege (it was the period of the shawl) sprinkled with tiny bouquets of violets. Her dark curls (the poor beloved curls to-day, alas! so thin and white) were at this time without a gray hair. There was about her the fragrance of the May day, and her face as it looked that morning with its broad brimmed hat is still distinctly present with me. Besides the bouquet of pink hyacinths, she had brought me a tiny watering-pot, an exact imitation in ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... joyful eyes for joyful nature. May I be alive to the gentle influences of a May day which bring new experiences to all who may receive them: and may I serve thee by unfolding to others the love of truth, the love of good, and the love of ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... reader to learn they were all makers of ballades and rondels. To write verses for May day, seems to have been as much a matter of course, as to ride out with the cavalcade that went to gather hawthorn. The choice of Valentines was a standing challenge, and the courtiers pelted each other ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... most of these little people are my benefactors, and add another ray of sunshine to the May day. I shall not soon forget the spectacle of that rare little warbler peeping around the corner of the porch, like a ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... was always planning surprises, so when she appeared with two large lunch baskets heaped with goodies, Mary realized that this would be a May day party unlike any she had ever before seen. Six burros were kept ever ready in the corral and these were caught and saddled for the children. Mother rode her Indian pony, a Christmas gift from Father. As they passed the mill and wound up the trail by the main shaft of the ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster
... and Richard and Dorothy were married at Hursley on May Day, 1649, before Cromwell's departure to crush the ill-arranged risings in Ireland. Her sister Anne shortly after married John Dunch of Baddesley, with 1000 pounds as her portion. Morley of Baddesley chronicles the marriage ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... the UFO's were still there because the day before the all- important May Day celebration, a day when the Soviet radio and TV are normally crammed with programs plugging the glory of Mother Russia to get the peasants in the mood for the next day, a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences had to get on the air to calm the people's fears. He left out Wall ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... it was, could always be had in exchange for his mother's signature, I suspected. The pale May day had turned bleak and chilly, and we sat down by an open hatchway which emitted warm air from somewhere below. At this close range I studied Cressida's face, and felt reassured of her unabated vitality; the old force of will ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... were either too late or too soon, as it was now October 9th, and as we had a lot to see on that day, with not overmuch time to see it in, we left the dew to the ladies, feeling certain, however, that they would be more likely to find it there in October than on May Day. When we had walked about five miles, we turned off the main road to visit the pretty village of Rosslyn, or Roslin, with its three great attractions: the chapel, the castle, and the dell. We found it surrounded by woods and watered by a very pretty reach of the River Esk, and ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... It makes me laugh as I recall how, on that May day, I looked into the first mirror I was alone with, smiled delighted, as an idiot with myself and said: "Matt, you are of the kings now. Your crown suits you and, as you've earned it, you know how to keep it. Now for some fun with your subjects and ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... placed in them by their youthful patrons, they had secured an excellent assortment of the crowns of tissue-paper flowers which, in those days, every little girl considered essential to the proper observance of May Day. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... very good indeed that Hooker and his staff were as nearly free from care on May Day as headquarter men can ever be in the midst of vital operations. Hooker had just reason to be proud of the Army of the Potomac and of his own work in reviving it. He had, indeed, issued one bombastic order of the day in which he called it "the finest ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... day of Beltaine, that is called now May Day, the Tuatha de Danaan came, and it was to the north-west of Connacht they landed. But the Firbolgs, the Men of the Bag, that were in Ireland before them, and that had come from the South, saw nothing but a mist, and it ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... had passed, and various political changes had taken place, that one bright May day, bright as such days are sometimes seen in the west, a heavy carriage drawn by four horses, and attended by two gentlemen and a sturdy servitor on horseback, passed slowly up and down the hills along the road leading to ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... not try this again for fear of a fall, and every step cost him a pang; but he never forgot it, and was thinking of it as he sat staring at the wall on that memorable May day. ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... many days. None of the persons who had wronged him would be punished for some time, neither his coarse and cowardly rival, nor his perfidious mistress, nor monstrous Lydia Maitland, whose infamy he had just discovered. They were all happy and triumphant, on that lovely, radiant May day, while he tossed on a bed of pain, and it was proven too clearly to him that very afternoon by his two seconds, the only visitors whom he had not denied admission, and who came to see him about five o'clock. They came from the races ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... May day came—warm, bright, and beautiful. At six o'clock in the morning the Zephyr and the Butterfly were manned, and the boys went over to the island to trim the May-pole with evergreen and flowers. The Sylph was degraded for the time into a "freighting vessel," and ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... north are long. It was past seven on this May day; yet Lydia knew that the best of the show was still to come; she waited for the last act, and refused to think of supper. That golden fusion of all the upper air; that "intermingling of Heaven's pomp," spread on the great slopes of Skiddaw—red and bronze and purple, shot through ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... swimming in the sea; and so he can go in just as if they were all-right bathing-drawers. In he goes, has a good long swim with her, and when he comes out, says, of his dripping ducks, 'tabula votiva . . . avida vestimenta,' to remind an old schoolmate of his hopping to the booth at the end of a showery May day, and dedicating them to the laundry in these words. It seems marvellous. It was a quaint revival, an hour after breakfast, for little Collett to be acting as intermediary with Selina to request Lady Ormont's grant of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... feelings of unfeigned delight that the Guards learned May Day was to witness the beginning of another great move towards Pretoria. We had entered Bloemfontein without expending upon it a single shot; we had been strangely welcomed with smiles and cheers and waving flags and lavish hospitality; but ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... May Day came bright and beautiful. The busy ones had all the "eats" in the Mandrake Hall, the glowworms were sleeping soundly to fill their storage batteries ready for the night. It made the salamanders' mouths water to see so many good things; ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... shepherd's plaid (because summer was not come); a white handkerchief tied over her head-gear, because it was so foggy, so damp, and so early; and a straw bonnet and ribbons peeping from under the handkerchief, because it was likely to be a sunny May day. ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... day in the year on which both the peals of bells were heard, the Feast of SS. Philip and James, which is also May Day. Then there was morning prayer at S. Philip and evening prayer at S. James, and the bells rang changes and cannons, and went on ringing by turns all the evening, the bell-ringers being escorted from one church to another with May garlands and a sort of triumphal procession. The ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... could not tell them from strays. Every one was to sweep their chimney four times a year, for fear of sparks falling on the thatch. No man was to suffer the nests of crows or magpies in his ground, but pull them down before May Day. In the meadows, before each man began to mow his grass he was to mark the exact limits of his own land with 'wadsticks' or tall rods, so that there could be no mistake as to boundaries. The health of the community and of the live ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... prevailing on the great passenger ship, the shadow of war impended over all. The bloody struggles of the great European cataclysm were proceeding at the other end of the English Channel and dire hints of dangers on the sea in the "war zone" had accompanied the sailing of the ship. But on this bright May day, as the liner approached its destination, danger seemed far distant and few indeed among passengers or crew gave serious thought to its imminence. All was truly well on board. The skies were clear, the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... on a May day. As he and Reuben, driving their new sheep, mounted the last edge of the moor which separated them from home, the Kinder Valley lay before them, sparkling in a double radiance of morning and of spring. David lingered a minute or two behind his ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the mutual happiness and thankfulness of that May day to Jack Henderson and Bryda; and as they sat for a few blissful minutes in the arbour, which had been Mrs Henderson's pride in earlier ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... he set to it, and after a lot of patient skirmishing he began to see faint signs of hope. He held in, however, so powerful as his nature would let him until the signs heartened the man for a dash at last, and 'twas by Hound's Pool on a May day with the bluebells beside the water, and the cherry blossom tasselling over their heads—that he told the girl she was the light of his spring and ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... then lie so thick on the ground that the bearers carried his body over the gate in Knighton field, and the company went over the hedges, and they digged a way to the church porch. I knew some ancient people of the parish that did remember it. On a May day, 1655 or 1656, being then in Glamorganshire, at Mr. Jo. Aubrey's at Llanchrechid, I saw the mountaines of Devonshire all white with snow. There fell but little ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... May Day, the sun shone and all the world seemed gay and green, and these Protestant adventurers thought they had never seen so fair a land. It was, they said, the fairest, fruitfullest and pleasantest of all the world, "abounding in honey, venison and wildfowl." The natives were ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... distance of a thousand miles, and on the fifteenth day of April, 1820, left for the colony in three Mackinaw boats, carrying three hundred bushels of wheat, one hundred bushels of oats, and thirty bushels of peas. Being stopped by ice in Lake Pepin, they planted a May pole and celebrated May day on the ice. They reached home by way of the Minnesota river, with a short portage to Lake Traverse, the boats being moved on rollers, and thence down the Red River to Pembina, where they arrived in safety on the third day of June. This trip cost Lord Selkirk ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... Rosemary," he said. "What a May Day! Simpson and I were up with the lark; weren't we, Simpson? Poor Simpson felt like a sort of 'Queen of the May,' when my electric bell trilled in his room, at 5 A.M. But I couldn't stay in bed. I woke with my something-is-going-to-happen feeling; and when I was ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... a squally May day, with bright sunbursts and driving showers. Montgomery worked all morning in the surgery getting ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his defeat was canvassed freely in the neighborhood smithy, the head-quarters of provincial gossip, and was under discussion one May day while Cummins Jackson, a planter and bachelor, waited to have ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... circle of court-officials, in whose faces it was easy to read that they were afraid of their ruler's wrath, and preferred keeping as far from him as possible. The dazzling light and oppressive heat of a Babylonian May day came in through the open windows, and not a sound was to be heard in the great room, except the whining of a large dog of the Epirote breed, which had just received a tremendous kick from Cambyses for venturing to fawn on his master, and was the only being that ventured to disturb ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the sport was, how sweet to breathe the bright pure air of that May day; how grand to outstrip the wind over the yielding turf, and at last to carry home the trophies of their prowess; the scalp of the wolf, the tusks of the boar, leaving the serfs to bring in the succulent flesh of the latter, while the ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake |
