"Solitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... miserable in Rome at the time of the Pope's Jubilee. Fortunately for us, this terrible old man had fastened himself upon a party of American school-teachers travelling en Cook, and for the time we were safe; but our vision of two hours of dreamy solitude faded lamentably away. ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... pious does he appear in these moments of solitude, and how spirited are his resolutions for the improvement of his mind, even in elegant literature, at a very advanced period of life, and when afflicted ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... clean, inconceivably tidy, shimmering with brilliant light under its lofty and beautiful ceiling, shaking and roaring with the terrific thunder of its own vitality, this hall in which no common voice could make itself heard produced nevertheless an effect of magical stillness, silence, and solitude. We were alone in it, save that now and then in the far-distant spaces a figure might flit and disappear between the huge glinting columns of metal. It was a hall enchanted and inexplicable. I understood nothing of it. But I understood that half the electricity of New York was being ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... the pulpit, became Uria. He rode through the desert with the letter of his king. He was alone. The solitude terrified him. His thoughts were gloomy. But he smiled when he thought of his wife. The desert became a flowering meadow when he remembered his wife. Springs gushed up from the ground at ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... there was a sentiment of solitude in his life, but it was scarcely more, so affectionate and devoted were his relations to his kindred and his friends. His elder sister, Mrs. Samuel B. Ripley, was one of the most admirably accomplished women in New England, living for some years in the Old Manse ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... excitability of brain and nerves which made care requisite; but depression of spirits was the chief thing to guard against, and a London life, provided he did not overwork himself, was better for him than solitude at Redclyffe. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... road behind them vanished, everything dropped away from them but the snow, and the low gray skies. A tiny wind slipped along the valley; it was strange not to see it, for it felt like the push of a Presence, in the breathless solitude. A long way off Lionel could hear a faint noise like the sound ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... cave of greenery, while the summer night hung round us heavy with love, and the odours that crept through the silence from the sleeping woods were the only signs of an outer world that invaded our solitude. What followed I cannot clearly remember. The succeeding horror almost obliterated it. I woke as a grey dawn stole into the cave. The damsel had disappeared; but in the shrubbery, at the mouth of the ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... Lizzie, of the conversation, and then, with a horrified, sickening sensation, I flew away-flew away to solitude, and communion with myself. ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... to dissipate her sombre thoughts; but I soon perceived that everything brought them back to her mind, and that the sight of this savage nature, whose solitude affected my own thoughts with sorrow, contributed to increase her melancholy. Within her own dwelling she was less agitated, but more depressed; her fever was then languid, and her beautiful face despoiled of that expression, full of agreeable recollections, that animated her in our private conversation. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... carries us into some high place before which the life of man is spread out and made apparent. The four movements are the four planes that solidify a single concept. The first sets us in a grim forest solitude, out in some great unlimited loneliness, beneath a somber sky. There is movement, a climax, a single cry of passion and despair, and then, only the soughing of wind through hoary branches. The scherzo is the flickering of mad watery lights, a fantastic whipping dance, a sudden sinister ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... along constantly over water, water, nothing but water, and you give me the solitude, the vastness of ocean which fills the eye. I have been in a little sail-boat on the sea, when the rising tide swept it toward the shore. May I not understand the poet's figure: "The green of spring overflows the earth like a tide"? I have felt the flame of a candle blow and flutter ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... breach of rock, sand, shingle, not a mile in length, lying at the foot of high cliffs, and on the grey sea in front not a sign of a sail, nor a wisp of smoke from a passing steamer. The apparent solitude and isolation of the place was as profound as ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... most arbitrary government could desire, its inhabitants would still gratify their thirst for political discussion and information. They would compose and print as they distil, in the depth of deserts and the solitude of mountains, and under the cover of darkness drop the pamphlets into the houses, or scatter them in the streets, and the obstacles to circulation will serve only to inflame the desire for possession. This would be the result of a determination to suppress ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... Rheims and professor of divinity. Five others with him, seized with a holy fear, consulted a hermit how they might escape the judgment of God. To them he gave the answer of the Psalmist, "Lo, I have prolonged my flight and remained in solitude." They, too, were fired with the love of solitude, and begged of Hugh Bishop of Grenoble that he would assign them a place suitable for a retreat. This the bishop did, and the order was established at La Chartreuse in the mountains of Savoy in the ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... than a poor steward were about to interrupt the savage quiet of Timon's solitude. For now the day was come when the ungrateful lords of Athens sorely repented the injustice which they had done to the noble Timon. For Alcibiades, like an incensed wild boar, was raging at the walls of ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... most pathetic of the letters he had composed and rejected, whose torn fragments still littered the floor, could never have spoken with the eloquence of this empty space! The men exchanged no words; the solitude of the cabin, instead of drawing them together, seemed to isolate each one in selfish distrust of the others. Even the unthinking garrulity of Union Mills and the Judge was checked. A moment later, when the Left Bower entered the cabin, his presence ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... regarded as a horrible, murderous monster, found himself, when he returned to Kromlaix late that evening, in the sorry position of King of the Conscripts. He was a young man who had led a very solitary life, but solitude, instead of making him morbid, had strengthened his natural feelings of pity and affection. His immense physical strength had never been exerted for any evil, and even in the roughest wrestling matches he had never fought ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... disposed them to embrace the hazardous professions of fishermen and pirates; and the success of their first adventures would naturally excite the emulation of their bravest countrymen, who were impatient of the gloomy solitude of their woods and mountains. Every tide might float down the Elbe whole fleets of canoes, filled with hardy and intrepid associates, who aspired to behold the unbounded prospect of the ocean, and to taste the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... The peculiar solitude to be found in the crowded heart of London was grateful to his present mood. To have been alone with his thoughts in the country would have been intolerable. The fields smack of innocence, and alone with them the past is apt to take the simple tints ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... resolves to go in quest of a treasure which is under the care of the Korigans, a supernatural folk belonging to Brittany. In order to wrest it from them, however, it is necessary for Hoeel to quit the country and spend a year in solitude in a desolate region. He bravely starts off, and Dinorah, thinking he has abandoned her, loses her wits, and constantly wanders about the woods with her goat, seeking him. Meanwhile the year expires and Hoeel returns, convinced that he has ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... he must now be getting nearer the den where the two unknown men used as a hideout. The very solitude of the place affected him. It was as if a heavy weight had been laid on his back, that threatened ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... think Saratoga the most delightful place in the world, Miss Wyllys? I am never so happy as when here. I delight so much in the gay world; it appears to me that I breathe more freely in a crowd—solitude oppresses ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Feelings that lure thee to betray, And light of thoughts that pass away. For thou hast earned a mighty boon, The truths which wisest poets see 85 Dimly, thy mind may make its own, Rewarding its own majesty, Entranced in some diviner mood Of self-oblivious solitude. ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... cares, or its feverish temptations, pointed his thoughts backwards, for a moment's relief, to scenes of pastoral gaiety and peace, the heart-wearied prince would sometimes draw from their repository, and in solitude would apostrophise them separately, or commune with the bitter-sweet remembrances which they recalled. In something of the same spirit—but with a hatred to the German philosopher such as men are represented as feeling towards the gloomy enchanter, Zamiel or whomsoever, by whose hateful ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the days began to be sad. They studied no longer, fearing lest they might be disillusioned. The inhabitants of Chavignolles avoided them. The newspapers they tolerated gave them no information; and so their solitude was unbroken, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... in the presence of a picture-gallery which Nature, it seemed, had painted all for her own delight. He thought himself the discoverer; he felt at once both a loneliness and elation at finding himself in that frozen solitude, gazing with fascinated eyes at one portion of the rock after another where he saw, or fancied he saw, sketches of this and that which ravished his sense of beauty both in colour ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... summer's bloom! Late arrival at the feast, Coming when the songs have ceased And the merry guests departed, Leaving but an empty room, Silence, solitude, and gloom,— Are you lonely, heavy-hearted; You, the last of all your kind, Nodding in the autumn wind; Now that all your friends are flown, Blooming ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... elemental words such as a farmhand might blunder out in the deep shadow of a lane, after dark. But he held them back. He would wait until after they had dined together and all round them there were silence and solitude. He drove still more slowly in order to give the two Japanese servants time to carry out his instructions and remove themselves. That cottage, which he had bought on the spur of the moment, fitted out with elaborate care ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... towards her hotel, traversing those wide characterless streets which are typical of a Russian town. The pavements were empty, the houses shuttered and dark; save for the broad back of the coachman perched before her, she sat in a solitude. Thus it was that the sound which presently she heard moved her to quick attention, the noise of a child crying bitterly in the darkness. She sat up and leaned aside to look along the bare street, and suddenly she called to the coachman to halt. When he did so, the carriage was close to ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... seen the bonny dust, Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell; It's little else you care about; you go because you must, And you feel that you could follow it to hell. You'd follow it in hunger, and you'd follow it in cold; You'd follow it in solitude and pain; And when you're stiff and battened down let some one whisper "Gold," You're lief to rise and ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... house as I seated myself to my reading in front of the library shelves. I was as much alone under that desolate roof as mortal could be with men anywhere within reach of him. I enjoyed the solitude and was making a very pretty theory for myself on a scrap of paper I tore from another old book when a noise suddenly rose in front, which, slight as it was, was quite unmistakable to ears trained in listening. Some one was unlocking ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... the freedom and solitude possible while in the Park, so all newspaper men and other strangers were excluded. Even the secret service men and his physician and private secretaries were left at Gardiner. He craved once more to be alone with nature; he was evidently hungry for the wild and the aboriginal,—a ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs
... said the Quotidienne, "reduces itself to this, we shall retire to some profound solitude where the sound of the falling monarchy cannot ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... No sound interrupted the silence of Luke's solitude, except the hooting of a large gray owl, that, scared at his approach, or in search of prey, winged its spectral flight in continuous and mazy circles round his head, uttering at each wheel its startling whoop; or a deep, distant bay, that ever and anon boomed upon the ear, proceeding ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... called himself, removed the next morning to the house of Aunt Deborah. The latter received him very cordially, partly because it was a pleasant relief to her solitude to have a lively and active young man in the house, partly because she was not forced to look upon him as a poor relation in need of pecuniary assistance. She even felt considerable respect for the prospective recipient of ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... had dealt this severe poniard-thrust, Athos, with a sigh, saw Raoul bound away under the cruel wound, and fly to the thickest recesses of the wood, or the solitude of his chamber, whence, an hour after, he would return, pale, trembling, but subdued. Then, coming up to Athos with a smile, he would kiss his hand, like the dog who, having been beaten, caresses a good master, to redeem his fault. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... a lonely bachelor, nor a lonely spinster, in order to live alone. The loneliest are those who mingle with men bodily and yet have no contact with them spiritually. There is no desert solitude equal to that of a crowded city where you have no sympathies. I might here quote Paris again, in illustration,—or, indeed, any foreign city. A friend of mine had an atelier once in the top of a house in the Rue St. Honore. He knew not a soul in the house nor in the neighborhood. There was a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... sudden distaste for her lonely kitchen, its bare cleanliness the more revealed by the February sun, caught her shawl from the nail and threw it over her head. She spoke aloud, in a way she had taken up within the last week, while her solitude was still vocal with notes out ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... of servitude Madame Cerise had acquiesced in many things that her own conscience did not approve of, for she considered herself a mere instrument to be used at will by the people who employed and paid her. But her enforced solitude as caretaker of the lonely house at East Orange had given her ample time to think, and her views had lately undergone ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... of rippling water, which reflected in its depths the glorious sun above. The scene inland was no less beautiful; and yet Fritz and I both felt a shade of loneliness stealing over us as we gazed on its utter solitude. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... now. Ah, that poor old chap was insane. Like the astronomer in Rasselas, he had brooded so long in solitude over his visionary idea that he had come to imagine it ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... after the senseless day, after its happy but meaningless triviality, the throng and mixed perfumery and silly courteous gestures, his blessed solitude! Oh solitude, that noble peace of the mind! He loved the throng and multitude of the day: he loved people: but sometimes he suspected that he loved them as God does—at a judicious distance. From his rather ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... inverted women, it may safely be said, the odor of the beloved person plays a very considerable part. Thus, one inverted woman asks the woman she loves to send her some of her hair that she may intoxicate herself in solitude with its perfume (Archivio di Psicopatie Sessuali, vol. i, fasc. 3, p. 36). Again, a young girl with some homosexual tendencies, was apt to experience sexual emotions when in ordinary contact with schoolfellows whose body odor was marked (Fere, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the commandant of the garrison, after having heard the tale of the leader, and taken a look at Pomponio, ordered him to be chained to the wall in a room of the prison. This was done. The chains were fastened around his ankles; his arms were unbound, and he was left to solitude and darkness. ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... that strikes me is the lifeless solitude of the bush. . . . There is a deep fascination about the freedom ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... confinement and disgrace. At night, they are marched to their solitary cells, there to pass the weary hours, with no friend to converse with, and no joy to cheer them. They are left, in darkness and in solitude, to their own gloomy reflections. And, oh! how many bitter tears must be shed in the midnight darkness of those cells! How many an unhappy criminal would give worlds, if he had them to give, that he might ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... cannot contemplate without wonder the vigorous and splendid thoughts which so highly distinguish that performance. 'I (says he) may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which if I could obtain in this gloom of solitude, what would it avail me? I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave; and success and miscarriage are empty sounds, I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan—but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes—an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour. His air appalled me—but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... was fitted up by one of the best West End establishments. The sanitary arrangements were excellent, and the drainage of the most perfect order, as I had reason to know personally later. I was so affected by the peaceful solitude that I lay down under a tree and presently fell asleep. I was awakened by the sound of voices, and, looking up, beheld two men bending over me. One was a grizzled veteran, and the other a younger dandyfied man; both were dressed in ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... discoverers and explorers. The second chapter is devoted to the Jesuit missionaries, who, reviving the spirit of the Crusades, plunged into the wilderness to convert the aborigines to Christianity, and, inspired by the wonders of the virgin solitude, became the pioneer writers of American travels. Chapters third and fourth deal with the French travellers who have visited and written on our country, from Chastellux to Laboulaye. The similar list of British travellers and writers is presented and discussed in the fifth and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... to be fit for the association of angels. A man like this feels more at home when alone than in company of other people; for the higher beings are his company, and he misses them when people are around him. Philosophers also enjoy solitude in order to clarify their thoughts, and they are eager to meet disciples to discuss their problems with them. In our days it is difficult to reach the position of these rare men. In former times when the Shekinah rested in the Holy Land, and the nation was ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... who said the time might come when some "New Zealand artist shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London bridge to sketch the ruins ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... made the resolution to conquer my feelings; and before the intimacy has been carried on to an extent that a rupture would occasion any pangs to her that I adore, I will retire from Seville, and lament in solitude my unfortunate condition.' ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the incessant effort its absence of natural interest required, Denton had now to pass one-third of his days. Save for an occasional visit from the manager, a kindly but singularly foul-mouthed man, Denton passed his working hours in solitude. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... glass to his eyes and slowly swept the field of vision. It was a striking proof of the solitude of this immense region that he did not see the first sign of a human being. No horsemen riding across the open spaces or climbing the wooded heights formed a part of the picture, nor in any direction could he detect the faint smoke of a camp fire. Wherever ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... whom he loved better than power, or fame, or any earthly thing. His eyes shone and his cheek paled; his old life with all its energy and active work was associated in his mind with failure, with discontent, and with solitude; his new life, with her by his side, was brilliant, happy, and successful. He felt within him the strength to move thousands, the faith in his cause and in his power to help it which culminates in great deeds. His strong voice rang out, clear ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... others of the same species, the satisfaction at company and the discomfort aroused by solitude, is one of the strongest roots of all social tendencies and customs. It manifests itself in young babies, and continues a strong force throughout life. As an instinct it has nothing to do with either being interested in taking ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... appointment for preaching, and often two. Brother Kline felt at home among the mountains. He had a lively appreciation of the sublime in nature; and more than once does he note the grandeur of some mountain's lofty summit over which he passed; the majestic power of some falling stream; or the awful solitude of some deep forest. It was mainly a timbered country through which they passed. The regions traversed by the Alleghany mountain proper were in that day still in a state of nature; and the scattered inhabitants very nearly in the ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... least, Mary. Since mamma's death he has fallen into this habit, and he has got so to love solitude, that he is never happy but when alone. We ought to be grateful to him because it shows that he trusts us;—but it would be much nicer if he ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... clouds, and in the glassy lake Their doubles and the shadow of my boat. The boat itself stirs only when I break This drowse of heat and solitude afloat To prove if what I see be bird or mote, Or learn if yet the ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... to fifteen miles in circumference. They are now generally broken and decayed; the waters which would fertilise a province are allowed to waste themselves in the sands, and hundreds of square miles capable of furnishing food for all the inhabitants of Ceylon are abandoned to solitude and malaria, whilst rice for the support of the non-agricultural population is annually imported from the opposite coast ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... diverted again, after her greeting with Doctor and Mrs. Tarrant, by stopping to introduce the tall, dark young man whom Miss Chancellor had brought with her to Doctor Prance. She had become conscious of his somewhat sombre figure, uplifted against the wall, near the door; he was leaning there in solitude, unacquainted with opportunities which Miss Birdseye felt to be, collectively, of value, and which were really, of course, what strangers came to Boston for. It did not occur to her to ask herself why Miss Chancellor didn't ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... he turned his experiences into "copy." And with that ubiquity of vision which is the privilege of the master of fiction he was able to see the place from two points of view. To Matt. Bramble, that devotee of solitude and mountains, the Chelsea resort was one of the ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... the cause of her departure if indeed I ever knew it. She returned to England, and the bitter tears she shed at parting were the last I saw flow for love of me for many years. My grief was terrible: I had no friend but her in the whole world. By degrees I became reconciled to solitude but no one supplied her place in my affections. I lived in a desolate ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... this the solitude, How populous, how vital, is the grave! This is creation's melancholy vault, The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom, The land of apparitions, empty shades! All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond Is substance; the ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... there was no service at St. Mark's. The rector was sick, the sexton said; "hard sick, too, he had heard," and the Hetherton carriage, with Lucy in it, drove swiftly to the rectory, where the quiet and solitude awed and frightened Lucy as she entered the house and asked the housekeeper ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... nothing occurred to feed it. Simpson began to feel that he had permitted himself the unreasoning terror of a child. He put it down partly to a certain subconscious excitement that this wild and immense scenery generated in his blood, partly to the spell of solitude, and partly to overfatigue. That pallor in the guide's face was, of course, uncommonly hard to explain, yet it might have been due in some way to an effect of firelight, or his own imagination ...He gave it the benefit of ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... Year reviving old Desires, The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires, Where the White Hand of Moses on the Bough Puts out, and Jesus ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... England for long, one must have the rusticity of Wordsworth's mind, and boots and stockings as homely. It is because men feel the necessity to explain that they drop into the habit of saying what is not true. Wise is the woman who never insists on an explanation. Love can make its own world in a solitude a deux, but marriage cannot. Nominally monogamous, all cultured society is polygamous; often even polyandrous. Moralists say that a soul should resist passion. They might as well say that a house ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... were sitting on the edge of the ledge, their feet dangling, the abyss below them, the desert stars twinkling coldly above them; around them the indescribable solitude of a desert night filled with mystery, its vague, haunting, whispering voice burdened with its age-old secrets. Trevison had an arm around the Judge's shoulder. Their voices mingled—the Judge's low, quavering; Trevison's full, ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... beaux and young beauties were sauntering in couples toward the groves and gardens; merry youths passed by, cheerily trolling refrains of drinking-songs—it was all a picture of vivacity, life, animation, gaiety, which formed a bitter contrast with my mourning and my solitude. On the steps of the gate sat a young mother playing with her child. She kissed its little rosy mouth still impearled with drops of milk, and performed, in order to amuse it, a thousand divine little puerilities such as ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... dearest to me; many sorrows, more than I could express, have afflicted me: but that first parting caused me the greatest pain of all, as is proved by the fact that after so long an interval I remember it so well. In the solitude of my own chamber, I bade farewell separately to all those little trifles that surrounded me: God bless the good old clock that hast so oft awakened me. Beautiful raven, whom I taught to speak and to say "Lorand," on whom wilt ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... stiff and insensible enough, to bear up under the constant dislike and condemnation of his own club. He must be of a strange and unusual constitution, who can content himself to live in constant disgrace and disrepute with his own particular society. Solitude many men have sought, and been reconciled to: but nobody that has the least thought or sense of a man about him, can live in society under the constant dislike and ill opinion of his familiars, and those he converses with. This is a burden too heavy for human sufferance: and he must ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... the house, not going to the Wheatsheaf, the Liberal inn, with the others; preferring to await in privacy and indeed in solitude the momentous result of the poll. She had come down to Harsh with the two girls in the course of the proceedings. Julia hadn't thought they would do much good, but she was expansive and indulgent now and had generously asked ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... towards Tom Pinch—'that my misfortunes bring this treatment on me? Do I not know, sir, that but for them I never should have heard what I have heard to-day? Do I not know that in the silence and the solitude of night, a little voice will whisper in your ear, Mr Chuzzlewit, "This was not well. This was not well, sir!" Think of this, sir (if you will have the goodness), remote from the impulses of passion, and apart ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... with the spirit and more with the body, his opinions might have been modified and corrected. But he did not even visit the Albanian colonies in Italy and Sicily. Hence that vast confidence in his mission—a confidence born of solitude, intellectual and geographical. Hence that ultra-terrestrial yearning which tinges his ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of gentle pathos, with the resigned and patient air of one who feels the burden of solitude and the sense of miscomprehension. And closing the Testament he held he rested his clasped hands upon it, and for a moment ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... there, below, a spot of holy ground Where from distress a refuge might be found, And solitude prepare the soul for heaven; Sure, nature's God that spot to man had given [1] Where falls the purple morning far and wide 5 In flakes of light upon the mountain-side; Where with loud voice the power of water shakes [2] The leafy wood, or sleeps in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... against the attacks of his red foes. He went thither from the Providence Plantation about the middle of the seventeenth century, when the town was an unbroken wilderness in the northern part of the Rehoboth North Purchase, so called, took up his abode and reared his family in lonely solitude within the close stockades he planted around his home. The first house that went by the name of Hatch's Tavern was built upon this old garrison, which, indeed, formed a part of its very walls, and not until the proprietor found it ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... that had taken hold of her and her nervous fears died away. A reckless feeling, like the excitement of the morning, came over her, and she urged the grey on with coaxing words, and responding to her voice, and hardly feeling her light weight, he raced on untiringly. All around was silence and a solitude that was stupendous. The vast emptiness was awe-inspiring. The afternoon was wearing away; already it was growing cooler. Diana had seen no sign of human life since she had left Gaston hours before and a little feeling of anxiety stirred faintly deep down in her heart. Traces ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... The very stillness and solitude that seemed to envelop these palaces suggested the enchanter's wand. To-morrow, perhaps, the perfect lawns where the robins hopped amidst the shrubbery would become again the rock-bound, windswept New England pasture ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in solitude at Ullathorne. He had a sister, who was ten years older than himself, and who participated in his prejudices and feelings so strongly, that she was a living caricature of all his foibles. She would not open a modern ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... all Andalusian majos, agricultural laborers, and naturally as careless and apathetic as men of their class usually are, but they could not help being very considerably embarrassed when they discovered that they were left in solitude upon a detached and isolated rock. They took what mutual counsel they could, but became only more and more perplexed. One of them was named Negrete, and he, as having traveled somewhat more than the rest, was tacitly recognized as a sort of leader; but although he was by far the most enlightened ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... walked down the wild canon beneath the brilliant African moon the call of the jungle was strong upon him. The solitude and the savage freedom filled his heart with life and buoyancy. Again he was Tarzan of the Apes—every sense alert against the chance of surprise by some jungle enemy—yet treading lightly and with head erect, in ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... descendant of the famous Martinus, has expressed his suspicions of the text being corrupted here, and proposes instead of "all on" reading "alone", alleging, in favour of this alteration, the effect of solitude in raising the passions. But Hiccius Doctius, a high Dutch commentator, one nevertheless well versed in British literature, in a note of his usual length and learning, has confuted the arguments of Scriblerus. ...
— English Satires • Various
... In this solitude, where one is thrown entirely upon one's own resources, one discovers how dependent one is upon men and books for inspiration. It is hard even to find a name. Not that finding a name is easy in any circumstances. Every one who lives by his pen knows ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... and rusted sewing-machine, an ice-cream freezer in like condition, a cracked and discarded marble mantelpiece, chipped porcelain and chinaware of all sorts, rusted stove lids and flatirons, half a dozen dead mops and brooms. This was the laboratory, and here, in congenial solitude, Herbert conducted his investigations. That is to say, until Florence arrived he was undisturbed by human intrusion, but he was not alone—far from it! There was, in fact, almost too much life in ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... sake, since I admired the skipping water extremely and had had no idea that I was spoiling its display. But the emotions which now thronged within me, and which led me, with an almost unwise alacrity, to seek solitude in the back- garden, were not moral at all, they were intellectual. I was not ashamed of having successfully—and so surprisingly—deceived my parents by my crafty silence; I looked upon that as a providential escape, and dismissed all ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... her into Nice alone. Jean did not feel inclined to make the journey and Lydia rather enjoyed the solitude. ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... the most estimable persons that exists, and to whom it was an honour to me to belong; but I often felt that similarity was wanting between us,—that the ascendency of a dominating temper, united to that of twenty years more of age, made one of these superiorities too much. If we lived in solitude, I had sometimes very painful hours to pass: if we went into the world, I was liked by persons, some one of whom I was fearful might affect me too closely. I plunged into my husband's occupations, became his copying clerk, corrected his proofs, and ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... beautiful. The message is given by the letter itself—the slip of bark or wood on which it was carved—and this wood speaks. First it tells us about itself. It had dwelt on the beach near the sea-shore: there were few to behold its home in the solitude, but every morning the brown wave encircled it with a watery embrace. Then it little thought that even, though itself mouthless, it should speak among the ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... a fragrant avenue of evergreens now, through a solitude where Tom had often hiked, and presently they turned into the path which formed the short cut to the girl's home. Across the river, on the top of the bank building, they could see the Stars and Stripes waving in the small field of ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... you. You may return with your child to the old home of the Dumanys, my poor Slav kingdom. There you may live, secluded from the world, bringing up your child and teaching him virtue, honesty, and useful employments. You may dole out alms to the poor, and in this mournful solitude pray to God for happy oblivion or the still happier news of my death. This is one of the roads open to you; it is the stony path of virtue, dreary and tiresome. The second path is the flowery one. You may throw yourself upon the waves of life, drink ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... its rocky bed, swollen with the melted snows of yesterday. Another interval passed while the gray outlook changed to black. Then a red light appeared as it were over the edge of the world. Its coming afforded a certain break in the naked whimpering solitude of the plain. ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... round to discover it; he could not find anything that resembled it. Then commenced for him a series of sufferings, unknown and terrible. Placed face to face with doubt, this sincere and religious spirit was frightened at its own solitude; and as it had no other desire nor aim on earth than truth, and nothing else here below interested it, he lived absorbed in his own sad contemplations, looked ceaselessly into the vague that surrounded him like an ocean without bounds, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the house, she went in the opposite direction, made a circuit and buried herself in the woods beyond the Shrewsbury. She was mad to get away from her own company; but the only company she could fly to was more depressing than the solitude and the taunt and sneer and lash of her own thoughts. It was late in the afternoon before she nerved herself to go home. She hoped the others would have gone off somewhere; but they were waiting for her, Stanley anxious and Cyrilla Brindley irritated. ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... came without my vengeance!" she mused, in that oppressive noon, in that gray and lonely place, in that lofty tower-solitude, where there was nothing between her and the hot, hard, cruel blue of the heavens, vengeance looked the only thing that was left her; the only means whereby that void in her heart could be filled, that shame in her life be washed out. To love! and to love ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... his welcome to the friar, and he was given a home at Llan Vaes in Anglesey, on the shores of the Menai. The friar brought a higher ideal than that of the monk; his aim was salvation, not by prayer in the solitude of a mountain glen, but by service where men were thickest together—even in streets made foul by vice, and haunted by leprosy. Of the Mendicant Orders, the Franciscans were the best known in Wales; ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... on the underside of a limb where neither snow nor wind can harm him, and digs out a horizontal tunnel in the dry, brittle wood in the very heart of the tree, before turning downward into the deep, pear-shaped chamber, where he lives in selfish solitude. But when the nesting season comes, how devoted he is temporarily to the mate he has neglected and even abused through the winter! Will she never learn that after her clear-white eggs are laid and her brood raised ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... ever-shadowy stretches of cloud upon ever-shadowy stretches of land that go their austere way to the edges of some vacant sea. They suggest, too, those less remote but perhaps even more aloof spaces of solitude which were ever Courbet's theme in his deeper hours, that haunting sense of subtle habitation, that acute invasion of either wind or soft fleck of light or bright presence in a breadth of shadow, as if a breath of living ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... crown, and happiness may find—or tears; 'Tis true! I should have welcomed the bar-ru;[1] But he hath since returned to Subartu."[2] His harp he took from its dust-covered case, And kissed its carved and well-remembered face; And tuning it, he glanced toward the wood, And sang his farewell ode to solitude: ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... not look towards the south until the north turns an iron hand upon you and refuses the hospitality of food and fire; your eyes are drawn towards the Pole by that charm—deadly and beautiful—for which men have given up three points of the compass, with their pleasures and ease, to seek a grave solitude, broken only by the beat of a musk-ox's hoofs, the long breath of the caribou, or the wild ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... trifling ap-parition!" He had got to try and make light of it, because at first he used to cry out and point, and then the miners ran out and left him alone with his phantoms, and this was terrible. He dreaded solitude; he schemed against it, and provided against it, and paid fellows to bear him company night and day, and at the festive board it was one thing to drink his phantoms neat and another to dilute them with figures of flesh and blood. He much ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... it,—her conception of it was of yellow rocks baking in sunlight, the swallows, the cedar smell, and that peculiar sadness—a voice out of the past, not very loud, that went on saying a few simple things to the solitude eternally. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the midst of this profound silence and solitude, Tiepoletta, providentially rescued from her persecutors, experienced an intense joy that made her entirely forget the hardships she had just undergone. There were undoubtedly new misfortunes in store for her. She must, without delay, find some ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... thought and how she felt. Hear him: . . . . . . . "I have been staying with Mrs. Boinville for the last month; I have escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of myself." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... individuality. In quiet moonlight nights I found it exceedingly pleasant to saunter all alone through the Niddry woods. Moonlight gives to even leafless groves the charms of full foliage, and conceals tameness of outline in a landscape. I found it singularly agreeable, too, to listen, from a solitude so profound as that which a short walk secured to me, to the distant bells of the city ringing out, as the clock struck eight, the old curfew peal; and to mark, from under the interlacing boughs of a long-arched vista, the intermittent gleam of the Inchkeith light now brightening and now fading, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... the counting house of John Swanwick. Upon the failure of his employer, Ewing studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1800. He was a contributor to the Port Folio from the first. He wrote for it a series of articles, entitled "Reflections in Solitude." All his contributions ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... in the history of the English Navy which he helped to form, and in his numerous letters, which on some future occasion the present editor hopes to annotate. The details to be obtained from these sources form, however, but a sorry substitute for the words written in the solitude of his office by Pepys for his own eye alone, and we cannot but feel how great is the world's loss in that he never resumed the writing of his journal. All must agree with Coleridge when he wrote on the margin of a copy of the Diary: "Truly may it be said that this was a greater ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... lay wholly through unbroken solitude; but the men we for the most part encountered were of the strange sort who had pushed westward farther and farther to be alone—to get away from their fellows. The axe to them did not signify the pearlash of commerce, but firewood and honey and coon-skins for their own personal wants. ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... hate the great world!" exclaimed Sara, with vehemence; "how I dislike the class which ambition, wealth, and pride separate from the rest of humanity! My only happiness now is found in solitude." ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... to oppose myself to this lecture," said Louise, laughing. "There are books which should only be read in solitude, and to that class belong the volumes of my past life. I am ready in the presence of your highness to have my future prophesied, but of my past I will hear nothing—I ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... exclaimed, in a loud and cheerful tone, that such a domestic bird, so constantly attached to human society, would never have abandoned her ancient seats, unless those towers had been devoted to impending ruin and solitude. [49] The favorable omen inspired an assurance of victory; the siege was renewed and prosecuted with fresh vigor; a large breach was made in the part of the wall from whence the stork had taken her flight; the Huns mounted to the assault with irresistible fury; and the succeeding generation could ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... and Guy Muschamp exchanged glances. It was Beltran the renegade, who had thus devoted himself to solitude. ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... shade? She has declared that she delights in them; but can we trust her declaration? True, hers a strange spirit—tinged, no doubt, with the moral tendencies of her mother's race—in which the love of solitude is almost an idiosyncrasy. But with her this forest-ranging is almost a new practice: only for a month or so has she been indulging in this romantic habit—so incomprehensible to the home-loving Lilian. Her father puts no check upon such inclinations: on the contrary, he encourages them, as ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... far more improbable and extravagant than the story of the "Wonderful Lamp," and all the other tales of the "Arabian Night's Entertainments." In his hours of leisure from his daily avocations, his thoughts either run wild among the most groveling objects, or sink into sensuality and inanity; and solitude and retirement present no charms to ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... of the great monasteries lay desolate, their stores exhausted, their portals open, while the brethren, dead within, had none to bury them; the lonely hermits died in their little beehive-shaped cells, or fled from the dreadful solitude to gather in some wealthy abbey which could still feed its monks; and isle and vale which had echoed their holy chants knew the sounds no more. Over all, unlifting, unchanging, brooded the deadly vapour, bearing the plague in its heavy folds, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... psychology had not misled him. Directly they gathered that he was advertising something, the crowd declined to look at it; they melted away, and Arthur returned to his work in solitude. ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... water, and one by one disappeared. The Old Codger with the Wooden Leg was the last, and one of the pirates returned for him. When he had followed the others, the great half-dark chamber remained as it had been before, in its empty solitude and gloom, without an ear to hear the steady rush of water pouring incessantly ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... Emmanuel could just stand; he is not greatly taller than I. And he is marvellous contented with a very little, and has been used to passing days and weeks in the solitude of his cell. Sure this would not be to him an evil place. If he had but a book or two and the needful food, ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... nails on the shell of a huge Indian tortoise turned upside down, which served as the bed of the actress. It was here that every day, to the murmur of the water, and amid perfumes and flowers, Thais reclined softly, and conversed with her friends, while awaiting the hour of supper, or meditated in solitude on theatrical art, or on the ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... occasion. But without this intermission from the dreadful concentration of his life, without this amount of physical exercise and fresh air, Philip Sheldon could scarcely have lived through this period. The solitude of shipwrecked mariner cast upon a desolate island could hardly be more lonely than this man's life had been since his return from Harold's Hill. From his study to the dining-room, and from the dining-room back to his study, was the only variety of his dreary ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... old, brain-weary self again, with the best of her youth behind her; while he was still there on the treshold, young and strong and free. But even this one short hour was good. Life had not given her many such. She would fence it round with silence, and solitude, and the scent ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... wave of reaction which was now sweeping the country, abandoned the stage on which he had played so brilliant a part, and retired to his chteau of Rueil, which had once belonged to Cardinal Richelieu, to end his splendid career in solitude and disgrace. He died on the 4th April 1817, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... wandered starving in the snows, feeding on carrion, on rats and mice, and, at last, upon each other's corpses, he sat in his royal robes, and gave away the lands of Edwin and Morcar to his liegemen. And thus, like the Romans, from whom he derived both his strategy and his civilization, he "made a solitude and ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... story which, till the end of time, was to move hearts to a passion of love and devotion, should be told without any colouring. Let us beware of reading it coldly! This passage is more adapted to be pondered in solitude, with the thought, 'All this was borne for me,' than to be commented on. But a reverent word or two ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... toward the acquaintance of any of the families in the neighborhood, and consequently were left to themselves. That, apparently, was what they desired, and why they came to Ponkapog. For after its black bass and wild duck and teal, solitude is the chief staple of Ponkapog. Perhaps its perfect rural loveliness should be included. Lying high up under the wing of the Blue Hills, and in the odorous breath of pines and cedars, it chances to be ...
— Our New Neighbors At Ponkapog • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... ass-loads of wood for fuel, (camels being unknown in that region.) The same features continually repeated themselves as we advanced; large broken cliffs were overhanging us, and birds singing in the solitude; it need not be added that the sun was cloudless ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... as he was in England, without his coming to cheer me; and so it happened that I, in my turn, withdrew from the world, which had once been a bright and a happy world to me, and retired to end my days, peacefully, contentedly, and gratefully, as my brothers are ending theirs, in the solitude of ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... a solitude my somber way Strays like a misanthrope within a gloom Of his own shadows—till the perfect day ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... to Bragton, waiting however till he was assured that the Senator had completed his visit to Dillsborough. He had been a little ashamed of the Senator in regard to the great Goarly conflict and was not desirous of relieving his solitude by the presence of the American. On this occasion he went quite alone and ordered no carriages from the Bush and no increased establishment of servants. He certainly was not happy in his mind. The mission to Patagonia was well paid, being worth with house and etceteras ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... homes to open up the wilderness and make the way plain for others to follow them. For one hundred and seventy years, ever since the first American Lincoln came from England to Massachusetts in 1638, they had been moving slowly westward as new settlements were made in the forest. They faced solitude, privation, and all the dangers and hardships that beset men who take up their homes where only beasts and wild men have had homes before; but they continued to press steadily forward, though they lost fortune and sometimes even ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... a monk of the 13th century, in the solitude of his convent, made the grand discovery of counterpoint, or the science of harmony, as distinguished from melody; he also invented the present system of notation, and gave those names to the sounds of the diatonic scale still in use:—ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si; these being the first syllables ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... and of so delicate health, should travel alone in the diligence; but I have no relative in Paris, and no friend on whose protection I could make a claim. I have lived there alone, or in something worse than solitude." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... ever thank you, sire?" said she, in grateful accents. "You have understood my heart, and have gratified its weary longings for occasional solitude. This, then, is ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach |
