"Wildness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... keep you from going on and doing things; you will do great things. It's in you. I think maybe it's the wildness in me that has taken this turn in you. You have more brains in a little minute than I ever had: you are amazingly clever and wise. I'm glad it was left for me to discover it; that's one credit I've got on ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... particular mention for the delicacy of his fancy and the beauty of his diction. His Ode on the Passions is universally esteemed for its sudden and effective changes from the bewilderment of Fear, the violence of Anger, and the wildness of Despair to the rapt visions of Hope, the gentle dejection of Pity, and the sprightliness of Mirth and Cheerfulness. His Ode on the Death of Thomson is an exquisite bit of pathos, as is also the Dirge on Cymbeline. Everybody knows and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... on the one hand, and the rampart of rocks on the other; there occurs along its entire length no other human dwelling than a lonely summer shieling; for full one-half the way we saw no trace of man; and the wildness of the few cattle which we occasionally startled in the hollows showed us that man was no very frequent visitor among them. About half an hour before sunset we ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... placed on the wheel. But before he had taken five steps, he again fell off, and was suspended as before. At the same instant, a woman also fell off, and without a sigh or the motion of a muscle, for she was too much exhausted for either, but with a shocking wildness of the eye, hung by her half-dislocated arms against the wheel. As the allotted time (fifteen minutes) had expired, the persons on the wheel were released, and permitted to rest. The boy could hardly ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... anguished war frieze of fleeing figures; of running hither and thither in the wildness of fear; of mothers running with babes at breasts; of men, their twisted faces steaming sweat, locked in the Laocooen embrace of death. Banners of flame. The exultant belch of iridescent smoke. Cries the shape of steel rapiers. A mouth torn back to an ear. Prayers ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... This was the reaction of the currents, and of the influence of breezes still older than the last. Not the least fearful symptom of the hour was the terrific calmness of the air amid such a scene of menacing wildness. Even the ship came into the picture to aid the impression of intense expectation; for with her canvas reduced, she, too, seemed to have lost that instinct which had so lately guided her along the trackless waste, and was "wallowing," nearly helpless, among ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... long-haired, sickly- looking man, of about thirty years of age, clad in a suit of rusty black, whose appearance and manner generally suggested to me the idea that he must be by profession a schoolmaster. There was a certain air of exaggerated earnestness of demeanour about him, and a wildness of expression in his flashing coal-black eyes, that caused me to set him down as being somewhat crack-brained. His name, I soon ascertained, was Algernon Marcus Wilde, and he was among the first of the emigrants to speak to me. He came to me, on the morning ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... life, the personages of a novel or romance live and move in the midst of an environment. They are placed in the midst of circumstances, upon which they act and by which they are acted upon. They may live on land or sea, in the country or in the city, amid the wildness of unsubdued forests or the culture of long-established communities. They may be surrounded by intelligence and luxury ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... full of that mingled wildness and subordination that gives its supreme charm to the Italian landscape; and without elements of great variety, it combined them in infinite picturesqueness. There were olive orchards and vineyards, and again vineyards and olive orchards. Closer to the farm-houses and cottages there were peaches ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... of you, the adorable wildness of you, you untamed thing! There were never any shades in you; kiss or kill was your motto, Alice. I felt from the first moment I saw you that you would love ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... bed with bedrid groans; Let there bechance him pitiful mischances, To make him moan; but pity not his moans: Stone him with harden'd hearts, harder than stones; And let mild women to him lose their mildness, Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness. ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... youth, with his right arm thrown across the horse's neck, and his left hand grasping his compass-staff. He is clad in a buck-skin hunting-shirt, with leggings and moccasins of the same material, the simple garb of a backwoods man, and one that well becomes him now, as in perfect keeping with the wildness of the surrounding scenery; while in his broad leathern belt are stuck the long hunting-knife and Indian tomahawk. In stature he is much above most youths of the same age. He is of a noble, robust form, with high and strong but smooth features, light brown hair, large blue eyes, not brilliant, but ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... of habit," she thought to herself. "There is certainly something that kindles your imagination in such a sight. It would be dreary if it weren't cultivated, but it must be wonderful to see a whole country reclaimed from wildness and made productive. 'Beauty for ashes' O!" and with a little shiver of pleasure, she repeated the lines that had so charmed her a few minutes before. "'The spirit of heaviness.' What a strange thing to include ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... temple that one visits before he gives himself to the wildness of the solitudes of Nubia. It stands at the very frontier. As one goes up the Nile, it is like a smiling adieu from the Egypt one is leaving. As one comes down, it is like a smiling welcome. In its delicate charm I feel something of the charm of the Egyptian character. ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... forest, the only confidant of my childhood, it was from you I learned nature's deepest tones—its wildness, its melancholy! You colored my soul ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... Foote. "He must come to you. He's got to have all his wildness crushed out of him. He'll come. He must have had enough of ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... Benedictine abbey. Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, France and Spain adopted his rule. Princes, moved by various motives, hastened to bestow grants of land on the indefatigable missionary who, undeterred by the wildness of the forest and the fierceness of the barbarian, settled in the remotest regions. In the various societies of the Benedictines there have been thirty-seven thousand monasteries and one hundred ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... perform wonders, if he chose to use the power with which he was invested; but he would wait until his sister might reap the benefit of his acquired wealth." In this strain he continued, alarming the placid Mrs Wybrow, who knew not what to do to moderate the wildness and the vehemence of his demeanour. Hoping, however, to appease him, she told him of the good fortune of his sister—how she had obtained a happy home, and how grateful he ought to be to Providence for its kind care of her. Much more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... with dulse, and foam, and wild light. The practical developments of his culture are orchards and clover-fields wearing a smiling, benevolent aspect, truly excellent in their way, though a near view discloses something barbarous in them all. Wildness charms not my friend, charm it never so wisely: and whatsoever may be the character of his heaven, his earth seems only a chaos of agricultural possibilities ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... that after the first month I had a deep longing to get away into the heart of an old wood, or into a lonely glen among the mountains, where I should see no trace of man's handiwork, and recover the tone of my spirit amid the wildness of nature. For this inevitable reaction of sight-seeing in the city, a remedy may be found by retiring for a day or two to some one or other of the numerous beautiful scenes in the neighbourhood. There is no city in the world more favourably situated for this purpose than Rome. Some ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... been fifty-six hours without rest, and forty-eight at work in the boats, so that, by the time they were unloaded, we had barely strength left to haul them up on the rock. We noticed, on this occasion, that the men had that wildness in their looks which usually accompanies excessive fatigue; and, though just as willing as ever to obey orders, they seemed at times not to comprehend them. However, by dint of great exertion, we managed to get the boats ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... fretfully; with a gleam of wildness in his eyes that betrayed how the iron was, little by little, eating into his heart. He had started after breakfast as gaily as a bridegroom, but gradually he had sunk below himself; and now he had much ado to curb ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... and birds of prey—temples to death in the midst of his undisputed domains! We had fully adopted Forsyth's sentiment, and held Paestum to be probably the most impressive monument on earth; but here at Segeste a nature less austere, and more RIANTE in its wildness, lent a quite different charm to a scene which could scarcely be represented by art, and for which a reader could certainly not be prepared by description. We gave an antiquarian's devoutest worship to this venerable survivor of 2000 years, and of many ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... this controversy:—"Our Methodist brethren have disturbed the peace of their maternal Church by the clamour of enthusiasm and the madness of resentment; but they are the wayward children of passion, and we hope that yet the chastening hand of reason will sober down the wildness of that ferment," etc. Kingston, U.C., 1826, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... sexton's face, giving no other reason for this strange act, than that the sexton's beard grew thin and hungerly, and seemed to ask the sop as he was drinking. Never sure was there such a mad marriage; but Petruchio did but put this wildness on, the better to succeed in the plot he had formed ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... told me in a flood of tears, 'Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more: for they were going to put him under ground, whence he would never come to us again.' She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which methought struck me with an instinct of sorrow that, before I was sensible what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thorough work in explaining the reasons for Luther's "defection" from Rome. They apply to Luther's stubborn resistance the law of heredity: Luther's wildness was congenital. Some have declared him the illegitimate child of a Bohemian heretic, others, the oaf of a witch, still others, a changeling ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... city. I need not observe that these meetings were extremely merry, but should not omit that they were equally innocent, though the girls of the house were very pretty. M. Fitz-Morris (who was a great mall player himself) was our president; and I must observe, notwithstanding the imputation of wildness that is generally bestowed on students, that I found more virtuous dispositions among these youths than could easily be found among an equal number of men: they were rather noisy than fond of wine, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... WILDNESS AND TAMENESS OF THE RUFFED GROUSE. The ruffed grouse is one of the most difficult of all North American game birds to keep in captivity. This fact is due largely, though not entirely, to the nervous and often hysterical temperament ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... for me again. His manner now was changed. The wildness and despair had left it. He was his old, cool, collected self. He was in the sort of mood when he always had an ascendency over me—the sort of mood when he showed that wonderful business faculty for which I could ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... The wildness began to appear again in Anne Silvester's eyes. She made feebly impatient signs with her hands. Lady Lundie bent over her, and heard her whisper, "Lift ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... to look for work, for with all his wildness he was industrious. He secured a place in a paper box factory at the princely salary of fifty cents a week. His business was to lower great packages of boxes from the upper story to the ground floor. He thought how delightful ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... currents. The east winds penetrate into the deep recesses of the valleys, which are sheltered against the cold south wind by the adjacent mountain ridge. The passes have a gloomy character, and the rugged grandeur of the surrounding country presents an aspect of chaotic wildness and disorder. The ground is covered with huge masses of rock; and the ungenial fruitless soil is shunned alike by plants and animals. The thin tendrils of a lichen, here and there twining on a ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... swing, spread. dimension, length &c 200; distance &c 196; size &c 192; volume; hypervolume. latitude, play, leeway, purchase, tolerance, room for maneuver. spare room, elbow room, house room; stowage, roomage^, margin; opening, sphere, arena. open space, free space; void &c (absence) 187; waste; wildness, wilderness; moor, moorland; campagna^. abyss &c (interval) 198; unlimited space; infinity &c 105; world; ubiquity &c (presence) 186; length and breadth of the land. proportions, acreage; acres, acres and perches, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the concession she made to his unsocial mood. The ravine path revealed unexpected wildness and freshness. The peace of twilight had already descended there. Miss Hitchcock strolled on, apparently forgetful of fatigue, of the distance they were putting between them and the club-house. Sommers respected the charm ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... mock at me," she cried, with a sudden return to her old wildness. "It is cruel, cruel! Leave me. For pity's sake go. How can you stand there taunting me so? How can I go with you? How can I face my children now? Do you know what I am? No, no, of course you don't. You could never understand. You, with your foolish, ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... enacted in this story took place between November 23 and December 7, 1850, on the road from Poker Flat to Sandy Bar, in Sierra County, California. The time and place are those that Bret Harte has made peculiarly his own. The austerity and wildness of the scenery seem somehow to favor the intimate revelation of character that the story displays. There is no intervention of cities, crops, fashions, or conventions between the different members of the character group or between the group as a whole and the reader. All is bare like a white ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... of the Reuss, on the road to St. Gothard, like which, the pass of the Rusten leads to a cold and bleak upper valley. Here we noticed the blight of late frost on the barley fields, and were for the first time assailed by beggars. Black storm-clouds hung over the gorge, adding to the savage wildness of its scenery; but the sun came out as we drove up the Valley of Dovre, with its long stretch of grain-fields on the sunny sweep of the hill-side, sheltered by the lofty Dovre Fjeld behind them. We ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... like a bird of gay plumage. It was the world in miniature, and it stirred and piqued his interest. A wish to stop one of these people, and to pour forth his longings, his hopes, his dreams, surged within him in a glow of fellowship and, smiling to himself at the pleasant wildness of the thought, he made his way through the wider spaces of the Place Lafayette and the Square Montholon into the long, busy ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the Nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality; And so the prince obscured his contemplation Under the veil of wildness. ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... and pretty woman—pretty, notwithstanding the wildness of her staring black eyes and the disorder of her long black hair that hung in tangled tresses to her waist. Her head and feet were bare, and her white gown was spotted with green stains of the grass, and torn by briars, as were also her bleeding feet and arms. Marian felt for her the deepest ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... aspect which can be found only where immemorial culture, without excessive invasion of the axe, has left nature in the undiminished possession of her chief beauties, without a trace of the savage wildness—a nature which hints at art. It was classic without being formal, but no description can give an idea of the charm of it in contrast with the general aridity of ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... on; her voice, that had trembled at first with a passionate wildness, had sunk into the spiritless apathy of despair; her head was bent, her hands clasped before her; her dress trailed with a soft rustle across the grass, sweeping over a whole wilderness of white daisies, that bent their heads beneath its folds as she ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... where all the travellers were in the habit of standing and talking with the ostlers, and with old Victor himself, who was not the landlord to leave his ostlers to do as they liked with horses and grain,—many a flirtation, but none that meant or did any harm; for with all her wildness and love of frolic, Mademoiselle Victorine never lost her head. Deep down in her heart she had an ambition which she never confessed even to her aunt Jeanne. She had read enough romances to believe ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... face. She was flaming to the ears, for suddenly she knew the reason that had prompted her. It rushed upon her like a sense of great shame. She recalled the desperate grip at her heart when she had seen him ready to leave, the wildness of her longing to share his danger, the black fear that he might meet disaster alone. It had all come without warning, and there had been no time for self-consciousness, but now she realized the truth. The poignant pain of it made her fingers ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... respect," she says, "he had the purest of morals, having always dreaded wildness as the enemy of talent; and he nearly always cherished women solely in his heart and in his head, even in his youth. He pursued chastity on principle; and his relations with the fair sex were those merely of curiosity. When ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... wildness had found its way to the neighborhood of Fairview, and made an unfavorable impression. Mrs. Lee firmly believed that he was moving with swift feet in the way to destruction, and rolling evil under his tongue ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... dawned so still and gloomy was wakening to something like wildness, threatening, brightening, gusty, when they stepped out of the train upon the platform of the San Mateo station. Clouds were piling gray and castle-like from the east up toward the zenith, and dark fragments ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... evening in August, about sunset-time. The western sky was overcast with grey low-hanging clouds; at intervals rain fell in brief showers. Once breathing the atmosphere of this strange seclusion one forgot the quaintness of Ollerton and the pleasing wildness of the forest: here the formality brought a suggestion of some old French colour print—the avenue might have been the state ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... came upon a group of islands hitherto unknown. These they named after the Earl of Sandwich, the group forming the kingdom of Hawaii—the chief island. Natives came off in canoes bringing pigs and potatoes, and ready to exchange fish for nails. Some were tempted on board, "the wildness of their looks expressing their astonishment." Anchorage being found, Cook landed, and as he set foot on shore a large crowd of natives pressed forward and, throwing themselves on their faces, remained thus till Cook ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... weather-bow, and sent a column of water through the port, that drove half its crew into the lee-scuppers. In the midst of this waterspout, the gun exploded, the loggerhead having been applied an instant before, giving a sort of chaotic wildness to the scene in-board. This satisfied the party below; though that on the forecastle fared better. The last fired their gun several times, and always without success. This failure proceeded from ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... tunnel or cut, changing scenes of wild and savage landscape appeared near by, and charming glimpses of distant valleys far below. The torrents and waterfalls of the river Gaudiara added to the weird beauty of the scene. A stanza in Southey's poem, "The Cataract of Lodore," fittingly describes the wildness of the river that we crossed and ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... a visit to a hypochondriacal friend, and also to see the mining in the Hartz mountains. The ode alternately describes, in a very fragmentary and peculiar manner, the naturally happy disposition of the Poet himself and the unhappiness of his friend; it pictures the wildness of the road and the dreariness of the prospect, which is relieved at one spot by the distant sight of a town, a very vague allusion to which is made in the third strophe; it recalls the hunting party on which his companions have gone; and after an address to Love, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... these two families you have typically Use opposed to Beauty in wildness; it is their wildness which is their virtue;—that the thyme is sweet where it is unthought of, and the daisies red, where the foot despises them: while, in other orders, wildness is their crime,—"Wherefore, when I looked that it ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... a sombre almost savage wildness about Yessney that was certainly not likely to appeal to town-bred tastes, and Sylvia, notwithstanding her name, was accustomed to nothing much more sylvan than "leafy Kensington." She looked on the country as something excellent and wholesome in its way, which was apt to become troublesome ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... stranger, looking over the continuous level which is presented to his view on a first glance at the country surrounding Philadelphia, has many pleasant surprises in store, if he be of an errant habit and much given to exploration; since there are several ravines of singular wildness in this vicinity, having bridle-paths connecting them with the different roads, and a great deal of broken country, whose variety ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... Queensberry, which appears like a magnificent palace erected by magic, in the midst of a wilderness. — It is indeed a princely mansion, with suitable parks and plantations, rendered still more striking by the nakedness of the surrounding country, which is one of the wildest tracts in all Scotland. — This wildness, however, is different from that of the Highlands; for here the mountains, instead of heath, are covered with a fine green swarth, affording pasture to innumerable flocks of sheep. But the fleeces of this country, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... recuperated in turn. Cymria capta ferum ... might have been the motto of her municipal arms. Exactly how Mr. ONIONS exhibits the romantic spectacle of her development, with the strange knowledge she picked up, as from virgin wildness she became first select and then popular, I cannot hope to explain. Suffice it to say that the process is epitomised in sketches of the various people who helped in the moulding of her—the drunken Kerr brothers, who built a house in a single night; Howell Gruffydd, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... the real unaffected feeling of wildness born to savage nature, life, and association, it is absolutely as different from all civilised feeling whatever as bird from fish; and it very rarely happens that an educated man ever knows what it is. What there is ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... very edge of the Seine, whose sinuous course here shapes the adjoining land into a narrow peninsula. The chalky cliffs on each side of the castle, are broken into hills of romantic shape, which add to the impressive wildness of the scene. The inclosed sketch will give you an idea, though a very faint one, of the general appearance of the castle at a distance. Towards the river, the steepness of the cliff renders the fortress unassailable: a double fosse of great depth, defended by a strong wall, originally ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... the road begins to be left alone with the sea, except for a few country houses here and there among the surrounding scrub—when my eye was caught by a little store that seemed to have strayed away from the others—a small timber erection painted in blue and white with a sort of sea-wildness and loneliness about it, and with large naive lettering across its lintel announcing itself as an "Emporium" (I think that was the word) ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... grounds of the big house. Years ago attempts at landscape gardening had been indulged in, while the master of the place fancied to pass his summers there, but years of recent neglect had all but obliterated the marks of culture. Wildness was over all, but it was the wildness of ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... need never fear from any true man, and with all his wildness he might yet call himself that." Then he stretched himself at full length on his chair, and threw his arms ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... watchfulness." And, acting up to his light, Sir Austin did watch. The youth submitted to an examination every night before he sought his bed; professedly to give an account of his studies, but really to recapitulate his moral experiences of the day. He could do so, for he was pure. Any wildness in him that his father noted, any remoteness or richness of fancy in his expressions, was set down as incidental to the Blossoming Season. There is nothing like a theory for binding the wise. Sir Austin, despite his rigid watch and ward, knew less of his son ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... among great beech woods and gardens on one side of a valley, at the bottom of which, half hidden by rhododendrons, an amber-colored stream descends in waterfalls to the sea. The slopes opposite to the house are thickly fledged with larches up to a certain height, when they suddenly give place to the wildness of the Mourne Mountains. The house externally is of more or less modern aspect, but within, when I knew it, it was full of fine family portraits, books, and old collections of china, together with certain other objects which appealed to the sense of history rather ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... more serious investigations to be found in the Talmud. Its levities may amuse. I leave untouched the gross obscenities and immoral decisions. The Talmud contains a vast collection of stories, apologues, and jests; many display a vein of pleasantry, and at times have a wildness of invention, which sufficiently mark the features of an eastern parent. Many extravagantly puerile were designed merely to recreate their young students. When a rabbin was asked the reason of so much nonsense, he ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... interesting. A detail of facts, in which your Royal Highness, in behalf of your country, has been so honourably engaged, may not prove unwelcome in aid of recollection; and a detail of facts, built on the experimental horrors of popular power, and which, proceeding from the wildness of theory to the madness of practice, has swept away every vestige of civil polity, and would soon leave neither law nor religion in the world, cannot, either in point of instruction or warning, be unreasonably laid before my fellow-citizens ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... wildness untamed in his eye, If you free him, stares round ere he springs to the sky; The slave whom no longer his fetters restrain Will turn for a moment and look ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... time Ogilvie is occupied with quite familiar and conventional critical problems. The relation between regularity and irregularity is one that he particularly stresses, and his resolutions tend to allow a certain wildness as natural to the imagination, even as evidence of the faculty. He is, however, more inclined to permit bold and spirited transitions in the shorter ode than in the longer ode. As usual Ogilvie's critical principles are related to the nature of the work in question, and a greater irregularity ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... works of the tin-streamers, who turned about the streams and examined the beds for 'grain-tin.' Many of the ruined 'blowing-houses' are still to be seen on the moor. Mrs. Bray mentions a curious testimony to the wildness and remoteness of the parts in which some of the miners must have worked: 'A very old woodcut ... exhibited a whole pack of hounds harnessed and laden with little bags of tin, travelling over the mountains of Dartmoor; these animals being able to cross the deep bogs of the forest in situations ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... would seem we should disperse them with fright. "I wept when I must see my good friend, Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, depart from our ship in one of those tug boats. It was a pain in my breast that he must leave me to go into the wildness of Canada." ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... greatly helped by the energy of Lord Redcar, who had a fine feeling for the picturesque associations of his ancestral home—the detour that took our line through the beeches and bracken and bluebells of the West Wood and saved the pleasant open wildness of the park was one of his suggestions; and we had many reasons to be proud of our surroundings. Nearly all the other communes that sprang up all over the pleasant parkland round the industrial valley of the Four Towns, as the workers moved out, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... continue to hand them on to you, in proportion as they are dealt out. Herschel's volcano in the moon you have doubtless heard of, and placed among the other vagaries of a head, which seems not organized for sound induction. The wildness of the theories hitherto proposed by him, on his own discoveries, seems to authorize us to consider his merit as that of a good optician only. You know also, that Doctor Ingenhouse had discovered, as he supposed from experiment, that ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... thing looks grotesque and uncanny, yet the pleasure in mere noise and dancing is childish and harmless. The picture is imposing and beautiful in its simplicity, gruesome in its wildness and sensuality, and splendid with the red lights which play on the shining, naked bodies. In the blackness of the night nothing is visible but that red-lit group of two or three hundred men, careless of to-morrow, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... with what must have been in his view useless lumber, and was so easily convertible into cash. The Library offered a strange spectacle: chairs thrown down, and broken glasses, bore witness to the wildness of last night's revel; the splendid carpet was strewn with the ends and ashes of cigars, and with packs of cards; and on the table, scratched in all directions by the sharp spurs of fighting-cocks, still lay the dice and caster. The atmosphere was so heavy with the fumes of wine and smoke that ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... year; Sophy had returned to my father's house, where she did not remain long; but it is not her history that I am relating. One morning a cousin of the count arrived at the hotel in a great bustle; he was about spending a season in Paris, in all the wildness of youth. He took us by surprise at breakfast; he took his seat at table, without ceremony, on the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... insignificance, crushed by the passive mastery of the slumbering ages. The magnitude of all things appalled him. Everything partook of the superlative save himself—the perfect cessation of wind and motion, the immensity of the snow-covered wildness, the height of the sky and the depth of the silence. That wind-vane—if it would only move. If a thunderbolt would fall, or the forest flare ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... drama was wild and picturesque in the extreme. On one side stretched the long, gleaming lake, a lake of wildness and beauty associated with so much of romance and peril in American story. Over them towered the crest of the peak later known as Defiance. To the south and west was Lake George, the Iroquois Andiatarocte, that ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Mary, in its natural state, has all the wildness and cunning of the fox and weasel. He will eat flesh, poultry, and sucking pigs, and is also very destructive to Indian corn. These creatures abound in the Western States, and are killed in great numbers for their skins. The Indian hunters eat the flesh, and say it is very tender and good; ...
— In The Forest • Catharine Parr Traill
... character, seems to have softened down from a certain wildness of expression to a more sober and thoughtful cast; and many thought him a handsomer man in age than in youth; his eye retaining always its brilliancy, and his countenance its play ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Jerome passed through and entered the sick man's chamber. Stretched upon a mattress, with both hands tightly bound to the bedstead, the friendless stranger was indeed a pitiful sight. His dark, dishevelled hair prematurely gray, his long, unshaven beard, and the wildness of the eyes which glanced upon them as they opened the door and entered, caused the faint hope which had so suddenly risen in Clotelle's heart, to sink, and she felt that this man could claim no kindred with her. Certainly, ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... right to left, and presenting a dark irregular outline on the surface of the horizon. The cultivation continues, with all its uniformity, to the very foot of the ridge; but the moment you pass the boundaries of the forest, you find yourself surrounded at once with all the wildness and luxuriance of natural scenery. The surface of the ground is broken and irregular, rising at times into vast piles of shapeless rocks, and enclosing at others small vallies, in which the wood grows in endless beauty, unblighted by the chilling ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... said to be effeminate, so they who are too elated with joy are properly called volatile; and as feeling envy is a part of grief, and the being pleased with another's misfortune is a kind of joy, both these feelings are usually corrected by showing the wildness and insensibility of them: and as it becomes a man to be cautious, but it is unbecoming in him to be fearful, so to be pleased is proper, but to be joyful improper. I have, in order that I might be the better understood, distinguished ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... but made no answer; in a second or two afterwards, another, that of a young lad, appeared beside the first, equally swart and begrimed, but having tangled black hair, descending in elf-locks, which gave an air of wildness and ferocity to the whole expression of the countenance. Lady Staunton repeated her entreaties, clinging to the rock with more energy, as she found that, from the superstitious terror of her guide, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Truedale saw the wildness in the old man's eyes—saw the trembling and twitching of the outstretched hands, and feared what might be the result of trouble and enforced sobriety. He pulled a large flask from ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... the room where the Cooleen Bawn was awaiting the verdict with a dreadful intensity of feeling, the latter rose up, and, throwing her arms about her neck, looked into her face, with an expression of eagerness and wildness, which Mrs. Hastings thought might be best allayed by knowing the worst, as the heart, in such circumstances, generally collects itself, and falls ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... storm in black wood; but he was limited by the form he wrote in and the instruments he wrote for. The energy, superhuman energy, of the thing is amazing: the storm throbs in the forest: one feels the pulse of the storm-god; the sforzando shocks and shrieks add to the terrific wildness of the scene. Pitilessly, ever higher and higher, the wind shrieks, always to that beating bass, until, amid the clatter and screaming, we hear Donner, exulting in his mad strength and swinging his mighty hammer as he rides. The lightning crackles vividly ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... sensual gratification ceased at last to afford him delight; he was observed to be more abstemious in the pleasures of the table, and to neglect the beauteous dancing girls who used formerly to occupy so much of his attention. He was sometimes gloomy and reserved, and there was an unnatural wildness in his eye which gave indications of incipient madness. Still his discourse was as reasonable as ever, his urbanity to the guests that flocked from far and near to Champtoce suffered no diminution; and learned priests, when they conversed with him, thought to themselves that few of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... picture of England in the age of Reason, well-bred and beautiful, artificial and a little airless, so had Furse in this represented the England of to-day. It was an England that valued cleanliness above all things, of the body and of the spirit, an England that loved the open air and feared not the wildness of nature nor the violence of the elements. And Mrs. Crowley had lived long enough in the land of her fathers to know that this was a true England, simple and honest; narrow perhaps, and prejudiced, but strong, brave, and of great ideals. The girl who stood on that upland, looking so candidly ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... once. The girl's eyes were disconcertingly direct, her voice and her manner disturbed him with their judicial calmness, so at variance with the wildness ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... can go with him, as I think, if he speak with some humility, so far as his daily self carry him, out of a cloudy light of vision; for whether he understand or not, it may be that voices of angels and archangels have spoken in the cloud, and whatever wildness come upon his life, feet of theirs may well have trod the clusters. But a man so plunged in trance is of necessity somewhat still and silent, though it be perhaps the silence and the stillness of a lamp; and the movement of the Play as a whole, if we ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... and the small, scrutinizing eyes absolutely sparkle with malice. Here, you say at last, is no poet, indeed, but an unusually cultivated banker or surprisingly adroit solicitor. Here the hair, retreating from the great forehead, begins to curl and roll with a distinguished wildness; here the long mouth, like a slit in the face, losing itself at each end in whisker, is a symbol of concentrated will power, a drawer in some bureau, containing treasures, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... pretty as a picture, but she was as nice-mannered, well-behaved a gyirl as you'd want to see. There was jest as much difference betwixt her then and what she used to be as there is betwixt a tame fox and a wild one. Of course the wildness is all there, but it's kind o' covered up under a lot o' cute little tricks and ways; and that's the way it was with Annie. Squire Elrod's pew was jest across the aisle from Old Man Bob's, and I could see Dick watchin' her durin' church time. But Annie never looked ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... insight to break through whatever entanglement of strange manners or unused element may at first trouble him, and to meet the nature and beauty with which it is filled: we cannot doubt that such a reader will be intensely touched by finding, amidst all its wildness and remoteness, such a startling realism, such subtilty, such close sympathy with all the passions that may move ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... therefore—who, however, will not usually have been the primary owner—goes to work upon his land amid all the wildness of nature. He levels and burns the first trees, and raises his first crop of corn amid stumps still standing four or five feet above the soil; but he does not do so till some mode of conveyance has ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... entertain him till the happy hour. The rustic pleas'd me with the concern he had for my Philander; oh my charming brother, you have an art to tame even savages, a tongue that would charm and engage wildness itself, to softness and gentleness, and give the rough unthinking, love; 'tis a tedious time to-night, how ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... some comfort in that thought, and went off then to spend his last evening for many months with his wife. For all his wildness, Bunter had made no mistake in his marrying. He had married a lady. A perfect lady. She was a dear little woman, too. As to her pluck, I, who know what times they had to go through, I cannot admire her enough for it. Real, hard-wearing every day and day after day pluck that only a woman ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... quit it, or receive any refreshment. I went to him myself, hoping, as I had always been a favorite, that I should be able to persuade him. When I came to him, I found the hand of death was upon him. He was still melancholy; but there was not such a mixture of wildness in it. I pressed him to take some food; but, instead of answering me, or turning away, he burst into tears, a thing I had never seen him do before, and, in inarticulate accents, he said, 'Will any one be kind to ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... above in its more amusing aspect, and am half afraid that I may appear to be making a jest of weakness on the part of one of the most devotedly unselfish mothers who have ever existed. But one can love while smiling, and the very wildness of my mother's dream serves to show how entirely her whole soul was occupied with the things which are above. To her, religion was all in all; the earth was but a place of pilgrimage—only so far important as it was a possible road to heaven. She impressed ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... superficial knowledge should humbly acquiesce in the judgment of a learned nation; yet I may hope or presume, that the Italians do not compare the tedious uniformity of sonnets and elegies with the sublime compositions of their epic muse, the original wildness of Dante, the regular beauties of Tasso, and the boundless variety of the incomparable Ariosto. The merits of the lover I am still less qualified to appreciate: nor am I deeply interested in a metaphysical passion for a nymph so shadowy, that her existence ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... a place of such wildness and beauty as no other scenery in the world affords. The granite terrace which runs round the four sides of the low block of laboratories looks out in every direction upon mountains. Far below in the hidden ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... which her predecessors had done, was to be atoned for. Many a wrong had been done, and the French nation had, no doubt, a right to be angry and to rage as does the lion for a long time kept in subjection, when at last, touched too much by the iron of its keeper, it rises in its wildness, and with withering greed, tears him in pieces from whom it has suffered so long and so much. The French people rose just as the incensed lion does, and determined to wreak their vengeance on their keepers, on those whom they had so long called ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... time in my life, I saw the expression of anguish in the face I loved best in the world. Mrs. Middleton's grief seemed out of proportion with the degree of affection she had hitherto apparently felt for her child; and there was a wildness in her sorrow which surprised as much as it affected me. Long afterwards, it struck me that something of remorse, at the preference she had so openly shown for me, and at the coldness with which she had regarded her daughter, might have ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... calculated: that, he thought, would best control her wildness. "No one could be more alive. If I were you, though, I'd go up to bed; we've had enough of this, or I have; I can't speak for you. But, however that may be, and as I've said before, it has got to stop, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... when he flung his bright smiles around him as he passed along. At no place was he more welcome than at the rectory, nor was there any house in which he felt so happy, not even excepting his own home. With all his wildness he felt the most sincere love and respect for Mr and Mrs Oliphant, and rejoiced in a day spent with their children. And there was one of these towards whom he was drawn with feelings of peculiar tenderness. He was not conscious of it, and ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... up to look ahead, while the boys in the back end of the wagons craned perilously over the edge of the box to see how long the line was. It seemed enormous to them, and their admiration of the marshals broke forth in shrill cries of primitive wildness. ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... Moliere has combined with such depths—with the indignation of Alceste, the self-deception of Tartufe, the blasphemy of Don Juan—such wildness of irresponsible mirth, such humour, such wit! Even now, when more than two hundred years have sped by, when so much water has flowed under the bridges and has borne away so many trifles of contemporary mirth (cetera fluminis ritu feruntur), ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... wildness of the gorge was beginning to soften, the two walls of rock to grow lower; they passed between two peaceful hills, with gentle slopes covered with thyme and lavender. It was the desert still, there were still bare spaces, green or violet hued, from which the faintest ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... This is a new way to beget more sorrow. Heav'n knows, I have too many; do not mock me; Though I am tame and bred up with my wrongs Which are my foster-brothers, I may leap Like a hand-wolf into my natural wildness And do an outrage: pray ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... brushwood—the 'maquis' of Corsica, which yields shelter to its traditional outlaws and bandits. Yet upon these hillsides there are hardly any signs of life; the whole country seems abandoned to primeval wildness and the majesty of desolation. Nothing can possibly be more unlike the smiling Riviera, every square mile of which is cultivated like a garden, and every valley and bay dotted over with white villages. After steaming for a few hours along this savage coast, the rocks which ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... you fellows?" asked Florinda in her ordinary tone; whereupon they made gestures of still greater wildness. "S-s-sh!" ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... he was patient to his wife. "It depends upon the company. A treasurer is sometimes a book-keeping clerk. However, the trouble is, Barbara's as wild as a hawk, though I don't know where she got her wildness. Her brother and sister are ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... article. The Analytical Review also saw German extravagances in The Ancient Mariner; the Monthly borrowed Southey's figure of the Italian and Flemish painters, and called The Ancient Mariner "the strangest story of a cock and bull that we ever saw on paper ... a rhapsody of unintelligible wildness and incoherence." The belated review in the British Critic was probably written by Coleridge's friend, Rev. Francis Wrangham, and was somewhat more appreciative than the rest. For further details, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... to say that Mr. Potter conceived at once a humorous opposition to the artistic enthusiasm of the critic, and, plunging into the garden, took a mischievous delight in its wildness and the victorious struggle of nature with the formality of art. At every step through the tangled labyrinth he could see where precision and order had been invaded, and even the rigid masonry broken or upheaved by the rebellious force. ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... infatuation of the buffalo seems the more remarkable from the contrast it offers to their wildness and wariness at other times. Henry knew all their peculiarities; he had studied them as a scholar studies his books, and he derived quite as much pleasure from the occupation. The buffalo were a kind of companions to him, and, as he said, he never felt alone when they were about him. He ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and women walked with quiet feet and spoke to one another in whispers, saving in the darkened room where Desmond O'Connor chattered unceasingly, and now shouted or laughed in the wildness of delirium. A nurse was installed in his room, a quiet and gentle little lady, never hurried yet never slow; always patient, with a coaxing manner and a soft voice. When he was sensible Desmond called her the Angel of Mercy; in his delirium he spoke to her always as Sylvia. ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... march they encountered a tribe of Indians in all their native wildness. They were very friendly though they had apparently never seen a white man before. Perhaps their friendliness was because they had never yet met any of the pale faces, from whom they subsequently suffered such great wrongs. These Indians ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... forced by the ruggedness of the path to use his hands more and more frequently, so did the wildness of the defile increase, till, after hours of toil, the patches of snow which he had long reached gave place to a slope of pure white crystals, into which his feet began to sink, making the ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... anxieties in which she had no share. Her paroxysms of exhilaration, followed by a gnawing sense of failure and uselessness, were known to her mother only as "wildness" and "low spirits," to be combated by needlework as a sedative, or beef tea as a stimulant. Mrs. Wylie had learnt by rote that the whole duty of a lady is to be graceful, charitable, helpful, modest, and disinterested whilst awaiting ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... possession of him. In the midst of this mental distress he experienced a sense of pleasure, and he allowed himself to sink deeper and deeper into it, with a dreadful consciousness all the time that his scruples were vanishing. In the wildness of his reverie the rest of the world became effaced, and he could only realise that he was still alive from the ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... Estranged Love Lotus Leaf, Recantation Love in a Mist, Perplexity Love Lies Bleeding, Desertion Lucurn, Life Lupine, Voraciousness Madder, Calumny Magnolia, Love of Nature Maiden Hair, Secrecy Mallow, Wildness Mallow, Marsh, Beneficence Marrow, Syrian, Persuasion Manchineal Tree, Duplicity Mandrake, Rarity Maple, Reserve Marianthus, Hope for Better Marigold, Grief, Chagrin Marigold, French, Jealousy Marigold and Cyprus, Despair Marjoram, Blushes Marvel of Peru, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... the ground, proving that at least a wound had been given. Just beyond, the gang evidently had dispersed, each one for himself, leaving behind everything that impeded their progress. The region was almost impenetrable in its wildness except by those who knew all its rugged paths. The body of the man whom June had wounded, however, was found, clothed in a suit of Quaker drab stolen from Mr. Reynolds. The rest of the band with few exceptions met with fates that accorded with ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... had their wealth. This tendency, emphasized on the political side by the civil war, was reinforced and has been prolonged by well-known natural conditions. A territory much larger, far less redeemed from its original wildness, and with perhaps even ampler proportionate resources than the continent of Europe, contained a much smaller number of inhabitants. Hence, despite an immense immigration, we have lagged far behind in the work of completing our internal development, and for that reason have not ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... often for punishment in a room, she would steadfastly refuse to admit that she had done wrong, and, maternal patience exhausted, the mutinous little culprit had commonly to be released impenitent and unconfessed. Indeed her wildness acquired for her the name of "Little Mustang;" as, later on, her fondness for poring over books beyond her childish years that of "Little Newspaper." At school, the confession must be made, she was refractory and idle. The prosaic routine of school life was dull and ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... most singular in Priscilla, as her health improves," observed Zenobia, "is her wildness. Such a quiet little body as she seemed, one would not have expected that. Why, as we strolled the woods together, I could hardly keep her from scrambling up the trees, like a squirrel. She has never before known what it is to live in the free air, and so it intoxicates her as ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lover belonged to the class of excitable, nervous people who exaggerate their feelings by an unconscious wildness of tone and of manner, his face bore the traces of a trouble too deep ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... second, startled by the sudden wildness of her caress. Then he presses his hot little face in ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... direction but that a semblance of ascetic retirement is still preserved. Between the monastery and the city lies the city park, which is not much patronized by the citizens, and for good reasons. To the rich wildness of nature is added the wildness of man. Hordes of desperadoes, "the barefoot brigade," the dregs of the local population, have taken up their residence there every spring, of late years, in the ravines and the caves which they have ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood |
