"Timbuktoo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much of the men. Behind our front at the time of my visit there were, for example, many thousands of cavalry, men tending horses, men engaged in transporting bulky fodder for horses and the like. These men were doing about as much in this war as if they had been at Timbuctoo. Every man who is taken from munition making at X to spur-worshipping in khaki, is a dead loss to the military efficiency of the country. Every man that is needed or is likely to be needed for the actual operations of modern warfare can be got by combing out the cavalry, the brewing and ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... the Leeambye, had "no connection with the Zambesi, but flowed under the Kalahari Desert, and became lost;" and "that, as all the old maps asserted, the Zambesi took its rise in the very hills to which we have now come." This modest assertion smacks exactly as if a native of Timbuctoo should declare that the "Thames" and the "Pool" were different rivers, he having seen neither the one nor the other. Leeambye and Zambesi mean the very ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... their ignorance of the most vital points of religion being truly horrible. In the second place, I acquired a vast stock of information concerning Africa and the state of its interior. One of my principal Associates was a black slave whose country was only three days' journey from Timbuctoo, which place he had frequently visited. The Soos men also told me many of the secrets of the land of wonders from which they come, and the Rabbis from Fez and ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... stopped at Peru, this jolly crew, And went to Paris and Timbuctoo; And after a while they found the Nile, And watched the sports of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Tangier, in Morocco, unquestionably takes the first rank among the travelers of the Middle Ages, if we consider the distances he traversed, the remote points he reached, or the number of years consumed by his wanderings. From Pekin to Timbuctoo, from the Volga to the Ganges, from Bukhara to Zanzibar, he vibrated to and fro, making himself acquainted, with the exception of Christian Europe, with the greater part of the known world. He touched, in many directions, the borderland of darkness, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... going to take a draft on Timbuctoo, or Hong-kong, or some place where red-headed girls are scarce, and see if I can't get away with ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... which it is the story-teller's duty to Perform for his readers. All novels were fish to Mrs. Cayhill's net; she lived in a world of intrigue and excitement, and, seated in her easy-chair by the sitting-room window, was generally as remote from her family as though she were in Timbuctoo. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Tony's stand. A high wooden structure rising tier on tier, containing papers from every corner of the world. I'll defy you to name a paper that Tony doesn't handle, from Timbuctoo to Tarrytown, from South Bend to South Africa. A paper marked Christiania, Norway, nestles next to a sheet from Kalamazoo, Michigan. You can get the War Cry, or Le Figaro. With one hand, Tony will give you the Berlin Tageblatt, and with the other ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... the following intelligence respecting Timbuctoo and Housa, is a Muselman, and a native of Tetuan, whose father and mother are personally known to Mr. Lucas, the British Consul. His name is Asseed El Hage Abd Salam Shabeeny. His account of himself is, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... years thus spent, by no means unfruitfully, though it was only by his prize poem of 'Timbuctoo' that he won public honours, he was called away from Cambridge by family troubles and returned to Somersby in February 1831. His father had broken down in health, and a month later he died, suddenly and ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... a lady to answer your questions, and the first thing you ask her is: "When was Magna Charta signed?" Probably she says that she doesn't know. Then you say, "What is the capital of Persia?" She answers Timbuctoo, or Omar Khayyam, according to how well informed she is. Then comes your last question: "What makes lightning?" She is practically certain to say, "Oh, the thunder." Then you tell her that the two numbers multiplied together come ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... bit slow at adopting anything," commented Carlton. "Did you know, Mrs. Downs, that electric lights are still as scarce in London as they are in Timbuctoo? Why, I saw an electric-light plant put up in a Western town in three days once; there were over a hundred burners in one saloon, and the engineer who put them up told me ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... divide into the Marabut, who does not drink, and the Soninki, who does, inhabit a triangle, its base being the line from the south of the Senegal to the Gambia River, and its apex the Niger; it has even extended to near Tin-Bukhtu (the Well of Bukhtu), our Timbuctoo. In old Mohammedan works their territory is called Wangara. This race of warmen and horsemen surprisingly resembles the Somal, who hold the same parallels of latitude in Eastern Africa, as to small heads, semi-Caucasian features, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... shall dive for alligators, catch the wild goats by the beard; Whistle to the cockatoos, and mock the hairy-faced baboon; Worship mighty Mumbo Jumbo in the mountains of the moon. I myself, in far Timbuctoo, leopard's blood shall daily quaff; Ride a tiger hunting, mounted ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... inflicting it would have duty as well as vested right upon its side, on the ground that it stands pledged to secure to each of the nation's constituent sections a republican form of government,—something which Utah has never enjoyed any more than Timbuctoo. I once asked Brigham if Dr. Bernhisel would be likely to get to Congress again. "No," he replied, with perfect certainty; "we shall send —— as our Delegate." (I think he mentioned Colonel Kinney, but do not remember absolutely.) ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... great river of Western Africa, whose head-waters rise amid the Kong Mountains behind Sierra Leone; flowing NE. as far as Timbuctoo (2 m. from the river), it there bends gradually southward, receives from the E. its great affluent the Benue, and about 100 m. from the coast begins to form a wide forest and jungle-covered delta (larger than that of the Nile), and finally flows into the Gulf of Guinea by 22 mouths after a course ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... course, as I've said, you're acting, in your wonderful way, for yourself; and what's for yourself is no more my business—though I may reach out unholy hands so clumsily to touch it—than if it were something in Timbuctoo. It's only that you don't snub me, as you've had fifty chances to do—it's only your beautiful patience that makes one forget one's manners. In spite of your patience, all the same," she went on, "you'd do anything rather ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Eden is almost the exact centre of all the world's deserts, counting from Gobi to Timbuctoo; and all that land qua land is 'dismissed from the mercy of God.' Those who use it do so at their own risk. Consequently the Desert produces her own type of man exactly as the sea does. I was fortunate enough to meet ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... "rapid transit" has been simplified. All which things, however, have nothing to do with national characteristics, but are now the common property of the civilized, or rather, I should say, the commercialized, world, and are probably to be found no less in full swing in Timbuctoo. No one—save, maybe, the citizens of some small imitative nation—confounds these things with change, or calls them "progress." The soul of a great old nation adopts all such contrivances as in the past it has adopted new weapons, or new modes of conveyance. Only a Hottentot or a Cook's Tourist ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... drink out of a bottle, and certainly there isn't as much left in it! But the queer thing is that with this electricity you take it away and just as much remains. It goes out from your toe, rushes away to Timbuctoo, and is back in your toe before you can wink. Why? No one knows. What's the good of asking? You can't see it: you can only see what it does. What good would it do us if we knew all about it? There it is, and it's going to revolutionise the world. It's no good asking— no one knows what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that most interesting city called Kilbeggan. What a fortunate thing it is for us in Ireland that we can see so much of the world without foreign travel, and that any gentleman for six-and-eightpence can leave Dublin in the morning, and visit Timbuctoo against dinner-time. Don't stare! it's truth I'm telling; for dirt, misery, smoke, unaffected behavior, and black faces, I'll back Kilbeggan against all Africa. Free-and-easy, pleasant people ye are, with a skin, as begrimed and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the warmth provoked by the exertion of climbing, you begin to notice how cool it feels;—you could almost doubt the testimony of your latitude. Directly east is Senegambia: we are well south of Timbuctoo and the Sahara,—on a line with southern India. The ocean has cooled the winds; at this altitude the rarity of the air is northern; but in the valleys below the vegetation is African. The best alimentary plants, the best forage, the flowers of the gardens, are of Guinea;—the graceful date-palms ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... soap who has his goods on sale from Oskaloosa to Timbuctoo doesn't care how widely a newspaper circulation is scattered. Whoever reads about his product is near to some store or other where it is sold—but ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman
... from Seville to Madrid was to go afoot in the dress of beggar or Gypsy, and the remark that in Tangier one of his principal associates was a black slave, whose country was only three days journey from Timbuctoo. {163c} He had already in 1835 planned to write "a small volume" on what he was about to see and hear in Spain, and it must have been from notes or full journals kept with this view that he drew for "The Zincali" and still more for "The Bible in Spain." He wrote ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... good gifts with his poorer brethren, or to elevate the masses with tinkling sounds or painted boards. From time to time an adventurous novelist is led round the opium-shops, dancing-saloons, and docks, returning with copy for tales of lust and murder that might just as well be laid in Siberia or Timbuctoo. When we scent an East End story on its way, do we not patiently await the battered head, the floating corpse, the dynamiter's den, or a woman crying over her ill-begotten babe? Do we not always get one or other of the lot? To read our story-tellers from Mr. ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson |
