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More "Solitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pleased to see worse fellows than you lately, since this infernal gout has laid me up in this dreary old place. The house is pretty full now, I am happy to say. I have friends who will come to shoot my partridges, though they won't remember my solitude in a charitable spirit before the first of September. You'll stop and dine, I hope; or perhaps you can put up here altogether for a week or so. My housekeeper shall find you a good room; and I can promise you pleasant company. Say yes, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... be remembered, took place in the earliest part of the reign of the Emperor Alexander I[A]. He was obliged, greatly against his will, to return to his father's country house. Dirty, poor, and miserable did the paternal nest seem to him. The solitude and the dullness of a retired country life offended him at every step. He was devoured by ennui; besides, every one in the house, except his mother, regarded him with unloving eyes. His father disliked his metropolitan habits, his dress-coats and shirt-frills, his books, his flute, his ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... awoke the thunder had stopped, but the rain was still falling in a fine drizzle. The forest, with its solitude and silence, did not terrify her. She was refreshed from her long sleep and she liked her little cabin so much that she thought she would spend the night there. She at least had a roof over her head ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... at the Narossara the feed was quite good enough, the oxen were doing no work, there was companionship, books, papers, and even a phonograph to while away the long weeks until our return. N'gombe Brown quite cheerfully deserted all this to live in solitude where he imagined the feed ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... lest it should be taken away from them, and who, like the Achilles of Homer, drag their enemy by the feet nine times round the walls of Troy. The Marquise was like that. She did not see Henri. In the first place, she was too secure of her solitude to be afraid of witnesses; and, secondly, she was too intoxicated with warm blood, too excited with the fray, too exalted, to take notice of the whole of Paris, if Paris had formed a circle round her. A thunderbolt would not have disturbed her. She had not even heard Paquita's last sigh, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... garden-house,—from which I have read of his "letting off rockets" in a summer twilight. Rockets to amuse a small dinner-party, I should guess,—dinner of Officers, such as he had weekly or twice a week. On stiller evenings we can fancy him there in solitude; reading meditative, or musically fluting;—looking out upon the silent death of Day: how the summer gloaming steals over the moorlands, and over all lands; shutting up the toil of mortals; their very ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... have seen, was composed in Ireland, in the solitude of a colonists' plantation, and the author was shut off from his fellows while he wrote. The influence of his surroundings is visible in the writing. The elaboration of the theme would have been impossible or at least very unlikely if its ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... nervous, uncontrolled condition at the time, although in other respects I cannot honestly say that I ever noticed the least sign of an unhinged mind. One thought that she was too much alone; but, of course, her loss was a very recent one, and everybody knows that in grief there often comes a desire for solitude.' ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... he wouldn't care to be undergoing Gustavus James himself—anything, rather than rambling about a strange country in a cold winter's night, with nothing but the hooting of owls and the occasional bark of shepherds' dogs to enliven his solitude. The houses were few and far between. The lights in the cottages had long been extinguished, and the occupiers of such of the farmhouses as would come to his knocks were gruff in their answers, and short in their directions. At length, after riding, and riding, and riding, more with a ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... think. While we are coldly discussing a man's career, sneering at his mistakes, blaming his rashness, and labelling his opinions—'he is Evangelical and narrow', or 'Latitudinarian and Pantheistic' or 'Anglican and supercilious'—that man, in his solitude, is perhaps shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a hard one, because strength and patience are failing him to speak the difficult word, and do the ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... subject to the influence of the twofold majesty of darkness and solitude; he was speechless, and looked by turns both at the earth and the sky. The stars appeared glittering in the blue heaven, and were reflected on the motionless surface of the neighboring water. Suddenly a luminous ray seemed ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... her mother, still very stern; "go and bend your proud knees and ask forgiveness; go, pray in solitude for humility and repentance. 'Tis not your reproaches that make me unhappy, 'tis your hard heart, my poor Beatrix; may God soften it, and teach you one day to ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... baptism, seemed almost to verify the idea of the Essenes. Was He indeed the long-expected Deliverer of Israel? Surely He must find this out—He must wring the answer from the inmost recesses of His soul. And so, He sought refuge in the Wilderness, intuitively feeling that there amidst the solitude and desolation, He would fight His ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... could see, or rather we had to guess it, as for days she kept her own chamber and would see no one, going out only when it was quite dusk for a solitary ramble. Ah! when sorrow afflicts the soul, there is no balm so great as solitude. Your poor mother took the ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... truth. Betwixt sleep and waking as I walked I felt infinite peace pour over me. So had the silent Campo Santo at Pisa affected me; so had I felt for a moment among the ancient ruins of the abbey at Rivaulx. In this dawn hour came a time of reversion. I too was very solitary, and loved my solitude. The necessities of civilisation were necessities no more: I needed luxury even less than I needed news. I cared for nothing that the men of a city ask: there was space before me and room to ride. The lack of small urgent stimuli, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... said Mr Ross, "it seems hard on you for the present, but it will be better for you in the end;" and so the heavy door was shut, and Spitfire had another twenty-four hours in solitude and quiet to ponder over his ways. The next day, as directed by Mr Ross, in whom he had all confidence, Sam suddenly threw open the door, and, while the dog was still blinking in the sudden sunshine that poured in, Sam without any hesitancy or fear strode in and, unchaining him, ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... things, 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
... through the "Spiritual Exercises" in complete solitude, twice in his life. They occupy thirty days. The "Account of the Conscience" is of the very essence of Jesuitism. The ordinary confession, familiar to every Catholic, is as nothing compared with this marvelous inquiry into the secrets ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... the sky but clouds obscure it, which is a good thing, as the country is being traversed by stragglers of theirs, leaving the hills and in retreat eastward. We hear of several such fugitive bodies from our pickets for the first few miles. Then we are in absolute solitude. The plain lies bare and blanched around us. A thorn bush or two sticks up on it, or, now and then, the ghastly shape of a dead horse lying in puffed up relief with legs sticking out stiff and straight and an awful stench blowing from it. Kimberley's search-light at stated intervals ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... made in the parlor, and Ethelyn solicited to come down, Mrs. Markham, who carried the invitation, urging that a change would do her good, as it was not always good to stay in one place. But Ethelyn preferred the solitude of her own chamber, and though she thanked her mother-in-law for her thoughtfulness, she declined going down, and Mrs. Markham had made her fire for nothing. Not even Melinda came to enjoy it, for she was in Camden, visiting ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... downs. The time is the year of grace twelve hundred and fifty and three; the month a cold and seasonable January. The wild heath around is crisp with frost and white with snow, it appears a dense solitude; away to the east lies the town of Hamelsham, or Hailsham; to the west the downs about Lewes; to the south, at a short distance, one sees the lofty towers and monastic buildings of a new and thriving community, surrounded by a broad and deep moat; to the north ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... out to found a Carthusian house in England in obedience to the Pope, the place he chose for it was Witham in Selwood, a solitude, for the Rule of the Order demanded it, and that is also why we have this monastery in the Weald to-day. It bears witness as nothing else could do to-day, perhaps, to the ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... usually with an iron-grilled wicket, where at the sound of the bell of the visitor a panel slid back and a white-coiffed face appeared. This secluded quarter was not exclusively inhabited by these gentle women, for there were other dwellings for those that loved the quiet solitude of this end of ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... for a few minutes to gaze at the novel and interesting scene, we turned up a path through a ravine, and were quickly again in the solitude of the mountains. We travelled upwards for three days, sleeping at nights at the huts of Indians, where we received a warm welcome from their wives, but the men were in all cases absent. We were now crossing ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... a last cigarette, sitting in the dark by his open front window. For the first time in over a year he found himself thoroughly enjoying New York. There was a rare pungency in it certainly, a quality almost Southern. A lonesome town, though. He who had grown up alone had lately learned to avoid solitude. During the past several months he had been careful, when he had no engagement for the evening, to hurry to one of his clubs and find some one. Oh, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... once I seemed half to awake, and fell into one of those fits of foolish nervous apprehension to which many even of the coolest and bravest are liable in deep solitude and darkness,—and if they, how much more an excitable person like myself! My heart throbbed for no reason, and, sitting with my head bowed down upon my hands, I fancied the most impossible dangers,—of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... himself for having tended more and more, as the quiet, peaceful, tranquil years went by, to absent himself from even those small domestic gatherings. And yet, might it not be that his instinct for solitude at this season was a right instinct, at least for him, and that to run counter to it would be in some degree unacceptable to the Power that fashioned us? Thus he allowed himself to go, as it were, his own way. After morning service, he sate down to his ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... "I have just returned from a night in the trenches, having come off the sick list yesterday morning. Last Sunday I was unable to leave my tent, but I had happy communion with Jesus in my solitude, and derived much pleasure from the fourteenth and fifteenth of St. John. How true is the peace of mind that cleaving to Christ brings to a man! There is nothing like ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... child. The journey was a very long one, and they were unduly delayed; and so it happened that while still in the forest the wife fell ill, and could not go on any further. So the husband built a hut of branches and leaves, and there, in the solitude of the forest, was born to them another ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... inhabitants Besides the ephemera of earth and air; —Where glid the sunbeams through the latticed boughs, And fell like dew-drops on the spangled ground, To light the diamond-beetle on his way; —Where cheerful openings let the sky look down Into the very heart of solitude, On little garden-pots of social flowers, That crowded from the shades to peep at daylight; —Or where unpermeable foliage made Midnight at noon, and chill, damp horror reign'd O'er dead, fall'n leaves and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... the rocks at the foot of this island. Until to-night I did not know that it was this island. I alone was washed on shore. In the days that came I grew to wish that I, too, had perished. You know nothing of what solitude and savagery mean to the man of civilization—and to the man of ambition. Oh, my God! I dared not leave the shore lest I miss the chance to signal a passing vessel. There was scarcely anything to maintain life on that rocky coast. Now and again I caught ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... come also from distant times, as well as distant places,) with the uproar of waters; and doubtless shapes of fear, or shapes of beauty not less awful, are at times seen upon the waves by the diseased eye of the sailor, in other cases besides the somewhat rare one of calenture. This vast solitude of the sea being taken, therefore, as one condition of the superstitious fear found so commonly among sailors, a second may be the perilous insecurity of their own lives, or (if the lives of sailors, after all, by means of large immunities ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... not my business for the moment: I want to speak of the bit of land long cherished in my plans to form a laboratory of living entomology, the bit of land which I have at last obtained in the solitude of a little village. It is a harmas, the name given, in this district [the country round Serignan, in Provence], to an untilled, pebbly expanse abandoned to the vegetation of the thyme. It is too poor to repay the work of the plow; but the sheep passes there in spring, when it ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... what I had not at all apprehended, namely the proportionate importance and unimportance of all the passions and emotions which regulate our relations with other souls. These discourses were given at regular intervals, and much of our time was spent in discussing together or working out in solitude the details of psychological problems, which we did with the exactness ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... higher than its neighbours and formed a convenient table for our purpose. The stone was overgrown with lichens and moss, and skirted by a growth of nettles and thistles. As we stood around it in the twilight, surrounded by a wild solitude, we might have been mistaken for a company of pirates dividing their ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... 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 ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... condition solitude was still so natural to me that I made no effort to approach the people of the place, and contented myself with observing them and their affairs from a distance. They seemed a very happy people. There could be no mistake about that. I did not see a clouded countenance; nor did I hear an ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... long been living as Christians remote from all churches and unknown by any. We can easily conceive that timidity in some cases, and distance in others, swell the ranks of these secret disciples. Though they follow not the footsteps of the flock, the Shepherd will lead them in their solitude. There will be many more names in the Lamb's book of life, depend upon it, than ever are written on the roll-calls of our churches, or in missionary statistics. The shooting-stars that yearly fill our sky are visible to us for a moment, when their orbit passes into the lighted heavens, and then ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... out," answered Barry, himself weary and sick of the performance and longing more than anything else for solitude and ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... adaptments are assembled here, that melancholy, meditation, selfish devotion, and despair would require. But yet 'tis pleasing. Soften the terms, and mellow the uncouth horror that reigns here, but a little, and 'tis a charming solitude. It stands on a large space of ground, is old and irregular. The chapel is gloomy: behind it, through some dark passages, you pass into a large obscure hall, which looks like a combination-chamber for some hellish council. The large cloister ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... uncouth-looking old man, but a certain dignity was imparted to him by a look of deep and unspeakable melancholy upon his face, which gave it pathos and character of its own. The rustic face is apt to become vacant, bovine, or coarse. Solitude often reduces man almost to the level of the beasts. This old man, who for many years had lived hidden away in this vast forest, might well have lost all but the semblance of humanity; but such was not the case. His eyes had light in them; his very melancholy ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... living left behind to maintain the honour of their clans or country. Messages were given to dying friends, that they might be delivered to the spirits of relatives in another world. Highlanders imagined they heard, in the passing gale, the voices of departed relatives, and in their solitude they beheld the forms of their fathers in the bright clouds. In cases of emergency, the spirit of the mountains gave friendly warnings, which enabled cautioned ones to avoid dangers, that otherwise could neither ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... 'that I'll go down again to Yarmouth. There's time, and to spare, for me to go and come back before the ship sails. My mind is constantly running on him, in his solitude; to put this letter of her writing in his hand at this time, and to enable you to tell her, in the moment of parting, that he has got it, will be a kindness to both of them. I solemnly accepted his commission, dear good fellow, and cannot discharge it too completely. The journey is nothing ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... ordinary sense, he began to feel the first stirring of religion. When Fetuao, with sweet shame, laid her head against his shoulder and told him of her impending motherhood, he kissed her, comforted her, and then, rising to his feet, he sought the solitude that at such a moment he felt he could not share even with her. In one of the unfrequented corners of the bay, a narrow beach shadowed by the forest and faced by the open sea, he threw himself upon his knees with a passionate thankfulness that seemed to find its expression in this act. Knowing ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... individuals who keep ALL the new clothing in store and by only the wiliest of Tommies can such material be wangled.) The Q.M.S. of the Ten Hundred was not exactly popular among the ranks. N.B.—Neither Q.M.S.'s nor C.Q.M.S.'s are acquainted as a rule with the gentle solitude of the first line trenches. Their duty it is to receive and issue the "plum and apple," the "road-paving" biscuit and the weekly change ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... and in such lonesomeness, Lad would gladly have tossed aside all prejudices of caste,—and all his natural dislikes, and would have frolicked in mad joy with the veriest stranger. Anything was better than this drear solitude throughout the million hours before the first of the maids should be stirring or the first of the farmhands report for work. Yes, night was a disgusting time; and it had not one single redeeming trait for ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... Sagalac. Many a man has stood on a wide plain of snow, white to the uttermost horizon, or in the yellow- brown grass of the Summer prairie, empty of all human life so far as eye could see, and yet has felt no solitude. It is as though the air itself is inhabited by a throng of happy comrades whispering in the communion ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to sit by himself for a time and think out, if possible, some satisfactory arrangement of this tormenting matter. But, as he threw open the door of his library with a sensation of relief at the prospect of a period of unbroken solitude, he stopped short, barely repressing the strong language which ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... from the bones, and the dead city was thenceforth left to moulder under the blight of a foreign garrison and an army of Jesuits. "Perhaps religious affairs will improve before long," said Philip. They did improve very soon, as he understood the meaning of improvement. A solitude of religion soon brought with it a solitude in every other regard, and Antwerp became a desert, as Sainte Aldegonde had foretold ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... last house but one in that imperfect row especially haunted me with its hollow grin and empty window-eyes. Something in the shape of this brick-and-mortar skeleton was attractive; and there being no workmen about, I strolled into it for curiosity and solitude. I gave, with all the sky-deep gravity of youth, a benediction upon the man who was going to live there. I even remember that for the convenience of meditation I called him ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... valley, enclosed on the left by the Valley Mountain with all its garland of woods; and by the Welsh mountains on the right. Hills and rocks, waving with the forests of oak and chestnut, bordered the road and, as their leaves rustled to the wind and twinkled in the sun, gave to the depth of solitude a sort of life and vivacity. Peggy had been telling Robert Dale about the attack on Tom's River, and all the sad details of Fairfax's death. Following the narrative a silence had fallen between them which was ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... be a faithful wife, if, when deserted by the man who has assumed charge of her existence, and her happiness, and her love, and her ideals, she refuses to resign herself—young, beautiful, and full of hope—to eternal isolation and everlasting solitude? ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... semi-barbarous hunters from the Canadas, the same description of population, a little more enlightened, from the States, and the metiffs or half-breeds, who claimed to be ranked in the class of white men, were scattered among the different Indian tribes, or gleaned a scanty livelihood in solitude, amid the haunts of the beaver and the bison; or, to adopt the popular nomenclature of the country of ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... beyond a sea of forest, the dark masses of pine throwing out the lighter, more delicate sweeps of beech, and pale purple distance beyond—not another building within view, giving a sense of vast solitude to Eleanor's eyes, more dreary than the sea at Dunbar, and far more changeless. An occasional bird was all the variety to ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by the mountains, or is its source nearer by me on the mountain side?" I could not determine. It was not a hammering or a grating or the filing of a saw, though it suggested such sounds. It had a vague, distant, ventriloquial character. In the solitude of the mountain top there was something welcome and pleasing in it. Finally I set out to try to solve the mystery. I had not gone fifty yards from camp when I knew I was near the source of the sound. Presently I saw a porcupine on a log, and ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... and see if I happen to meet anyone. Two hours to wait; a little restless already, I brush the dust and heather from my clothes. I know the places I pass by, trees and stones stand there as before in their solitude; the leaves rustle underfoot as I walk. The monotonous breathing and the familiar trees and stones mean much to me; I am filled with a strange thankfulness; everything seems well disposed towards me, mingles with my being; I love it all. I pick up a little dry ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... but nowhere were they crowded. There was room in abundance, and wild places seemed to be held sacred for solitude.' ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... the fire. Was the prospect of sharing this gipsy-like life attractive to him? An adventurer himself, was he drawn toward these homeless strollers, for whom the illusions of dramatic art shone with enticing luster in the comparative solitude of the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... his affliction [w]. He shut himself up from the light of day, and from all commerce with his servants: he even refused, during three days, all food and sustenance [x]: the courtiers, apprehending dangerous effects from his despair, were at last obliged to break in upon his solitude; and they employed every topic of consolation, induced him to accept of nourishment, and occupied his leisure in taking precautions against the consequences which he so justly apprehended from the murder of the primate. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... great house was like a tomb, my mother was like a flower in it. I recall the sweetness of her timid personality, the half-frightened eyes which looked at me sometimes from the peculiar solitude of her mind, and the faint perfume of her dress when, as a child, I would rest my head in her lap and beg her to tell me of my ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... death, which occurred six months later. At this point his Court career ceased. A weak heart and a constitutional dislike of responsibility assisted him in his firm decision to lead the life of a country nobleman. He retired to his estate, and remained there in solitude, troubling no one except his agent, till a Russian lady, whom he had first met and loved during his early travels on the Continent, happened to come visiting in the neighbourhood. As the daughter of a Russian Prince and Ambassador, she had considered her rank superior ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the letter, but she kept it, and read it over and over again in the silence and solitude of her room. She felt that she was guilty in thus reading it,—even in keeping it from her husband's knowledge; but though conscious of this guilt, though resolute almost in its commission, still she determined not to remain at Matching after her husband's departure,—not to ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... certainly, for one thing, English boys are younger for their age. Sabbath observance makes a series of grim, and perhaps serviceable, pauses in the tenor of Scottish boyhood—days of great stillness and solitude for the rebellious mind, when in the dearth of books and play, and in the intervals of studying the Shorter Catechism, the intellect and senses prey upon and test each other. The typical English Sunday, with a huge midday dinner and the plethoric afternoon, leads perhaps to different ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... In the solitude of her own chamber Alicia gave way to those feelings of wretchedness which she had with difficulty stifled in the presence of Lady Audley, and bitterly wept over the extinction of her bright and newly-formed visions of ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... living after their own manner without observation, and of lying hid in the obscurity of multitudes; for in a city populous as Cairo it is possible to obtain at the same time the gratifications of society and the secrecy of solitude.' Rasselas, ch. xii. Gibbon wrote of London (Misc. Works, ii. 291):—'La libert d'un simple particulier se fortifie par l'immensit de ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... back of sundown when I heard there was such lots of company up here. No indeed; talk of solitude, I believe Robinson Crusoe lied when he said he liked it. Yes, and Old Friday too, if he ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... eyes, trying to realize that great silence as one would try to realize the Infinite. Then faintly she heard a man's voice singing. It seemed at first a trick of the imagination. But nearer and nearer it came, in the fellowship of life joyfully invading the solitude; and with a readjustment of her faculties to the expected event, she watched the point where the trail dipped on a sharp turn ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... businesses of the world. In that silent retirement, in thousands of instances, a tragedy not less severe than unobtrusive is enacted, the tragedy of the lonely and breaking heart. An obscure mist of sighs exhales out of the solitude of women in the nineteenth century. The proportionate number of examples of virtuous love, completing itself in marriage, will probably diminish, and the relative examples of defeated or of unlawful love increase, until ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... next day with Desmond as a matter of course. He called for her at her office, and drove her away possessively. There was no more solitude for her, no more proud loneliness, no more boastful independence. Already she clung and already she enjoyed it. When, over the table, he asked: "Isn't it nice being engaged?" she nodded, smiling, and answered: "I'm wondering why I haven't ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... refutation, in order to the discovery of the truth, but all were at random doomed to destruction; so that some lamented those that were in prison, some those that were put to death, and others lamented that they were in expectation of the same miseries; and a melancholy solitude rendered the kingdom deformed, and quite the reverse to that happy state it was formerly in. Herod's own life also was entirely disturbed; and because he could trust nobody, he was sorely punished by the expectation of further misery; for ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... feeling infinite, so felt In solitude, where we are least alone; A truth, which through our being then doth melt, And purify from self: it is a tone The soul and source of music, which makes known Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm, Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone, Binding ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Even in their solitude Eddie and Pheeny used modest paraphrases and breathed hard and looked askance, and made sure that no one overheard. They whispered as parents do when their ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... to them from this intellectual solitude an unhappiness so profound that they are glad to be able to attribute to the mental inferiority of others the condition of moral isolation in ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... the Afghan side, and he had the experience of riding up and down those stony hill slopes beside the Commander-in-Chief. He explored the Khojak tunnel, then under process of construction, running through 'a wall-like range which reminds one of the solitude of Sainte-Baume in Provence,' surveyed all the defences of Quetta, and then, while Lady Dilke went on by rail to Simla, he set out to ride, in company with Sir Frederick Roberts and Sir Robert Sandeman, from Harnai, through ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... requests more or less clearly stated, anxious entrances and triumphant exits, the last client dismissed, the commode drawers locked, the apartment on Place Vendome was left in solitude in the fading light of four o'clock, the close of the November days which are prolonged so far beyond that hour by the aid of artificial light. The servants removed the coffee cups, the raki and the open, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... alternative, the stanza with alternate rhymes. Here the question is about the fourth line, which may either consist of six syllables, like Coleridge's Fragment, "O leave the lily on its stem," or of four, as in Pope's youthful "Ode on Solitude," these types being further varied by the addition of an extra syllable to form a double rhyme. Of these the four-syllable type seems to me the one to be preferred, as giving the effect of the Adonic better ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... nobody but Giotto and Dante, nor seems to have been for ages. Cool it is, and of a pulverous smell, as a sacred place should be; a blessed benching goes round the wall, and you sit down and take unlimited comfort in the frescos. The gardener leaves you alone to the solitude and the silence, in which the talk of the painter and the exile is plain enough. Their contemporaries and yours are cordial in their gay companionship; through the half-open door falls, in a pause of the rain, the same sunshine that they saw lie there; the deathless ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... spur of rock overhanging a green nook in the broken ugliness of the cliffs, sheltered from the sea by an encircling arm of rock, and reached by a steep path down the cliff. Around her towered an amphitheatre of vast cliffs in which the sea sang loud music to the spirit of solitude. In the moaning waters in front of the cove a jagged rock rose from the incomparable green, tilted backward and fantastically shaped, like a great grave face watching the house on the ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the Universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. Imperishable ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... pleasure to Lady Fareham in some rare interval of solitude—when the weather was too severe for her to venture outside the hall door, even in her comfortable coach, and when by some curious concatenation she happened to be without visitors—to open her portfolio and prattle with her pen to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... more to men in the smoking-room. It is a dog's life. But one has to have suffered before one gets the full savour out of joy. And I do not grumble at the price I have to pay for the sensation of basking, at length, in solitude and the glow of ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... through the window by the light of her low fire—carefully banked up with damp cinders that it might last the longer and waste the less when she was out—sitting waiting for him in her bonnet. His tap at the glass roused her from the musing solitude in which she sat, and she came to the door to open it; aiding her ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... fact that another may see it carelessly and indifferently makes no difference. It only means that not thus does he perceive God. But, for myself, I know no experience more wholly and deeply religious than when I pass in solitude among deep stream-fed valleys, or over the wide fenland, or through the familiar hamlet, and see the dying day flame and smoulder far down in the west among cloudy pavilions or in tranquil spaces of clear sky. Then the well-known land whose homely, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... SOL. Ah! Solisa, that sweet voice, Why should I pity thee? 'Tis not my office. Go, go to her that cheered thy loneliness, Thy utter loneliness. And had I none? Had I no pangs of solitude? Exile! O! there were moments I'd have gladly given My crown for banishment. A wounded heart Beats freer in a desert; 'tis the air Of palaces that ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... log, majestic in its solitude, floated down the river, resisting the efforts of tenacious creepers to bind and hold it prisoner. Piang poked it with his paddle. Another was floating in its wake, and he idly tapped this, also. It stirred, turned over, ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... these newspapers (Muller saw that they were German papers) were still in their wrappings. They were probably Viennese papers for which he had telegraphed and which had just arrived. His anxiety had not allowed him to read them in the presence of his wife. He had sought the solitude of early morning on the Lido, that he might learn, unobserved, what terrors fate had in ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... greatly embarrassed, "I cannot give them quarters here tonight; formerly it was all very well, but now it is another thing," he added, looking at Mimi, whose softly kindling eyes seemed to appeal for solitude for their two selves. "What is to be done? Give me a bit of advice, Marcel. Invent a trick to ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... an oath, threw a stone at the group, and dispersed them, but not before one or two slips of yellow rice paper, marked with hieroglyphics, were exchanged, and a small parcel put into Ah Fe's hands. When Ah Fe opened this in the dim solitude of his kitchen, he found a little girl's apron, freshly washed, ironed, and folded. On the corner of the hem were the initials "C. T." Ah Fe tucked it away in a corner of his blouse, and proceeded to wash his dishes in the sink with a smile of ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... few of the best bourgeois families of Valence he found happiness. There, too, blossomed the tenderest, purest idyll of his life. At the country house of a cultured lady who had befriended him in his solitude, he saw his first love, Caroline de Colombier. It was a passing fancy; but to her all the passion of his southern nature welled forth. She seems to have returned his love; for in the stormy sunset of his life at St. Helena he recalled some delicious walks at dawn when Caroline ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the country. The ship glided on stealthily, as if it had taken some hidden road in order to spring out on some one unawares. There was not a single boat in the canal nor a living soul on the dykes, and the silence and solitude strengthened the impression that our course had the hidden air of a piratical incursion. On leaving the canal we entered the ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... out-house was by an accident deprived of its mother and brethren. It evaded all attempts to catch it, though food was put within its reach. Just below where it lived, a brood of chickens were constantly running about; and at length, growing weary of solitude, it thought that it would like to have such lively little playmates. So down it scrambled, and timidly crept towards them. Finding that they were not likely to do it harm, it lay down among them. The chickens seemed to know that it was ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... thought I could not do that amiss, which I only did in obedience to him. I took a kinswoman with me. At first he seemed a little confused; for he was reserved toward women. Being newly come out of a five years' solitude, he was surprised that I was the first to address him. He spoke not a word for some time. I knew not to what attribute his silence. I did not hesitate to speak to him, and to tell him a few words, my difficulties ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... to send her some, and was duly grateful when they reached her. "I fancy you are now saying, 'tis a sad thing to grow old; what does my poor mamma mean by troubling me with criticisms on books that nobody but herself will ever read? You must allow something to my solitude." And again: "I thank God my taste still continues for the gay part of reading. Wiser people may call it trifling, but it serves to sweeten life to me, and is worst better than ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... the world so small but that we may yet leave in it also unconquered spaces of beautiful solitude; where the chamois and red deer may wander fearless,—nor any fire of avarice scorch from the Highlands of Alp, or Grampian, the rapture of the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... after Mrs. Slawson had disappeared, the girl sat in the solitude of her shadowy room thinking—thinking—thinking. Unable to get away from her thoughts. There was something about this plan, to which Martha had committed her, that frightened, overawed her. She felt a strange impulse to resist it, to follow her own leading, and go to the school instead. She knew ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... solitude enough, while tending her patient and sitting up with her, to ponder the matter; and as she thought over her married life, and contemplated unflinchingly the constant, weary, fruitless struggle in which ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... vividly do I recall the apparition which stole into my solitude after supper—which I had scented longingly from afar. A wraith all in white—gown and neck and arms and face, the masses of fluffy hair making this last more wraith-like. It sank to the floor beside my low bed, and gathered me, miserable culprit, ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... your return. A week is not too long, Philip, when employed as I trust I shall employ it—a week to interchange our sentiments, to hear your voice, to listen to your words (each of which will be engraven on my heart's memory), to ponder on them, and feed my love with them is your absence and in my solitude. No! no! Philip; I thank God that there is ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... this, that we are linked to all free peoples not merely by a noble idea but by a simple need. No free people can for long cling to any privilege or enjoy any safety in economic solitude. For all our own material might, even we need markets in the world for the surpluses of our farms and our factories. Equally, we need for these same farms and factories vital materials and products of distant ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... stream rushed by the lower corner of his farm, and its wild music sang him to sleep when he spent the night in the hills. He furnished his "summer residence" with a few simple necessities so that he could live there a number of days at a time. He minded not the solitude. The wild odorous verdure of the hills, the cool breezes, the song of the distant streams, the call of the birds, all seemed to harmonize with his own feelings at that time. He had a good kerosene lamp, and at nights when he was not too tired, he read. On his visits to the city ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... the library or attic den, as suits his convenience. In this way he feels quite independent, has motive for exercise in walking to and fro, and as he is always welcome to dine with us, can mix his portion of solitude and society in the exact proportion of his taste, even as his well-shaped fingers carefully blend the ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... as intimated by the chairman, I have visited the Sandwich Islands, that peaceful land, that beautiful land, that far-off home of profound repose and soft indolence, and dreamy solitude, where life is one long slumberous Sabbath, the climate one long, delicious summer day, and the good that die experience no change, for they but fall asleep in one heaven and wake up in another. And these boys have played base-ball there; ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... sit here, in my solitude and captivity, and recall every incident of that sweet epoch—to ache with the pangs of happy remembrance; than which, for the likes of me, great poets tell us there is no greater grief. This sorrow's crown of sorrow is my joy and my consolation, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... tribute to the memory of so sincere a friend? But in a ship this is almost impossible, unless, as an officer, you can retreat to your own cabin; and those gushings from the heart, arising from grief or pleasure, the tears so sweet in solitude, must be prostituted before the crowd, or altogether repressed. At last the wished-for opportunity did come. Mr Wilson, who had been away on service, came to congratulate me as soon as he heard the news, and with an instinctive ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... gained materials enough for reflection; he rose soon, took leave of the company, and gave himself up, in the solitude of his own room, to the torrent of thought and feeling which that night's conversation had let loose. So, then, it was true; Emily Varnier was no fabulous being! Hallberg had loved her, his love had ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... go on sighing for the moon; and when you find the moon is unattainable, you will not dream of seeking solace in more earthly lights—not even poppa's best sperm," she added, with a wistful little smile, for Pauline's fun sparkled in solitude as freely as in company, and as often at her own expense as at that of other people, and her brave American spirit would not admit, even to ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... vanished within the cabin; a door opened to frame a picture of a tall man. He was stooped; the years, or solitude, perhaps, had borne heavily upon him; his face was a mat of gray beard that was a continuation of the unkempt hair above. The rifle was still in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... be alone this Christmas," I says to myself, "I'll make it the gol-blamedest, crowdedest solitude ever heard of this side of ...
— Colonel Crockett's Co-operative Christmas • Rupert Hughes
... tour of the city's walls and gardens. Went with Said, and myself, alone. I am fond of being alone, and would sometimes walk miles over The Desert—the caravans being not even in sight. This was solitude! ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... manhood's early morn, Young Huon led through strife and scorn A trusty troop and free, Who left their homes his lot to share, For Freedom sworn to live and dare, Or die—at Fate's decree; And from the covert solitude Of dark morass and thicket rude Guerilla warfare waged, On Tory band, unwary foe, And struck full many a dauntless blow, While ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... in consultation to apply Relief to the misfortune that has fallen On me, my mistress, and her daughter, all Would not avail.—Ah me! so many troubles Environ us at once, we sink beneath them. Rape, poverty, oppression, solitude, And infamy! oh, what an age is this! O wicked, ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... them on the desert sand, By waters cold and rude, Alone upon the dreary strand Of oceaned solitude! They looked upon the high, blue air, And felt their spirits glow, Resolved to live or perish there,— TWO ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... the hush of thy lone haunts I wander again, Where these time-hallow'd relics, familiar remain, As if charmed into magic repose; The pass subterraneous,—the fathomless well, The mound whence the violet peeps—and the cell Where the fox-glove in solitude grows. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... was marked. He could do his part in the day's work, be a man among men, dicker with the importers at the Salem Custom House and as Consul at Liverpool, rub effectively with the traders, but his choice was always for solitude, he liked to go for days without speaking to a human being and to live withdrawn from the contacts of the world, even from his neighbours and family. Probably it was because he was so thoroughly a recluse ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... iron cross that standeth On the mouldering wall and rude, Like a noble thought uplifted In the Past's deep solitude. ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... the first time since I have been in Europe alone—the only citizen of the United States at present in this ancient Moorish city: alone, I may almost say, in the midst of paradise. Yet the beauties of nature will not compensate for the solitude of the heart, which is continually yearning after sympathy; we wish for something beyond the pleasures of the eye, and I would that you were with me. I would take you up to me Alhambra, and descant to you for hours upon its perfections and its romantic history. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... out the necessity that the history of this movement for the emancipation of women should be recorded, in justice to those who carried it forward and as an inspiration to the workers of the future. And so together, for a long decade, these two great souls toiled in the solitude of home just as together they fought in the open field, not for personal gain or glory, but for the sake of a cause to which they had consecrated their lives. Had it not been for their patient and unselfish labor the story of the hard conditions ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... strong. Half the fun of boarding school in her opinion was in having a room-mate, and she could not forego that pleasure even for the sake of a very deep and tender sentiment. But she made the most of her solitude while she had it. From kodak pictures she had seen of the room, she knew at a glance which of the narrow white beds had been Lloyd's, and immediately pre-empted it for herself, staking out her claim by depositing her hat and gloves ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... pursuing his toilsome work in the solitude and silence of the level under the sea, as already described, a noble ship was leaping over the Atlantic waves—homeward ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... frequent waving of palms over the high walls which lined the road. The street was empty of all except an old orange vender, shuffling slowly along, with a cartwheel of a tray on her head, piled with yellow fruit shining vividly in the hot sun. The quiet and the solitude gave a sense of distance from the teeming bazaars and tourist-ridden haunts, which ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... to you." This was said at Harrington after Lady Chiltern had returned from her first journey up to London. That visit had been very short, and Miss Palliser had been left alone at the hall. We already know how Mr. Spooner took advantage of her solitude. After that, Miss Palliser was to accompany the Chilterns to London, and she was there with them when Phineas Finn was acquitted. By that time she had brought herself to acknowledge to her friend Lady Chiltern that it would perhaps be desirable that Mr. Maule should return. If he did not do ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... worldly gayety, and I sit here in the twilight looking at the evening star and writing about love. How true it is that the pen is mightier than the sword! Gayety is well in its place, but the soul of the artist finds its happiness in work and solitude. I hope Josephine will realize, though, why I cannot describe her wedding. Of course no artist of delicate sensibilities could describe a wedding when she hadn't been asked ...
— Different Girls • Various
... that abound on the island, but the mosquitoes seriously interfered with such work and the party soon returned to the vessel. The absolutely calm night allowed the mosquitoes to reach us and stay; and in spite of its brevity and the utter stillness of the vast solitude about us, broken only now and then by a noise from the little Halifax trader whose acquaintance we here made for the first time, and of whom we saw so much on our return voyage across the gulf, or by the howling of wolves and Eskimo dogs in the distance, we were glad when it ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... and all the evil that like a spreading thunder-cloud darkens it day by day! Oh, wilt thou leave me desolate and alone? ... Fight as I will, I shall often sink under blows, . . conquer as I may, I shall suffer the solitude of conquest, unless THOU art with me! Oh, speak!—is there no deeper divine intention in the marvellous destiny that has brought us together?—thou, pure Spirit, and I, weak Mortal? Has love, the primal mover of all ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... books which go with midnight, solitude, and a candle. It is much easier to say what does not please us then than what is exactly right. The book must be, anyhow, something benedictory by a sinning fellow-man. Cleverness would be repellent at such an hour. Cleverness, anyhow, is the level of mediocrity today; ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... rocks at the foot of this island. Until to-night I did not know that it was this island. I alone was washed on shore. In the days that came I grew to wish that I, too, had perished. You know nothing of what solitude and savagery mean to the man of civilization—and to the man of ambition. Oh, my God! I dared not leave the shore lest I miss the chance to signal a passing vessel. There was scarcely anything to maintain life on that rocky coast. Now and again I caught a seagull ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... choir and of the organ mingled with the boy's dreams, but did not arouse him, and when the people departed and the sexton closed the church and went home, Tode still slept on in darkness and solitude. ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... and she always displays a quaint humor of expression and a quiet feeling of pathos which give a touch of active realism to all her writings. In "A Spinner in the Sun" she tells an old-fashioned love story, of a veiled lady who lives in solitude and whose features her neighbors have never seen. There is a mystery at the heart of the book that throws over it ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... it, however, a vague gray aloofness which chimed with his spirit, a sober austerity as of a stricken whale,—a mother-whale surely, for was not her young one there at her nose,—fled here to heal her wound perchance, and desirous only of solitude. ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... officer of the crown entered my solitary cell at Kilmainham prison on Monday last—unbidden and unexpected—uninvited and undesired. I want to know what justification there was for his coming to insult me in my solitude and in my sorrow—ostensibly informing me that I was to be brought up for sentence on Thursday, but in the same breath adroitly putting to me the question if I knew any of the men recently arrested near Dungarvan, and now in the prison ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... however, and not of truth, is the moving principle of his mind; and he is guided in his fantastic delineations by no rule but the impulse of an inexhaustible imagination. He luxuriates equally in scenes of Eastern magnificence; or the still solitude of a hermit's cell—in the extremes of sensuality ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... offence: "Madam, the mighty power of use Now strangely pleads in my excuse; If you unused have scarcely strength To gain this walk's untoward length; If, frighten'd at a scene so rude, Through long disuse of solitude; If, long confined to fires and screens, You dread the waving of these greens; If you, who long have breathed the fumes Of city fogs and crowded rooms, Do now solicitously shun The cooler air and dazzling sun; If his majestic eye you flee, Learn hence ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... in solitude, with his good judgment prompting him; but louder and more distinct sounded another voice within him. As he glanced once more at the gold, it was not thus that his twenty-two years and fiery youth reasoned. Now everything was within his power on which he had hitherto gazed with ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... burst out laughing at me. I could not think of anything more to add, and I felt relieved when, with a warning shriek, the train dashed into a tunnel. By the time we had emerged again into the sunlight and the solitude of the open landscape I had ready an impromptu which I had been working at in the darkness. I looked straight at Miss Metford ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... imperfect, how inconsecutive, did everything appear! This is the curse of reverie. But they who revel in its pleasures must bear its pains, and are content. Yet it wears out the brain, and unfits us for social life. They who indulge in it most are the slaves of solitude. They wander in a wilderness, and people it with their voices. They sit by the side of running waters, with an eye more glassy than the stream. The sight of a human being scares them more than a ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... He hated solitude or quiet; and here in this crowded terminus there was life and bustle and variety enough in all conscience; and all to be seen for nothing: so he strolled backwards and forwards upon the platform, watching the busy porters, the eager passengers rushing to and fro, and meditating as to where ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... started in genuine amazement. He did not love Arnold, but after two hours of solitude he was glad to hear any human voice. It never occurred to him, too, that any one should feel Frances such a necessity as to alter plans on ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... have always been more woman than artist. He always put the theater first. He lived in it, he died in it. He had none of what I may call my bourgeois qualities—the love of being in love, the love of a home, the dislike of solitude. I have always thought it hard to find my inferiors. He was sure of his high place. He was far simpler than I in some ways. He would talk, for instance, in such an ingenuous way to painters and musicians that I blushed for him. But I know now that my blush was far more unworthy than his freedom ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... before long in getting her brother out of the way, and releasing them from their painful imprisonment. The streets of Upton were hushed in utter solitude and silence as they walked through them, speechless and heavy-hearted; those streets which, on the morrow, were to have been crowded with groups of his people, eager to welcome him home. They passed the church, ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... possibly imagine them—the old moss-covered logs, and immense trees cut down years ago and left to lie there until all overgrown with mosses and lichens. I never before experienced such a feeling of solitude as in that walk of over a mile in length through those deep dark woods, where sometimes we had literally to cut our way through with our little hatchets (we always carried them with us when ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... illuminated were the grand, vaporous backgrounds of the Pyrenees and of Spain—the frontier fraud was resumed more ardently, as soon as the thinned crescent had become discreet and early setting. Then, in these beautiful times, smuggling by night was exquisite; a trade of solitude and of meditation when the mind of the naive and very pardonable defrauders was elevated unconsciously in the contemplation of the sky and of the darkness animated by stars—as it happens to the mind of the sea folk watching, on ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... Miss Roscom, for thus intruding upon your solitude, but, finding you absent on our return, I came to seek you and, with your permission, to escort you home. I think you do wrong to come to this lonely place to cherish a sorrow which seems to me to be almost unreasonable. I would not have you forget your ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... Did not twelve years' solitude on a desert island appear to him a sufficient expiation? Did not the penitent yet feel himself pardoned, either in his own eyes or in ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... the grass grew richer and softer and more luscious; Shag commenced to put on fat. But daily the Dog-Wolf grew hungrier and thinner. In the vast solitude, walled on every side by the never-ending sky from which the stars peeped at night and the sun smiled by day, there was little for the Dog-Wolf, who was a flesh-eater. Scarce anything but Gophers; not an Antelope, nor a Mule Deer, nor ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... The homestead policy was established only after long and earnest resistance; experience proves its wisdom. The lands in the hands of industrious settlers, whose labor creates wealth and contributes to the public resources, are worth more to the United States than if they had been reserved as a solitude ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... and Mrs. Henry were gone from the hall; my lord, for warmth's sake, hurried to his bed; there was still no sign of stir among the servants, and as I went up the tower stair, and entered the dead man's room, a horror of solitude weighed upon my mind. To my extreme surprise, it was all in the disorder of departure. Of his three portmanteaus, two were already locked; a third lay open and near full. At once there flashed upon me some suspicion of the truth. The man had been ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that forlorn remnant of the Hebrew race. "A rock rent from the side of Mount Zion by some great national catastrophe and projected into the central plain of China, it has stood there while the centuries rolled by, sublime in its antiquity and solitude.''[66] ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... total extinction of the manufacture. The din of the iron hammer was hushed, the glare of the furnace faded, the last blast of the bellows was blown, and the district returned to its original rural solitude. Some of the furnace-ponds were drained and planted with hops or willows; others formed beautiful lakes in retired pleasure-grounds; while the remainder were used to drive flour-mills, as the streams in North Kent, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... night through. They are really the first throbbings of life, the harbingers of day; and it pleases you as much to hear them as it must please a shipwrecked seaman once again to grasp a hand of flesh and blood after years of miserable solitude. They have the freshness of the daylight life about them. You can hear the carters cracking their whips and crying hoarsely to their horses or to one another; and sometimes even a peal of healthy, harsh horse-laughter comes up to you through the darkness. There is now an end ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... place once, though it lies, so to speak, opposite to the Italian city where I lived for years, and yet you would hardly believe how the topsy-turvydom and transmigration of this myth somehow seemed less mad than they really are, with the wood loud with lions at night and that dark red solitude beyond. They say that the hermit St. Securis, living there among trees, grew to love them like companions; since, though great giants with many arms like Briareus, they were the mildest and most blameless ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... which the beck rushed down a waterfall; and where, still a little farther, the mountain shook off turf and flower, had only heath for raiment and crag for gem—where it exaggerated the wild to the savage, and exchanged the fresh for the frowning—where it guarded the forlorn hope of solitude, and a last refuge ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... excellent father of a family, without loving Johnson or Boswell, for a sense of humour is not one of the primary virtues. But Boswell's is one of the very few books which, after many years of familiarity, will still provoke a hearty laugh even in the solitude of a study; and the laughter is of that kind which ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the Zunamenie Church, passed through the shops in the Rejestwenskoi district, drove the sledge out on to the frozen Neva, and halted in the middle of the river, in front of the deserted church of Ste. Madeleine. There, protected by the solitude and darkness, hidden behind the black mass of his sledge, he began to break the ice, which was fifteen inches thick, with his pick. When he had made a large enough hole, he searched the body of Foedor, took all ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... some particular natures that are private and retired: my natural way is proper for communication, and apt to lay me open; I am all without and in sight, born for society and friendship. The solitude that I love myself and recommend to others, is chiefly no other than to withdraw my thoughts and affections into myself; to restrain and check, not my steps, but my own cares and desires, resigning all foreign ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... However this may be, the province can and some day will grow coffee, tobacco, rice, and cocoa to perfection; its savannahs will furnish pasturage for thousands of cattle, where now some one solitary carabao serves only to mark the solitude ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... distant ridge, she perceived two figures and presently made out the brown robe and hood of the Hermit, and a little, barefoot peasant boy, running to keep up with his rapid stride. They vanished over the crest of the hill, and Mora—alone in this wild solitude—realised that many hours might elapse ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... empty, and seemed silent and dull after Cornbridge. No place was dull and certainly no place was silent where Lady Linden was, and coming back to Hurst Dormer, Hugh felt as if he was then entering into a desert of solitude and silence. ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... circumstances, it was better for both that they should not be long together; and the restless state of Marianne's mind not only prevented her from remaining in the room a moment after she was dressed, but requiring at once solitude and continual change of place, made her wander about the house till breakfast time, avoiding ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, of their getting warm, becoming rude, and shooting one another. Conviction is the effect of our own dispassionate reasoning, either in solitude, or weighing within ourselves, dispassionately, what we hear from others, standing uncommitted in argument ourselves. It was one of the rules, which, above all others, made Doctor Franklin the most amiable of men in society, 'never to contradict any body.' If he was urged to announce an opinion, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... mountains; the trees snow-burdened, but black with the darkness of night in their melancholy depths. The earth white; snow to the thickness of many feet on all. Life none; not a beast of the earth, nor a fowl of the air, nor the hum of an insect. Solitude. Cold—grey, pitiless ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... of pimento-tree on his knee. The lesser hut served him as kitchen, and in the larger he slept and employed himself in reading, singing psalms, and praying; so that, as he remarked, he was a better Christian while in this solitude than ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... awake! the love that loveth all Maketh a deeper calm than Horeb's cave. God in thee, can his children's folly gall? Love may be hurt, but shall not love be brave?— Thy holy silence sinks in dews of balm; Thou art my solitude, my mountain-calm. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... thrilling, nameless life before him. Just then the long mourn of a timber wolf wailed in with the wind. Seldom had he heard the cry of one of those night wanderers. There was nothing like it—no sound like it to fix in the lone camper's heart the great solitude and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... disarrayed By chill November, late I strayed, A lonely minstrel of the wood Was singing to the solitude I loved thy music, thus I said, When o'er thy perch the leaves were spread Sweet was thy song, but sweeter now Thy carol on the leafless bough. Sing, little bird! thy note shall cheer The ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... de Sismondi, "present the same contrast between the memories of their prosperity in the Middle Ages and their present desolation. The town of Ceres, made famous by Renzo da Ceri, who defended by turns Marseilles against Charles V. and Geneva against the Duke of Savoy, is nothing but a solitude. In all the fiefs of the Orsinis and the Colonnes not a soul. From the forests which surround the pretty Lake of Vico the human race has disappeared; and the soldiers with whom the formidable prefect of Vico made Rome tremble so often in the fourteenth century have left no descendants. Castro ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... my solitude and my aloofness; You are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs, And sweeter to my heart than ...
— The Madman • Kahlil Gibran
... better tracking, as we crawled painfully along, the melancholy Point with its lonely graves, deserted cabins and cannibal legend receded into eerie distance and wrapped itself once more in congenial solitude. ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... said good-by there was a gentle pity in her eyes, for she was certain her long-time friend was headed for the highroad of destruction. But instead I turned into the dim solitude of Shiba Park. I had something to think about. To-day's experiences had painted anew in naming colors the difference in husbands. How prone a woman is, who is free and dearly beloved, to fall into the habit of taking things for ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... but on the west this was limited by an irregularly-disposed series of low hills. Cultivation and scrub-jungle alternated the whole way. The miserable Goanese, like a dog slinking off to die, slipped away behind the caravan, and hid himself in the jungle to suffer the pangs of fever in solitude. I sent men to look for him in vain: party succeeded party in the search, till at last night set in without his appearing. It is singular in this country to find how few men escape some fever or other sickness, who make a sudden march after living a quiet stationary life. It appears ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... her his arm, and solemnly they went. The room, which had been designed to enable twenty-four people to dine in comfort, held now but a little round table. In his present solitude the big dining-table oppressed old Jolyon; he had caused it to be removed till his son came back. Here in the company of two really good copies of Raphael Madonnas he was wont to dine alone. It was the only disconsolate hour of his day, this summer weather. He had never been a large eater, like ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... if they could find a retired lodging for him at Enfield, "where he might not be known, and might have the comfort of seeing them both now and then, upon such a circumstance he could gladly give the days to solitude to have the comfort of half an hour now and then with them both for two or three weeks." Nevertheless, as if he considered this plan out of the question, he ends with a touching expression of grief that, being near his journey's end, he may never see them again. It is impossible ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... fatigue and dying with grief, she bowed her beautiful head, and instead of retracing her steps to the farmhouse of Ipenza, she went to the church in the valley and fell on her knees before the altar of the Virgin of Solitude." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... day she had pictured to herself how beautiful the prairie must be, clad in all the verdant livery of the most wonderful of the seasons. And yet it would mean a new solitude and loneliness to her, her husband, of necessity, being away through all the long daylight hours. She began to understand Gertie's dread of having no one to speak to. She avoided asking herself the question as to whether it was loneliness ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... the solitude of her chamber, Julia communed with herself as follows: "And so he'll live after all. Well, I may as well let him know at once that I will not marry him." So saying, she opened her portfolio, and wrote ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... went out to the barn, where he smoked for awhile in pensive solitude. He thought long and earnestly, and was so absorbed that he looked up with a start at the sound of his mother's voice calling to him ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... tears! tears! In the night, in solitude, tears, On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand, Tears, not a star shining, all dark and desolate, Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head; O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears? What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... guest would have been a blessing in his solitude, but Zoska.... If she did not know the truth, what ill wind had blown her here? ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... busy life and commotion in the Esquimau camp, from which Edith had retired to some distance to indulge in solitude the sad reveries of home, which weighed more heavily on her mind as the time flew by and the hope of speedy delivery ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... the waving foliage; far away from the din of trumpets, huxterers and showmen; here can the sweet air whisper its low song of peace and lull our fervid imaginations into tranquillity. This is no solitude, though all is quiet and in repose. Under the trees and in the road are throngs of loiterers, but there is no rude laughter, no coarse jests; a moving crowd is there, but a quiet and happy one. And now we come upon the venerable church with its low steeple, its time-eaten stone ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... after the door had closed, and to keep him company in his solitude back swarmed all those dreary thoughts that Bob's cheery presence had for the time being banished; with a rush they came to jeer, taunt, ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... over my head and out of my sight. The only movement she made for some time was to finger with an ungloved hand and as if with the habit of fondness the row of pearls on her neck, which my glass showed me to be large and splendid. Her diamonds and pearls, in her solitude, mystified me, making me, as she had had no such brave jewels in the days of the Hammond Synges, wonder what undreamt-of improvement had taken place in her fortunes. The ghost of a question hovered there a moment: could anything ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... him best, call'd it feign'd mirth; And others said, He wore a smile like death's upon his face. His presence dash'd all the beholders' mirth, And he went away in tears. Simon. What followed then? Marg. Oh! then He did not as neglected suitors use Affect a life of solitude in shades, But lived, In free discourse and sweet society, Among his friends who knew his gentle nature best. Yet ever when he smiled, There was a mystery legible in his face, That whoso saw him said he was a man Not long for this world.— And true it was, for even then The silent love was ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... every step difficulties increased. There were only thirty-five miles to be travelled, but excepting on the margin of a few slender streams the country through which their route lay was the barest of desert land. There was no shelter from the chill blasts of this mountain solitude, where, even in November, the thermometer sometimes sank to sixteen degrees below zero. There was no fuel but the wild sage and willow; there was little ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... and 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 ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... of my watch-fire were cast upward and strewn asunder. It was an awful long winter night. The same sable clouds rioting in the sky, the same cruel wind moaning angrily through the chinks and crevices of many a shattered edifice. Solitude, the chillness of night, and the vagueness, even more than the inevitableness, of the danger, wrought fearfully on my exhausted frame. Stupor and lethargy soon followed these brief moments of speechless excitement. Bewildered imagination peopled ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... restoring. On such a morning, and reaching the summits of the forest-mountain about sunrise, we shall have one chance the more for seeing the famous Spectre of the Brocken.[16] Who and what is he? He is a solitary apparition, in the sense of loving solitude; else he is not always solitary in his personal manifestations, but on proper occasions has been known to unmask a strength quite sufficient to alarm those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... evening, Shandon and the doctor, accompanied by Garry, went out to reconnoitre the vast plains; they took care not to go too far from the ship, for it was hard to find any fixed points in this white solitude, which was ever changing in appearance. Refraction kept producing strange effects, much to the doctor's astonishment; at one place, where he thought he had but an easy jump before him, he had to leap ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... two of her nieces in keeping house for a boarding-school of young girls. Here her lively manners and her gracious interest in the young made her a universal favorite, though the cares she assumed broke in upon those habits of solitude and study which formed her delight. From the day that she surrendered this independency of hers, she had never, for more than a score of years, a home of her own, but filled the trying position of an accessory in the home of others. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... mercifully set me free, I came to try to cheer your solitude; but you look as if solitude made you happier than society does the rest of us," she said without her usual affectation, for his ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... "Goddesses enthroned in solitude, Surrounded not by time or place, These are the mothers! About them formed and formless, Eternal stability and endless change In ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... and opening on the minster sanctuary, not only by casement windows that shed a dim midday gloom, but by a narrow winding staircase, at the foot of which an iron-spiked door led to the long gloomy path of cloistered solitude. This place remained in the situation in which I describe it in the year 1776, and probably may, in a more ruined state, continue ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... the pandemonium of my six hundred sewing-machines and the jingle of gold which they pour into my lap I feel the deadly silence of solitude ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... who is guided by reason, is more free in a State, where he lives under a general system of law, than in solitude, where he ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... Granite Pillar.' No appearance of human life or labour exists around; the whole is a desert, over which these columnar formations—resembling a city of the Titans, crumbling slowly into dust—hold an empire of solitude and death. The imagination is oppressed with a sense of utter desolation ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... twenty-third. He had never felt less sleepy. Nor did a book and a pipe before his gas log seem quite what he wanted. The vagabond streak in him was awake, the same potent wanderlust that as a boy had driven him to the solitude of the forests and the hills. This morning it sent him questing down Powers Avenue to that lower town where the derelicts of the city floated ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... was the first time her name as an author had been published, though for the last three years she had from time to time written anonymously for magazines. This was her own book; thought out, written, revised, and completed in her chosen solitude and secrecy. No one knew of it; possibly Roland suspected something, but he had not ventured to make any inquiries, and she had no reason to believe that he even suspected its existence. It was simply altogether her own; no other mind had any ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... concern of a woman was to get a man to do that. That was the drama, that was life. And the jealousy of these demands was the master motive in the world. You said, Kahn, a little while ago that sexual love was the key that let one out from the solitude of self, but I tell you that so far it has only done so in order to lock us all up again in a solitude of two.... All that may have been necessary but it is necessary no longer. All that has changed and changes still ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... rich and the powerful of this globe preach their sound gospel of palpable progress. The part of the ideal you embrace is the better one, if only in its illusions. No great passion can be barren. May a world of gracious and poignant images attend the lofty solitude of your renunciation!" ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... no help; she was gone alone into the silent chamber of pain, where there comes no company, no friend, no love. His spirit cried out to her, but she heard him not—she was alone, alone! Is there any solitude that the desert or the ocean knows, that is like the ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the country towards those who, acting wisely or unwisely, after the famine, determined to get rid of a population which the soil had shown itself unequal to support. There is no doubt that Lord Lucan brought "a conscience to his work" and made a solitude around Castlebar. "On the ruins of many a once happy homestead," continues the local scribe, "do the lambs frisk and play, a fleecy tribe that has, through landlord tyranny, superseded the once happy peasant." It is also ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... he took counsel of no one; as far as it was possible he lived in solitude, never seeing those of his acquaintances who were outside the literary world, and seldom even his colleagues. Milvain was so busy that he had only been able to look in twice or thrice since Christmas, and Reardon nowadays never went to ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... It was an enchanting solitude for the "restless heart,"—the plain little church with its cross pointing the way upward, the front half-hidden by trees through which its window-eyes look out to the street. A short distance from the church and farther back was the priest's house, set in a bewilderment ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... sank below the horizon, the Texan turned his horse toward McWhorter's. He paused on a rocky spur for one last look over the bad lands, and raising his gauntleted fist, he shook it in the face of the solitude: "I'll get you! Damn ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... mental, had indeed hindered the circle of their acquaintance from being very extensive; but there were some, as well as Mr. Hartley, who preferred the company of ugliness, censoriousness and ill nature to solitude. ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... shut out All but the distant sky,— I've felt the loneliness of night, When the dark winds pass'd by. My pulse has quicken'd with its awe, My lip has gasp'd for breath; But what were they to such as this— The solitude of death? ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... inoffensive to each other; and we therefore observe in animals who are entirely guided by nature that it is cultivated by such only, while those of more noxious disposition addict themselves to solitude, and, unless when prompted by lust, or that necessary instinct implanted in them by nature for the nurture of their young, shun as much as possible the society of their own species. If therefore ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... his mother's remonstrating exclamation Wyvis paid no attention in the least: his mood was fitful, and he was glad to step out of the ill-lighted room into the hall, and thence to the silence and solitude of ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... on the bench were as much a part of the machinery of prosecution as the Counsel for the Crown. The whole thing was a ghastly farce—as ghastly as the private enquiries that intervene between the Russian rebel and the hunger, and solitude, and death of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... develop his "Laws of Sound" in that voiceful silence; or was it in that solitude he had first watched the gentle ebb and flow of his own life-current and learned the secret which Harvey, later, uttered ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... asleep), the word was passed to the beaters, who surrounded our post on the plain-side, extending some miles in line, and full two or three distant from us. They entered the jungle, beating tom-toms, singing and shouting as they advanced, and converging towards our position. In the noonday solitude of these vast forests, our situation was romantic enough: there was not a breath of wind, an insect or bird stirring; and the wild cries of the men, and the hollow sound of the drums broke upon the ear from a great distance, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... took his first and daring step. He went not, however, to learned lawyers or able ministers of the Gospel in his distress and trouble, but wended his way "directly to the woods," where he felt that he would be safer with the wild animals and reptiles, in solitude, than with the barbarous civilization that ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... never been tenanted by man. Northmour was plainly from home; whether, as usual, sulking in the cabin of his yacht, or in one of his fitful and extravagant appearances in the world of society, I had, of course, no means of guessing. The place had an air of solitude that daunted even a solitary like myself; the wind cried in the chimneys with a strange and wailing note; and it was with a sense of escape, as if I were going indoors, that I turned away and, driving my cart before me, entered ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... the great word comes not so. It comes always in solitude and quiet. Gracious lady knows that as well ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... a nature which seldom fails to render men more accessible to strong and sudden emotions. The glades of the forest, and the acclivity which leads to it, were in full view of the Royal army, but presented the appearance of a deep solitude. All was silence, except when the regimental bands of music, at the command of the officers, who remained generally faithful, played the airs of "Vive Henri Quatre," "O Richard," "La Belle Gabrielle," and other tunes connected ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... it was impossible not to think with respect of the self-devotion of these men, who, after having for many years partaken (in a greater or less degree) of the habits and comforts of a civilised life, had thus voluntarily withdrawn themselves once more to their stern yet beautiful solitude (truly, as Gray calls it, a locus severus), there to practise the severities of their order, without, it may be supposed, any possessions or means, except what they were themselves enabled to throw into a common stock; for nearly the whole of their property ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... unwilling to assure you that in the ultimate one finds a broken heart rather fattening than otherwise; and that a blighted life has never yet been known to prevent queer happenings in conservatories and such-like secluded places or to rob a solitude a deux of possibilities. I grant you that love is a wonderful thing; but there are a many emotions which stand toward love much as the makers of certain marmalades assert their wares to stand toward butter—'serving as an excellent occasional substitute.' At least, so you will find it. ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... him up the old Indian trail along the bank of the river. He wanted solitude. He wanted to be where he could talk without fear of being overheard. There was much that he had ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... day, I sadly mused.... O Khalid, I can never forgive this crime of thine against the sacred rites of Friendship. Such heartlessness, such inexorable cruelty, I have never before observed in thee. No matter how much thou hast profited by thy retirement to the mountains, no matter how much thy solitude hath given thee of health and power and wisdom, thy cruel remissness can not altogether be drowned in my rejoicing. To forget those who love thee above everything else in the world,—thy mother, thy cousin, thine ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... delighted to see a woman. Here was somebody to talk to. To be sure, she had a deerskin mask over her face, and he knew that was the way the villagers dressed the dead, but he gave the subject no heed. The place was nice and warm, and he felt that his solitude was at an end. He could now have a nice long conversation; so seating himself on the floor he spoke to the visitor. But she made no reply. He then pushed one of the frozen fish toward her, but the fish came flapping back. Then he offered the other fish one by one, telling ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... vine, carrying bunches of grapes, is twined; the Solitaire and the motto "Non solus." The explanation of this Mark is obvious, and may be summed up in the one word "Concord;" the solitary individual is symbolical of the preference of the wise for solitude—"Je suis seul en ce lieu tre solitaire." This Mark was the principal one of the Leyden office, and was in constant use from 1620 to 1712, long after the Elzevirs had ceased ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... mountainous district which stretched away to the south, and across which our road lay, we could not but be struck by the bleak appearance of the mountains, neither desolate nor rugged enough to possess the majesty of a bold and sublime solitude, nor sufficiently wooded and populous to exhibit that softer and more animating character which in the scenery of Switzerland is no less charming than its grandeur is imposing. Of course this does not apply to all Nepaul; the lower ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... away, Banu answered, before the great and overwhelming flood arises. Will the world be destroyed by water? At this question Banu turned towards the hillside, like one that deemed his last exhortation to be enough, and who desired an undisturbed possession of the solitude. But at the entrance of the cave he stopped: the track is easy to lose after nightfall, he said, and panthers will be about in search of gazelles. Thou wouldst do well to remain with me: my cave is secure against wild beasts. Look behind thee: ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... heard their shout of triumph when they had destroyed the mountain lioness and it made him very angry, for he hated any noise or disturbance; his name, Nikoochis, which means solitude, indicated this. ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... impressive specimen of Michael Angelo's architecture, a minute's walk will transport the visitor from the small, uneasy, lava stones of the Roman pavement into broad, gravelled carriage-drives, whence a little farther stroll brings him to the soft turf of a beautiful seclusion. A seclusion, but seldom a solitude; for priest, noble, and populace, stranger and native, all who breathe Roman air, find free admission, and come hither to taste the languid enjoyment of the ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wealthier, statelier than any which Aurungzebe swayed, and whose might and wealth and state were mainly due to the courage and the genius of the lonely, melancholy lad, the humble writer in the service of John Company, who had endeavored in his solitude and his despair to end his young life at the muzzle of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... in accents rude, To thee, serenest Solitude, Bursts forth th' unbidden lay; 'Begone vile world! the learned, the wise, The great, the busy, I despise, And ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... garrison duty and that it was objectionable. The soldiers who arrived on the Peru, City of Pueblo and Pennsylvania were shocked that they had missed the fight and disgusted with the news of peace. They had made an immense journey to go actively into war, and emerged from the ocean solitude to police a city in time of peace. It was their notion that they lacked occupation; that their adventure had proved an enterprise that could ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... as being different from other men. He spent a great deal of his time in religious contemplation and would go off by himself into the solitude of the mountains, to think ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... de plaisirs, Sans silence point de mystere. Charme divin de mes loisirs, Solitude! que tu ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Hospital lies to the south, between the back of the "Nunnery" and the River Mere. It can be reached from the ambulatory by a dark, narrow tunnel under the nurses' lodgings. The Brethren never went near it. For years old Battershall, the gardener, had dug there in solitude—day in, day out—and had grown his vegetables, hedged in from all human intercourse, nor grumbling at ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of some city swain—there the fish-hawk built his solitary nest, on some dry tree that overlooked his watery domain. The timid deer fed undisturbed along those shores now hallowed by the lover's moonlight walk, and printed by the slender foot of beauty; and a savage solitude extended over those happy regions, where now are reared the stately towers of the Joneses, the Schermerhornes, and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... speaks to us more intimately than our friends are able to speak, and that reticence which holds us back from perfect intercourse when we look into each other's faces vanishes. A few lines read in the solitude of the woods, or before the open fire, often kindle the emotion and imagination which slumber within us; in companionship with the greatest minds our shyness vanishes; we not only take but give with unconscious freedom. When we reach this stage we have reached the man who ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... armies on the banks of the Euphrates. In the region of the Tigris, the descendants of Assyrian captives who, like the Jews, had been set free by Cyrus, had rebuilt Assur, and had there grown wealthy by husbandry and commerce,* but in the district of the Zab solitude reigned supreme.** Calah and Nineveh were alike deserted, and though their ruins still littered the sites where they had stood, their names were unknown in the neighbouring villages. Xenophon, relying on his guides, calls ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... full of meaning; they had drunk much. The count, who even in his moments of relaxation preserved a dignified demeanor, hit on a much-appreciated comparison of the condition of things with the termination of a winter spent in the icy solitude of the North Pole and the joy of shipwrecked mariners who at last perceive a southward track opening out ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... write on the 4th day of July, 1859, a New Treatise, while others are keeping the shadow for reality, rejoicing in companies and filling my ears with explosions of crackers and thunders of guns and my nostrils with the most disagreeable smell of gun powder, while I am mourning in my solitude in the midst of hundreds of thousands of people of the City of New York and neighbourhood, because they would not receive our message of peace and learn how to bring forth fruits of the true liberty of nations. This treatise was occasioned by the book "The War in Europe, its remote and recent causes" ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... in Gothic traceries, As if a vast cathedral deep and dim; And through the solemn atmosphere The low winds hymn Such thoughts as solitude will hear. To lead your way across Gray carpet aisles of moss Unto the chantry stalls, The sumach candelabra are alight; Along the cloister walls, Like chorister and acolyte, The shrubs are vested white; The dutiful monastic oak In his gray-friar cloak Keeps ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... their interest to enliven their solitude, Blondine? There is a talisman which can procure your release. It is a simple Rose, which, gathered by yourself, will deliver you from your exile and restore you to the arms ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... the bright slanting rays of the morning sun, and then she turned into the house to arrange its disorder before going to her work. She wondered if she should like or dislike the evening and morning solitude; for several hours when the clock struck she thought of her father, and wondered where he was; she made good resolutions according to her lights; and by-and-bye came the distractions and events of the broad full day to occupy her ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was tormented by any religious apprehensions of the Dread Unknown, but simply because the only life of which he had any experience seemed to him a peculiarly pleasant thing. He had a sort of instinctive persuasion that John Lord Lilburne would not be better off anywhere else. Always disliking solitude, he disliked it more than ever when he was ill, and he therefore welcomed the visit of his sister and the gentle hand of his pretty niece. As for Beaufort, he bored the sufferer; and when that gentleman, on his arrival, shutting out his wife and daughter, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... himself at the same time that he was one doomed by his nature to such crushing of the spirit if he came out of the hole of his solitude, and endeavoured to carry on the open fight of life among his fellow-men. He knew that he was one doomed to that disappointment, the bitterest of all, which comes from failure when the prize has been all but reached. It is much to have become Solicitor-General, and that he had achieved;—but ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... Lake Isle of Innisfree William Butler Yeats A Wish Samuel Rogers Ode on Solitude Alexander Pope "Thrice Happy He" William Drummond "Under the Greenwood Tree" William Shakespeare Coridon's Song John Chalkhill The Old Squire Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Inscription in a Hermitage Thomas Warton The Retirement Charles Cotton The Country ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
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