Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Desert   Listen
noun
Desert  n.  That which is deserved; the reward or the punishment justly due; claim to recompense, usually in a good sense; right to reward; merit. "According to their deserts will I judge them." "Andronicus, surnamed Pius For many good and great deserts to Rome." "His reputation falls far below his desert."
Synonyms: Merit; worth; excellence; due.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Desert" Quotes from Famous Books



... a man down is a very favourite diversion among a certain race Of wags. It is only to praise, and extol, and stimulate him to double and treble exertion and effort, till, in order to show his desert of such panegyric, the poor dupe makes so many turnings and windings, and describes circle after circle with such hazardous dexterity, that, at last, down he drops in the midst of his flourishes, to his own eternal disgrace, and their entire ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... in his temperament. Joe, who began to be well aware of his gift, used it without stint and found that it had a contagious quality—it loosened other people up; it unfolded their shy and secret petals like sun heat on a bud; it made the desert of personality blossom like the rose. He warmed the life about him ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... mortally wounded by Carson's prompt charge, as signs after they had cleared out proved; but the Indian custom of tying the wounded on their ponies precluded the chance of taking any scalps. The wily Comanche, like the Arab of the desert, is generally successful in his sudden assaults, but Carson, who was never surprised, was always ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... least encouragement. The land had long ago been stripped of its forest trees, and, thus defrauded of its natural fertilizers, lay now, after successive seasons of drain and waste, as barren as a desert, with the exception of that narrow strip between the hills which apparently bent low that inland might look ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... Secamp girls, Mrs. Windibrook attributed it to their great privations in the alkali desert. "One day," continued Mrs. Windibrook, "when their father was ill with fever and ague, they drove the cattle twenty miles to water through that dreadful poisonous dust, and when they got there their lips were cracked and bleeding and their eyelids like burning ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... they asked him whether he had played fair with liberty in Washington. Growing angry, he tried to denounce them as cowards, afraid to listen to a discussion, and they answered that it was cowardly to desert a slave who needed a defender. At eleven o'clock he flung his arms in the air and dared them to shoot, because a man had waved a pistol. The crowd answered with a shower of eggs, while a man shouted that bullets were too valuable to be wasted on traitors. At twelve o'clock the bells ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... outcast, had congregated there; all equal in HIS eyes, as they will be in the valley of Jehosaphat when the judgment is, to receive the divine manna and the vital heavenliness which His presence afforded; when, like pilgrims refreshed by pure water in the desert, they went forth to encounter again the heat, the simoon, the thirst and weariness of the way, but with ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... his way across a vast desert moorland, and came, after three days, into the barren hill country and among the rugged mountains of the South. There an earthquake had split the rocks asunder, and opened dark and bottomless gorges, and hollowed out many a low-walled cavern, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... day we had made a home out of what seemed a desert. Books had been unpacked, flowers had been brought in, the stoves were made to burn, the hard chairs and sofas had been twisted and turned into something more human and sociable, and we had begun to realize that we ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Beduin, immediately supposing that they lived together in a criminal manner, fell upon my brother in a rage, and after he had mangled him in a barbarous manner, he carried him on a camel to the top of a desert mountain, where he left him. The mountain was on the way to Bagdad, so that the passengers who passed that road gave me an account of the place where he was. I went thither speedily, where I found the unfortunate Schacabac in ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... you have no plan that will interfere with coming with us," he said to the physician. "We have a big boat chartered down here at the beach, and we're going to loaf along out to one of the 'desert islands' and camp ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... sally forth from the coast, to lose sight of land, to venture forth into the blue desert, advised of the existence of islands by the vaporous knobs of the mountains which were outlined on the horizon at sunset. Every advance of this hesitating marine over the Mediterranean had represented greater expenditure of audacity ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... love; no mean pride could stand in my mind against the force of affection. But there is a species of pride which I cannot, will not renounce—believing, as I do, that it is the companion, the friend, the support of virtue. This pride, I trust, will never desert me: it has grown with my growth; it was implanted in my character by the education which my dear mother gave me; and now, even by her, it cannot be eradicated. Surely I have misunderstood one passage in your letter: you cannot advise your daughter to restrain ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... went out, not knowing where he was or how to get back, and when his senses came on again and he tried to find out he couldn't find, and he walked 'most all night and was lost like people in a desert who go round and round. And the next day he walked all day long and 'most froze, and he'd passed Mother McNeil's house a dozen times and didn't know it; and he was chasing Noodles and just leaning against that railing when the cop came and you came. Oh, Miss Frances, ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher

... Joseph, already a great ruler, unrecognized by them, tormented them, accused them, kept his brother Benjamin, and all through love: "I love you, and loving you I torment you." For he remembered all his life how they had sold him to the merchants in the burning desert by the well, and how, wringing his hands, he had wept and besought his brothers not to sell him as a slave in a strange land. And how, seeing them again after many years, he loved them beyond measure, but he harassed and tormented them in love. He left them ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... friend," he murmured, "you move me to despair. How can an alliance between nations with such contrary ideals be possible? You would desert a beautiful scene like this to gain by vulgar exercise an appetite that you may eat. Can't you realize the crudeness of it? Yet I must remember that you are my guest," he added, striking the bell by his side. "Antoine shall prepare my linen clothes, and ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... natives.... It may be that Signor di Ambris wanted guarantees that if the d'Annunzian troops were to come to the rescue, they would not suffer the fate of the Yugoslavs who in the Great War had managed to desert to Italy, had valiantly fought and won many decorations and—after the War—been ignominiously interned. And they had given no grounds ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... the Truth, naturally addicted to Madrigal, and we should undoubtedly have had a small desert of Numbers to have pick'd and Criticiz'd upon, had he not been interrupted just upon his Delivery; nay, after the Preliminary Sigh had made Way for his Utterance. But so was his Fortune, Don Mario was coming towards the Door at that very ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve

... presently they had totally disappeared, leaving a sky with rents and yawns of blue in places, and a clear glass-like circle of horizon, upon which, however, there was nothing to be seen. The boat moved slowly before the wind, which blew hot as a desert breeze; I steered, and Jackson and Fallows sat near me, one or the other from time to time getting on to a thwart to take a view of the ocean, under ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell

... of the Great Desert, Middle Africa exhibits a new type of humanity in the NEGRO, with his dark skin, woolly hair, projecting jaws, and thick lips. As a rule, the skull of the Negro is remarkably long; it rarely approaches ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... hire negroes in Carolina, Virginia and Maryland for the purpose. They ought however to be freemen, for slaves could not be sufficiently depended on. It is to be apprehended they would too frequently desert to the enemy to obtain their liberty, and for the profit of it, or to conciliate a more favorable reception would carry off ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... once he was drawn into scenes of violence that might have ended his career. But the Bert Smallways who tramped from Cardiff to London vaguely "going home," vaguely seeking something of his own that had no tangible form but Edna, was a very different person from the Desert Dervish who was swept out of England in Mr. Butteridge's balloon a year before. He was brown and lean and enduring, steady-eyed and pestilence-salted, and his mouth, which had once hung open, shut now like a steel trap. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... resulting from the great success of the Chenab Canal in irrigating the desert of the Bar, was formed out of the three adjacent districts of Gujranwala, Jhang, and Montgomery in 1892, and contained in 1901 a population of 791,861. It lies in the Rechna Doab between the Chenab and Ravi rivers in the north-east ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... eyes as many hundreds see, Yet none but you should claim a right in me; A right so placed that time shall never hear Of one so vowed, or any loved so dear. When I am gone, if ever prayers moved you, Relate to none that I so well have loved you: For all that know your beauty and desert, Would swear he never loved that knew to part. Why part we then? That spring, which but this day Met some sweet river, in his bed can play, And with a dimpled cheek smile at their bliss, Who never know what separation is. The amorous ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... "I DIDN'T desert her," said Doctor Kirby. "She got disgusted and left ME. Left me without a chance to explain myself. As far as ruining her life is concerned, I suppose that when I ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... shore, Dr Johnson's heart was cheered by the sight of a road marked with cart-wheels, as on the main land; a thing which we had not seen for a long time. It gave us a pleasure similar to that which a traveller feels, when, whilst wandering on what he fears is a desert island, he perceives the print ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... with illness, she must have felt all the horrors of desolation—for she was without means or home. But Providence did not desert her in this last dread hour of trial. Miss Rebecca Bergen of Brooklyn, N. Y., who had learned her worth by a few months' hospital association, deemed it a privilege to receive the sufferer at her own home, and ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... Presently Leo's lips moved, and I heard him whispering, "On! on as before! You will find them, I am sure!" This decided me. Still, I resolved to rest at the nearest wood we could reach. I was thankful when at length we arrived at one—a little oasis in the desert. What was still more satisfactory, within it appeared a small pool, a bright stream rushing out of the bank on its side. We had tethered the ox. While Mango sat by Leo's side bathing his temples and wetting ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... read, but the confidence of his pulpit tone, which was one of the secrets of his power, would now and then desert him, and he would look up to me as if ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... loves, whose love nobody wants, with whom nobody here has one feeling in common?" And then all at once came as it were a vision before her eyes, of a scene whereof she had heard very frequently from her father,—a midnight meeting of the Desert Church, in a hollow of the Cevennes mountains, guarded by sentinels posted on the summit,—a meeting which to attend was to brave the gallows or the galleys,—and Phoebe fancied she could hear the words of ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... of Africa had been long exercised by Count Romanus, and his abilities were not inadequate to his station; but, as sordid interest was the sole motive of his conduct, he acted, on most occasions, as if he had been the enemy of the province, and the friend of the Barbarians of the desert. The three flourishing cities of Oea, Leptis, and Sobrata, which, under the name of Tripoli, had long constituted a federal union, [120] were obliged, for the first time, to shut their gates against a hostile invasion; several of their most honorable citizens were surprised and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... Ball it self is due Desert, The Line that measure shows Is Reason whereon Judgment looks Where Players win ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett

... when she stood in the loose wreckage of it—how should she use her freedom? If it was a cage, at least it was a comfortable cage; at least it was better than the howling darkness of the unfamiliar desert beyond. ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... business of Moosoo, an' make America too hot to hold him an' his'n? The red-coats? Nay; but rayther the pro-vincials, the men that's fit the catamounts, an' bars, an' Injins, an' turned the waste an' howlin' wilderness into a gardin', an' made the desert blossom like a rose. So, I ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... me, my dear fellow," said Mr. Cupples earnestly, laying his hand on the other's arm. "I am going to be very frank. I am extremely glad that Manderson is dead. I believe him to have done nothing but harm in the world as an economic factor. I know that he was making a desert of the life of one who was like my own child to me. But I am under an intolerable dread of Mabel being involved in suspicion with regard to the murder. It is horrible to me to think of her delicacy and goodness being in contact, ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... friends have read the sorrowful story of "Enoch Arden," so sweetly and simply told by the great English poet? It is the story of a man who went to sea, leaving behind a sweet young wife and little daughter. He was cast away on a desert island, where he remained several years, when he was discovered, and taken off by a passing vessel. Coming back to his native town, he found his wife married to an old playmate,—a good man, rich ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... to do something which involved his wading into a river. Instantly a dozen Colmans plunged into the water. Instances of extraordinary penance abound, beside which the austerities of Simon Stylites almost pale. The Irish saints' love of solitude was also a very marked characteristic. Desert places and solitary islands of the ocean possessed an apparently wonderful fascination for them. The more inaccessible or forbidding the island the more it was in request as a penitential retreat. There is hardly one of the hundred islands around the Irish coast which, one time or another, ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous

... seven following years, under the auspices of the monks of St. Jerome. Negroes were employed in this cultivation from its commencement; and in 1519 representations were made to government, as in our own time, that the West India Islands would be ruined and made desert, if slaves were not conveyed thither annually from ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... "No—I do not desert you!" He spoke lightly, but significance lurked in his tone. "The Rajah and his suite are waiting to receive us in the Durbar Hall, and unless you object to my cigar, or send me to the right-about, I claim you as my prisoner of war ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... had devoted himself to internal reconstruction, after the precedent of Trikoupis, but he was not the man to desert the national idea. The army and navy were reorganized by French and British missions, and when the opportunity appeared, he was ready to take full advantage of it. In the autumn of 1912, Turkey had been for a year at war with Italy; her finances had suffered a ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... Life of Browne, Johnson wrote:—'The time will come to every human being when it must be known how well he can bear to die; and it has appeared that our author's fortitude did not desert him in the great hour of trial.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... inventory, minute as it is, should desert us at the most important point, and give insufficient data for estimating the size of the room. I conjecture that it was about 46 ft. long from the following considerations. In the first place, I allow 2 ft. for the width of each desk. Of these there were four between the door and the fireplace ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... not have hoped all things, and suffered all things, from one, her love of whom must have been inwoven with so many exalting elements of delicious pride, and more delicious humility. To offend the love of such a woman was wrong, but it might be forgiven; to desert her was unmanly, but he might have returned, and wiped for ever from her eyes the tears of her desertion: but to injure and to desert, and then to turn back and wound her widowed privacy with unhallowed ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... You don't think I'd desert you when you're seedy? What you want is air. We'll take a ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... the trespass we have suffered Pardon in one another, pardon thou Benignly, and regard not our desert. ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante

... Spanish forces, and a plan of their fortifications. The Patriots were preparing to strike a decisive blow, and this intelligence was important to their success. She had induced Sabarain, her lover, and eight others, to desert. They were discovered, and apprehended. The letters of La Salvarietta, found on the person of her lover, betrayed her to the vengeance of the tyrant of her country. She was seized, brought to the Spanish camp, and tried by court martial. The highest rewards were promised her ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... of nobility. It is the lion of Iran, holding in its paw the sceptre of the Khorassan while behind it shines the sun of Darius. There is a legend concerning the latter symbol to the effect that Darius, hunting in the desert, threw his spear at a lion and missed. The beast crouched to spring, when the sun, shining on a talisman on Darius' breast, so overpowered it that it came fawning to his feet and followed him back to ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff

... surrounded by mountains covered with fir—being the ancient Cartusia whence our neighbors the monks took their name; the Great Chartreuse lies close by, an hour's walk perhaps: this hamlet is in their district, 'the Desert,' as they call it; their walks are confined to it, and you meet on a certain day a procession of white-clothed shavelings, absolved from their vow of silence, and chattering like magpies, while vigorously engaged in butterfly-hunting. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... of service, if one has vast plans which no ordinary resources could possibly realize, if one has a life ambition to make the industrial desert bloom like the rose, and the work-a-day life suddenly blossom into fresh and enthusiastic human motives of higher character and efficiency, then one sees in large sums of money what the farmer sees in his seed corn—the beginning of new and richer harvests whose ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... possible explanation. Foresters know that on certain nights the wilderness seems simply to teem with life—scratchings and rustlings in every covert—and on other nights it is still and lifeless as a desert. The wild folk were abroad to-night and were simply paying casual, ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... where the debris of Beaumont-Hamel began and that of the German trench ended. Dust was mixed with the black bursts of smoke rising from the conglomerate mass of buildings and streets thrown together by previous explosions. The effect suggested the regular spout of geysers from a desert rock crushed by ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... Eskimo must procure one of the spirits of the elements for his own particular familiar spirit or torngak. These spirits would appear to be somewhat coquettish and difficult to win, and marvellous tales are related of the manner in which they are wooed. The aspirant must retire for a time to a desert place, where, entirely cut off from the society of his fellows, he may give himself up to fasting and profound meditation. He also prays to Torngarsuk to give him a torngak. This Torngarsuk is the chief of the good spirits, and dwells ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... the frozen ground with snow dripping from above, with shoulders pressed against walls of icy mud, they waved spoons at us and invited us to share their soup. Even the dark-skinned, sombre-eyed men of the desert, the tall Moors and Algerians, showed their white teeth and laughed when a "seventy-five" exploded from an unsuspicious bush, and we jumped. It was like a camp of Boy Scouts, picnicking for one day, and sure the same night of a warm supper and bed. But the best these poilus might ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... work to begin it over again, and they thus turn to the injury of the race the charm which was given them for its increase. This practice, with other causes of depopulation, forbodes the coming fate of Europe. Her arts and sciences, her philosophy and morals, will shortly reduce her to a desert. She will be the home of wild beasts, and her inhabitants will hardly ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... images of men and women splendidly alive, yet not disqualified from making, as all true sculpture should, architectural ornament. All this it may do; or, on the other hand, it may lead us into the desert, and art may seem to be dead amidst us; or feebly and uncertainly to be struggling in a world which has utterly forgotten ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... whirlpool. I was a young fellow, down for the summer. I was ensnared by her beauty, and hadn't sense enough to see the danger. She followed me to the city,—took a place in a shop, and was about as wretched as a sea gull in a desert. I was fool enough to think it a noble act to befriend her and so I complicated matters. My father must have found out, though I was never sure of that. Father was a man who kept a calm exterior under any emotion; but he sent me abroad, and I, not knowing that he had discovered anything, dared not ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... one interesting recollection attached to it, since on the same arid shores, Cortes disembarked more than three centuries ago. Unlike the green and fertile coast which gladdened the eyes of Columbus, the Spanish conqueror beheld a bleak and burning desert, whose cheerless aspect might well have deterred a feebler mind from going further in search of the paradise that ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... (John Abdullah Capricorn, to give him his full name) was commandeered by a publisher last year to write a book for 10. The work was far advanced when an editor offered him 15 and his expenses to visit the more desperate parts of the Sahara Desert, to which spots he at once proceeded upon a roving commission. Whether he will return or no is now doubtful, though in March we had the best hopes. With the month of May life becomes hard for Europeans south of the Atlas, and when my poor dear friend was last ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... he muttered. "Can't believe as how our Jim 'ud ever desert a post. He promised me faithfully as how he'd stick here like grim death until I came back. I hope he ain't had a fit, nor aught o' that sort—he ain't a strong chap at the best ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... nobleman ascended the steps of his club he seemed again to be thinking deeply; within, his preoccupation did not altogether desert him. In a corner, with the big pages of the Times before him, he read with scant interest the doings of the day; even a perennial telegram concerning a threatened invasion of England did not awaken momentary ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... and looked where the officer pointed, shading his eyes with his hand. Before him lay only the brown, undulating waves of upland, a vast desert of burnt grass, shimmering ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... is an aunt. But if I were dying of thirst, in a desert, I would not accept a cup of water at her hands. Will you read to me? I am tired; and the sound of your voice ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... Bjarne from Iceland, 'Art thou going to leave me here, Bjarne?' Quoth Bjarne, 'So it must be.' Then said the man, 'Another thing didst thou promise my father, when I sailed with thee from Iceland, than to desert me thus. For thou saidst that we both should share the same lot.' Bjarne said, 'And that we will not do. Get thou down into the boat, and I will get up into the ship, now I see that thou art so greedy after life.' So Bjarne ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... united in one thing: in impoverishing the soil. Year after year they scratched it and took out bonanza crops. They put nothing back. All they left was plow-sole and exhausted land. Why, there's big sections they exhausted and left almost desert. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... Republic—what was there left in life for him away from Venice? How should he bear to die dishonored and disinherited by the country which he had deserted in her hour of struggle? For never any more might one return who should desert ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... that has served us so well is dying. Gaoh, which in our language of the Hodenosaunee is the spirit of the winds, knows that we need it no more. Surely the land is near because Gaoh after being a benevolent spirit to us so long would not desert us at the ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... early summer are richly carpeted with multitudes of delicate wild flowers. The beauty of these patches of gleaming color is enhanced by contrast with the forbidding and rugged character of the surroundings; but in a very short time these blossoms disappear from the arid and parched desert that they have temporarily beautified. These beds of bloom are not seen in the immediate vicinity of the present villages, but are unexpectedly met with in portions of ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... smaller game animals often show but little dread of its neighborhood, and, though careful not to let it come too near, go on grazing when a bear is in full sight. Whitetail deer are frequently found at home in the same thicket in which a bear has its den, while they immediately desert the temporary abiding place of a wolf or cougar. Nevertheless, they sometimes presume too much on this confidence. A couple of years before the occurrence of the feats of cattle-killing mentioned above ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... well, Alick," said he; and that was all he did say, for he was not given to praising any one beyond his desert. "What are you going to do with ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic

... in the Arabian desert lie under the lee of long ridges of rock. The high cliffs extending from north to south are barriers against the drifting sand. Standing on the rocky summit the seer Isaiah beheld a sea whose yellow waves stretched to the very horizon. By day the winds were still, for the pitiless ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... increase while the amount of capital and the mode of using it remained the same, the effect would be a downward movement of both labor and capital in the series of subgroups by which we represent industrial society. Labor and capital would tend to desert the subgroups A''', B''', and C''' in our table and to move to ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... cannot go with you just now, for at present I cannot, ought not, to leave my aunt. Helpless as she is, it would be cruel, ungrateful to desert her; but things cannot continue this way much longer, and I promise you that as soon as I can I will go to you. I want to be with you; I want somebody to care for me, and I know you will be a kind friend to me always. Most ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... the soldier with the black hair, 'that you are a deserter.' 'No,' replied the Exceptional Pedestrian, 'I did not desert my army; it deserted me. And now I wish to say that I have become very much interested in you all, and, if there is no objection, I should like to join your company for the present.' 'I have no objection ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... are patches of potatoes, buckwheat and rye, the yellow and green breaking the gray surface of the rocky waste; not a habitation, not a living creature, is in sight. Before us and around stretch desert upon desert of bare limestone, the nearer undulations cold and slaty in tone, the remoter taking the loveliest, warmest dyes —gold brown, deep orange, just tinted with crimson, reddish purple and pale rose. We are on the threshold of the true Caussien region. Sterility of soil, a Siberian ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... again of steering her laboriously this way and that, Louie meanwhile clinging to her arm and uttering little panic-stricken shrieks that irritated Nan beyond measure. No one could conceive how hard it was for the girl not to desert her clinging companion. She knew in her heart that Louie would never master the knack unless she were made to rely upon herself. As long as she could depend on Nan's support she would not make any effort to use her own energy, nor ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann

... skill at the game. Towards tea-time the ladies arrive to watch the evening efforts of their husbands and admirers, and to escort them home when the light begins to fail. So the tennis courts have become a little social oasis in the vast desert of oriental life. Brilliant it is not. Sparkle there is none. But there is a certain chirpiness, the forced ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... autobiographer had not been intrusted to a private tutor. Parental eyes, beaks, and talons, provided sustenance for his infant frame; and in that capacious eyrie, year after year repaired by dry branches from the desert, parental advice was yelled into him, meet for the expansion of his instinct, as wide and wonderful as the reason of earth-crawling man. What a noble naturalist did he, in a single session at the College of the Cliff, become! Of the customs, and habits, and haunts of all inferior ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... park. Why did he waste thirty-five days in the charred capital? Was it belief in his star, or was it despair at the ruin of his prospects? On the 13th of October, the remnant of the Grand Army started on its long journey over the desert it had left behind, because all other roads were closed to it. The retreat has been described by many writers; but what pen shall do justice to the suffering caused by the unusually severe winter, the snow, the ice, the hunger, and the thirst? And ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen

... southern sections and upon Mount Desert island; New Hampshire,—as far north as Conway, more common near the lower Connecticut; Vermont,—in the eastern and southern sections as far north as Bellows Falls; Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut,—too abundant, forming ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame

... low, flat desert with large areas of rocky or sandy surfaces rising to small mountains in ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... people do talk about him, they can't say the things they say of Master Aaron Boynton. I don't believe father would ever run away and desert us." ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... of it," was the quick reply. "If I did a thing like that, I never could look a white man in the face again. I have been guilty of a good many mean acts during my life—some that I would gladly recall if I could—but I am not mean enough to desert. Besides, I have no desire to have a ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon

... that 'where there was a hill, there he would have a hollow, where there was a dell, there we should find a mound'; and, indeed, we ourselves experienced the delusion, for the spot which we had known for many years as a bleak desert, appeared sheltered and decorated with thriving plantations, a house new from the kiln, cheated us with its Elizabethan air; neither was the spell broken when we found ourselves in the interior; there we saw, or thought we saw, one of Raphael's loveliest easel pictures, one ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... must not say, "why should the desert of one attach itself to another?" For it was in consequence of the respective merits and demerits of the elephant and the crocodile that the holder of the discus made all haste to interfere in the battle [Footnote: The objector urges "why should our good ...
— The Tattva-Muktavali • Purnananda Chakravartin

... tottering; and still she sees, falling beside her, the never-ending stream of phantom sand. Sometimes I like to think that she is seated on the sand because she is herself the Spirit of Staying, and victor over all things that pass and change;—quicksand of the desert in moving pillar; quicksand of the sea in moving floor; roofless all, and unabiding, but she abiding;—to herself, her home. And sometimes I think, though I do not like to think (neither did Chaucer mean this, for he always meant the lovely ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... dim the pure surface of unsullied honor. Nor cans't thou purchase me, thou sordid dross. Guns and grappling-irons!" abruptly added the Corporal, abandoning his philosophical strain, and getting into a towering passion,—"would you bribe me to desert my post as a guardian of innocence, and turn traitor to every principle of honor in my heart?—Bah!" and crumpling the bill in his hand, he threw it into the face of the Honorable Mr. Tickels, much to ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... Locusts were the tender shoots of the Carob tree, and that the wild honey was the luscious juice of the Carob fruit. Having got so far it was easy to go farther, and so the Carob soon got the names of St. John's Bread and St. John's Beans, and the monks of the desert showed the very trees by which St. John's life was supported. But though the Carob tree did not produce the locusts on which St. John fed, there is little or no doubt that "the husks which the swine did eat," and which the Prodigal Son ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... that morning on the brink of the falls. It occupied two pages of the paper, describing accurately and in detail all that had taken place. It told of the thunder storm up river, of the breaking loose of the "Eb and Flo," the run to the city, and the noble action of Eben Tobin, who would not desert his post of duty. Donaster breathed more freely when he found that his own name was not mentioned. The paper merely stated that two men had escaped by means of a motor-boat after they had been unable ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... thou, Zobeide, still upon our solemn love-oath? How thy heart, this hour so faithless, once belonged to me, me only? Canst thou yield thy heart, thy beauty, to that old man, dead to love-thoughts? Wilt thou try to love the tyrant lacking love despite his treasure? Dost thou deem the sands of desert higher than are virtue— honor? Allah grant, then, that he hate thee! That thou lovest yet another! That thou soon thyself surrender to the scorned one's bitter feeling. Rest may night itself deny ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... seven, leaves. The writing was very elegant and in the Latin language. Each seventh leaf contained a picture and no writing. On the first of these was a serpent swallowing rods; on the second, a cross with a serpent crucified; and on the third, the representation of a desert, in the midst of which was a fountain, with serpents crawling from side to side. It purported to be written by no less a personage than "Abraham, patriarch, Jew, prince, philosopher, priest, Levite, and astrologer;" ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... put himself into a condition in which his genius should elaborate and shape what he, by the aid of his poetic taste and all other faculties, had been able to rough-hew? How far did his consciousness desert him?—only partially, as in the instance just given, so that he marvelled, while he wrote, at his own fertility, power, and truth?—or wholly, as in a Pythonic inspiration, so that the frenzy filled him to his fingers' ends, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... but we did not visit it. It was so named because it had been found on land belonging to Sir William Bagshawe, whose lady christened its chambers and grottos with some very queer names. Across the moors we could see the town of Tideswell, our next objective, standing like an oasis in the desert, for there were no trees on the moors. We had planned that after leaving there we would continue our way across the moors to Newhaven, and then walk through Dove Dale to Ashbourne in the reverse direction to that taken the year before on ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... other of her favourites. Reading was the sole sitting-down occupation that Cricket did not think was intolerably stupid, and a sheer waste of time. Fortunately, she always had boundless resources of amusement within herself, and she would not have been lonely on a desert island. ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... battled constantly with the hope that the boys would find them playing around the corner, or hidden in some unfrequented spot. So it was with a cheerful trust that she said good- bye to the two young workingmen who presently issued from the door of the great store building, and went rapidly up the desert and torn up street. ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston

... the High Priest in his jewelled breastplate officiating again at the altar of our Holy Temple? Now at last the vision begins to take shape, the hope of Israel begins to shine again. Like a rosy cloud, like a crescent moon, like a star in the desert, like a lighthouse over ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... curtain down. Military expeditions were sent to avenge the massacre, but they might as well have chased the stars. The missions on the Colorado were ended. Never again was an attempt made to found one. The desert relapsed into its former complete subjection to the native tribes, and the indifferent Colorado swept on to the conflict with the sea-waves as if neither white man nor Amerind had ever touched its waters. Nearly half a century passed ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... From the rough road that climbs the mountains to Assunto, the convent is invisible, a gnarled and ragged olive grove intervening, and a spur of cliffs as well, while from Palermo one sees only the speck of white, flashing in the sun, indistinguishable from the many similar gleams of desert monastery or pauper village. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... made his bid for liberty; but he was no coward to desert his companions. He uttered a choking cry of mingled fear and defiance, and rushed in between his friends to swing a heavy blow with his fist fair upon the giant's unprotected temple. Now Milo gave sign of interest. He laughed: a deep, rumbling, pleasant laugh of appreciation ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... not engaged; far from it," he says; "yet never would I desert her to walk such ties as the Barlow Suburban, more cruel than the ties which bind us together." So he makes out a time card. "In the morning she goes to work, and back at evening; and some day she may be minded to ride at noon for the sake of the exercise which is to be had on the B. S. car." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... that what old Maury's Geography led me to believe was a vast Desert of Gobi here in North China or Mongolia alongside Manchuria is not a genuine desert at all, but chiefly a great grass plain with golden possibilities as a cattle country. Mr. Parker declares that if cattle were grown on these immense ranges and brought ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... stream, though the scorched earth is deeply scored by the rush of fierce temporary torrents. Hitherto, I have only travelled over the green coast which faces the trade winds, where clouds gather and shed their rains, and this desert, which occupies a great part of leeward Hawaii, displeases me. It lies burning in the fierce splendours of a zone, which, until now, I had forgotten was the torrid zone, unwatered and unfruitful, red and desolate under the sun. The island is here only twenty-two miles wide, and strong ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... I wouldn't do it while you are here. In spite of all you've said to me, I still think too much of you for that." Replacing the pistol in the drawer, he added: "Alicia, if you desert me now, you'll be sorry to the day ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... 44. "A man never salutes women in public; he would even commit an indecency if he looked at them steadily. An Arab lady who met us in a wide valley of the desert of Mount Sinai, went out of the way, gave her camel to be led by her servant, and walked on foot till we were passed; another, who met us in a narrow way, and who was on foot, sat down, and turned her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various

... seek him among the villages of the blacks near the sea-shore. The farther we go the more we seem to be making our way into the desert. Look there!" he cried, pointing in different directions; "the foot of man never treads ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn

... traveller has completed a journey of fifty miles, that he enjoys the sight, doubly cheering after crossing such a desert, of green, cultivated fields, and the dwellings of man. The broad waters of the Hawkesbury then come unexpectedly in view, flowing in the deepest, and apparently most inaccessible of these rock-bound valleys. He here soon discovers a practical proof of the advantages of ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... in which the Israelites wandered for forty years. You have heard what a dry, dreary, desert place the wilderness was. There is still a wilderness in Arabia; and there are still wanderers in it; not Israelites, but Arabs. These men live in tents, and go from place to place with their large flocks of sheep and goats. But there are other Arabs ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer

... daily happiness of living in your society, of estimating your worth, of feeling your fascinations, were not the means most in request for him, who knew, too well, how little he deserved, either by fortune or desert, to hope, to hope to make you his; and yet, how little has prudence or caution to do with situations like this." She did not guess the animus of this speech. "I felt all I have described; and yet, and yet, I lingered on, prizing too dearly the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... What is the worth of your plague-spotted souls, that such a price should be paid for them? But it is too late—too late! I cry aloud, but he does not hear me; I beat at the door of the grave, but he will not wake; I stand alone, in desert space, and look around me, from the blood-stained earth where the heart of my heart lies buried, to the void and awful heaven that is left unto me, desolate. I have given him up; oh, generation of vipers, I have given him up ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... alien name and an alien lineage, lest we be immediately rejected or trodden under foot without further test. On the next generation that will proceed from you, will depend your fame in history: honorable, if this honorably witnesses for you; but ignominious, even beyond desert, if you have no offspring to speak for you, and if it is left to the victor to write your history. Never yet has a victor had sufficient inclination or sufficient knowledge rightly to judge the conquered. The ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... penetrate the veil of her perfect serenity. She never, it became apparent, descended from the most inflexible self-control; small emotions—surface gayety of mood, curiosity, the faintest possible indication of contempt, he had learned to distinguish; the fact that she cared enough for him to desert every familiar circumstance was evident; but beyond these he was ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Agis' or Jugurtha's fate![9] View him, ye hollow heartlings as he stalks The dauntless monarch of his native walks Breathes the warm odor which the girgir bears,[10] Shouts the fierce music of his savage airs, Or madly brave in hottest chase pursues The tawny monster of the desert dews; Eager, erect, persistent as the storm, Soul in his mien, God's image in his form! Yes, view him thus, from Kaffir to Soudan, And tell me, worldlings, is the black ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... had been better weighed and looked upon, and in sanctificationem, to make them holy; for he is juge sacrificium, "a continual sacrifice," in effect, fruit, and operation; that like as they, which seeing the serpent hang up in the desert, were put in remembrance of Christ's death, in whom as many as believed were saved; so all men that trusted in the death of Christ shall be saved, as well they that were before, as they that came after. For he was a continual sacrifice, as I said, in effect, fruit, ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer

... so he could afford to have a scholar-son. He made no farther demur, and even allowed his house to become the seat of learning in which Sabbatai and nine chosen companions studied the Zohar and the Cabalah from dawn to darkness. Often they would desert the divan for the wooden garden-balcony overlooking the oranges and the prune-trees. And the richer Mordecai grew, the greater grew his veneration for his son, to whose merits, and not to his own diligence and honesty, he ascribed ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... dressing is one cup of claret, one-half cup of sugar, and piece of lemon. Always use lemon juice in preference to vinegar in fruit salads. All fruits that go well together may be mixed. This is served just before desert. ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum

... snoring breaths made steam Upon the air, and (as I thought) sadly The beasts at market-booths and awnings gay Of shops, the city's comfortable trade, Lookt, and then into months of plodding lookt. And swiftly on my brain there came a wind Of vision; and I saw the road mapt out Along the desert with a chalk of bones; I saw a famine and the Afghan greed Waiting for us, spears at our throats, all we Made women by our hunger; and I saw Gigantic thirst grieving our mouths with dust, Scattering up against our breathing salt Of blown dried ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... it,—seest thou? for the fail Of any point in't shall not only be Death to thyself, but to thy lewd-tongu'd wife, Whom for this time we pardon. We enjoin thee, As thou art liegeman to us, that thou carry This female bastard hence; and that thou bear it To some remote and desert place, quite out Of our dominions; and that there thou leave it, Without more mercy, to it own protection And favour of the climate. As by strange fortune It came to us, I do in justice charge thee, On thy soul's peril and thy body's torture, That thou commend it strangely to some place Where chance ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare

... bitterness is—when forced to struggle against strong but misguided wills, whether of our own or others'; to feel that we are without a mother—that that gentle voice is silent forever; that that well in the desert of life—a mother's heart—is forever closed to us; that that protecting angel of our steps is departed from us—never, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... to hinder the finis of my mad plunge. I waved my limbs violently, kicking out and shrieking in the agonies of fear. I cursed and prayed, wept and laughed alternately, did everything, yet nothing, that could save me from contact with the lone desert so horribly close. Nearer and nearer I approached, until at last my feet rested on the hard caked soil. For the first few minutes after my arrival I was too overwhelmed with fear to do other than remain stationary. The ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... "We can't desert God's cause any more than that of an emperor," replied the priest, with a simplicity that affected Blondet. He took the abbe's hand and shook ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Desert" :   Operation Desert Storm, maroon, Patagonian Desert, Great Indian Desert, desert holly, deserter, go forth, Eastern Desert, go away, desert pea, Death Valley, dissent, Kizil Kum, Sturt's desert pea, ditch, Great Salt Desert, biome, Gobi, Chihuahuan Desert, desert paintbrush, Great Arabian Desert, Kalahari Desert, desert iguana, desertion, fly, tract, desert rat, An Nefud, desert rheumatism, Lut Desert, desert tortoise, Qara Qum, Qizil Qum, desert mariposa tulip, Black Rock Desert, desert willow, desert plant, Kalahari, Atacama Desert, Gibson Desert, desert plume, desert lynx, defect, forsake, take flight, piece of land, Syrian Desert, desert olive, Turkestan Desert, Mohave Desert, desert rose, Kyzyl Kum, Sahara, parcel, Rub al-Khali, Dasht-e-Lut, Ar Rimsal



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com