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Solitary   Listen
noun
Solitary  n.  One who lives alone, or in solitude; an anchoret; a hermit; a recluse.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Solitary" Quotes from Famous Books



... and more anxious than anyone could know, stood apart with Grant Andrews, while Eph Somers stood solitary ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham

... sealed and directed to the several poor subjects of her bounty, whose distance prevented them from being personally known to her. Thus, though she kept no sumptuous table in her own court, she spread the tables of the poor in their solitary cells; breaking bread to virtuous pilgrims, according to their ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... not call it as folks love to do, In bustling centres of incessant trade, And leafless acres, though perhaps a few Pet dandelions blossom in the shade Where other vegetation will all fade, And parch to yellow in the smoky court, Where a solitary sunbeam might have strayed, And all the gloomy atmosphere is fraught With all that's dank and filthy of the ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... was low, and the concourse of people about the court was necessarily attended with noise, which might disturb him in his present infirm state of health, these reasons were assigned for fitting up an apartment for him in a solitary house at some distance, called the Kirk of Field. Mary here gave him marks of kindness and attachment; she conversed cordially with him; and she lay some nights in a room below his; but on the ninth of February, she told him that she would pass that night in the palace, because ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... cross-legged knights, whose marble effigies were in the church. With the first planting of his foot upon the staircase of his dusty office, all these mysteries increased; until, ascending step by step, as Tom ascended, they attained their full growth in the solitary labours ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... which I was acquainted, and I was quite unable to put a name to them. We walked two miles or more inland before turning back, but nowhere did I see anything suggesting the destruction of so much as a solitary ape, at which I was in nowise surprised, for I felt sure that the apes at least would be able to keep well ahead of the fire, and make good their escape to West Island. But West Island was, like Apes' Island, a fire-blackened ruin as ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... long, scoring gashes, so close together and crossing each other in such a way as showed what a tremendous raking she had received. She began the action with fifty-seven men, all told, out of which eighteen had been killed outright, and the remainder, with one solitary exception, more or less seriously wounded. Looking upon the paths our shot had ploughed along her deck, I was only surprised that any of her people were left alive to tell the tale. In addition to this, five of her twelve guns were ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... blankets, mess utensils, supplies of every kind sufficient for the equipment of a hundred thousand men. Stacks of forage also had been lighted, and were blazing like huge beacon-fires, and an oppressive silence settled down upon the army as it pursued its march across the wide, solitary plain at sight of that dusky, eddying column that rose from behind the distant hills, filling the heavens with desolation. All that was to be heard in the bright sunlight was the measured tramp of many feet upon the hollow ground, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... all authority in the empire, assumed the coarse habit of a recluse, retired to a celebrated place of pilgrimage, near Balkh. There, in a solitary cell, he devoted the remainder of his life to prayer and the worship of God. The period of Lohurasp's government lasted one ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... and melancholy than the wail of this instrument when the day begins to struggle with the night—when not a sigh nor a sound besides comes to molest the solitary reign of silence; it is especially the last long note which spreads in widening waves over the immensity of the plain beneath, awaking the distant, far-off echoes amongst the mountains, that has in it a poetic element that stirs up ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... government telegraph organization is that of New Caledonia, with its one solitary cable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... seen that the office of the Forest Ranger is by no means a sinecure. He works hard and he works long and alone and our kindly thoughts should go out to him in his solitary patrols ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... regarded it as a charm. With him, "medicine" meant some mysterious power that would protect and guide him, and propitiate the unseen powers in his favor. When about to obtain his medicine, the young Indian went alone to some solitary river or lake in the depths of the forest, or mounted to some lonely peak. Here he fasted, and remained until, sleeping, he dreamed. The first animal he dreamed about, whether it were a bear, buffalo, deer, weasel, or ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge

... trickery, deception. soga rope. sol m. sun. solamente only. soldado soldier. soledad f. solitude. solemne solemn. solemnidad f. solemnity. soler to be accustomed. solidaridad f. solidarity, participation. solidez f. solidity. solitario solitary. solo alone; solo only; tan solo only. soltar to loosen, let go. soltero -a bachelor, unmarried person. solteron -a bachelor, old maid. sollozo sob. sombra shadow. sombrero hat. sombrio somber, gloomy. son m. sound. sonar to sound. sondear to sound. sonreir(se) ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... since seventeen days in close, solitary confinement, half-starved, deprived of rest, and of that mental and physical activity which had been the very essence of life to him hitherto—might be outwardly but a shadow of his former brilliant self, but nevertheless he was still that same elegant English gentleman, that prince ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... were, German books, but of a dulness, a distance from the actual interests of the warm, various, coloured life around and within him, to us hardly conceivable. There was more entertainment in the natural train of his own solitary thoughts, humoured and rightly attuned by pleasant visible objects, than in all the books he had hunted through so carefully for that all-searching intellectual light, of which a passing gleam of interest gave fallacious promise here or there. And still, generously, he held to the belief, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... solitary walk, I sought a strain not all unworthy Thee, My heart, still ringing with wild worldly talk, Gave forth ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble

... susceptible minds and tender bodies of these little creatures whose education begins in the cradle. You understand, sir, that my conjugal diplomacy would not be of much service to me unless, after having put my wife in solitary confinement, I did not also employ a certain harmless machiavelism, which consists in begging her to do whatever she likes, and asking her advice in every circumstance and on every contingency. As this delusive liberty has entirely deceived a creature so high-minded as she is, I have taken pains ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... "I never hear the loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer's noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of grey plover in an autumn morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of Devotion or Poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... on, Elsie, let us have the whole story," he added, turning to her again, but still keeping his hold upon Arthur. "You young dog!" he added, when she had finished. "Yes, I'll forgive you when you've had a good, sound flogging, and a week's solitary confinement on bread and water, but ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... watchdogs, but to strip the sea of those isolated vessels, that in time of peace rise in irregular but frequent succession above the horizon, covering the face of the deep with a network of tracks. These solitary wayfarers were now to be found only as rare exceptions to the general rule, until the port of destination was approached. There the homing impulse overbore the bonds of regulation; and the convoys tended to the conduct noted by Nelson as a captain, "behaving as all ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... rarely disappointed. Thus hornbills in the East are represented by toucans in the West, and the humming bird of the West by the sunbird of the East, and so also in the Malayan archipelago. Notably in Borneo we find bolbophyls without pseudo bulbs, and with solitary or few flowered scapes and other traits singularly suggestive at first sight of the Western Masdevallia. Thus some bolbophyl, for example, have caudal appendages to their sepals, as in Masdevallias, and on the other hand some Masdevallias have their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... very important point on the French front there long stood, in an exposed and commanding position, a large and solitary tree, or rather the trunk of a tree, for it had been shorn of its branches by shell-fire. A landmark in that flat and devastated region, every detail of this gaunt sentinel had long since become familiar to the keen ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... Some time previously a solitary Unyamwesi had attached himself to the party at Chitankooi's, where he had been left sick by a passing caravan of traders: this man now assured them the country before them was ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... had been wandering about for fully half an hour, and in dangerous places. He must make haste. He made his way to the river, but soon came to another standstill. Why in the Neva? Why in the water at all? Better some solitary place in a wood, or under some bushes. Dig a hole and bury them! He felt he was not in a condition to deliberate clearly and soundly, but ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... This solitary hunter was Colonel Ebenezer Zane. He was one of those daring men, who, as the tide of emigration started westward, had left his friends and family and had struck out alone into the wilderness. Departing from his home in Eastern Virginia he had plunged into the woods, and ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... time face to face with the problem of solitude. He can appreciate the danger from wild animals, genii, ghosts, battles, sieges and sudden death, but in no other book before, did he ever come upon a human being left solitary, with all ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison

... horses, when a whirling sound was heard, followed immediately by a loud shout. A sleigh passed within ten yards of us, going down, and the whirling sound was caused by its runners, while the shout came from a solitary man, who stood erect, waving his whip and calling to us in a loud voice, as long as he could be heard. This was but for a moment, however, as his horses were on the run; and the last we could see of the man, through the misty moon-light, he had turned his whip on his team, to urge it ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... heed to the wistful look in his eyes or to the appealing shuffle of his foot, she sent back a dignified little reply to the effect that "A previous engagement would prevent, etc." The polite lie made it necessary for them to venture forth at dinner time to eat their solitary meal of sardines and wafers in the grove below. The menu was limited to almost nothing because Deppy refused to fill his pockets with "tinned ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... squirt very dexterously, hit the lighted wick of the solitary candle, which fizzed, sputtered, and finally gave ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... very dark over the moors. The solitary lights of a cab crawling almost at a foot pace along the lonely road shone like a will-o'-the-wisp through the snow. It had been snowing for hours, steadily, thickly, and the cold was intense. The dead heather by the roadside had long been completely hidden under that ever-increasing ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... and many other kings, and extended his dominions over the whole of Gaul, he once, in an assembly of his nobles, lamented his solitary estate. "Alas, I am but a stranger and a pilgrim, and have no kith or kin who could help me if adversity came upon me". But this he said, not in real grief for their death, but in guile, in order that if there were any forgotten relative lurking anywhere he might come forth ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... thought, but that some rumour of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge their curiosity; and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he divined them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear—solitary people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a name known in all those coasts. The news of his treacheries and uprooting was bound to get there before long. Some long-headed busybody might stumble on our secret and undo us. My mind had been seeking a more solitary place, and, ranging to and fro, had lighted on the Ecrehou rocks, which I had visited once with my grandfather and Krok ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... and patient labour in making burrows for themselves, find life there so intolerably monotonous that they prefer to take the chances above ground. Others pass whole days with wives and families or in solitary misery where there is not light enough to read or work, scarcely showing a head outside from sunrise to sunset. They may be seen trooping away from fragile tin-roofed houses half an hour before daybreak carrying children in their arms, ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... had announced the death of a Sir Reginald Seaton, without any claimant to his title or estates. He had once been blessed with a large family, but one after the other they had been laid in their graves, and he alone had been left a solitary and decrepit old man. Thus Heaven had proved the avenger of crime, and prevented the guilty ones from enjoying the profits of their guilt. The papers I possessed clearly proved that I was the rightful heir; and as there was no one to oppose my claim, I was, without much difficulty, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... eating his solitary, well-cooked dinner in his comfortable and handsome house, a house situated in one of the half-moon terraces which line and frame the more aristocratic side of Regent's Park, and which may, indeed, be ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... falsehood of what he says," said our hero, calmly. "It was not at Calcutta I left the Argonaut, nor was it of my own accord. Captain Haley, with his own hands, tied me to a tree on a small island in the Southern Ocean, and there left me, as he supposed, to a solitary death. But Heaven did not forsake me, and sent first a brave sailor and afterward a ship to my assistance. The charge that I stole money from him I shall not answer, for I know Mr. Morgan ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... removal, a charge denied by him; but even if it were true, or admitted, that some of his crew were unable to escape, he was only responsible to his own government. In a few days, however, he was released from solitary confinement, and many restrictions were removed from all of us. But humiliations or physical discomforts weighed as a feather upon our spirits compared with our reflections upon the consequences of the disaster which ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... in the middle watch, the weather cleared and the stars shone out with piercing brilliancy, enabling us to see the whole of the big ships and the transports, although we were all steaming with lights out, except for a solitary shrouded lantern carried by each ship right aft, to enable her next astern to ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... and during the subsequent convalescence, she had had leisure to ruminate upon purposes of this sort. Her expanded mind led her to seek something more arduous than the mere removal of personal vexations; and the sensibility of her heart would not suffer her to rest in solitary gratifications. The derangement of her father's affairs daily became more and more glaring; and a small independent provision made for herself and her sisters, appears to have been sacrificed in the wreck. For ten years, ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin

... a great heart. For the pilgrim multitudes Moses was the shadow on a great rock in a weary land. For poor, hunted David, Jonathan was a covert in time of storm. Savonarola, Luther, Cromwell sheltered perishing multitudes. Solitary in the midst of the vale in which death will soon dig a grave for each of us stands the immortal Christ, "the shadow of a great rock in a ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... knew why Judy put everything aside to be with her father, to anticipate every desire of his, to cheer every solitary minute. ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey

... have the bungalow with the family, than Rotherwood all alone!" she ruminated. "As for Muvkins, she's one in a million. I believe she'd be cheery in a coal cellar, so long as she'd a solitary chick to keep under her wing. Why, if we'd lost our boys, she'd have been trying to make it up to Queenie and me for not having brothers. I know her! That's ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... very seeming carelessness about restraining her was all calculated; he knew that restraint would produce nothing but utter alienation. Just so far as she allowed him, he shared her studies, her few pleasures, her thoughts; but she was essentially solitary and uncommunicative. No person, as was said long ago, could judge him, because his task was not merely difficult, but simply impracticable to human powers. A nature like Elsie's had necessarily to be studied ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... that look so steadfastly back upon the things they knew before History was born—before Tradition had being—things that were, and forms that moved, in a vague era which even Poetry and Romance scarce know of—and passed one by one away and left the stony dreamer solitary in the midst of a strange ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... climbing plants are drawn from tree to tree; and the live-oak, sycamore, hickory, with the loftiest pines, altogether form avenues down which the eyes of a stranger wander with delight, and in which on these delicious calm days it is a joy to linger. My rides were sometimes solitary; and it was on these occasions I most enjoyed these forest paths, now as healthful as beautiful; yet, let only a few months pass away, and to sleep one night within their shade would be death as certain as though it were spent beneath the ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... to seventy of these bottles every minute throughout the day of twelve hours. Why the treadmill and the crank with their periodical respites must be pastime compared to this maddeningly monotonous occupation, which combines hard labour, with the wrist at any rate, with next to solitary confinement. One can understand these men becoming gloomy and taciturn, and affirming that they sometimes see devils hovering over the bottle-racks and frantically shaking the bottles beside them, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... army was really in motion, and that if it held upon its apparent course its right wing would pass about 500 yards to the west of Jebel Surgham. That hill was within easy shelling distance from the gunboats, and the solitary instance of prudence that the dervishes had so far shown was to keep far enough inland to render the assistance of the flotilla of as little help as possible to us. Some there were who thought that Jebel ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... enacted by the great men who had built up the Roman dominion, and were not to be set aside in impatient haste. Caesar therefore recommended that the estates of the conspirators should be confiscated, that they themselves should be kept in strict and solitary confinement dispersed in various places, and that a resolution should be passed forbidding an application for their pardon either ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... will not be displeased at being told every slight circumstance of the manner in which Dr. Johnson contrived to amuse his solitary hours. He sometimes employed himself in chymistry, sometimes in watering and pruning a vine, sometimes in small experiments, at which those who may smile, should recollect that there are moments which admit of being soothed only ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... Henry Wadsworth Longfellow To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time Robert Herrick To Mistress Margaret Hussey John Skelton On Her Coming To London Edmund Waller "O, Saw Ye Bonny Lesley" Robert Burns To a Young Lady William Cowper Ruth Thomas Hood The Solitary Reaper William Wordsworth The Three Cottage Girls William Wordsworth Blackmwore Maidens William Barnes A Portrait Elizabeth Barrett Browning To a Child of Fancy Lewis Morris Daisy Francis Thompson To Petronilla, Who Has Put Up Her Hair Henry Howarth Bashford The Gipsy Girl Henry Alford ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... a peasant proprietor. He had now a new source of pride: that this land, which he watered with his sweat, should bring forth abundantly; that his cattle, whom no strange hand might touch, should be the sleekest and fattest of all. Solitary and unaided he laboured in house and field, as if wishing to defy that fate which had torn from him the only two people he had loved. As he could love them no longer he had rather be quite alone, save for ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... rather singular that the Carrolls should have but one maid, but there were reasons. Carroll himself, when he first organized his Banbridge establishment, had expressed some dissent as to the solitary servant. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... street that Amster took was empty; by night it was absolutely quiet and dark, as dark as were the thoughts of the solitary man. He walked along, brooding over his troubles. Scarcely an hour before he had been discharged from the factory because of his refusal to submit to the injustice of ...
— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner

... our traveller proceeds to Geneva; from Geneva, by water, to Livorno, (Anglice, Leghorn.) Now there is little or nothing to be seen at Livorno. There is, in the place della Darnesa, a solitary statue of Ferdinand I., some time cardinal, and afterwards Grand-Duke of Florence. M. Dumas bethinks him to tell us the principal incident in the life of this Ferdinand; but then this again is connected with the history ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... without being annoyed in any way after you saw them. The women, two of them, viz: Mrs. Greegsby and Mrs. Graham, have been rather ailing, but we hope they will very soon be well. They have been attended to by the Ladies' Society, and are most grateful for any attention they have received. The solitary person, Mrs. Graves, has also been attended to; also her box will be looked after. She is pretty well, but rather dull; however, she will get friends and feel more at home by and bye. Mrs. Wanzer is quite well; and also young William Henry Sanderson. They are all of them in pretty ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... advantage is not advantage at all, but the first step in degeneration. If one will be rich in old age he must deny himself some gratifications in youth; his present reward is his self-control. If a man will climb higher than his fellows he must expect to be sometimes solitary; his reward is the ever-widening view, though the path be rougher and the air more biting than in their lower altitude. If he point to heights yet to attain, the majority will disbelieve him or say, "Our present height was good enough for our ancestors, it is good ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... whole of the quadrupeds were in motion; for, acting upon Joses' orders, the teams were unhitched, and away the whole body swept in a thundering gallop onward towards the mountain, leaving the waggons solitary ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... she never saw him, because he always went away before it grew light in the morning, and how she continually went about in sadness, thinking how happy she would be if she could but see him, and how all day long she had to go about alone, and it was so dull and solitary. "Oh!" cried the mother, in horror, "you are very likely sleeping with a troll! But I will teach you a way to see him. You shall have a bit of one of my candles, which you can take away with you hidden in your breast. ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... asked three guests to come to supper—three lonely women who otherwise would have spent a solitary evening—and Mrs. M'Cosh had asked Bella Bathgate to sup with her and afterwards to witness ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... in relations from which he may derive what advantage he can for himself, but which, apart from that advantage, have no point or purport or aim; it is to make him an Egoist even against his will; leaving him for his solitary ideal a cult of self-development, deprived of its main attraction by its dissociation from the development of others. Now, if any man, having a full sense of what is implied in his words (a sense, not merely conceived ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... centre of the town, when he was surrounded by his servants and family; he has very coolly selected the gold bangles of his children, and silenced the trembling remonstrances of the Mahajun by threats of vengeance; nor is this a solitary instance. When he murders, he is equally above all concealment; as in the recent case of a sepahee returning home with his savings, who was waylaid and murdered by our hero in open day. He very coolly gave himself up, acknowledging that he had killed the sepahee, who had first assaulted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... the long road, already in twilight, the rail fence wrapped in creepers, and a solitary chestnut tree in full bloom. Farther away swept the freshly ploughed ground over which passed the moving figures of the labourers transplanting the young crop. Of them all, Carraway saw but a single worker—in reality, only one among the daily toilers in the field, moulded ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... miles; Soult still occupied Santiago de Compostela, the division Maurice-Mathieu was at Ferrol and Lugo, Marchand's at Corunna and Betanzos: nevertheless, one fine night the companies of the train—men and horses—disappeared, and we were never able to discover what became of them: a solitary wounded corporal escaped to report that the peasants, led by their monks and priests, had thus made away with them. Four months afterward, Ney with a single division marched to conquer the Asturias, descending the valley ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... quickly, the boys amusing themselves by exploring their little island, fishing from the bank, and loafing in the shade of the solitary palm, at whose base was supposed ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... the chair, in the course of its varied existence, had grown so accustomed to general intercourse with society, that I doubt whether it would have contented itself in the pulpit of the Old South. There it would have stood solitary, or with no livelier companion than the silent organ, in the opposite gallery, six days out of seven. I incline to think, that it had seldom been situated more to its mind, than on the sanded floor of ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... complete somersault, and when it recovered its feet, stood still. The great bird followed the rest of the band across a little ridge, beyond which they disappeared. Then it returned, soaring high in the heavens, and after two or three wide circles, swooped down at the solitary yearling, its legs hanging down. We halted at two hundred yards to see the end. But the eagle could not quite make up its mind to attack. Twice it hovered within a foot or two of the yearling's head—again flew off and ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... become used to living in society by playing in social groups. Scarcely anyone is more to be pitied than the lonely child standing in the corner of the playground, able only to watch the games, because parental prohibition has already made him a solitary and unsocial creature. ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... seems to have lost all fear when he flew to absolute power—a sovereign remedy unworthy of a great spirit, though convenient for a timid one like his own. Hobbes considered men merely as animals of prey, living in a state of perpetual hostility, and his solitary principle of action ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... alone, as always. She sighed as she remembered how lonely she had been all her life. Except Alden, there had never been anyone to whom she could talk freely. Even at school, the other children had, by common consent, avoided the solitary, silent child who sat apart, always, in brown gingham or brown alpaca, and taking refuge in the fierce pride that often ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... had forgotten to pack my trunk—my papers, &c. laying all about the room in a state of considerable confusion. I rose at once with all the despatch I could muster; this took a long time to effect, and it was nearly two o'clock ere I finished, and sat down to smoke a solitary pipe,—the last, as I supposed it might be my lot to enjoy for heaven knows how long, Mrs. R. having expressed, rather late in our intimacy I confess, strong opinions against tobacco ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... departed; and my guide Remounting scal'd the flinty steps, which late We downward trac'd, and drew me up the steep. Pursuing thus our solitary way Among the crags and splinters of the rock, Sped not our feet ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... her about the farm, it occurred to him to go to the ragged "buryin' ground" and though he found her there he did not obtrude upon her solitary vigil. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... be a third party, shouldn't you?" she asked, so significantly that even Alma couldn't help understanding her. Tears started to the big eyes as the little girl dropped her bread back into the hollow depths of the pail, replaced the cover, and went away to find a solitary corner, with a sorer spot in her heart than ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the same spot and in the same box as your reply—as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger to-night at half-past eight o'clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... people, more than I can mention here, to whom I owe my grateful thanks. Prior to my departure for the South Seas Dr. Haddon took great trouble in helping and advising me, and, indeed, I doubt whether I should have ventured upon my solitary expedition if I had not had ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... might be expected from their environment. Without an aristocracy, without anything that can be called a plutocracy, without a solitary millionaire, New Zealand is also virtually without that hopeless thing, the hereditary pauper and begetter of paupers. It may be doubted whether she has a dozen citizens with more than L10,000 a year apiece. On the other hand, the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... retiring, was not accounted among the big mitres. This was plain from the complete absence of young priests about him. We have seen that he "did not take" in Paris. Not a single future dreamed of engrafting itself on this solitary old man. Not a single sprouting ambition committed the folly of putting forth its foliage in his shadow. His canons and grand-vicars were good old men, rather vulgar like himself, walled up like him in this diocese, without exit to a cardinalship, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... things happen. I recollect reading in my green youth of a clergyman, who mounted a pulpit of the port where he was landed after his almost solitary rescue from a burning ship at midnight in mid-sea, to inform his congregation, that he had overnight of the catastrophe a personal Warning right in his ear from a Voice, when at his bed or bunk-side, about to perform the beautiful ceremony of undressing: and the Rev. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... without arriving at any satisfactory answer, . . and as Sah-luma still did not return, he resumed his slow, unguided, and solitary way. He presently found himself in a close boscage of tall trees straight as pines, and covered with very large, thick leaves that exhaled a peculiarly faint odor,—and here, pausing abruptly, he looked anxiously about ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... extraordinary in Paris, two hearses were waiting at the door, and two coffins standing under the archway; Cibot's funeral and the solitary state in which Pons was lying was made even more striking in the street. Schmucke was the only mourner that followed Pons' coffin; Schmucke, supported by one of the undertaker's men, for he tottered at every step. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... name that belongs to her. I believe she's Mrs. Dr. Fisher, isn't she?" drawled Livingston Bayley, a budding youth, with a moustache that occasioned him much thought, and a solitary eyeglass. ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney

... deep and came to a tent from which I saw a faint light emerging. I looked inside and there with their backs to the pole stood some stalwart young Canadians. On an island in the tent, was a pile of blankets, on which burnt a solitary candle. "Hello, boys, how are you getting on?" "Fine, Sir, fine," was their ready response. "Well, boys, keep that spirit up," I said, "and ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... skill of genius the service of the Church appropriate to the day, in heart-rending contrast with those doors of the prison which did not open, and the help of God which did not come to the young and solitary captive. Le beau jour fleuri passed over her in darkness and desertion: her agony and passion lay before her like those of the Divine Sufferer, to whom every day of the succeeding week is specially consecrated. There ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... faith of him who had given Therese's son being; therefore, to the same pure doctrine of Christianity had she dedicated his deserted child; and should they ever meet again, she believed it must be before the throne of Divine Mercy; and there she trusted to present their solitary offspring with the sacred words—"Here I am, Lord, and the ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... clouds constantly hung on the mountain pinnacles, and the torrents swelled the Hawash to such an extent, that the land for many miles on both sides was inundated. There must have been some difficulty in spending the time of this solitary confinement among the hills; but the author was well employed in writing his volumes, and engineers were employed in erecting a Gothic hall, to the great delight of his Abyssinian majesty. He would allow them to do every thing except paint his portrait—the national idea being, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... told off as scouts; these were the most active, with intelligent mahouts. The men appeared to take an intense interest in the sport, and in the regularity of the arrangements, as they were equally aware with myself of the necessity for strict order and discipline, where only one solitary gun represented the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... don't believe they meant to use 'em on that solitary man that stood in back end of the boat, a-propellin' it—it would have been ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... the glassy plain: and oftentime When we had given our bodies to the wind AND ALL THE SHADOWY BANKS ON EITHER SIDE CAME CREEPING THROUGH THE DARKNESS, spinning still The rapid line of motion, then at once Have I reclining back upon my heels Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs Wheeled by me—even as if the earth had rolled With visible motion her diurnal round! Behind me did they stretch in solemn train, Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched Till all was tranquil as a ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... brightest graduates, had emulated his master by setting up in business in Chicago, where he ran everything with the same rigid cleanliness, sanitation, and scientific cruelty. Michael received nothing but the excellent food and the cleanliness; but, a solitary and brooding prisoner in his cage, he could not help but sense the atmosphere of pain and terror about him of the animals being broken ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... two thousand years to complete its journey, and another, a very brilliant one seen in 1882, must journey for eight hundred years before it again comes near to the sun. But we never know what might happen, for at any moment a comet which has traversed a long solitary pathway in outer darkness may flash suddenly into our ken, and be for the first time noted and recorded, before flying off at an angle which must take it for ever further and further ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton

... desire had nursed at sea, And had not dared exhibit it before; Or that it sprung from opportunity, Suggested by that solitary shore; Without more pause, in that lone desert, he Would sate his greedy passion; but forbore Till he of one could rid him, of the twain, Who in the boat with us ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... Cuba is willing to suffer, if she can only get away from the oppression of Spain. You have seen that she considers no sacrifices too great, that she will surrender fortune, happiness, and life itself, will endure lingering tortures and death in solitary dungeons; and all this, just that she may secure the very freedom which you and I enjoy ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... have painted the stone on which S. Roch rests his foot with greater precision or more consummate mastery; the delicacy of flesh tints is amazing. The bit of landscape behind S. Roch (invisible in the reproduction), with its stately tree trunk rising solitary beside the hanging curtain, strikes a note of romance, fit accompaniment to the bizarre figure of the saint in his orange jerkin and blue leggings. How mysterious, too, is S. Francis!—rapt in his ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... a good insurance against that. I write because of the countless acres as good as mine, in this great, dear America, which might now be giving their owners all the healthful pastime, private solace, or solitary or social delights which this one yields, yet which are only "waste lands" or "holes in the ground" because unavailable ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... remembered this statement, questioned other Bacchantes about these things, and heard the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul confirmed. Hence, during many a solitary ride, while the cart rolled slowly along, she pondered over the thought that Juliane's soul had lived again in foolish Julie. How? Why? She did not rack her brains on those points. What had been a fancy, slowly became a fixed belief in the mind thus constantly dwelling upon one ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... fell into a pleasant mood, and so the evening wore away. When Hiram rose to leave, he found it was nearly midnight. His cousin insisted he should remain with him, and Hiram was glad to accept the invitation. He did not feel like returning to his solitary room with his mind ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... deprive me of the pleasure of your company; there is a raging small-pox in the house: I beg, however, that you will accept of such accommodation as a small house at the bottom of the avenue can afford you." Swift was forced to comply with this request: and in this solitary situation, fearful of speaking to any person around him, he was served with dinner. In the evening, the wits thought proper to release him, by going down to him in a body, to inform him of the deception, and to ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... three cases of books, broken open but not unpacked, a trunk and a carpet-bag, and some bundles of groceries; they had been left by the expressman on tables and chairs and on the floor, so that the solitary man had to do some lifting and unpacking before he could sit down in his loneliness to eat the supper Brother Nathan had provided. He looked about to see where he would put up shelves for his books, and as he did so the remembrance of his ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland

... lest the sire should find them there, Sped by wild paths away. They fled and left him there alone By longing love possessed; And with a heart no more his own He roamed about distressed. The aged saint came home, to find The hermit boy distraught, Revolving in his troubled mind One solitary thought. "Why dost thou not, my son," he cried, "Thy due obeisance pay? Why do I see thee in the tide Of whelming thought to-day? A devotee should never wear A mien so sad and strange. Come, quickly, dearest child, declare The reason of the change." And Rishyasring, when questioned ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... it; and as it was vacant at the time, she went into it at once. Many of my readers will remember her description of the garden and the view from it, the terrace, the circular grass-plot with its one tall white rose-tree. "You cannot imagine," she wrote, in 1830, "how I delight in that fair, solitary, neglected-looking tree." The tree is not neglected now. Dovenest is inhabited by Mrs. Hemans's then young friend, the Rev. R.P. Graves; and it has recovered from the wildness and desolation of thirty years ago, while looking as secluded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... sorely distressed by the heat and the want of water on the downs. Every now and then he lay down, panting distressfully, with his tongue hanging out, and his young masters always waited for him, often themselves not sorry to rest in the fragment of shade from a solitary thorn or juniper. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the presages she had made, on her first acquaintance with me; acknowledging my generosity, as she called it, in the most elegant and pathetic expressions; but declined my proposal, on account of her attachment to the dear melancholy cottage where she had so peacefully consumed her solitary widowhood. Finding her immovable on this subject, I insisted on her accepting a present of thirty guineas, and took my leave, resolving to accommodate her with the same sum annually, for the more comfortable support of the infirmities ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... least equivalent to saying that she was not an insignificant person of weak will and feeble intelligence. She was indeed the last of her name, but the race had not decayed. It was by accident and by force of circumstances that it had come to be represented by the solitary young girl who sat reading a novel over her fire on that evening, caring very little for the fact that she was a very great personage, related to many royal families, a Grandee of Spain and a Princess of the Holy Roman Empire, all in her own right ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... passing an humble and solitary dwelling, the gentleman said to me, 'There is a young woman sick in this house; should you like to go in and see her?' 'Yes, sir,' said I, 'very much. She can have very few visitors, I think, in this lonely place, and if you ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... In a solitary chamber at the top of the house I kept my workshop of filthy creation. The summer months passed, but my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. Winter, spring, and summer passed away before my work drew to a close, but now every day showed me how well I had succeeded. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... well used to trunkless heads in this city, but there is a vast difference between the sight of such in the glare of day, when surrounded by comrades, and amid the excitement of war or an execution, and a similar head in the stillness of a calm night during the solemn hours of a long and solitary watch." ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne



Words linked to "Solitary" :   unfrequented, uninhabited, hermit, lonely, nonsocial, troglodyte, confinement, lone, lone hand, solitary pussytoes, recluse, ungregarious, only, single, St. John the Baptist, solitudinarian, unaccompanied, solitary vireo, nongregarious, alone



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