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Ripening   /rˈaɪpənɪŋ/  /rˈaɪpnɪŋ/   Listen
Ripening

noun
1.
Coming to full development; becoming mature.  Synonyms: maturation, maturement.
2.
Acquiring desirable qualities by being left undisturbed for some time.  Synonyms: ageing, aging.



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"Ripening" Quotes from Famous Books



... among its veiling trees. The blue waving line of the downs, crowned here and there by clumps of trees, ran far along the southwestern horizon, melting vaporously in the distance above "the Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames." Over the downs and over the wide valley of ripening cornfields, of indigo hedgerow-elms and greener willow and woodland, of red-roofed homesteads and towered churches, moved slowly the broad shadows of rolling clouds that journeyed through the intense blue above. Some shadows were like veils of pale gray gauze, through which the world ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... peace! And do you hope to end What you have now begun? Say, do you hope To check the ripening change of Christendom, The universal spring, that shall renew The earth's fair form? Would you alone, in Europe, Fling yourself down before the rapid wheel Of destiny, which rolls its ceaseless course, And seize its spokes with human arm. Vain ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... their post, by terrors unsubdued, They with redoubling force their task pursued. 700 And now the senior pilots seem'd to wait Arion's voice, to close the dark debate. Not o'er his vernal life the ripening sun Had yet progressive twice ten summers run; Slow to debate, yet eager to excel, In thy sad school, stern Neptune! taught too well: With lasting pain to rend his youthful heart, Dire fate in venom dipp'd her keenest dart; ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... may be introduced by referring to the unusual attention given to fruit at the time of ripening. The economical housekeeper takes certain foods when they are most plentiful and preserves them for use when they are not in season. Some foods require special care to keep them from decaying. The decay is caused by the action of microscopic plants called "bacteria", ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education

... thy lullaby I sing, For thee great blessings ripening be; Thine eldest brother is a King, And hath a kingdom bought for thee. Sweet baby, then forbear to weep; Be still, my babe; ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)

... he puts forth The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honors thick upon him: The third day comes a frost, a killing frost; And—when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a ripening—nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, This many summers in a sea of glory; But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride At length broke under me; and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... parallel between the signs and symptoms foreboding that outbreak and the very apprehension of coming war which was evinced by the recent lo pawns to peace. (2) And after sundry notable and shrewd remarks, tending to show where elements for war were already ripening, amidst clashing opinions and disorganized states, he wound up with saying: "So that, all things considered, I think we had better just keep up enough of the bellicose spirit not to think it a sin if we are called upon to fight for our pestles and mortars, our three-percents, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... events were ripening, the years passed, and not until 1749 was La Verendrye restored to his leadership in the West. Though now sixty-four years old, he was overjoyed at the prospect. Not only was he permitted to continue his search ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee

... he "found himself at five-and-twenty what he ought to have been at fifteen." He had had no regular training as a draughtsman, and lacked the confidence of science. But his extraordinary faculty of invention as a designer was already ripening; his mind, rich in knowledge of classical story and medieval romance, teemed with pictorial subjects; and he set himself to complete his equipment by resolute labour, witnessed by innumerable drawings. The works of this first period are all more or less tinged by the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... his cart, there were the little orchards with the soldiers' tents sheltering beneath them, the villages with the old men, the women, the children, watching, like ghosts, their passage, the fields in which the summer corn was ripening, the first trembling heat and beauty of a quiet day in early June. No sound in the world but peace, the woods opening around them as they advanced. He lay back on his bumping cart, watching the world as though he was seeing pictures of some place where he ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... very old. We have returned to Nature—but not the nature of mere academicians. We paint, not the world of the camera, but the world of the brain. We paint, not the thing you think you see, but the way you think you see it—its vibrations of your inner mentality. To paint the apple ripening on the bough one should reproduce the gentle swelling of the maturing fruit in your perception.... Now, you see, I am not trying to reproduce the precise carving of that door; I do not fix the wavings of that palm. ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... conservatism and rigid adherence to the old-time customs of law and theology among the masses, than in the East. Thousands are becoming ready to be baptized into a new faith, a broader and holier recognition of the rights of humanity. The harvest-fields are ripening ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... feeling I shall pray 20 For thee when I am far away: For never saw I mien, or face, In which more plainly I could trace Benignity and home-bred sense Ripening in perfect innocence. Here, scatter'd like a random seed, Remote from men, Thou dost not need The embarrass'd look of shy distress, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth

... had not expected an early crop, and in his last testament had solemnly bequeathed his fame to the next age. During a whole generation his philosophy had, amidst tumults wars, and proscriptions, been slowly ripening in a few well constituted minds. While factions were struggling for dominion over each other, a small body of sages had turned away with benevolent disdain from the conflict, and had devoted themselves to the nobler work of extending the dominion of man over matter. As soon as tranquillity ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... jubilant above the earth, the dew sparkled, flowers that had awakened early gleamed, a lark sang high up beneath the sky, swallows flew swiftly through the air. He and she walked across the green field toward the hill with the ripening rye; they followed the footpath which led over there. She went ahead, very slowly and looked back over her shoulder toward him, and they talked and laughed. The further they descended the hill, the more the grain intervened, soon they could no ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen

... the keeper, repeating the question. And at the answer they both started forward, the dog ranging ahead through a dense growth of beech and chestnut, over a high brown ridge, then down, always down along a leafy ravine to the water's edge—a forest pond set in the gorgeous foliage of ripening maples. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... of the winter feed?" cried Bob aghast, well aware that in these lower altitudes the season's growth was nearly finished and the ripening about to begin. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... a faded leaf (for in Europe death is not glorified to the foliage as in our own land), in the purple of the ripening grapes, and in the tawny grass of the pastures, there was autumn enough to touch our spirits, and while it hardly affected the tone of the landscape, to lay upon us the gentle and pensive spell of its presence. Of all the days in the year I would have chosen this ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... to find this profane mummery going on instead of the holy services to which Christina had looked forward for strength and comfort; she was far too well instructed not to be scandalized at the profane deception which was ripening fast for Luther, only thirty years later; and, when the stone was held up by the friar in one hand, the printed briefs of indulgence in the other, she shrunk back. Her father however said, "Wilt have one, child? Five hundred years is no ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Schwab, one of the finest representatives of the German revolutionary period of that time, and Dr. Solotaroff were indefatigable in the care of the patient. Here, too, she met Edward Brady, the new friendship subsequently ripening into close intimacy. Brady had been an active participant in the revolutionary movement of Austria and had, at the time of his acquaintance with Emma Goldman, lately been released from an Austrian prison after an incarceration of ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... attraction that was real so far as consisted with his complete selfishness, joined to his professional prudence, and that systematic habit of taking up fancies at any time for anything, which prevents each fancy as it occurs from ripening into passion. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... weeks of August were come—sunny, sultry weeks; and from the brow of the hill, all the vast plain lying westward for many miles looked golden with the corn ripening for harvest. The oats in the little field had already been reaped; and the fruit in the garden, gathered and sold by Martha, had brought in a few shillings, which were carefully hoarded up to buy winter clothing. It was now ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton

... time, while he may not ungratefully rejoice with Sophocles at being "set free from service to a band of madmen," that ripening of his nature which comes most fruitfully of a generous exercise of its powers will have instinctively taught him that secret of the transmutation of the passions which is one of the most precious rewards ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... changing so fast that before long my whole method will change! In a short time the difference between the me of today and the me of tomorrow will be the difference between a youth of twenty and a man of thirty. I think and think, and my ideas are ripening; I realise that nature has treated me kindly in giving me the heart and brain that I have. Believe in me, dear sister, for I have need of some one who believes, though I have not given up the hope of being somebody ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... has great effect on the germination of seeds, the growth of plants, and the ripening of ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring

... subjects for which intercession is to be made, after the manner of the Oremus dilectissimi, now used on Good Friday. This catalogue included all conditions of men, the conversion of the world, the exaltation of Holy Church, the maintenance of the Roman empire, the due ripening and gathering of the fruits of the earth, and other spiritual and temporal blessings,—subjects very much the same as those which are now called the Pope's intentions. The prayers ended with a special reference to those present, that they might persevere in the Lord even to the ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... old, and it is no wonder he soon forgot his grievances. About lunch-time he thought he would go down in the meadow, to see if the first strawberries were ripening, as he intended them ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... thing that Julian had asked of her. But he did not know what Julian had asked. And he did not comprehend the bitter fruit that her following of his further advice to keep from low and loveless actions must bring to the ripening. When he spoke, as the sun went down on London, he was carried on by excitement, and was thinking rather of the fate of Julian, the diablerie of Valentine, than of the individual life of the girl at his side. He was arming her for the battle. But he dreamed of weapons, not of rations, like many ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... children's favor more thoroughly than ever, but not in an officious way. He found Belle moping the evening after her father's departure, and he gave her a swift drive in his buggy, which little attention completely disarmed the warm-hearted girl and became the basis of a fast-ripening friendship. ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... the country flying past the car windows, and the healthful exercise, the bath in the pure air saturated with the water of the Seine, vivified by a bit of forest, perfumed by flowering meadows, by ripening grain, all combined to make her giddy for a moment. But that sensation was soon succeeded by disgust at such a commonplace ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... Coast Range Juanita finds a land of delightful promise. Far away the rich valley of the San Joaquin sweeps. Rolling hills lie on either side, golden tinted with the ripening wild oats. Messengers join the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... hurry to do good, and mar by excessive zeal what patience would complete. "Deus quies quia aeternus," saith St. Augustine. The cypress is a thousand years in growth, yet its limbs touch not the clouds, save on a mountain top. Shall the regeneration of a continent be quicker than its ripening? That would be ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... long, lazy morning, stretched out in the shade of the apple-tree. A smell of clover and ripening orchards filled the heated air. The hens clucked around drowsily with drooping wings. A warm breeze stirred the ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston

... Carolina convention, recognizing the embarrassment and incongruity of basing their action simply upon the constitutional election of a President, declared that the public opinion of their State "had for a long period been strengthening and ripening for Disunion." Mr. Rhett, eminent in the public service of his State, asserted "that the secession of South Carolina was not produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive- slave Law; that it was a matter which had ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... do not swear: although I joy in thee, I have no joy of this contract to-night; It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden; Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be Ere one can say It lightens. Sweet, good night! This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. Good night, good night! as sweet repose and rest Come to thy heart as that ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... labors were greater and still more successful, he never altogether left the stage. I repeat, that I value his plays, most, because they helped to discipline him for his after-work; and I thank the theatre chiefly for ripening in its heat the philosophic humorist. That was the real character of the man. He tried many things, and he produced much; but the root of him was that he was a humorous thinker. He did not write first-rate plays, or first-rate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... think thus, when I see a person ill, or in sorrow, or weighed down with weary griefs. I like to think that that which is ebbing here is flowing and ripening into fitness for the freed soul in that land where there shall be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... his kind mention of me."[14] That letter is interesting also as being the last exchanged between Pope and his old friend; and it is instructive, as showing how the acquaintance between the poets was already ripening, that Pope turned to Gay in his distress at the defection of his earlier friend. "Our friend, Mr. Cromwell, too, has been silent all this year. I believe he has been displeased at some or other of my freedoms, which I very innocently take, and most ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... deciduous trees crowning its low swelling top, with a faint radiance deepening into dreamy halftones on their eastern slopes; now several giant chestnuts lifting their proud crests of bloom above the valley; again it was an emerald meadow in which cattle were grazing. The rich old gold of ripening wheat and the blue haze hanging over the distant hills all lent an atmosphere of tranquillity which the notes of the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... always cake for lunch. After the port, which generally made her feel sleepy, Considine would be taken off to see the stables, and Gabrielle conducted to a walled garden, heavy with the scent of ripening fruit, where there was no shade but that of huge apple trees, frosted with American blight, that reminded her, in their passive mellowness, of the people who owned them. Nothing more violent than archery, in its old and placid variety, ever invaded the lives ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... broke off abstractedly—"I am waiting now. He lives, keeping well his mighty secret. What though I cannot go to him, or name the hill or the vale of his abiding-place? He lives—it may be as the fruit in blossom, it may be as the fruit just ripening; but by the certainty there is in the promise and reason of God, I know ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... bright scarlet flower or the brilliant plumage of a songless bird,—gorgeous sunsets on American prairies, where the rolling purple ground contrasted with the crimson and golden glories of eventide,—vivid sketches along the Mediterranean, the blue sea embracing the twin sky,—vineyards ripening under the mellow Italian sun,—fields of yellow wheat bending to the sickles of English reapers,—and sometimes, half hidden by the folds of a heavy crimson curtain, one was startled to discover the solemn icebergs and everlasting snows of the Arctic regions. The wood-work of all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... ebbed slowly, and broad blue shadows crept across the patch of turf, they sat in a silence broken only by the wiry cheep of sparrows and the distant moan of trolley cars. The arrows of the decumbent sun gilded the ripening grapes above them. Suddenly there were two loud bangs and a vicious whistle sang through the arbor. Broken twigs eddied ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... that no reference is made either to the incalculable benefits conferred by the action of the sun in ripening the fruits of the earth, or to the services of the moon as a time-measurer, in dividing off the months. Both these actions are clearly indicated later on in the Scriptures, where Moses, in the blessing which ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... catching glimpses of the river from time to time, with the hills on the further side hazily blue and indistinct with the September haze of sunbeams. Near hand the green of plantations and woodland was varied with brown grainfields, where grain had been, and with ripening Indian corn and buckwheat; but more especially with here and there a stately roof-tree or gable of some fine new or old country house. The light was mellow, the air was good; in the excitement of her drive Daisy half forgot her perplexity and ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner

... amused with a colloquy that took place, in regard to a field of ripening grain, near which the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... came down from Canada, in the winter of 1812, on his second visit, the Creeks were ripening for war. Their Red Sticks party was very strong. The many prophets, some of whom were half negro, had declared that the whites could be driven into the sea. The soil of the Creek nation was to ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... of all this happiness, ripening after careful culture, that Florent dropped one September morning just as Lisa was taking her matutinal bath of sunshine, and Quenu, with his eyes still heavy with sleep, was lazily applying his fingers to the congealed fat left in the pans from the previous ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... a great, black cauldron of clear water, with berries above and berries below, and high crags red with heather. There you may find shade in summer, and great blaeberries and ripening rowans in the wane of August. These last were the snare for Alice, who was ever an adventurer. For the moment she was the schoolgirl again, and all sordid elderly cares were tossed to the wind. She teased Doctor Gracey to that worthy's delight, and she bade George ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... and cast me out! You shall find other, nobler ways than mine To work your soul's redemption,—glorious noons Of battle 'neath the heaven-suspended sign, And nightly refuge 'neath God's aegis-rim; Increase of wisdom, and acquaintance held With the heart's austerities; still governance, And ripening of the blood in the weekday sun To make the full-orbed consecrated fruit At life's end for the Sabbath supper meet. I shall not sit beside you at that feast, For ere a seedling of my golden tree Pushed off its petals to get room to grow, I stripped the boughs to make an ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... a woman. And yet, for all this new desire, I doubt If Elfinhart would e'er have spoken out, And told the fairies of her wish to leave them, (A wish her conscious heart well knew would grieve them), If in the ripening of her silent thought A still voice had not whispered that she ought To leave that world of love and mirth and beauty, To share man's burden in this world of duty. (There's anticlimax for you! Most provoking, ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis

... oils are strongest in new teas, and are gradually wasted by exposure to the atmosphere. Robert Fortune and other travelers in China have stated that the Chinese will not use new teas, but allow them to pass through a sort of "ripening" process. Mr. Crole, speaking probably of the Indian teas with which he was so familiar as a planter and chemist, says that "tea should always be kept for a year before being drank. If the infusion ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.

... grown up together now separated, to meet in the future on altered terms. Caesar held to his inherited convictions, remaining constant through good and evil to the cause of his uncle Marius. His companion Cicero, now ripening into manhood, chose the other side. With his talents for his inheritance, and confident in the consciousness of power, but with weak health and a neck as thin as a woman's, Cicero felt that he had ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... back from this glimpse of God's ultimate purpose for us, to watch the process by which it is reached, so far as we can trace it in the ripening of the little annuals. ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter

... oblong, pinnatifid pinnules; seven to fifteen inches tall, slender and rough with rusty, jointed hairs. Pinnae triangular-ovate, usually distant, the ends of the rounded lobes reflexed and forming separate involucres which are pushed back by the ripening sporangia. ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton

... deputation of Cheyennes and Arapahoes visited me at ranch headquarters. On the last lease taken, and now inclosed in our pasture, there were a number of wild plum groves, covering thousands of acres, and the Indians wanted permission to gather the ripening fruit. Taking advantage of the opportunity, in granting the request I made it a point to fortify the friendly relations, not only with ourselves, but with all other cattlemen on the reservation. Ten days' permission was given to gather the wild plums, camps were allotted to the Indians, ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... overflowed. Here we found great quantities of a small onion about the size of a musket ball, though some were larger; it is white, crisp, and as well flavoured as any of our garden onions; the seed is just ripening, and as the plant bears a large quantity to the square foot, and stands the rigours of the climate, it will no doubt be an acquisition to settlers. From this production we called it Onion island. During the next seven and three quarter miles we passed several long circular bends, and a number ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... It is not difficult to trace in it many of the influences which had helped in forming or deforming the mind of the young man of twenty-five, not yet come into possession of his full inheritance of the slowly ripening qualities which were yet to assert their robust independence. How could he help admiring Byron and falling into more or less unconscious imitation of his moods if not of his special affectations? Passion showing itself off against a dark foil of cynicism; sentiment, ashamed of its own self-betrayal, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... at the same period, 1641, gives us the the fullest account of his hesitation. It was a hesitation caused, partly by the wealth of matter which his reading suggested to him, partly by the consciousness that he ought not to begin in haste while each year was ripening his powers. Every one who has undertaken a work of any length has made the experience, that the faculty of composition will not work with ease, until the reason is satisfied that the subject chosen is a congenial one. Gibbon has told ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... the arms of the farmer. They were the Sabine women, on the eve of the bridal, when the insatiate Romans tore them away and trampled them. The Indian corn was yet green, but so tall that the tasselled tops showed how cunningly the young ears were ripening. There were melons in the corn-rows, that a week would have developed, but the soldiers dashed them open and sucked the sweet water. They threw clubs at the hanging apples till the ground was littered with them, and the hogs came afield to gorge; ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... new. In all else willing to be taught, in this Instruct me not; I have my lesson clear.— Arcas, seek out my uncle Laias, now Conferring in the city with our friends; Here bring him, ere the king come back from council. That, how to accomplish what the Gods enjoin, And the slow-ripening time at last prepares, We two with thee, my mother, may consult; For whose help dare I count ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... straight, and in the dark woods he kept it with difficulty, having to pat with his foot to find the hard ground, but in the turned-out fields the way was well-defined and he walked rapidly. Once he crossed a stretch of ripening oats, and in a dip-down where the growth was rank he heard voices and a song—hired men lying out to wear off the effect of a visit to the distillery. He came to the dam much sooner than he had expected, and near the trickling water he sat down upon a rock to rest. An island of willows ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... mother's charms Thy palace fill with insults and alarms? Say, is the fault, through tame submission, thine? Or leagued against thee, do thy people join, Moved by some oracle, or voice divine? And yet who knows, but ripening lies in fate An hour of vengeance for the afflicted state; When great Ulysses shall suppress these harms, Ulysses singly, or all Greece in arms. But if Athena, war's triumphant maid, The happy son will as the father aid, (Whose fame ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... vengeance upon their country. Furious speeches were made in the Assembly and in the streets, to rouse to madness the people, now destitute of work and of bread. "Citizens," ferociously exclaimed Marat, "watch, with an eagle eye, that palace, the impenetrable den where plots are ripening against the people. There a perfidious queen lords it over a treacherous king, and rears the cubs of tyranny. Lawless priests there consecrate the arms which are to be bathed in the blood of the people. The genius of Austria is there, guided by the Austrian Antoinette. ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... intimidating or corrupting those who ought to have been forward to resist its pretensions. Up to the time of the "Missouri Compromise," by which the nation was wheedled out of its honor, slavery was looked on as an evil that was finally to yield to the expanding and ripening influences of our Constitutional principles and regulations. Why it has not yielded, we may easily see, by even a slight glance at some of the incidents in ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... from the jetty, steaming walls of the pit drifted ambrosial perfume that evoked visions of ancient vineyards where, under the Eastern sun, bloomy clusters of grape—mayhap even the very grape sung by the Tent-maker—hung ripening. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... looked artificial because so curiously decorative. The breeze that had filled the sails of the felucca had either died down or was the possession of the river. For here stillness reigned. In a warm silence the fruit was ripening to bring gold to the pockets of Baroudi. The wrinkled earth beneath the trees was a dark grey in the shade, a warmer hue, in which pale brown and an earthy yellow were mingled, where the sunlight ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... writings were failures, his talk was more successful than ever. He still tried to show off on all occasions and sometimes fell flat in consequence; but his failures in this field were few and merely comparative; constant practice was ripening his extraordinary natural gift. About this time, too, he began to develop that humorous vein in conversation, which later lent a singular distinction ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... no doubt concerning Rostopchine's part in regard to its conflagration. But, after all, it was caused by those who had a right to do it, those who, beginning at Smolensk, burned their villages, their hamlets, even their ripening or ripened harvest, after the Russian army had passed and the enemy came in sight. Who? The Russian people of all classes, of all conditions without exception, men even invested with public power, and ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... merchant, an old friend of Captain Frankland's, who treated us most sumptuously. He told us of a curious disease which had lately attacked the vines, and which he feared would ultimately destroy them. The grapes growing on the diseased vines, instead of ripening, wither up and rot. He said that he had urged the inhabitants of the island not to depend solely on their vines, but to endeavour to produce other articles for which their soil and climate was especially suited. Among other things he introduced the mulberry-tree, by the cultivation ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... as a bait or wage for some animal to come and sow its seed. Why, then, should it not take on these alluring colors to help along this end? And yet there comes the thought, may not this scarlet and gold of the berries and tree fruits be the inevitable result of the chemistry of ripening, as it is with the autumn foliage? What benefit to the tree, directly or indirectly, is all this wealth of color of the autumn? Many of the toadstools are highly colored also; how do they profit by it? Many ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... occasions actually realised, as in the burning of Lord Sandwich's flagship at the battle of Solebay, and the destruction of the Spanish-Dutch fleet at Palermo by Duquesne. But as the "nimbleness" of great-ships increased with the ripening of seamanship and naval architecture, the fireship as a battle weapon became almost negligible, while a fleet at anchor was found to be thoroughly defensible by its own picket-boats. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century indeed the occasions on which the fireship ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... continue unto the third heir or scarcely to the second,—O blessed Lord, when I remember this I am all abashed; I cannot judge the cause, but fairer ne wiser ne better spoken children in their youth be nowhere than there be in London, but at their full ripening there is no kernel ne good corn found, but chaff for the most part. I wot well there be many noble and wise, and prove well and be better and richer than ever were their fathers. And to the end that many might come to honour and worship, I intend to ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... terror. All Italy reminds one of the papal palace at Avignon—the banqueting-rooms above, the dungeons of the Inquisition below; popes and princes feasting within sound of the rack and the scourge. The Revolution is but the ripening of the disease; the hydrophobia which has been lurking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... or distemper. Interference with breathing that is of recent origin and progression, without any observable swelling or soreness about the throat, will make one suspect the formation of an abscess in this location. But little can be done in the way of treatment, save to hurry the ripening of the abscess and its discharge by steaming with hops, hay, or similar substances and by poulticing the throat. The operation for opening an abscess in this region necessitates an intimate knowledge of the complex anatomy of the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... into manhood. He had had from early life capable teachers for his education, and was under the protection of the great philologist Reuchlin, who was a brother of his grandmother. He then showed gifts of mind wonderfully rich and early ripening. Besides the classics, he learnt mathematics, astronomy, and law. He also studied the Scriptures, grew to love them, and even when a youth had made himself familiar with their contents, without having ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... moreover, that his first acquaintance with her had commenced on board a slave bark; and that their friendship as children,—afterwards ripening into love,—had been cemented while both were castaways upon a raft—Ocean Waifs in the middle ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... this dead fruit was ripening overmuch, And had to be removed lest living Spain Should sicken ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... full of pleasant odours—the smell of wood fires from the cabins of the married men and from the ovens of the cookhouse, the ammoniacal whiffs from the stables, the smell of ripening apples from "Boston's" orchard—while over all and through all came the perfume of the witch-hazel and tar-weed from the forests and mountain sides, as pungent as ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... it came to me that in this contest between the two was epitomized all the vast conflict that raged around them; that in it was fast ripening that fruit of destiny of which Ventnor had spoken, and that here in the Hall of the Cones would be settled—and soon—the fate not only of Disk and Cross, but ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... rubbing, kill the trees. Better to pick up the apples that fall too early, and give them to the swine. Turkeys and hens in an orchard will do much to destroy the various insects. They may be removed for a short time when they begin to peck the ripening fruit. ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... faults are—early blooming, in consequence of which it is often caught by the late frosts; the irregular and unequal blooming of its pistillate and staminate blossoms, and the consequent failure of the former to be fertilized and to develop nuts; and lateness in ripening its wood in the Fall and consequent liability to injury by frost at ...
— English Walnuts - What You Need to Know about Planting, Cultivating and - Harvesting This Most Delicious of Nuts • Various

... was showery with strong bursts of sunshine between the slanting summer rains. All along the great highway, in sun and shade, women, children, the coloured people, all the white men left by the drag-net of the war, were out in the ripening fields, by the roadside wall, before gates, in the village streets. They wept with pride and joy, they laughed, they embraced. They showered praises, blessings; they prophesied good fortune. The young women ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... field of corn, and was rearing her brood under cover of the ripening grain. One day, before the young were fully fledged, the Farmer came to look at the crop, and, finding it yellowing fast, he said, "I must send round word to my neighbours to come and help me reap this field." One of the ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... dozen wretched bodies may be seen hanging in a row. The mayor of Vaison is buried alive; the mayor of Etampes, defending a supply of food, is trampled to death by a mob exasperated with hunger, and the mayor of Saint Denis is hung at Lanterne. The ripening grain is left ungathered in the fields, and the fruit of the vineyards is trodden under foot. The bloody cruelty ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... along some fields where the corn was ripening, when a rabbit suddenly sprang out at their feet, and standing on its hind ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... with astonishment. Beneath a honeycombed cliff, which supported one enormous cotton-tree, was a spot of some thirty yards square sloping down to the stream, planted in rows with magnificent banana-plants, full twelve feet high, and bearing among their huge waxy leaves clusters of ripening fruit; while, under their mellow shade, yams and cassava plants were flourishing luxuriantly, the whole being surrounded by a hedge of orange and scarlet flowers. There it lay, streaked with long shadows from the setting sun, while a cool southern air rustled in the cotton-tree, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... my head, wild flowers and long wild grasses drooped over the raw edge of the parados, and a few stalks of ripening wheat trailed there or stood out against the sky—an opaque, uncertain sky which had been so calmly blue, but which was now sickening with that whitish pallor which presages ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... well, only letting fall a hint that we might take a long journey on the following night. Still I gathered from his air of mystery, and the importance he displayed, that the plot—whatever its nature—was rapidly ripening. ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... roan, and they were off at a telling trot. Out over West Hill they went, leaving a thick fog of summer dust in their wake, and on through cool woods to a ridge from which the valley opened, revealing a broad checker-board of ripening grain fields. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... eagle's nest: The shepherd's humble shieling, and his fold, And, half-way up, broad vineyards, with their vines Bending with purple clusters of ripe fruit;— Wide valleys, with green meadows, and pure streams, And gentle hills, where ripening harvests stand; Majestic rivers, with their verdant banks Studded with towns, and rural villages; Motionless lakes, and seas without a wave, And oceans pulseless as a dead man's heart! And mighty cities, standing on their coasts, With vasty ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands

... largest peaches, when full grown and just ripening, throw them into salt and water, and add a little bay-salt. Let them lie two or three days, covering them with a board; take them out and dry them, and with a sharp knife cut them open and take out the stone; then cut some garlic very fine, scrape a great deal of horseradish, ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury

... interesting to watch the effect of the new campaign upon the ripening resolve of the British Nation to have, its Army set in order. Upon many minds, and no doubt upon Ministers and their adherents, the impression made by success in the field will be that reform is needless. The true impression would be that it is as ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson

... proverb denounces as summa injuria,) in having ever interfered at all with Mr O'Connell, others of the same faction are roundly imputing to them a system of decoy, a "laying of traps," (that was the word,) in waiting so patiently for the ripening of the Repeal frenzy. Upon the same principle, a criminal may have a right to complain that her Majesty, when extending mercy to a first crime, or a crime palliated by its circumstances, and that a merciful prosecutor who intercedes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... a virtue of necessity, and reconcile themselves to living together under equal rights and laws. Their community of servitude, which dates only from the destruction of Hungarian independence in 1849, seems to be ripening and disposing them for such an equal union. The German colony of East Prussia is cut off from Germany by part of the ancient Poland, and being too weak to maintain separate independence, must, if geographical continuity is to be maintained, ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... the Royal Botanic Society there is a cocoa-plant which has achieved greatness, for it has actually borne fruit, and is, according to Professor Bentley, the first that has done so in England. The fruit gave evidence of reaching maturity and of ripening its seeds. Linnaeus called cocoa "Theobroma," by which he meant to imply that it was food for the gods, but Belzoni, writing in the sixteenth century, regarded it as fitter for pigs than for men. Readers ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... her lover. It was a green, shady place, full of great maple-trees and flowering vines and shrubs, and patches of green grass. All kinds of sweet old-fashioned flowers grew there, mingling their scent with the strawberries' perfume and the woody odours of the ripening cherries. They were alone in this lovely place; the high privet hedges hid them from the outside world, and the babble and rumble of Broadway came to them only as the murmur of noise in a dream. Speechless ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... that the early inhabitants of Great Britain, Ireland, and parts of France were known as Celts, and that their religion was directed by strange priests called Druids. Three times in the year, on the first of May, for the sowing; at the solstice, June 21st, for the ripening and turn of the year; and on the eve of November 1st, for the harvesting, those mysterious priests of the Celts, the Druids, built fires on the hill-tops in France, Britain, and Ireland, in honor of the sun. At this last festival the Druids ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various

... pamphlets nor cheap magazines written for their amusement or instruction; but this is less owing to want of attention to their interests on the part of many good and enlightened men, than to the unsettled state of the country; for the blight of civil war prevents the best systems from ripening. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... a word on our favourite subject. O fy 'divine Clarinda!' " I suspect, although quite unconsciously on the part of the lady, who was bent on his redemption, they but used the favourite subject as a stalking-horse. In the meantime, the sportive acquaintance was ripening steadily into a genuine passion. Visits took place, and then became frequent. Clarinda's friends were hurt and suspicious; her clergyman interfered; she herself had smart attacks of conscience, but her heart had gone from her control; ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... commissary and no other course had ever been deemed expedient by his successors. In July, 1863, Steele had ordered[879] practically all distribution agencies to be abolished, his reason being that only refugees,[880] Indians out of their own country, ought, in the season of ripened and ripening crops, to need subsistence and such subsistence, being limited in amount and derived altogether from the army supply, could be most economically handled by the regular commissaries. As winter approached and the necessity for feeding on a large ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... of them here the other day. Now if you want a proof of the genial influence of the long-continued snow on vegetation, I can tell you that these cranberries—ottakas, the French Canadians call them—go on ripening through the winter under three or four feet of snow, and are much better and juicier than in October, when they are generally harvested. That cedar swamp ought to be full ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... and right, that the States should resume the control of their local affairs. The division of governmental functions between State and nation was one of the most fortunate circumstances of our birth-period; it was the ripening of our historical antecedents, felicitously grasped and molded by a group of great men. It rests on the fitness of each local community to handle its own affairs, while only the most general and fundamental interests are intrusted to the central authority. When the Southern States were ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... in this city, or at least during the period of my nominal attachment to this academic body, the remoter parts of my future life would unfold before me. All hearts were at this time occupied with the public interests of the country. The "sorrow of the time" was ripening to a second harvest. Napoleon had commenced his Vandal, or rather Hunnish War with Britain, in the spring of this year, about eight months before; and profound public interest it was, into which the very coldest hearts ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... of the West!—'tis well for me My years already doubly number thine;[16] My loveless eye unmoved may gaze on thee, And safely view thy ripening beauties shine; Happy, I ne'er shall see them in decline; Happier, that, while all younger hearts shall bleed, Mine shall escape the doom thine eyes assign To those whose admiration shall succeed, But mixed with pangs to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... stretched themselves out to their furthest over the red wheat, now rapidly ripening; soon they would fade out altogether, and the woods would grow blue. For the sun was touching the line of the distant hills, and the long day's work ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry

... example, were all eagerly hastening towards their several futures. They were garrulous over them at every meal. But to what future in this world were James and Mary Mesurier looking forward? Love had blossomed and brought forth fruit, but the fruit was quickly ripening, and stranger hands would soon pluck it from the boughs. In a very few years they would sit under a roof-tree bared of fruit and blossom, and sad with falling leaves. They had dreamed their dream, and there is only ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... in England by late east winds. The apple blossom is now nipped by the night frosts falling in the latter part of May. Hence no apples can be had in East Siberia, although the summer heats are otherwise amply sufficient for the ripening of fruit. After the fleeting summer, winter weather again sets in. It will often freeze at night in the middle of July; and after the 10th of August the sear leaf begins to fall, and in a few days all are gone, except perhaps the foliage ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various



Words linked to "Ripening" :   organic process, mellowing, ripen, biological process, late-ripening



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