Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Sustenance   /sˈəstənəns/   Listen
Sustenance

noun
1.
A source of materials to nourish the body.  Synonyms: aliment, alimentation, nourishment, nutriment, nutrition, victuals.
2.
The financial means whereby one lives.  Synonyms: bread and butter, keep, livelihood, living, support.  "He applied to the state for support" , "He could no longer earn his own livelihood"
3.
The act of sustaining life by food or providing a means of subsistence.  Synonyms: maintenance, sustainment, sustentation, upkeep.  "Fishing was their main sustainment"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Sustenance" Quotes from Famous Books



... every cranny of the rocks, sending out arms, legs, fingers, ropes, pillars, and what not, of live holdfasts over every rock and over each other till little but the ubiquitous Seguine {95a} and Pinguins {95b} find room or sustenance among them. The island on which we landed is used, from time to time, as a depot for coolie immigrants when first landed. There they remain to rest after the voyage till they can be apportioned by the Government officers to ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... songs, the leading animals are introduced; they come to the boy to offer their bodies for the sustenance of his tribe. The animals are regarded as his friends, and spoken of almost as tribes of people, or as his cousins, grandfathers and grandmothers. The songs of wooing, adapted as lullabies, were equally imaginative, and the suitors were often animals personified, while ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... teetotallers, and no more touch a drop of champagne than a grocer eats his own currants, or a confectioner his own sweetmeats. I suppose the butcher lives exclusively on fish, and his friend, the neighbouring fishmonger, is entirely dependent on the butcher for his sustenance, except when game is in, and then both deal with the gamester or poulterer. There are some traders in necessaries who can make a fair deal all round. The only exception to this rule, for which, from personal observation, I can vouch, is the tobacconist, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various

... patiently to the bottom of the hill of life. She was a woman, who, through life, has been remarkable for her silent resignation to the divine will. What renders the last part of her life remarkable, is, that she lived 39 days without any sustenance whatever, except about two spoonfuls of wine with water daily; the vital motions and functions being so near a cessation, that the solids needed no reparation; yet she retained all her senses to ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... spoiled? Why should you doom him as well as yourself to loneliness? I have not forgotten his look that evening when you were singing to us—it was the look of a man who is starving for a little happiness, for the comfort and sweet sustenance that only a wife can give him. There, I will say no more—I have discharged my conscience, and repeated my boy's words. I trust they have not been spoken in vain." His hand rested lightly on her head for a moment as though in blessing, but no word escaped ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no land? does his crew drink air? Surely, he will stop for water. Nay. For a long time, now, the circus-running sun has raced within his fiery ring, and needs no sustenance but what's in himself. So Ahab. Mark this, too, in the whaler. While other hulls are loaded down with alien stuff, to be transferred to foreign wharves; the world-wandering whale-ship carries no cargo but herself and crew, their weapons ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... that this layer, for the greater part of the growing season, is drawing its sustenance from the parent plant, to which it is still attached. Therefore the other branches of this vine thus called upon for unusual effort should be permitted to fruit but sparingly. We should not injure and enfeeble the original vine in order to get others like it. For this reason we ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... the village of his wife: he thereby pledges himself to furnish the mother of his wife for life with kindling wood: if he divorces, the children remain the property of the mother. On the other hand, the wife must see to the sustenance of the husband. Although, occasionally, slight disagreements break out between man and wife, Livingstone found that the men did not retaliate, but he discovered that the men, who offended their wives, were ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... prisoner, and who afterwards published the dreadful story.[7] "when the fourth night came with renewed terrors. Weak, distracted, and wanting everything, we envied the fate of those whose lifeless corpses no longer needed sustenance. The sense of hunger was already lost, but a parching thirst consumed our vitals. Recourse was had to wine and salt water, which only increased the want. Half a hogshead of vinegar floated up, and each had half a wine-glassful. This gave a momentary relief, yet soon left ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... the rest—but the death of his unhappy patron in 1612 put an end to all these schemes, and reduced Kepler to the utmost misery. While at Prague his salary was in continual arrear, and it was with difficulty that he could provide sustenance for his family. He had been there eleven years, but they had been hard years of poverty, and he could leave without regret were it not that he should have to leave Tycho's instruments and observations behind him. While he was hesitating what best to do, and ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... and no sign of cave or opening, nor disturbance of the earth. Returning thanks to God for being once more in the world, he made the best of his way home. When he got within his mother's door, joy at seeing her and weakness for want of sustenance made him so faint that he remained for a long time as dead. As soon as he recovered, he related to his mother all that had happened to him, and they were both very vehement in their ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... home, he broke his violin and cast the pieces into the fire, to the great dismay of his wife, who saw their family means of sustenance consumed. But his lame child, crying out with joy, leaped across the room to welcome his father. The child was ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous

... he crossed, and the tracks of Wildfire were still wet on the sand bars. The stallion was slowing down. Slone saw him, limping along, not far in advance. There was a ten-mile stretch of level ground, blown hard as rock, from which the sustenance had been bleached, for not a spear of grass grew there. And following that was a tortuous passage through a weird region of clay dunes, blue and violet and heliotrope and lavender, all worn smooth by rain and wind. Wildfire favored the soft ground now. He had deviated from his straight ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... replied the other. "They attach themselves to the rocks at the bottom of the sea, not to draw their sustenance from them in the same way as plants ashore derive their nourishment from the earth through their roots; but, simply to anchor themselves in a secure haven out of reach of the waves, getting all their nutriment from the water, which is the atmosphere of the sea in the same way as air is ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... down on the spars, waiting for seven bells, which was the sign for breakfast. The officer, seeing my lazy posture, ordered me to slush the main-mast, from the royal-mast-head, down. The vessel was then rolling a little, and I had taken no sustenance for three days, so that I felt tempted to tell him that I had rather wait till after breakfast; but I knew that I must "take the bull by the horns," and that if I showed any sign of want of spirit or of backwardness, that ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... against the bad time which they know comes as certainly and periodically as the good time. Bees and squirrels and many others fill their barns with the plentiful overplus of the summer fields, birds can migrate and find sunshine and sustenance elsewhere, and others again can store during their good season a life energy by means whereof they may sleep healthily through their hard times. These organizations can be adjusted to their environments because the changes of the latter are known and can be more ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... been carried from the battle-field seriously wounded and unable to administer to the wants of its Southern offspring. The offspring was not strong enough to stand alone. The result was that its demise soon followed because it had been deprived of that nourishment, that sustenance and that support which were essential to its existence and which could come only from the parent which had been seriously if not fatally wounded upon the field of battle. After the Presidential election of 1872 Southern white men were not ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch

... entered into an argument, some defending the beauty of the younger sister, some of the elder; and it lasted till they entered the park, where all were glad to partake of their well-earned meal, most of the gentlemen having been at work since dawn without sustenance, except a pull at the beer ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... time in exchange for the privilege of working part of the land for his own support. Soldiers defended the landlord and joined plundering forays on the territory of neighbors. The priests, in exchange for sustenance, mollified "higher powers" and built temples in which the people could gather, worship and ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... produce? What shepherd feeds his flock and does not drink its milk and clothe himself with its wool? So, too, may he who sows spiritual seed justly reap the small harvest which he needs for his temporal sustenance. If then he is poor who lives by work, and who eats the fruit of his labour, we may very well be reckoned as such; but if we regard the degree of poverty in which our Lord and His Apostles lived, we must perforce ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... to the rays of the sun. Under this vault, and among those fine trees, prolific nature has given birth to a crowd of climbing plants of a most remarkable description. The rattan and the flexible liana mount up to the topmost branches, and re-descending to the earth, take fresh root, receive new sustenance, and then remount anew, and at various distances they join themselves to the friendly trunks of their supporting columns, and thus they form very often most beautiful decorations. Varieties of the pandanus are to be seen, of which the ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... heaven, so that it overshadowed the regions of the world and all the earth with its boughs and branches, even unto the shores of the sea. And as he gazed it seemed to him that the tree made shelter for the wild beasts, and that it held food for them all, and likewise that the birds of the air found sustenance in the fruit of the tree. And it seemed to him that an angel descended from the heavens, and spake with a loud voice, commanding the tree to be cut down, and the wild beasts and the birds to flee away, when its fall should come. And he bade that its fruit be cut off and its branches ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown

... of fitting reception when you arrive, as you may hold yourself certain of my best endeavours to conduct you thither safely. I go to get the horses; meantime, let me pray you once more, as your poor physician as well as guide, to take some sustenance." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... only on itself, whereas the other arms must depend in a considerable degree on the efficiency of their materials and the will and strength of brute force; and when the snows of Russia or the deserts of Egypt deprive their animals of the means of sustenance, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... attributable rather to his fame as a writer than to any particular excellence in the art which he then exercised. He took upon himself the functions of a lecturer, being moved to do so by a hope that he might thus provide a sum of money for the future sustenance of his children. No doubt he had been advised to this course, though I do not know from whom specially the advice may have come. Dickens had already considered the subject, but had not yet consented to read in public for money on his own account. John Forster, writing of ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... Princeling crawl ashore, And whistle cut-throats, with those swords that scraped Their barren rocks for wretched sustenance, To cut his passage to ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... the prospect of favorable results. As connected equally with both these objects, our trade with those tribes is thought to merit the attention of Congress. In their original state game is their sustenance and war their occupation, and if they find no employment from civilized powers they destroy each other. Left to themselves their extirpation is inevitable. By a judicious regulation of our trade with them ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson

... sweetmeats were sent to them as food, which the most scrupulous could eat from any hand, the soldiers often snatched them from them and ate them themselves, or took them to their officers. The women and children were all stripped of their clothes, and many died from cold and want of sustenance. It was during the months of September and October that these atrocities were perpetrated. The heavy rain had inundated the country, and the poor prisoners were obliged to lie naked and unsheltered ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... however, suppose it to be possible that a people who inhabit a sea-coast, and who seem to derive no part of their sustenance from the productions of the ground, should not be acquainted with some mode of catching fish, though we did not happen to see any of them thus employed, nor observe any canoe, or vessel, in which they could go upon the water. Though they absolutely ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... days, appeared to be in a hopeless state, refusing sustenance of any kind, and became delirious. This was the crisis of the malady; for he soon began to take some food, and recovered strength daily. He at length proposed to attempt the journey, to which I joyfully assented; and ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... twilight of the Arctic evening. None of the party had eaten since breakfast and they felt the need of sustenance. If nothing else, this need of food would have hurried the party on to their ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood

... called the Szekler Stone, and was formerly surmounted by the castle of a Hungarian vice-voivode. Its ruins are still to be seen there. The lower slopes of this mountainside are cultivated now, and the ploughshare is gradually forcing one terrace after another to yield sustenance to the farmer. Thus it is that by these cultivated terraces the centuries of the town's history can be numbered. For there is a village there, deep down in the rocky ravine, as if on the floor of a volcano's crater, ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... Betty wished to leave the house. Jane it was who must scrub the furry quartet until their silky fur stood up in bunches the wrong way all over their chubby little sides; Jane must sleep with them nights, and be ready to furnish sustenance at any moment of day or night; and above all, Jane must watch them anxiously and incessantly in waking hours, uttering those little protesting murmurs of admonition which mother cats deem so necessary toward the proper training of kittens. And, poor ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... in people's mouths, and are so rare in fact, that their definition is evidently as little understood as the principle of their connection. The point at which they unite, the common root from which they derive their sustenance, is the right of self-government. The modern theory, which has swept away every authority except that of the State, and has made the sovereign power irresistible by multiplying those who share it, is the enemy of that common freedom in which religious freedom ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... power. The unfortunate duke was discovered in a ditch, half concealed by fern and nettles. His stock of provision, which consisted of some peas gathered in the fields through which he had fled, was nearly exhausted, and there is reason to think that he had little, if any other sustenance, since he left Bridgewater on the evening of the 5th. To repose he had been equally a stranger; how his mind must have been harassed, it is needless to discuss. Yet that in such circumstances he appeared ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox

... back by a passing shower. On the same day a party of Roman sportsmen, out quail shooting, were "held up" in the ruins and obliged to pay a ransom of five thousand scudi. The brigands of the kingdom of Naples were constantly given refuge and sustenance on our side the frontier, and on a visit to Olevano, in the Sabine hills, I was witness of a band of over two hundred taking refuge from the Italian troops in the Papal territory, and being furnished with provisions and refreshments as at a festa. Artists out sketching were never ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... frequently for sustenance to memories and seek discourse with the shades, unless one has made up one's mind to write only in order to reprove mankind for what it is, or praise it for what it is not, or—generally—to teach it how to behave. Being neither quarrelsome, nor a flatterer, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... bay about a league farther within the straits. The 22d they were nearly destroyed by a violent storm, but the weather became calm next day. The constant employment of the seamen was to go on shore in search of muscles for their sustenance at low water, and when the tide was in to fetch wood and fresh water, so that they had no time to dry themselves, though they kept up a good fire continually. In short, during the whole nine months spent in these straits, now and formerly, they scarcely had an opportunity once to dry their sails, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... conscious of the success of his solution of it, naturally complained of the severe discipline to which he owed his strength. We who enjoy the results may feel how much he owed to the very sternness of his education and the niggard hand with which his imaginative sustenance was dealt out to him. The observation may sound paradoxical at the first moment, and yet it is supported by analogy. Are not the best cooks produced just where the raw material is the worst, and precisely because ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... the powerful leader of the anti-Broderick party, more than he was to Broderick; but this was overlooked by many of Gwin's supporters. The friends, of General McDougall were his warmest friends and backers, They now rallied to his support and to the sustenance of the Herald. General Volney E. Howard, J. Thompson Campbell, Judge R. Augustus Thompson, W. T. Sherman, the manager of Lucas, Turner & Co.'s banking house here—now General Sherman—Austin E. Smith, Sam. E. Brooks, Gouverneur Morris, Hamilton Bowie, Major Richard Roman; and the solid ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara

... infinity of delights for eye, ear, and understanding? Whence that abundance that even furnishes our luxury? Think of all the trees in their rich variety, the many wholesome herbs, and such diversity of foods apportioned among the seasons that even the sluggard might find sustenance from the casual bounty of earth. Whence come living creatures of every kind, some bred on solid dry land, some in water, others speeding through the air, to the end that every part of nature may yield us some tribute? Those rivers, too, that, with their pretty bends, environ ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... descended in the night. Even these, however, only benefited the vegetation where any continued to exist, and did not contribute in the slightest degree to the natural water supply so necessary for the sustenance of human and animal life. The results were terrible to witness. Kangaroos and snakes; emus and cockatoos; lizards and rats—all lay about either dead or dying; and in the case of animals who had survived, they seemed no longer to fear their natural ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... he was digging for roots, his poor sustenance, his spade struck against something heavy, which proved to be gold, a great heap which some miser had probably buried in a time of alarm, thinking to have come again and taken it from its prison, but died before the opportunity had arrived, without making ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... well bear with poverty while the ability to gain sustenance remains. The individual who has but his own wants to supply may suffer with fortitude the winter of want; his affections are not wounded, his heart is not wrung. The most desolate in populous cities may hope, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... continued to fish up plate, bullion, and dollars as plentifully as ever till their provisions grew short. Then, as they could not feed upon gold and silver any more than old King Midas could, they found it necessary to go in search of better sustenance. Phipps resolved to return to England. He arrived there in 1687. and was received with great joy by the Duke of Albemarle and other English lords who had fitted out the vessel. Well they might rejoice, for they took by far the greater part ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... receiver, whom they made constable: the chartists—men, in whose fate millions have publicly expressed an interest. There was Collins, the mad sailor, who threw a stone at the last king; May, who murdered the Italian boy; and Cohen, a jew, who resigned himself to despair, and refusing sustenance, died: they now rest ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... among the clergy than among ordinary mortals, it is because the clerical vocation is one that tempts men who have this temperament strongly developed to enter it, and afterwards provides a good deal of sustenance to the particular form of vanity that lies behind the temptation. The dramatic sense loves public appearances and trappings, processions and ceremonies. The instinctive dramatist, who is also a clergyman, tends to think of himself as moving to his place in the sanctuary in a solemn ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... in preference to the scarcely less fertile soil of the prairies, lying in situations less accessible, and more remote from market. They came to a wilderness in which houses were not prepared for their reception, nor food, other than that supplied by nature, provided for their sustenance. They often encamped on the margin of the river exposed to its chilly atmosphere, without a tent to shelter, with scarcely a blanket to protect them. Their first habitations were rude cabins, affording ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... and sunfish but no trout. Its water was not pure enough for trout. Was there ever any other fish so fastidious as this, requiring such sweet harmony and perfection of the elements for its production and sustenance? On higher ground about a mile distant was a trout pond, the shores of which were ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... hills the rain of the Atlantic, so the Western Peloponnese arrests, in the clouds of the first mountain ranges of Arcadia, the moisture of the Mediterranean; and over all the plains of Elis, Pylos, and Messene, the strength and sustenance of men was naturally felt to be granted by Zeus; as, on the east coast of Greece, the greater clearness of the air by the power of Athena. If you will recollect the prayer of Rhea, in the single line of Callimachus—[Greek: "Taia phile, teke kai su; teai d' odines elaphrai]," (compare Pausanias, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... horse, and till he carries his last sheaf of corn and his last loaf of bread to the next bivouac; and then he may think himself fortunate, if he is suffered to return home without horses or waggon, and is not compelled to accompany the depredators many miles without sustenance of any kind. In all other armies, whether Russians, Prussians, Austrians, or Swedes, when the troops are not drawn out in line of battle opposite to the enemy, in which case it is necessary to send back ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)

... attaining this wealth; and notwithstanding the scarcity of food, and the danger of an assault by "two or three thousand" savages, they continued to toil up the river. They labored on until they had nothing for sustenance except two dogs of the mastiff species and the sassafras leaves which grew in great abundance around them. Upon this inviting fare they were fain to nourish their bodies, while their souls were fed upon the hope of finally entering this region of pearls; but at length, in a state near to starvation, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... self-accusing Conscience, he became a Burthen to himself: Cursing the Day in which he harkned to the Bawd's Insinuations, by whose means he was thus drawn in, to ruine both himself and all his Family: And being almost starv'd for want of Sustenance, o'er-come with Grief ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous

... that all this could be undergone with impunity. They suffered terribly from malarial and rheumatic complaints, and the instances of vigorous and painless age were rare among them. The lack of moral and mental sustenance was still more marked. They were inclined to be a religious people, but a sermon was an unusual luxury, only to be enjoyed at long intervals and by great expense of time. There were few books or none, and there was little opportunity for the exchange of opinion. Any variation in the dreary ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... continue to have a number of monographs, more or less scholarly in treatment—one dealing with the Grail as a Food-providing talisman, and that alone; another with the Grail as a vehicle of spiritual sustenance. One that treats of the Lance as a Pagan weapon, and nothing more; another that regards it as a Christian relic, and nothing less. At one moment the object of the study will be the Fisher King, without any relation to the symbols he guards, or ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... lives of all. The fallen may be raised up, the exposed may be shielded, the wanderers may be called home, or else this house is built upon the sand, and doomed to fall when the rains shall descend, the floods come, and the winds blow. The returning autumn, with its harvest of sustenance and wealth, bids us contemplate again the mystery and harmony of the natural world. The tree and the herb produce seed, and the seed again produces the tree and the herb, each after its kind. There is a continued production ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... eat the regulation bread, the general-officers were reduced to the most miserable shifts, and were like the privates, without pay, oftentimes for seven or eight days running. There was no meat and no bread for the army. The common soldiers were reduced to herbs and roots for all sustenance. Under these circumstances it was found impossible to persevere in trying to save Mons. Nothing but subsistence ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... in his leafy hut, he gave it food, And daily nourished it with patient care, Until it grew in stature and in strength, And to the forest skirts could venture forth In search of sustenance. At early morn Thenceforth it used to leave the hermitage And with the shades of evening come again, And in the little courtyard of the hut Lie down in peace, unless the tigers fierce, Prowling about, compelled it to return Earlier at noon. ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt

... Rice cakes, simply made, are very light and easy of digestion. The gluten confers the property of rising on dough or paste made of Rice flour. But as an article of sustenance Rice is not well suited for persons of fermentative tendencies during the digestion of their food, because its starch is liable to undergo this chemical change ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... which oxen are able to move, and the fact that they must graze in the daytime, limit the length of a march and the hours of working. Nevertheless, oxen can draw far greater loads than mules, can work over heavy ground in wet weather, and for most of the year depend for their sustenance on grazing alone. On the other hand, mules travel more quickly, and can feed at any time of the day or night, but forage for them must be carried, since grazing alone is not sufficient to keep them in working condition—and their loads must be lighter; their use, therefore, increases ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... fighting cocks at Steve's, as happens on most of the small ranches. The extreme glory of the prairie was not ours. We were wood-choppers, hay-cutters, and farmers, as well as punchers; but what we lost in romance, we made up in sustenance. No one ever saw a biscuit suffering from soda-jaundice on Steve's table. And how, after a night's sleep in a temperature of forty below zero, I would champ my teeth on the path to breakfast! Eating was not an appetite in those days—it ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... least thing had passed her lips in the nature of sustenance, neither her youth nor the fact that she was being half starved in her prison could save her from dangerous suspicion of contempt for ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... shall prescribe her an ounce of camphire every morning, for her breakfast, to abate incontinency. She shall never peep abroad, no, not to church for confession; and, for never going, she shall be condemned for a heretic. She shall have stripes by Troy weight, and sustenance by drachms and scruples: Nay, I'll have a fasting almanack, printed on purpose for her use, in which No Carnival nor Christmas shall appear, But lents and ember-weeks ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... into herself as if she had been struck. Often enough had he tried to reach those lips against her consent—often had he said gaily that her mouth and breath tasted of the butter and eggs and milk and honey on which she mainly lived, that he drew sustenance from them, and other follies of that sort. But he did not care for them now. He observed her ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... was a heavy-pulling boat and deeply laden, could not; and in a quarter of an hour we had the misery to see her in the breakers, swallowed up with all hands, together with all the provisions and water for our sustenance. I will not attempt to describe the agony of the steward's wife, who saw her husband perish before her eyes. She fainted; and it was a long time before she came to again; for no one could leave his oar for a minute to assist her, as we pulled for ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... and resurrection of their great god the Egyptians drew not only their support and sustenance in this life, but also their hope of a life eternal beyond the grave. This hope is indicated in the clearest manner by the very remarkable effigies of Osiris which have come to light in Egyptian cemeteries. Thus in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... belonged. As he thought of her long and useful life, and looked upon her sweet, placid countenance bearing but few tokens of her ninety-two years of earthly pilgrimage, he was moved to ask her, "My dear Mrs. S., what has been the chief source of your strength and sustenance during all these years? What has appealed to you as the real basis of your unusual vigor of mind and body, and has been to you an unfailing comfort through joy and sorrow? Tell me, that I may pass the secret on to others, and, if possible, profit ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... there all this while; but upon the fourth day, in the morning, from behind the wainscot in the galleries, came forth two men of their own voluntary accord, as being no longer able there to conceal themselves; for they confessed that they had but one apple between them, which was all the sustenance they had received during the time they were thus hidden. One of them was named Owen, who afterwards murdered himself in the Tower; and the other Chambers; but they would take no other knowledge of any other men's being in the house. On the eighth day the before-mentioned ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea

... me to make any such preparations. I could not tell what sort of sustenance she would look for from my sagacity. And as to taking stock of the wares of my mind no one I imagine is anxious to do that sort of thing if it can be avoided. A vaguely grandiose state of mental self-confidence is much too agreeable to ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... towards brutes, but to inculcate the duty of rewarding those who serve us, showing that they who labor for others, are entitled to what is just and equal in return; and if such care is enjoined, by God, not merely for the ample sustenance, but for the present enjoyment of a brute, what would be a meet return for the services of man? MAN, with his varied wants, exalted nature and immortal destiny! Paul tells us expressly, that the principle which we have named, lies at the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... work of fanatics who sought to subvert every authority but their own; and the unfortunate mob who followed them, in so far as they fought for anything beyond the daily pay which had been their only means of sustenance since the siege began, fought for they knew not what. As the conflict was prolonged, it took on both sides a character of atrocious violence and cruelty. The murder of Generals Lecomte and Thomas at the outset was avenged by the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... growth of plants, O to that of animals; and the constituents of the atmosphere vary little from one age to another. The compensation of nature is here well shown. Plants feed upon what animals discard, transforming it into material for the sustenance of the latter, while animals prepare food for plants. All the C in plants is supposed to come from the CO2 in the atmosphere. Animals obtain their supply from plants. The utility of the small percentage of CO2 in the air is ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams

... no means of feeding these thousands of helpless ones. Their only means of sustenance was from the charity of the British and French soldiers, who shared ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat

... the excellent mead to you which is drunk by the son of Ness, the rich in strife, there has been known to me, ere now, leaping over a bank, frequent sustenance which was sweeter. ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy

... which it is very necessary to have clear ideas. Suppose a carpenter in Lanzerote to be engaged in making chests of drawers. Let us suppose that a, the timber, and b, the grain and meat needful for the man's sustenance until he can finish a chest of drawers, have to be paid for by that chest. Then the capital with which he starts is represented by a b. He could not start at all unless he had it; day by day, he must destroy ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... the second figure; take a third; one which our Lord Himself has given us. Here is the picture—a palace, a table abundantly spread, lights and music, delight and banqueting, gladness and fulness, society and sustenance. The guests sit close and all partake. To be within means food, shelter, warmth, festivity, society; to be without, like Lear on the moor, is to stand the pelting of the storm, weary, stumbling in the dark, starving, solitary, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... prosperous kings. Whatever limits to the increase of man artificial wants may interpose in a civilised state and in ordinary climates are unknown in a tropical region, where clothing is an encumbrance, the smallest shelter a home, and sustenance supplied by the bounty of the soil in almost spontaneous abundance. Under such propitious circumstances, in the midst of a profusion of fruit-bearing-trees, and in a country replenished by a teeming harvest twice, at least, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... castle exacted two abacees for each camel in the caravan, though nothing was legally due, as he and his troops have their pay from the king. In the whole of our way, from the river Lacca to Chatzan, we found no sustenance for man or beast, except in some places a little grass, so that we had to make provision at Lacca, hiring a bullock to carry barley for our horses. The Agwans or Afgans, as the people of the mountains are called, came down to us every day at our ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... the other hand, young fresh strength droops and is lost for want of sustenance; this is the case with thousands everywhere! A hundred, a thousand good deeds and enterprises could be carried out and upheld with the money this old woman has bequeathed to a monastery. A dozen families might be saved from hunger, want, ruin, crime, and misery, and all ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... smoothing their feathers, and through rain drove to a hill covered closely with small trees. The trees were small, because the soil from which they drew sustenance was only one to three feet deep. Beneath that was chalk. Through these woods was cut a runway for a toy railroad. It possessed the narrowest of narrow gauges, and its rolling-stock consisted of flat cars three feet wide, drawn ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... the case. Man exchanged his mental or physical energy for these Dollars. He then re-exchanged the Dollars for sustenance, raiment, pleasure, and operations for the removal of ...
— John Jones's Dollar • Harry Stephen Keeler

... naturally, the least beloved of all. It would be as easy and as profitable a problem to solve the Rabelaisian riddle of the bombinating chimaera with its potential or hypothetical faculty of deriving sustenance from a course of diet on second intentions, as to read the riddle of Shakespeare's design in the procreation of this yet more mysterious and magnificent monster of a play. That on its production in print it was formally announced as "a new play never staled with the stage, ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the episcopal bench was nothing. A prelate was rarely seen in the saloons of Zenobia. It is since the depths of religious thought have been probed, and the influence of woman in the spread and sustenance of religious feeling has again been recognised, that fascinating and fashionable prelates have become favoured guests in the refined saloons of the mighty, and, while apparently indulging in the vanities of the hour, have re-established the ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... property liable for the separate debts of the other [Sec.3403.] The husband is liable for necessaries furnished the wife, upon an implied obligation to provide for her a reasonable support. The term "necessaries," is not confined to the supply of things actually demanded for her sustenance, such as food, clothing and medicine, but includes all that may be needful for her comfort and happiness according to her rank and station in society. In determining the extent of the husband's liability, it is always proper to consider the wife's ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson

... and explanation. The intellect, scientifically enlightened, would argue away and take the place of innate, inspired feelings, whose faith has been correspondingly impaired and shaken by the breaking down of religious shelter and sustenance. ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... Christians, who were unanimous in the belief that the Baptist lived on the produce of a particular tree which still abounds in the desert. Nay, the friars at the present day assert, that the very plants which yielded sustenance to the holy recluse continue to flourish in their ancient vigour; and the popish pilgrims, says Mr. Maundrell, who dare not be wiser than such blind guides, gather the fruit of them, and carry ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... the historian, it booteth not to tell of all those minor haps and chances that befell them; how, despite all Beltane's wood-craft, they went astray full oft by reason of fordless rivers and quaking swamps: of how they snared game to their sustenance, or how, for all the care and skill of Sir Fidelis, Beltane's wound healed not, by reason of continual riding, for that each day he grew more restless and eager for knowledge of Belsaye, so that, because of his wound he knew small rest by day and a fevered sleep ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... it is communicated only through a losing of herself, which marks her union with the greatest powers of life. It is, I think, one of the most destroying tragedies of our industrial society that women are denied this sustenance in a fixed and regulated unison of sacrifice, are forced away from service to life, excited to do violence to their deepest instinct, by engaging in the deadly and futile rivalry, where the greatest successfulness must bring to ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... herself had pneumonia and no doctor, for two months, it was well known that she had lain on her back, free from every kind of remedy, employing only courage, nature, and beef tea, or some such simple sustenance. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... in little battalions like infantry. It is remarkable in how shallow and how very poor a soil the vine will grow. At Saint Michael's, they dig square holes in the volcanic rocks, and the vines find sustenance. At the Cape of Good Hope the Constantia vineyards are planted upon little more than sand. I dug down some depth; and could find nothing else. The finest grapes grown in Burgundy are upon a stratum of soil little more than a foot deep, over schistus slate quarries, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... Seraphita-Seraphitus talks with assurance of the essence of phenomena and the invisible world, but, forsooth, only to initiate the shades that visit spiritualistic seances, and to say what is either obscure verbiage, or a hash-up of philosophies often digested without much sustenance derived from them. In the end, this dual personage vanishes from our mundane atmosphere, translated bodily to heaven; and leaves his or her lovers to repair their loss—just like a forlorn widow or widower—by making a match based on rules of ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... came, and fell to upon the broiled fish and strong ale, with a sort of fury, as determined to do his duty to the utmost in all matters that day, and therefore, of course, in that most important matter of bodily sustenance; while his mother and Frank looked at him, not without anxiety and even terror, doubting what turn his fancy might have taken in so new a ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... Whether by these means much of that sustenance and wealth of this nation which now goes to foreigners would not be kept at home, and nourish and ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... ask for him her forgiveness. Never again would he cross her path. His grief broke forth afresh every few moments, and he was weak as a child. Ray became really alarmed about him, and going into the dining-room where he and Blake were accustomed to take their bachelor sustenance, he rummaged around in the dark for some brandy. Of late he had given up all use of stimulants, and Blake was down at the store. It was some minutes before he found the decanter, but when he returned the room was empty. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... brought about the present state of things, will understand that of the evils which have so alarmingly demoralized our political life, and so sadly lowered this Republic in the respect of the world, many, if not most, had their origin, and find their sustenance, in that practice which treats the public offices as the plunder of victorious parties; that as, with the increase of our population, the growth of our wealth, and the multiplication of our public interests, the functions of government expand and become more complicated, those evils will grow ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... for two miles, they came upon a small stream. Here they sat down, lighted a fire, mixed some flour and water—for although the ghee had been taken from them, when they were disarmed, they had been allowed to retain their supply of flour, for their sustenance in prison—and made some small cakes. These they cooked in the glowing embers. They could not be termed a success, for the outside was burned black, while the centre was a pasty mass. However, they ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... been educated in the enjoyment of ease and luxury, discovered how little is requisite to supply the demands of nature; and lavished their unavailing treasures of gold and silver, to obtain the coarse and scanty sustenance which they would formerly have rejected with disdain. The food the most repugnant to sense or imagination, the aliments the most unwholesome and pernicious to the constitution, were eagerly devoured, and fiercely disputed, by the rage of hunger. A dark suspicion was entertained, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... Europe or America know anything about them. Most travelers have never heard of them. No liners touch them; no wire or wireless connects them with the world. No tourists visit them. Their people perish. Their trade languishes. In Tahiti, whence they draw almost all their sustenance, where their laws are made, and to which they look at the capital of the world, only a few men, who traded here, could tell me anything about the Marquesas. These men had only the vague, exaggerated ideas of the sailor, who goes ashore ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... west and east, vex neither sea nor land nor the trees that grow on it? Truly these things were ordered by Him who kept this woman safe from the tempest, as well when she awoke as when she slept. But whence might this woman have meat and drink, and how could her sustenance last out to her for three years and more? Who, then, fed Saint Mary the Egyptian in the cavern or in the desert? Assuredly no one but Christ. It was a great miracle to feed five thousand folk with five loaves and two fishes; but God in their great ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... from the rigors of the winter, and the large stores of wine found in Dantzig were an important resource for the soldiers. The attempts at mediation by Austria had failed; the campaign of 1809 was being prepared; everywhere the grass was springing up in the fields, affording necessary sustenance for the horses; the wild swans were reappearing in flocks upon the shores of the Passarge. The Emperor Napoleon had fixed upon the 10th of June ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... and Crees, was said to have thus received its name. Andrew McDermott knew all the Indians as they drew near with curiosity, to see the settlers and to speculate upon the object of their coming. The Indian despises the man who uses the hoe, and when the Colonists sought thus to gain a sustenance from the fertile soil of the field, they were laughed at by the Indians who caught the French word "Jardiniers," or gardeners, and applied ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... sustenance declared thy sweetness unto thy children, and serving to the appetite of the eater, tempered ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... not bite which thou drawest, unless it sing round thy own head. Then would Helgi's death be on thee avenged, if a wolf thou wert, out in the woods, of all good bereft, and every joy, have no sustenance, unless on corpses thou ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... distance in the midst of the gardens that surrounded it, and saw the way by which the magician had brought him. Returning God thanks to find himself once more in the world, he made the best of his way home. When he got within his mother's door, the joy to see her and his weakness for want of sustenance for three days made him faint, and he remained for a long time as dead. His mother, who had given him over for lost, seeing him in this condition, omitted nothing to bring him to himself. As soon as he recovered, the first words ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... choice—they offer the world of coercion. And the way of the past shows clearly that freedom, not coercion, is the wave of the future. At times our goal has been obscured by crisis or endangered by conflict—but it draws sustenance from ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... from the surrounding, quivering, dainty flesh! See how it gradually but surely expands and grows! By what marvelous mechanism it is supplied with long and slender roots that reach out to the most secret nerves of pain for sustenance and life! What beautiful colors it presents! Seen through the microscope it is a miracle of order and beauty. All the ingenuity of man cannot stop its growth. Think of the amount of thought it must have required to invent a way by which the life of one man might be given to produce one cancer? ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... trade, in fact, which gave early sustenance and vitality to the great Canadian provinces. Being destitute of the precious metals, at that time the leading objects of American enterprise, they were long neglected by the parent country. The French adventurers, however, who ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... will show itself full of microscopic creatures, shrimp-like and swift; and the famous red snow of the Arctic regions is only an exhibition of the same property. It has sometimes been fancied that persons buried under the snow have received sustenance through the pores of the skin, like reptiles imbedded in rock. Elizabeth Woodcock lived eight days beneath a snow-drift, in 1799, without eating a morsel; and a Swiss family were buried beneath an avalanche, in a manger, for five months, in 1755, with no food but a trifling store of chestnuts and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... that it is impossible to calculate exactly how long she may be spared to you; but I am sure her fate might be prolonged, and her remaining days more happy, if she could be induced to remove into a better air and a more quiet neighbourhood, to take more generous sustenance, and, above all, if her mind could be set more at ease as to your and your brother's prospects. You must pardon me if I have seemed inquisitive; but I have sought to draw from your mother some particulars as to her family and connections, with a wish to represent ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Brothers deserted their brothers, children their parents, and parents their children; and in some of the caves on the coast, heaps of decayed bones still indicate the spots where the helpless sufferers were left to expire, not so much perhaps from the violence of the disease as from the want of sustenance. ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... are also made "partakers of the Divine Nature[1]," their birth-sin being at the same time washed away by the Virtue of His Cleansing Blood. This Life, once begun, is kept up in faithful Christians by believing and persevering use of the Mystical Food provided for its sustenance in their souls—the Blessed Body and Precious Blood thus given to them being a continual extension of the Incarnation; whilst their actual sins are forgiven by the absolving Word of the Priest, and the Pleading of the One Sacrifice, unceasingly presented in Heaven, and constantly ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... joint by carbonic acid gas, and the dessert by ammonia. On these four items a green plant feeds, out of them it builds up its living frame. Note that its diet is of inorganic or non-living matter. It derives its sustenance from soil and air, yet out of these lifeless matters the green plant elaborates and manufactures its living matter, or protoplasm. It is a more wonderful organism than the animal, for while the latter can only make new protoplasm when living ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various

... though feeble, began to flow once more through her veins; and when reason came back, and with it the outgushing tenderness of the young mother, she found that her babe had been laid upon another breast, and that from another it was to draw the sustenance which nature had supplied for it in ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur

... impression. It is, therefore, with no little satisfaction that I now class the Diatomaceoe with plants, probably maintaining in the South Polar Ocean that balance between the vegetable and the animal kingdoms which prevails over the surface of our globe. Nor is the sustenance and nutrition of the animal kingdom the only function these minute productions may perform; they may also be the purifiers of the vitiated atmosphere, and thus execute in the Antarctic latitudes the office of our trees and grass turf in the temperate ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... the clue is oftener purely imaginary than real. A little discrepancy like this does not disturb the professional scandal-monger. So tenacious is the habit of making much of nothing, that, deprived of this, her sustenance, she would find life colorless and void. So, if material does not present itself, she manufactures it. ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... support some living creatures. Running down upon it, four wretched, emaciated men were discovered clinging to a piece of wreckage, and wildly waving for assistance. They were taken aboard the British man-of-war, and given food and drink, of both of which they partook greedily; for their sole sustenance during the four days for which they clung to their frail raft was rain-water sucked from a piece ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... and thrived in the Overholt home. The tiny rootlets of his avid, unconscious baby life he thrust out in all directions through that kind soil, sucking, sucking, grasping, laying hold, drawing to him and his great little needs sustenance material and spiritual. More keen and capable to penetrate were those thready little fibres than the irresistible water-seeking tap-root of the cottonwood or the mesquite of the plains; more powerful to clasp and to hold than the cablelike ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... should an old man, whose race is nearly run, hesitate to own, that in the pride of his youth and strength, he was made to feel how insufficient we all are for our wants? Yes, I prayed; and I hope in a fitting spirit, for I felt that this spiritual sustenance did me even more good than the material of which I had just before partaken. When I rose from my knees, it was with a sense of hope, that I endeavoured to suppress a little, as both unreasonable and dangerous. ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... agility, his courage, his arms, and his force, we shall find that his advantages hold proportion with his wants.... In man alone this unnatural conjunction of infirmity and of necessity may be observed in the greatest perfection. Not only the food which is required for his sustenance flies his search and approach, or at least requires his labour to be produced, but he must be possessed of clothes and lodging to defend him against the injuries of the weather: though to consider him only in himself, he is provided neither with arms, nor force, nor other ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch

... youth seek to obtain that which shall compensate the losses of thy old age. And if thou understandest that old age is fed with wisdom, so conduct thyself in the days of thy youth that sustenance may not be ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci

... Martine served him, not even noticing the comforts with which she once more surrounded him, in humble adoration, heart-broken at giving her money, but very happy to support him now, without his suspecting that his sustenance came from her. ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola



Words linked to "Sustenance" :   creature comforts, repast, keep, delicacy, meal ticket, dish, nutrient, nutrition, sustentation, ingesta, meal, course, mess, conveniences, comforts, stodge, finger food, sustain, goody, dainty, kickshaw, fast food, resource, treat, milk, subsistence, vitamin, upkeep, amenities, mince, kosher, puree, food, wheat germ



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com