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More "Thorny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hills east of Rio Paraguay; Gran Chaco region west of Rio Paraguay mostly low, marshy plain near the river, and dry forest and thorny ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... quiet slumber all over earth, and woodland and wild waters had sunk to rest; now the stars wheel midway on their gliding path, now all the country is silent, and beasts and gay birds that haunt liquid levels of lake or thorny rustic thicket lay couched asleep under the still night. But not so the distressed Phoenician, nor does she ever sink asleep or take the night upon eyes or breast; her pain redoubles, and her love swells to renewed madness, as she tosses on the strong tide of wrath. Even so she begins, and thus ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... condition. Yes, I am hoping even far more. If I could only experience the marvellous change which Dr. Barstow described so eloquently last Sunday evening, might I not do right easily and almost spontaneously? It is so desperately hard to do right now! If conversion will render my steep, thorny path infinitely easier, then surely I ought to seek this change by every means in my power. Indeed, there must be a change in me, or I shall lose even the foothold I have gained. I am subjected, all day long, to insult and annoyance. At ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... man as can slide down a thorny locust and never get scratched!" he shouted. This was equivalent to setting his triggers; then he launched himself nimbly and with enthusiasm into the thick of the fight. It was Mr. Bunker's unfortunate privilege to sustain the onslaught ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... public, and the benefit of an affectionate parent, a few circumstances connected with Briggs' family, with such observations and reflections of her own as would naturally suggest themselves to a refined and intelligent mind. Should this first essay of a timid girl in the thorny path of literature be favourably received by my friends and patrons, it will stimulate her to fresh exertions; and, I fondly hope, may be the means of placing her name in the same rank by those of Lady Morgan, Madame Tussaud, Mrs. Glasse, the Invisible ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... has not the heart to plant annuals, much less perennials, under such circumstances. Let the Parsonage Aid Society do it, if it must be done. And the Parsonage Aid Society does do it. You will see in many Methodist preachers' front yards fiercely-thorny, old-lady-faced roses—the kind that thrive without attention—planted always by the president of the Parsonage Aid Society. And it may be there will be a syringa bush in the background, not that the Parsonage Aid Society is partial ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... street with a lowering front, unmindful of the hints of Dr. Mather, who is aware of an unsettled dispute between the captain and the governor, relative to the authority of the latter over a king's ship on the provincial station. Into this thorny subject, Sir William plunges headlong. The captain makes answer with less deference than the dignity of the potentate requires: the affair grows hot; and the clergymen endeavor to interfere in the blessed ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... way is cut off by huge thorny hedges and fences of barbed wire—man's devilish improvement on the bramble—brought down to the water's edge. The river-follower must force his way through these obstacles, in most cases greatly to the detriment of his clothes and temper; ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... first successful, and both from the Vatican and from Frederick William III., who put him in charge of the legation on Niebuhr's resignation, he received unqualified approbation. Owing partly to the wise statesmanship of Count Spiegel, archbishop of Cologne, an arrangement was made by which the thorny question of "mixed" marriages (i.e. between Catholic and Protestant) would have been happily solved; but the archbishop died in 1835, the arrangement was never ratified, and the Prussian king was foolish enough to appoint as Spiegel's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Except at their meals, and when he took them for their walk, and when they were sent to him to be reprimanded, his children never beheld him in the flesh. Mamma, poor lady, careful of many other things, superintended her children unremittingly, to keep them in the thorny way they should go. Hers the burden and heat of every day, hers to double the roles of Martha and Cornelia, that her husband might be left ever calmly aloof in that darkened room, the Study. There, in a high armchair, with one stout calf ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... "shall the seas float without their silent inhabitants; the thorny hedges cease to hide the birds; the oak to spread its boughs; and Flora to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... two of our elders went out for a stroll into the village. I could not restrain my eagerness any longer, and, slipping out unperceived, followed them for some distance. As I went along the deeply shaded lane, with its close thorny seora hedges, by the side of the tank covered with green water weeds, I rapturously took in picture after picture. I still remember the man with bare body, engaged in a belated toilet on the edge of the tank, cleaning his teeth with the chewed end of a twig. Suddenly my elders ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... redeeming Saviour; he is my sole refuge. To our mother, my conscience acquits me either of intentional errors, or errors of omission. This is a source of the purest consolation; it clears the rough, the thorny path to the valley of death. Elizabeth, my dearest sister, listen to me before I go hence, and be no more seen. Every night recall to mind the actions of the day. Let this be the question you put to yourself: "Have I done my duty in all things?" Where you have failed, let the morning ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... and by whom conferred, M. Thiers went to Bordeaux in 1871, is a thorny question, into which I need not here enter. What he might have done for his country is, perhaps, uncertain. What he did we know. He founded a republic of which, in one of his characteristic phrases, he said that: 'it must be Conservative, or it could not be,' ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... longer he thought the more sure he was that the girls were beginning to guess his position, and that his only course was a polite indifference to both. But this policy promised to lead through a thorny path, and to what? In impotent rage at himself he ground his teeth during the pauses between the stanzas that he was compelled to sing. Such was the discord in his heart that he felt like uttering notes that would make ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... primitive forms the Bengalees owed whatever influence they retained under Mahomedan rule, has given them under British rule far larger opportunities which they have turned to account with no mean measure of success. I must reserve the thorny question of education for separate treatment. All I need say for the present is that, had it grown less instead of more superficial, had it been less divorced from discipline and moral training as well as from the realities of ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... on which the proprietors had hitherto let themselves be borne along by the force of circumstances suddenly split up into a number of narrow, arduous, thorny paths. Each one had to use his judgement to determine which of the paths he should adopt, and, having made his choice, he had to struggle along as he best could. I remember once asking a proprietor what effect the Emancipation had had on the class to which he belonged, and he gave ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... path with a sword. Above the bush towered the giants of the forest—great cotton trees, thirty or forty feet in circumference, and rising to the height of from two to three hundred feet. Round the tops of these many birds were flitting, but in the underbrush there was no sign or sound of life. Thorny ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... I must not be understood as pretending to settle the thorny question of a reconciliation between freedom of choice and pre-determination or prevision. All I there contend for is that no mechanical or scientific determinism, subject to special conditions in a limited region, can ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... fortress is the good greenwood, Our tent the cypress tree; We know the forest round us As seamen know the sea. We know its walls of thorny vines, Its glades of reedy grass, Its safe and silent islands Within the ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... But the ground was not level, being deeply scarred with watercourses, and not easy to cross at any time, much less in a storm. I managed to get entangled in a thorny shrub, and was nearly thrown on my face by the force of the wind as I ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... the son of Indra, with a calm mind, and firmly adhering to his purpose, then devoted himself, without the loss of any time, to ascetic austerities. And he entered, all alone, that terrible forest abounding with thorny plants and trees and flowers and fruits of various kinds, and inhabited by winged creatures of various species, and swarming with animals of diverse kinds, and resorted to by Siddhas and Charanas. ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... not in the procession, and the teacher, riding on, found her lying face down among the briars of the desolate meeting-house yard, her small body convulsively heaving with her weeping, and her slim fingers grasping the thorny briar shoots as though she would still hold to the earth that lay in freshly broken clods over her ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Miss Anthony were pioneers struggling for this righteous cause. I think the greatest reforms, the greatest progress ever made for any reforms in our country have been along the lines on which they worked. Miss Anthony's has been a long life. She has trod the thorny way, has walked through briars with bleeding feet, but it is through a sweet and lovely way now and the hearts of the whole country are with her. A few days ago some one said to me that every woman should stand with ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... the wheels of state, And so 'twere well within his itching hand To place commission for those distant Isles Where mild efficiency can work no harm. 'Tis strange that Francos in the halls of state So long hath squatted, in a chair too big, But still much gold can smooth a thorny path And work discovery of hidden worth. With modest mental gifts, but gentle mien He ill is fitted for promotion here. But it were matter of but little weight With Quezox as a mentor at his side, What he shall fashion in his pigmy state, For squirt from wisdom's fount can quench each flame. ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... understand? She is a man's woman. She took a particular dislike to me, and I just had to be stubborn and thorny to get on at all. I'm awfully sorry—but I couldn't stay with her, and I'm certain you wouldn't ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... to taste very bitterly the agonies of those who break out of straight paths, never having realised till then how thorny the wrong course was, and how deep the pits and ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... says it's awful bitter an' cold to see Hiram settin' out along that stony, bony, thorny road, as she's learned every pin in from first to last. She says if Lucy 'd only be a little patient with him, but no, to bed he must go feelin' as bright as a button, an' in the mornin', oh my, but she says it's heartrendin' to ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... whose voice was toneless and gray as an autumn sky it seemed to her that all was wrong, that she had committed a fault that was almost a crime, that there was nothing now to be done but to confess, to go home and to expiate, as the Prodigal Son doubtless did among the thorny roses of forgiveness, those days in the far country. But always with the morning light came the remembrance that it was not her father's house to which she must go to make submission. It was her step-father's. And after all, it ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... was easy, but where the current swept close along the ragged edge of the forest, progress was difficult and slow on account of snow-crinkled and interlaced thickets of alder and willow, reinforced with fallen trees and thorny devil's-club (Echinopanax horridum), making a jungle all but impenetrable. The mile of this extravagantly difficult growth through which I struggled, inch by inch, will not soon be forgotten. At length arriving within a few hundred yards of ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... calling, and while Andy and Spouter were doing their best to brush aside some thorny bushes which held them back, the struggle between Jack and Werner continued. The bully landed on Jack's shoulder again and then on his chest, and in return received a crack on the chin which ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... the Sierra have I ever made the acquaintance of mountains more rigidly inaccessible. The slopes are exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot of the explorer, however great his strength or skill may be, but thorny chaparral constitutes their chief defense. With the exception of little park and garden spots not visible in comprehensive views, the entire surface is covered with it, from the highest peaks to the plain. It swoops into every hollow and swells over every ridge, gracefully ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... there once, but for some reason or other it had become blocked with a rank vegetation. The old gap was chocked full with a thorny, flower-bearing bush so thick that a cat could not have passed through. Somerfield switched on one of his theories as soon as he got over his first surprise. Worshipers, he held, had brought flowers there and the seeds that had dropped ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and without pausing to relight the pine splinters, they rushed pell-mell towards the sound of barking, bumping into trees, stumbling over logs, scratching their faces and tearing their clothes on thorny vines. But no one minded. Bim had treed a 'coon in the shortest time on record, and now if they could only get it, the triumph would be ample ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... is the bustle and cumber of the world, that will call a man off from looking after the salvation of his soul. This is intimated by the parable of the thorny ground. (Luke 8:14) Worldly cumber is a devilish thing; it will hurry a man from his bed without prayer; to a sermon, and from it again, without prayer; it will choke prayer, it will choke the Word, it will choke convictions, it will choke ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... thick-set, or blossoms lightly tossed Low at my feet." Therewith, a dusk globe, crossed With golden bands, from bent boughs, stripped she. Through The gleaming sphere its nectrous juices drew, And thirsting cried—as one grown drunken: "Mine These fruits unknown, in thorny combs that shine, Or gray-green spikes that glow, dull on the sands. Fain would I pluck, out-reaching eager hands, Save that a marvel grows of ruddier rind Out-flinging fruity breath upon the wind, Beneath harsh ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... produced some good crops of grain, and even cotton and silk, were chiefly clothed with fruit-trees—orange and lemon, and the fig, the olive, and the vine. Sometimes the land was uncultivated, and was principally covered with myrtles, of large size, and oleanders, and arbutus, and thorny brooms. Here game abounded, while from the mountain-forests the wolf sometimes descended, and spoiled ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... ceremonial law was to surround the whole nation with an impenetrable hedge of peculiarities, and so to keep them separate from surrounding nations. The ceremonial law was like a shell which protected the kernel within till it was ripe. The ritual was the thorny husk, the theology and morality were the sacred included fruit. In this point of view the strangest peculiarities of the ritual find an easy explanation. The more strange they are, the better they serve their purpose. These ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... organism, we cannot say how far such conditions may have been modified by the action of man, and he may therefore have influenced the life of such organisms in ways, and to an extent, of which we can form no just idea.] I do not propose to enter upon the thorny question, whether the existing races of man are genealogically connected with these ancient types of humanity, and I advert to these facts only for the sake of the suggestion, that man, in his earliest ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... sweet; but they are perish'd, And life is thorny now, and dim, and flat; Yet rests their memory—deeply—fondly cherish'd; God! in thy mercy, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... part of the mountains Mr. Hunt met with three different kinds of gooseberries. The common purple, on a low and very thorny bush; a yellow kind, of an excellent flavor, growing on a stock free from thorns; and a deep purple, of the size and taste of our winter grape, with a thorny stalk. There were also three kinds ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... you on the thorny and bloody path to victory, will forsake you, and you will not be aware of it, for conquerors and tyrants are always blind. You will conquer and dominate. And you will plunge into injustice, and you will not ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... for with somebody to look at, it did not suit Miss Hazel's ideas to be looking. She could not tease Mr. Falkirk, who had gone to sleep; Mr. Kingsland was absolutely beyond reach, except of rather thorny wishes; and when at length the dilettante cigar perfumes began to assert themselves, Wych Hazel flung the rest of her patience straight out of the window, and looked after it. The coach was stopping just then ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... aristocratic ladies; she also took great interest in art and literature, and it was even said that she patronized one of our poets in a manner which was worthy of the Medicis, and that she strewed the beautiful roses of continual female sympathy on to his thorny path. All this was evident to everybody, and had nothing strange about it, but the world would have liked to know the history of that woman, and to look into the depths of her soul, and because people ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... heads in mocking scorn, And bade the Christ come down,— While from His wounds the blood-drops fell, And from the thorny crown; The spear uplifted pierced His side, And ...
— Hymns from the Morningland - Being Translations, Centos and Suggestions from the Service - Books of the Holy Eastern Church • Various
... examined their Sharps, and made ready to follow Jones. He slipped into the thorny brake and, flat on his stomach, wormed his way like a snake far into the thickly interlaced web of branches. Rude and Adams crawled after him. Words were superfluous. Quiet, breathless, with beating hearts, the hunters pressed ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... composed of black sterile rocks, which are piled together in an extraordinary confusion; even to the environs of the town of Saint Croix, scarcely any thing is seen, on the greater part of these dry and burnt lands, but low plants, the higher of which are probably Euphorbia, or thorny Cereus; and those which cover the ground, the hairy lichen, Crocella tinctoria, which is employed in dying, and which this island furnishes in abundance. Seen from the sea, the town, which is in the form of an amphitheatre, appears to be ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... early purpose, the terror at the cruel world, the longing for peace and shelter; the desire to smooth his sister's way, which had led him to devote himself in heart to the cloister, though never permitted openly to pledge himself. Then the discovery that the world was less thorny than he had expected; the allurement of royal favour and greatness; the charm of amusement, and activity in recovered health; the cowardly dread of scorn, leading him not merely into the secular life, but into the gradual dropping of piety and devotion; the actual share ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some sacred caves in Burmah. Lighting our torches, and each man taking one, we mounted the steep, tortuous, and slippery foot-path of damp, green stones, through the thorny shrubs that beset it, to the low entrance to the outer cavern. Stooping uncomfortably, we passed into a small, vacant antechamber, having a low, dripping roof, perpendicular walls, clammy and green, and a rocky floor, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... messengers, provoked to fury, of the grim king of the dead. Clubs with heavy hammers and mallets, sharp-pointed lances, heated jars, all fraught with severe pain, frightful forests of sword-blades, heated sands, thorny Salmalis—these and many other instruments of the most painful torture such a man has to endure in the regions of Yama, O Bharata! The ungrateful person, O chief of Bharata's race, having endured such terrible treatment in the regions of the grim king of the dead, has to come back to this world ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... more white than snow, If through the thorny brake ye go, My loving heart I'll set below To take the hurt ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... the wolf, nesting place of buzzards, land of cloud-nourished trees and wild things that live without drink. Above all, it is the land of the creosote and the mesquite. The mesquite is God's best thought in all this desertness. It grows in the open, is thorny, stocky, close grown, and iron-rooted. Long winds move in the draughty valleys, blown sand fills and fills about the lower branches, piling pyramidal dunes, from the top of which the mesquite twigs flourish greenly. Fifteen or twenty feet under the drift, where it seems no rain ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... thou art a fallen child of light, A ruined seraph in a world of care— Tortured and wrung by sorrow and despair, And longings for the beautiful and bright: Thy brow is deeply scarred, and bleeds beneath A spiked coronet, a thorny wreath; Thy rainbow wings are rent and torn with chains, Sullied and drooping in extremest wo; Thy dower, to those who love thee best below, Is tears and torture, agony and pains, Coldness and scorn and doubt which often parts;— ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... ten, a strong but not too thick tweed coat is the best for rough work. In a very thorny country, a leather coat is almost essential. A blouse, cut short so as to clear the saddle, is neat, cool, and easy, whether as a riding or walking costume. Generally speaking, the traveller will chiefly spend his life in his shirt-sleeves, and will only use ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... patience was endless, and her good temper unflagging. What she lacked in brains she made up for in warmth of heart, and though she faithfully upheld discipline, she was apt somewhat to tone down the severity of the rules, and indeed sometimes surreptitiously to soften the thorny paths of ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... Colley Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, Blackmore, Smyth, and Lord Hervey are among the prominent criminals placed in Pope's pillory, and the student of the age may find an idle entertainment in tracking the poet's thorny course, while he gives an unenviable notoriety to names of which the larger number ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... carefully described[854] the case of a six-year-old white moss-rose, which sent up several suckers, one of which was thorny, and produced red flowers, destitute of moss, exactly like those of the Provence rose (R. centifolia): another shoot bore both kinds of flowers and in addition longitudinally striped flowers. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... will, to make them all thy own He rent a pillar from the eternal throne! —Made in His image, thou must nobly dare The thorny crown of sovereignty to share. —Think not too meanly of thy low estate; Thou hast a choice; to choose is ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... novelty of the task so absorbed was she in her sudden Quixotic project. Yet, as she groped among the brown leaves at the foot of her tree, her fingers came in contact with something wholly different from chestnuts or their thorny burrs. It was hard as a stone, yet it wasn't a stone. It was half-buried in the leaf-mold and moss, though the rain of the previous night had washed ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... and keeping with great care in the shadow, had followed him through the little door which he forgot to lock, and was now hidden among those very trees, he might have remembered a proverb to the effect that snakes hide in the greenest grass and the prettiest flowers have thorny stems. But he thought of no such thing, who was lost in happy anticipations of a moonlight interview with a lovely and cultured young lady, whose image, to speak truth, had taken so deep a hold upon ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... darling, you must! Daddy come out and help Molly pick daisies!" And, since one's here, and the Spring's in the garden (How many lives hence will that thought earn pardon?) Since one's a man and man's heart is insistent, And, since Nirvana is doubtful and distant, Though life's a hard road and thorny to travel— Stones in the borders and grass on the gravel, Still there's the wisdom that wise men call folly, Still one can go and ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... carried on thus without discovery. Each night was a repetition of the preceding one, an interminable fighting of our way through dark forests, into and out of sloppy ditches, over fields and through thorny hedges, ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... to the low hedge, but though it was low it was very thorny, and while he was trying to find a place to get through, he looked over and spied a hare crouched in the rough grass, just under the hedge between it and the wheat. The hare was lying on the ground; she did not move, though she saw Bevis, and when he looked ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... fallen, I frequently see such a central sprig, whose progress I have watched, when I thought it had forgotten its destiny, as I had, bearing its first crop of small green or yellow or rosy fruit, which the cows cannot get at over the bushy and thorny hedge which surrounds it; and I make haste to taste the new and undescribed variety. We have all heard of the numerous varieties of fruit invented by Van Mons[9] and Knight.[10] This is the system of Van Cow, and she has invented far more and more memorable ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... lay. The cut was a natural stronghold, opening sidewise on the face of the shore, so as to be invisible from the open water. It was deep enough for an ocean-liner, but too narrow for a big steamer to enter with her own power. Bedient turned into the thick, thorny undergrowth, which lined the eastern wall of the Inlet, and made his way around its devious curvings, silently and slowly. The growth on the cliffs was so dense in places that he had to crawl. The heat pressed down upon the heavy moist foliage, and drained him like a steam-room. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... caves, I cannot help thinking that the sole aim of the ascetic builders was to tempt weak mortals into the sin of irritation by the inaccessibility of their airy abodes. Seventy-two steps, cut out in the rock, and covered with thorny weeds and moss, are the beginning of the ascent to the Bagh caves. Footmarks worn in the stone through centuries spoke of the numberless pilgrims who had come here before us. The roughness of the steps, with deep holes here ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... safe and sure road to heaven. The observation of Gibbon respecting the early monks is applicable to all of them: "Each proselyte who entered the gates of a monastery was persuaded that he trod the steep and thorny ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... that can be said on the thorny subject of the return of the refugees, is that latterly the rate of return has been steadily increasing. Last month the military authorities allowed us to grant 400 ordinary permits (this number is over and ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... before we reached that town, and that, from there, we would need no help. We followed his suggestion. The road was almost level. It passed through a district covered with a dense growth of brush and thorny trees, except where the land had been plowed for planting corn. In the early evening we saw many birds. Flocks of parrots rose from the trees as we passed by; at one point Manuel shot a little eagle, which fell wounded to the ground. Our guide concluded to carry it on alive. All went well for ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... said the Abbe Gevresin; "yes, Rohant de Fleury says that its thorny branches were used to crown the Son's head; but this leaves us wondering, when we remember that in the Old Testament, in the ninth chapter of the Book of Judges, all the tall trees of Judaea bow down before the Royalty prophetically prefigured ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... touched upon politics, yet the careful reader will find that the hero of the sketch must have been a young Democrat, since he is made to appear very nimble, and has a fondness, partial to himself, of getting into rather thorny places. What led him into those dangerous places we have very little chance of knowing. "He was wondrous wise," saith the poet, and forsooth he jumps into a bramble-bush, the last place in the world where a wise man is to be found. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... ashore and tied it to a tree. Pressing forward, he had to push his way through a thicket of huge willows and poplars—overthrown in many places by repeated storms—and there the fruitful bramble forms a thorny undergrowth, and tall valerian, shooting upward from the weather-beaten soil, mixes its aromatic scent with the wholesome smell ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... and is connected with no desert. It is like the gilded poison that undermines the human frame. It is like the hoarse murmur of the winds that announces the brewing tempest. Virtue, for such is the decree of the Most High, is evermore obliged to pass through the ordeal of temptation, and the thorny paths of adversity. If, in this day of her trial, no foul blot obscure her lustre, no irresolution and instability tarnish the clearness of her spirit, then may she rejoice in the view of her approaching reward, and receive ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... effect of this good lesson keep, As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven Whilst, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,[70] Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... antithetical existence before us, but the beauty of experience can only be seen by the backward glance, 'tis when we turn our sad and tear-dimmed eyes to look over our bended shoulders at the thorny way that bears the impress of our weary feet, that we can feel what a grand and salutary prayer our lips might make by substituting the murmur and the cry of pain by a holy accent which ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... further the hills to the south became loftier; the banks drew closer in on both sides of him; the boulders in the arid bed were larger. Cactus and Spanish bayonet harassed him like malignant creatures; skeleton ocatillas and bristling yuccas imposed thorny barriers before him. The sun poured its full flood of white-hot rays upon him. He wound his way in and out among the obstacles, keeping his intent eyes upon the glaring rocks, save only when he lifted them to look for lurking savages. The ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... and North—between the lifeless fetters of prescription and the living freedom of invention. The contrast between the two is very strongly marked. The soft and curling foliages of the sunny South are for a season giving way to the hard and thorny leafage of the wintry North. It would seem as if pointed architecture began with the hard and frozen winter of its existence, and if it had been the plan or design of one individual we might have ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... toward which side are you? Have you fallen into the soft feather-bed of agnosticism, or the thorny ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... world, so thorny, and where none Finds happiness unblighted, or if found, Without some thistly sorrow at its side, It seems the part of wisdom, and no sin Against the law of love, to measure lots With less distinguished than ourselves, that thus We may with patience ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... do so there were needed Many sturdy pulls and struggles. Ringing shouts and cries of triumph Greeted this successful fishing. From the rock came down the Baron To the fishers, and the ladies Eagerly made haste to follow. Over rocks and thorny brambles To the shore they found a pathway. Margaretta followed also, Notwithstanding her long habit. When young Werner saw her coming, Bashfully his arm he offered, And bewildered were his senses. So Sir Walter Raleigh's heart once Must have beaten, when his mantle He made use of as a carpet ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... spring Nilajan and Mohana; follow them, Winding beneath broad-leaved mahua-trees, 'Mid thickets of the sansar and the bir, Till on the plain the shining sisters meet In Phalgu's bed, flowing by rocky banks To Gaya and the red Barabar hills. Hard by that river spreads a thorny waste, Uruwelaya named in ancient days, With sandhills broken; on its verge a wood Waves sea-green plumes and tassels 'thwart the sky, With undergrowth wherethrough a still flood steals, Dappled with lotus-blossoms, blue and white, And peopled with quick fish and tortoises. Near ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... Something told him he was not there now.... Vaguely, in the darkness, he put up his hand to feel if the plaster Christ were above his head. His groping old fingers found it, and he stayed, half-reared up against his pillows for an instant, while he touched the drooping head with its thorny crown, and on that familiar touch he let his hand fall, and with ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... hills there. Travelling over casuarina sandhills and some level triodia ground, we found there was a creek with eucalypts on it, but it was quite evident that none of the late showers had fallen there. Hardly any grass was to be found, the ground being open and stony, with thorny vegetation. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... the rives hide In sinuous course like rivers glide, And line the path with deadly foes: The wood, my love, is full of woes. Scorpions, and grasshoppers, and flies Disturb the wanderer as he lies, And wake him from his troubled doze: The wood, my love, is full of woes. Trees, thorny bushes, intertwined, Their branched ends together bind, And dense with grass the thicket grows: The wood, my dear, is full of woes, With many ills the flesh is tried, When these and countless fears beside Vex ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... It is situated on a high part of the plain; and hence is a landmark visible at a great distance. As soon as a tribe of Indians come in sight of it, they offer their adorations by loud shouts. The tree itself is low, much branched, and thorny: just above the root it has a diameter of about three feet. It stands by itself without any neighbour, and was indeed the first tree we saw; afterwards we met with a few others of the same kind, but they were far from common. Being winter the tree had no leaves, but in their ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the high tide would have cut it off completely but for the friendly arm which the Watling Street extended to it from the Tot Hill, while a thicket of brambles and briers edged it like a natural prison wall. Nor had man forgotten such defences, she found when they had passed a gap in the thorny hedge; a fence of stone rose sheer before them and extended on either hand as far as eye could reach. In the fence was a great gate of black oak, which a black-robed Benedictine presently opened to ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... services for each other: horses nibble, and cows lick each other, on any spot which itches: monkeys search each other for external parasites; and Brehm states that after a troop of the Cercopithecus griseo-viridis has rushed through a thorny brake, each monkey stretches itself on a branch, and another monkey sitting by, "conscientiously" examines its fur, and extracts every ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the latter sweeping down to join the plains. A dust, light, dry, and feathery lay thickly on the adobe boxes on the surrounding ledge on the slopes, like a gray ash sprinkled from a giant sifter. Cactus and yucca dotted the slopes, thorny, lancelike, repellent; lava, dull, hinting of volcanic fire, filled crevices and depressions, and huge blocks of stone, detached in the progress of ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... to when a matter shall be discussed in a Joint Cabinet or not, has not been the smallest of the stumbling blocks in the thorny path of the Union negotiations. In Norway, to quote Mr HAGERUP, there has been quite a "sickly" fear of having matters settled there. On the Norwegian Left Side they have defended the opinion, that only those matters which, being expressly mentioned in the Act of Union, as being distinctively ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... a roadhouse obtaining refreshments. For this trick, Pepper and some of the others got after the Pornellites and made them prisoners in a cave, from which they could escape only by going out a back way, through some water and mud, and thorny bushes. ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... my dearest young lady, that worldly joy claims no kindred with the joys we are bid to aspire after. These latter we must be fitted for by affliction and disappointment. You are therefore in the direct road to glory, however thorny the path you are in. And I had almost said, that it depends upon yourself, by your patience, and by your resignedness to the dispensation, (God enabling you, who never fails the true penitent, and sincere invoker,) to be an heir of a ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... marked exactly alike. They had a transparent dorsal and two pectoral fins, which were all I observed, and a long thin snout or beak; the mouth was just at the end of it, on the top: some of them were thorny on the back; we caught also some crabs; a very minute blue fish; a black and red insect resembling a flea; a species of Diphyes; a very small kind of polypus; and one or two small jellyfish. A land bird flew ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... weakest, the weariest, the faintest—claims His attention. His loving eye follows me day by day out to the wilderness—marks out my pasture, studies my wants, and trials, and sorrows, and perplexities—every steep ascent, every brook, every winding path, every thorny thicket. "He goeth before them." It is not rough driving, but gentle guiding. He does not take them over an unknown road; He himself has trodden it before. He hath drunk of every "brook by the way;" He himself hath "suffered being tempted;" He is "able to succour them that are tempted." ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... a current in the stream, and it flowed west. Following its course, he soon entered the oak forest again, and passed through to find himself before massed and jumbled ruins of cliff wall. There were tangled thickets of wild plum-trees and other thorny growths that made passage extremely laborsome. He found innumerable tracks of wildcats and foxes. Rustlings in the thick undergrowth told him of stealthy movements of these animals. At length his further advance appeared futile, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... crowned. No great, but guilty fame Here kindled pride, that should have kindled shame; THESE chose the better, happier part, That poured its sunlight o'er the heart; That crowned their homes with peace and health, And weighed Heaven's smile beyond earth's wealth; Far from the thorny paths of life They stood, a living lesson to their race, Rich in the charities of life, Man in his strength, and Woman in her grace; In purity and love THEIR pilgrim road they trod, And when they served their neighbor felt they ...
— An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830, • Charles Sprague
... the same time Transvaalers, mostly Heidelberg men, had gained a footing on the eastern end of the same ridge where boulders in Titanic masses, matted together by roots of mimosa trees, rise cliff-like from the plain where Klip River, emerging from thorny thickets, bends northward to loop miles of fertile meadow-land before flowing back into the narrow gorge past Intombi Spruit Camp. How the Boers got there one can only imagine, for neither the Imperial Light Horse pickets on Waggon Hill, ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... gales, which the forest had partly made good, and there was scarcely a rod of the way that was not obstructed by half-rotted trunks. Then there were thick bushes, and an undergrowth of willows where the soil was damp, with thorny brakes and matted fern in between. In places the growth was almost like a wall, and the men, skirting the inlet, were glad to scramble forward among the rough boulders and ragged driftwood at the water's edge for some minutes at a time, until it was necessary ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... achievement, and told us nothing of the hard road that leads up to them! If the Lord chastises us, it is "for our profit"; if God smites, it is only to enrich; so bear with patience, endure as seeing him who is invisible. Be "patient in tribulation," drink the cup of your Gethsemane, wear your thorny crown without complaint, endure your Calvary; for unto you is given both to suffer and ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... many a tale it hath, The auld kirk-yard, Of life's crooked thorny path To the auld kirk-yard. But mortality's thick gloom Clouds the sunny world's bloom, Veils the mystery of doom, In the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... said upon the question in hand. He told his people from the pulpit, that it was a very needless one. 'Tis just (said he,) as if you should ask me, when we are to walk, which foot should we lift first. If we should walk to purpose we must make use of both limbs; and so despatched the thorny question. I wish we may all imitate the wisdom of that great and good man. Is it not sufficient for us to declare that both are necessary, without determining the nice point of priority and posterority?" (Essay on Gospel and Legal Preaching, by a Minister of the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... feel anxious about me. Some higher Power leads me through strange, dark, thorny paths, broken at times by glades opening down into prospects of sunny beauty, into which I am not permitted to enter. If God disposes for us, it is not for nothing. This I can say: my heart is in some respects better, it is kinder, and more humble. Also, my mental acquisitions ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; 410 And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain. And thus it chanced, as I divine, With Roland and Sir Leoline. 415 Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother: They parted—ne'er to meet ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... pattern of dappled light and shadow on the grass, for our delectation. Most of the way had been made familiar in pursuit of some wild boar that would not stand and fight but hurried into the wildest and most difficult part of the forest, charging through every bush, however thick and thorny, in vain endeavour to shake off the pitiless pack. For my companion no corner of the forest lacked memories, some recent, some remote, but all concerned with the familiar trial of skill in which the boar had at last yielded ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... the tents, we reached the source of all that fertilising water the channel of which we had followed up. How wild the source was too! No Saracenic arch over that; the water in a full flow came out from among the roots of a great tree - one of the curious thorny dm trees that grow in thickets over the plain. I believe our Arabs called them dm; Mr. Dinwiddie said it was a Zizyphus. It was a very large tree at any rate, and with its odd thorny branches and bright green foliage canopied picturesquely ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... through a safe road; as it was, Gabriel, Roche, and I resumed our journey alone. During two or three days we followed the edge of the wood, every attempt to penetrate into the interior proving quite useless, so thick were the bushes and thorny briers. Twice or thrice we perceived on some hills, at a great distance, smoke and fires, but we could not tell what Indians ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... wisdom and the justice with which our fathers bound contending colonies into confederation and blended different habits and rival interests into a harmonious whole, so that shoulder to shoulder they entered on the trial of the revolution, step with step trod its thorny paths until they reached the height of national independence and founded the constitutional representative ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... libertine excess. The Sofa suits The gouty limb, 'tis true; but gouty limb, Though on a Sofa, may I never feel: For I have loved the rural walk through lanes Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep, And skirted thick with intertexture firm Of thorny boughs: have loved the rural walk O'er hills, through valleys, and by river's brink, E'er since a truant boy I passed my bounds To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames. And still remember, nor without regret ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... or life is gay, Thorny path or primrose way; All is common, all is strange; "Down the ringing grooves ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... calm, she sees her course, Nor shrinks, though thorny be the way. Shall human will succumb to fate, Crushed by ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... rocks! O thorny woods! O shore! O hills and dales! O valleys, rivers, seas! How do your new-discovered beauties please? O Nymph, 'tis yours the guerdon rare, If now the open skies shine fair; O happy wanderings, well spent ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... its cluster of heavy fruit, its long plume-like drooping flower; the coccoeiro, with its slighter trunk and pendent branches of small berry-like fruit; the palmetto, with its tender succulent bud on the summit of the stem, used as a vegetable, and proving an excellent substitute for cabbage; the thorny icari, or cari—a variety of fan-palm. Its spiny stems and leaves, which cut like razors, make it difficult to approach. Its bunches of bright chestnut-brown fruit hang from between the leaves which form its crown, each bunch about a foot in ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... railways signed in 1911. An agreement with France, with regard to the railways of Asiatic Turkey, was signed in February 1914, and one with England (securing our interests on the Persian Gulf) in June of the same year. Thus just before the war broke out this thorny question had, in fact, been settled to the satisfaction of all the Powers concerned. And on this two comments may be made. First, that the long friction, the press campaign, the rivalry of economic and ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... horizon. During the whole morning they had been galloping through the region of the Monte, or bush, that border-land which connects the treeless plains with the tropical forests of the north, where thorny shrubs covered the ground in more or less dense patches, where groves of the algaroba—a noble tree of the mimosa species,—and trees laden with a peach-like but poisonous fruit, as well as other trees and shrubs, ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... was usually called M. le Capitaine, though in fact he had never reached that rank. He had been in the army, and having been wounded in the leg while still a sous-lieutenant, had been pensioned, and had thus been interdicted from treading any further the thorny path that leads to glory. For the last fifteen years he had resided under the roof of Madame Bauche, at first as a casual visitor, going and coming, but now for many years as constant there ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... Umslopogaas," I said, "for surely he is dead, and though you cannot forget him, yet speak of him no more, and I pray of you, my daughter, that if we do not meet again, yet you should keep me in your memory, and the love I bear you, and the words which from time to time I have said to you. The world is a thorny wilderness, my daughter, and its thorns are watered with a rain of blood, and we wander in our wretchedness like lost travellers in a mist; nor do I know why our feet are set on this wandering. But at last there comes an end, and we die and go hence, none know where, but ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... him legally. But of my own free will I disdain that degradation; I choose rather to be free. No fear of your scorn, no dread of your bigotry, no shrinking at your cruelty, shall prevent me from following the thorny path I know to be the right one. I seek no temporal end. I will not prove false to the future of my kind in order to protect myself from your hateful indignities. I know on what vile foundations your temple of wedlock is based and built, what pitiable victims languish and die in its sickening ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... the vagueness of their conceptions, under an obscure and pedantic jargon, the immortal and laughable sarcasms of Moliere would not have been more than an act of strict justice. In all cases every thing has its day; now, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the most delicate, the most thorny points of doctrine were discussed with an entire good faith, with perfect lucidity, and in a style that placed many members of the faculty in the rank Of our best speakers. Servan, however, goes beyond the limits of a scientific discussion, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny, and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love, Doth work like ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... helpless man across the saddle, this stretch of thorny and contorted desert was practically impassable. Yet Gale headed into it unflinchingly. He would carry the Yaqui as far as possible, or until death make the burden no longer a duty. Blanco Sol plodded ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... depths of human souls miracles abounded in Ars. For the conversion of sinners the holy cure lived; for them he entered upon his thorny way of heroic penance. His whole life was characterized by prayer, penance and self-abnegation. All counted as nothing if he could win the conversion of his parish, dreaming not of a world to be won from ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... I said enough farewells already? Wasn't my whole life one thorny path of farewells? At post offices, steamer-quays, railway stations—with the waving of handkerchiefs damp ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... little body of determined whites, each with his gun in his hands, and his eyes on the alert for the first sign of danger. The trail was still along the river, but presently it branched off, and entered an arrayo, or gully, thick with thorny plants and entangling vines. At the end of the arrayo was a rocky plateau, and here for the time being ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... the unknown coast. Anxious Bay. Anchorage at Waldegrave's and at Flinders' Islands. The Investigator's Group. Coffin's Bay. Whidbey's Isles. Differences in the magnetic needle. Cape Wiles. Anchorage at Thistle's Island. Thorny Passage. Fatal accident. Anchorage in Memory Cove. Cape Catastrophe, and the surrounding country. Anchorage in Port Lincoln, and refitment of the ship. Remarks on the country and inhabitants. Astronomical and ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... answered: "Brave among the brave is Panther Son of Waub-Ojeeg, the warrior, And the brave are ever silent; But a whining dog is woman, Whining ever like a coward." Forth into the tangled forest, Threading through the thorny thickets, Treading trails on marsh and meadow, Sullen strode the moody hunter. Saw he not the bear or beaver, Saw he not the elk or roebuck; From his path the red-fawn scampered, But no arrow followed after; From his den the sly wolf listened, But no twang of bow-string ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... is a gay deceiver, and life a fleeting dream; the mists of illusion which gather over the morning of existence, gradually disappear as the day advances; and this imagined scene of enchantment, this fairy-land of pleasure subsides into the reality of a thorny wilderness. The only preparation for such a change, is a piety which seeks its happiness on high, and knows that no earthly condition can form a paradise without the presence of the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... men. Nature—always careful that nothing should interfere with the procreative functions—had provided him with a sheath or prepuce, wherein he carried his procreative organ safely out of harm's way, in wild steeple-chases through thorny briars and bramble-brakes, or, when hardly pushed, and not able to climb quickly a tree of his own choice, he was by circumstances forced up the sides of some rough-barked or thorny tree. This leathery ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... formations can have but little idea of them. On every side, as far as the eye can see, undulations of earth stretch away like the waves of the ocean, and on them no vegetation flourishes save buffalo-grass, sage-brush, and the cactus, blooming but thorny. ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... in the young girl's society, and as often as she could she had the girl at her house. Sometimes, too, Keith was of the party. He held himself in leash, and hardly dared face the fact that he had once more entered on the lane which, beginning among flowers, had proved so thorny in the end. Yet more and more he let himself drift into that sweet atmosphere whose light was the presence ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... of the cross-ways, guarded by a colossal image of Christ, she hesitated between two roads running among thorny slopes. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... has carefully described[854] the case of a six-year-old white moss-rose, which sent up several suckers, one of which was thorny, and produced red flowers, destitute of moss, exactly like those of the Provence rose (R. centifolia): another shoot bore both kinds of flowers and in addition longitudinally striped flowers. As this white moss-rose had been grafted on the Provence rose, Prof. Caspary ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... heart a strange wish for exploring The thorny and briery place, And, lo, a path through the deepest ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... wandering outcast. Here and there he could see the beginnings of chopped-out pathways, and, with the fixed idea of getting out of sight of the busy river, he would land and follow the narrow and winding path, only to find that it led nowhere, ending abruptly in the discouragement of thorny thickets. He would go back slowly, with a bitter sense of unreasonable disappointment and sadness; oppressed by the hot smell of earth, dampness, and decay in that forest which seemed to push him mercilessly back into the glittering sunshine ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... tyres splashing through puddles, and spattering him with mud, Herrick's face was very tired and worn, but in his eyes there lurked a little faint light of happiness that he had helped another weary soul a few steps forward on its pilgrimage over a thorny road. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... has confined cultivation within much narrower limits. Between the Sutlej and the Jhelam the uplands between the river valleys are known locally as Bars. The largest of the truly indigenous trees of the Panjab plains are the farash (Tamarix articulata) and the thorny kikar (Acacia Arabica). The latter yields excellent wood for agricultural implements, and fortunately it grows well in sour soils. Smaller thorny acacias are the nimbar or raunj (Acacia leucophloea) and the khair (Acacia ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... but poorer were the love. Lord, I would have me love thee from the deeps— Of troubled thought, of pain, of weariness. Through seething wastes below, billows above, My soul should rise in eager, hungering leaps; Through thorny thicks, through sands unstable press— Out of my dream to him who ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... crowd, or low or high— A pensive wanderer on life's thorny heath Earth's pageants for my view Have nought: I love but few, And few who chance to hear thy trembling breath, My lyre, for her who wakes thee, have a ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... studious absence of questioning that was the rule of the house. The Superintendent was an elderly man, inclining to stoutness and of unyielding placidity. It was suspected that the Founder had taken pains to choose a man who would observe his injunction of not meddling with thorny questions the more strictly from his ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... the underbrush, for it was evident it could not be far off. The bloody track could be followed for some distance; in fact, in one place the thorny roots of the remarkable pachiuba palm-tree, the roots that the women here use for kitchen graters, had torn off a bunch of long, beautiful hair from the sides of the jaguar, which very likely was weak and was dragging itself to some cluster of trees where it could be safe, or else to find a ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... provocation which gave rise to many of them. Eusden, Colley Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, Blackmore, Smyth, and Lord Hervey are among the prominent criminals placed in Pope's pillory, and the student of the age may find an idle entertainment in tracking the poet's thorny course, while he gives an unenviable notoriety to names of which the larger number were 'born ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... brazen belfries chime Across the hills and through the dales, And o'er the breasts of meadowed vales, Beneath the smiles of Christmas time! Rough sorrow's thorny fingers grow As soft and waxen as a child's, And balmy pleasures o'er the wilds Chant music to the ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... he, increase our flood of affliction by a tide of useless sorrow. Perhaps more prosperous days are yet in reserve for us;—happiness may yet be ours." "Never, never! she exclaimed. Oh, what will become of me!" "Heaven cannot desert you, said Alonzo; as well might it desert its angels. This thorny and gloomy path may lead to fair fields of light and verdure. Tempests are succeeded by calms; wars end in peace; the splendours of the brightest morning arise on the wings of blackest midnight.——Troubles will not always last. ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... beautiful boy of Nazareth, in manhood my joy and my hope! Are those hands the same that have been so lovingly held in mine; those arms, outstretched and motionless, the same that have so often been clasped around me! Oh! that I might staunch His wounds, and moisten His parched lips, and gently lift that thorny crown ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... listening to an Italian air delightfully sung. When the singing ceased, Rodolphe landed and sent away the boat and rowers. At the cost of wetting his feet, he went to sit down under the water-worn granite shelf crowned by a thick hedge of thorny acacia, by the side of which ran a long lime avenue in the Bergmanns' garden. By the end of an hour he heard steps and voices just above him, but the words that reached his ears were all Italian, and spoken by ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... perfect net-work of sipos or creepers and llianas choked up the path, and the hunters had to clear every step of the way with their machetes. Even the dogs, with all their eagerness, could make only a slow and tortuous advance among the thorny vines of the smilax, and the sharp spines that covered the trunks ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... central issues, genuine concern for high principles of governance, and the rare moral courage that disregards popularity as a mainspring of action—could have fitted any set of legislators to tackle the complex and thorny problems that pressed for settlement and to effect the necessary preliminary changes. That the delegates of the principal Powers were devoid of many of these qualities cannot fairly be made a subject of reproach. It was merely an accident. But it was as unfortunate as their ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... as in a dream, and never found the way long enough. The briny smell of the shore, and a sweet odour of flowerets growing along the cliffs amid thorny bushes, perfumed the air. Had it not been for Granny Yvonne waiting for her at home, she would have loitered along the reed-strewn paths, like the beautiful ladies in stories, who dream away the summer evenings ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... were radiant with roses and honeysuckles, jasmine and clematis. Pinks, lilies, columbines made the garden patches gay, and, as though so many flowers were not enough, the windows, too, shone with geraniums and the scarlet tassels of great cactus, that lifted their exotic, thorny bodies behind the window panes. Not a wall but flaunted red valerian and snapdragon. Indeed Bridetown ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... irresolute, glaring at its new enemies. The leopard, I observed, was no longer on its back. At this moment I heard an exclamation of anger, and looking round I observed Peterkin struggling violently in the grasp of one of the wild vines or thorny plants which abound in some parts of the African forests and render them almost impassable. It seems that as the bull drew near, Peterkin, who, like Jack and me, was preparing to shoot, found that a dense thicket ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... us emotions difficult to express. We could not satiate our eyes with gazing on the beauties of this place, verdure being so enchanting to the sight, especially after having travelled through the Desert. Before reaching the river we had to descend a little hill covered with thorny bushes. My ass stumbling threw me into the midst of one, and I tore myself in several places, but was easily consoled when I at length found myself on the banks of a river of fresh water. Every one having quenched his thirst, we stretched ourselves under the shade of a small grove, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... Cuckoo could not be capable of the real love, the love ascetic, not the love Bacchanalian. Love among the roses is easy, but not many can welcome love among the nettles; and, moreover, Julian, despite his knowledge of the thorny paths along which Cuckoo walked habitually, along which all her poor sisterhood walked incessantly, had not entirely disabused himself of the fallacy that a life such as hers was, in some vague, undefined and indefinable way, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... dumb lips. They can't find words to tell the exhilaration of the climb, the bracing air, the far outlook, and, yet more, the wondrous presence of the Chief Climber, even though there's a bit of smarting of face and hands where the thorny tanglewood tore a bit as ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... adventures which to them seemed so exciting, not to say tragical, the effect astonished them immensely, as their audience went into gales of laughter, especially at the wheelbarrow episode, which Bab insisted on telling, with grateful minuteness, to Ben's confusion. Thorny shouted, and even tender-hearted Betty forgot her tears over the lost dog to join in the familiar melody when Bab mimicked Pat's ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... and positively serviceable for? Well, thought I, as there must be a sure and trust-worthy method of treatment, as certainly as God is the wisest and most beneficient of Beings, I shall seek it no longer in the thorny thicket of ontological explanations,... nor in the authoritative declarations of celebrated men. No; let me seek it where it lies nearest at hand, and where it has hitherto been passed over by all, ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... of the river called Shigogo and Shipanga are bordered by a low level expanse of marshy country, with occasional clumps of palm-trees and a few thorny acacias. The river itself spreads out to a width of from three to four miles, with many islands, among which it is difficult to navigate, except when the river is in flood. In front, a range of high hills ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... themselves up, and without pausing to relight the pine splinters, they rushed pell-mell towards the sound of barking, bumping into trees, stumbling over logs, scratching their faces and tearing their clothes on thorny vines. But no one minded. Bim had treed a 'coon in the shortest time on record, and now if they could only get it, the triumph would be ample reward for ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... there motionless, looking and listening intently. My cap was in my pocket, and only my head appeared above the low firs that sheltered me. Suddenly, without noise or warning of any kind, I received a sharp blow on the head from behind, as if some one had struck me with a thorny stick. I turned quickly, surprised and a good bit startled; for I thought myself utterly alone in the woods—and I was. There was nobody there. Not a sound, not a motion broke the twilight stillness. Something trickled on my neck; I put up ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... my best. I've done my best, and now I can do no more. I say, how black it is," he said half-aloud, and then he felt blank, faced as he was by another difficulty—how was he going to get back along the trackless path encumbered with stones and with rifts and tufts of very thorny bushes here ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... worried author has also his own compunctions, for while he has tried so often and vainly to secure the recognition requested, till he is in despair of such effort, he still is haunted by the fear that he may overlook some genius whom it would be a delight to guide through what seems a thorny jungle ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... me, Miss Phoebe,' I will say, 'and I will take you back through those years of hardships that have made your sweet eyes too patient. Instead of growing older you shall grow younger. We will travel back together to pick up the many little joys and pleasures you had to pass by when you trod that thorny path alone.' ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... roses on a thorny stem, all of gold; perfumed, and blessed by the Pope on the fourth Sunday in Lent, and sent to a prince who has during the year shown most zeal ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... always regarded as a poor one, and never encouraged a young man to pursue it as a profession unless forced into it by his own irresistible impulses. Its nobility he ranked very high, but not its remunerativeness. He regarded it as a luxury for the rich and leisurely, but a very thorny and discouraging path for a poor man. How few have ever got a living by it, unless allied with other callings,—as a managing clerk, or professor, or lecturer, or editor! The finest productions ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... you sportive?—bid the morn of youth Rise to new light, and beam afresh the days Of innocence, simplicity, and truth; To cares estranged, and manhood's thorny ways. What transport, to retrace our boyish plays, Our easy bliss, when each thing joy supplied; The woods, the mountains, and the warbling maze ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... bird, uses this method still more frequently. He even prepares a small larder before feasting. One may thus see on a thorny branch spitted side by side Coleoptera, crickets, grasshoppers, frogs, and even young birds, which he has seized when they ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... every tree is sharp as a spear-point and is curved and clutching. There is a deep gulf to be gone through," she said, "a place of silence and terror, full of dumb, venomous monsters. There is an immense oak forest—dark, dense, thorny, a place to be strayed in, a place to be utterly bewildered and lost in. There is a vast dark wilderness, and therein is a dark house, lonely and full of echoes, and in it there are seven gloomy hags, who are warned already of your coming and ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... off by huge thorny hedges and fences of barbed wire—man's devilish improvement on the bramble—brought down to the water's edge. The river-follower must force his way through these obstacles, in most cases greatly to the detriment of his clothes ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... as to when a matter shall be discussed in a Joint Cabinet or not, has not been the smallest of the stumbling blocks in the thorny path of the Union negotiations. In Norway, to quote Mr HAGERUP, there has been quite a "sickly" fear of having matters settled there. On the Norwegian Left Side they have defended the opinion, that only those matters ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... night the Prince kept on over the stony road. When the sky grew gray, he took a short nap under a thorny hedge, and by sunrise he was once more on his way. On his right, in a beautiful green field, he saw to his great delight three silver birches, their branches rustling lightly in ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... who once on earth endured— Beating storm and thorny way, Have the prize they sought secured, And have ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the soldiers led him away into the court which is the Praetorium, and called together all the cohort. [15:17]And they put on him a purple garment, and plaiting a thorny crown put it on him. [15:18]And they saluted him, Hail, king of the Jews! [15:19]And they struck his head with a reed, and beat him, and kneeling down worshipped him. [15:20]And when they had mocked ...
— The New Testament • Various
... not the place to plunge into the thorny questions which surround the thought of the tempted Christ. However these may be solved, the great fact remains, that His temptations were most real and unceasing. It was no sham fight which He fought. The story of the wilderness is the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hill and was never for a moment uncompanioned by nightingale, cicala and firefly—I began to suffer from footsoreness, a bodily affliction against which romance, that certain salve for the maladies of the soul, is no remedy, or very little. Crossing the hills, over burning roads, through thorny brakes or by slopes of harsh grass, my heels and the balls of my toes became alarmingly inflamed; and an acacia-spine, lodging in the sole of one foot, made matters no better. That second day of mine I could ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... don't like thorny things?" he asked her as they went down the hillside, up which Ted and Ruth were now struggling. It was steep and he held out his hand to her, but she ignored it and went on ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... a foul and midnight murder fed, Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame, And spare the meek usurper's holy head. Above, below, the rose of snow, Twin'd with her blushing foe, we spread: The bristled boar in infant-gore Wallows beneath the thorny shade. Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom, Stamp we our vengeance deep, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... shallows, and many a rock-walled well, Where the silver-scaled sea-farers, and the crook-lipped bull-trout dwell. But most when their hearts were merry 'twas the joy of carle and quean To ride in the deeps of the oak-wood, and the thorny thicket green: Forth go their hearts before them to the blast of the strenuous horn, Where the level sun comes dancing down the oaks in the early morn: There they strain and strive for the quarry, when the wind hath fallen dead In the odorous dusk of the pine-wood, and the noon is ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... the lea rig, My ain kind dearie, O! And cuddle there fu' kindly Wi' me, my kind dearie, O! At thorny bush, or birken tree, We 'll daff and never weary, O! They 'll scug ill een frae you and me, My ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... have anywhere, is that which has been given to us by the "noble company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs," who, refusing to take the easy road of popularity, have deliberately chosen the thorny path of insult, ignominy, destruction, for the faith that glowed within their souls. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Socrates, St. Paul, Wycliff, Huss, Savanarola, Martin Luther, John Knox, George Fox, John Wesley, Joseph Priestly, Theodore Parker—how the names multiply, ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... are some jungles so dense, so tangled with lianas and so thorny with Livistonias and rattan that nothing larger than a cat can make way through them. There are thousands of square miles so boggy, so swampy, so dark, gloomy and mosquito-ridden that all men fear them and avoid them, and in them rubber culture must be ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Honouring those Princes of the Apostles' Band? King Ethelbert, my uncle, built Saint Paul's; Saint Peter's Church be mine!' An hour's advance Left them in thickets tangled. Low the ground, Well-nigh by waters clipt, a savage haunt With briar and bramble thick, and 'Thorny Isle' For that cause named. Sebert around him gazed, A maiden blush upon him thus he spake: 'I know this spot; I stood here once, a boy: 'Twas winter then: the swoll'n and turbid flood Rustled the sallows. Far I fled from men: A youth had done me wrong, and vengeful thoughts Burned ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... step he saw the ragged cluster of children troop down the road from twenty years agone, almost as if he actually beheld them, himself at the head. He could still feel their plump palms clinging to his hand at the first suggestion of danger. He had led them a right thorny path, each to a successful goal. And now could he turn against "Fambly"? Should he denounce the treachery of one of the little group that he could see huddling together for warmth on the meagre hearthstone, while outside the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... groaned Rainiharo, "somewhere in my inwards! Thorny shrubs are revolving in my stomach! Young crocodiles are ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... and blossoms when fallen to the ground. "The twigs thus destroyed are detached by as clean a cut as if severed with a knife." Sir Walter Elliot writes of it: "The gulandi lives entirely in the jungle, choosing its habitation in a thick bush, among the thorny branches of which, or on the ground, it constructs a nest of elastic stalks and fibres of dry grass thickly interwoven. The nest is of a round or oblong shape, from six to nine inches in diameter, within which is a chamber about three or four inches in diameter, in which ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... thee my footsteps straying, Thorny proved the way I trod; Weary come I now, and praying— Take me to ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... Ensign Platt at the entrance, he staggered towards him, but the dacoits made a rush at Ensign Platt with their spears at the same time. He saved himself by springing over a thick and thorny hedge on one side of the quadrangle, and ran round behind to the small door leading into the bathing-room, which he reached in time to assist Mrs. Ravenscroft to escape, as the dacoits were forcing their way through the ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... felt, must have an outlet. He circled round it, clambering over fallen trees and forcing his way through thorny vines, till he saw, amid roots of alder-bushes, a streamlet flow from the lakeside. This he hopefully followed. Not far had he gone before a dull roar met his ears, breaking the sullen silence of the woods. It was the sound of falling waters. He hastened forward. The wood grew thinner. Light appeared ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... his adventures of the time, accompanied his wife's text with such graphic illustration of gesture, that his audience laughed at the merry tale till the tears ran down their cheeks. Then with a few allusions to his strange childhood, he thanked the God who led him through thorny ways into the very arms of love and peace in the cottage of Robert and Janet Grant, whence, and not from the fortune he had since inherited, came all ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... bird—the plain brown munia—seems more appropriate than that with which the species has since been saddled by Blanford. The nest of this little bird is more loosely put together and more globular than that of the amadavat. It is usually placed low down in a thorny bush. The number of eggs laid varies from six to fifteen. These, like those of the red munia, are white. June seems to be the only month in the year in which the eggs of this species have not been found. In the United Provinces more nests containing ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... essence, including talent, and yet distinct from it. Genius you have, but genius unconcentrated, undisciplined. I see, though you are too diffident to say so openly, that you shrink from the fame of singer, because, fevered by your reading, you would fain aspire to the thorny crown of author. I echo the hard saying of the Maestro: I should be your worst enemy did I encourage you to forsake a career in which a dazzling success is so assured, for one in which, if it were your true vocation, you would not ask whether ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Arabian and African deserts, if man and domestic animals, especially the goat and the camel, were banished from them. The hard palate and tongue and strong teeth and jaws of this latter quadruped enable him to break off and masticate tough and thorny branches as large as the finger. He is particularly fond of the smaller twigs, leaves, and seed-pods of the sont and other acacias, which, like the American Robinia, thrive well on dry and sandy soils, and he spares no tree the branches of which are within his reach, except, if I remember ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... were the signs of their good intention; and it is not to be wondered at on the other hand that we would not trust a mob of blacks, all warriors, heavily armed with spears, boomerangs, clubs, and little thorny sticks, to approach the camp. From my previous knowledge of the blacks I fancied we would easily have driven them away on horseback, but this I did not think necessary. The mere fact of seeing the horses brought towards the camp made them retire to a more respectful distance from us; ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... steeply up and down, over loose coral blocks, between ferns and mosses; lianas serve as ropes to help us climb over coral rocks, and with our knives we hew a passage through thorny creepers and thick bush. The road runs in zigzags, sometimes turning back to go round fallen trunks and swampy places, so that we really walk three or four times the distance to Hog Harbour. Our guide uses his bush-knife steadily ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... curving bend of coarse meadow the grass has kept something of its greenness, and the season of blossoming stays by the beautiful stream. There is a wanton tangling and mingling of the waste-loving flowers, such as the yellow toad-flax, the bristling viper's bugloss, the thorny ononis that spreads a hue of pink as it creeps along the ground, sky-blue chicory on wiry stems, large milk-white blooms of datura, and purple heads of centaurea calcitrapa, whose spines are avoided like those of a hedgehog by people who walk with bare feet. Upon the banks, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... description, with engravings, of the qualities of black and long pepper, and an account of where these spices are found. We will here say something of the manner of the growth of the pepper-plant. Like the vine, it requires support, and it is usual to plant a thorny tree by its side, to which it may cling. In Malabar, the chief pepper district of India, the jacca-tree (Artocarpus integrifolia) is made thus to yield its assistance, the same soil being adapted to the growth of both plants. The stem of the pepper-plant entwines ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... having been attended to with the assistance of Gobo, who had now found his feet, I went on to extricate our unfortunate companion from the aloe bush. This we found a thorny task, but at last he was dragged forth uninjured, though in a very pious and prayerful frame of mind. His 'spirit had certainly looked that way,' he said, or he would now have been dead. As I never like to interfere ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... answered—The Lord Jesus Christ preached in a ship to his hearers on the shore (Matt 13); and showed that they were as four sorts of ground—The high-way, The stony, The thorny, and The good ground; whereof the good ground was the only persons ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... When health gushes through each vein, Who paint the fever of the brain? Who picture half the grief and pain That follows pale sickness in her train? With bitterest dregs she fills her cup, And makes her victims drink them up: Binds them to thorny pillows down, And frightens sleep with her stern frown; Or if perchance the eyelids close, She gives her victim no repose, But hurries round and madly screams, And conjures up her wildest dreams, Binds reason in her iron chains, To fancy gives her ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... Scroggles penetrated much farther into the wilds than he had any intention of doing. There is no saying how far, in his absence of mind, he might have wandered, had he not been caught and very uncomfortably entangled in a mesh-work of wild vines and thorny plants that ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... reverence crowned. No great, but guilty fame Here kindled pride, that should have kindled shame; THESE chose the better, happier part, That poured its sunlight o'er the heart; That crowned their homes with peace and health, And weighed Heaven's smile beyond earth's wealth; Far from the thorny paths of life They stood, a living lesson to their race, Rich in the charities of life, Man in his strength, and Woman in her grace; In purity and love THEIR pilgrim road they trod, And when they served their neighbor felt ...
— An Ode Pronounced Before the Inhabitants of Boston, September the Seventeenth, 1830, • Charles Sprague
... and plunged into the briars. Helen heard the rotten fence-rails smash and he vanished behind the thorny branches that closed across the gap. She was glad he had gone so quickly; partly because it was her wish, and partly because she saw the cry of pain had moved him. She liked to think he ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... One of the most valuable lessons experience can teach any human being is not to worry and fret about the future. You can plant ahead of yourself a path of roses and be cheerful, or you can plant a bed of thorns and reap a thorny reward. Cultivate the spirit of contentment, devote all your energy to making the actual present comfortable. Don't fret about what is going to bother you next week, because, as the philosopher said, most of the troubles we ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... by a mass of tangled creepers, looked down at the growing young life at their feet with the sombre resignation of giants that had lost faith in their strength. And in the midst of them the merciless creepers clung to the big trunks in cable-like coils, leaped from tree to tree, hung in thorny festoons from the lower boughs, and, sending slender tendrils on high to seek out the smallest branches, carried death to their victims in an exulting riot ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... in the mulberry tree, And he spoke out aloud in his fond reverie. At the sound of the word, the good mare made a push, And down went the priest in the wild-briar bush. He remembered too late, on his thorny green bed, Much that well may be thought ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... called, "I have watched your struggle to find the pathway, and I know that you will love the things that belong to it. Therefore, I will show you the trail, and this is what it will lead you to: a thousand pleasant friendships that will offer honey in little thorny cups, the twelve secrets of the underbrush, the health of sunlight, suppleness of body, the unafraidness of the night, the delight of deep water, the goodness of rain, the story of the trail, the knowledge of the swamp, the aloofness of knowing,—yea, more, ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... rapidly what the President and Blondet could only do after much thinking, and very often solved knotty points for them. In delicate conjunctures the President and Vice-President took counsel with their junior, confided thorny questions to him, and never failed to wonder at the readiness with which he brought back a task in which old Blondet found nothing to criticise. Michu was sure of the influence of the most crabbed aristocrats, and he was young and rich; he lived, therefore, above the level ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... a thorny waste; Hot noontide lies on all the way, And with its scorching breath makes haste Each freshening dawn to burn and slay, Yet patiently I bide and stay: Knowing the secret of my fate, The hour of bloom, dear Lord, I wait, Come when it will, or soon ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... whose echo resounds thro' the glen, Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den, Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear, I charge you disturb ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... idled in the cabin, like the other guests, while Ephraim and his assistant busied about the premises. But the morning grew on, and the guests, after a season of smoking and tilted silence against the wall, shook themselves and their effects together, saddled, and were lost among the waste thorny hills. Twenty Mile became hot and torpid. Jones lay on three consecutive chairs, occasionally singing, and old Mr. Adams had not gone away either, but watched him, with more tobacco running ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... thousand years have roll'd away Since thy dread walls entomb'd their noble prey; To us they speak, ask the warm tear to flow For ills now pressing and for present woe; Bid us to succour fellow-men who haste Along the thorny road of life, and taste The bitterness of poverty, endure All that befalls the too neglected poor; And with no friend, no bounty to assist, Steal from the world ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... on Man' is a more thorny subject. When a man finds himself attacked and defended from all quarters, and on all varieties of principle, he is bewildered. Friends are as dangerous as enemies. He must not defy a bristling enemy, if he cares for repose; he ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Douglas who doubted his motives, could not but admire his courage. It did, indeed, require something more than audacity to head a revolt against the administration. No man knew better the thorny road that he must now travel. No man loved his party more. No man knew better the hazard to the Union that must follow a rupture in the Democratic party. But if Douglas nursed the hope that Democratic senators ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... he began to observe that his silk stockings were inconvenient for traversing a forest. A large branch of thorny wood had made a great hole in his coat; his breeches were not irreproachable by any means; and more than once, feeling his long sword embarrass him by catching in some plants which obstructed his path, he involuntarily turned ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... scream unnerved the other runners, who swerved and stumbled, and in a moment the jampan was overturned down the side of the kudd. The white figure in it was shot out and went rolling down the rough hillside among the scrub and thorny bushes and broken ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... fellow," said he. "For all that he is so crabbed and crusty outside, like an everlasting workday, another man is hidden in him, as fine as Sunday, whether you believe me or not. He appreciates everything beautiful. Mean he may be, and thorny and quarrelsome and quick with his fists. For instance, the token that he marked the boy with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... unchallenged. After a few yards in its friendly shade, he dropped the thorny bundle and strode swiftly toward his own camp. He had not gone a hundred yards before a voice of French type cried "'Alt," and he was face to face with a sentry whose musket was ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... easily entertained, but there now exists too much refractory evidence against assigning this Greek Gospel to an Aramaic-speaking Galilean. That an untutored fisherman could have written so elaborate and so highly philosophical an account of Jesus has always presented a thorny problem. And so to most scholars John's authorship of the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... not mean that any man will necessarily act in the same way to-morrow as he did yesterday, when subjected to the influence of the same threat, inducement, or temptation; because, without grappling the thorny question of free will, we realize that a man's action is never the result of only one stimulus and motive, but is the resultant of many; and we have no reason to expect that he will act in the same way when subjected ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... too, and we were all of passionate tempers. Besides, with all this reading, I didn't do particularly well at school. How could I when day after day I would march off from the house, leaving a smooth bed behind me in my room? We were thorny people. Quarrels were frequent. My mother had a phrase which set my teeth on edge—'Don't you talk, Martin, until you are earning your living'—the sort of remark that stings and stays in a boy's memory as something ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... to Monseigneur, "there is one thing which much embarrasses the feet, the furze that grows upon the ground, where M. le Marechal de Villeroy is encamped. The furze, it is true, is not mixed with any other plant, either hard or thorny; but it is a high furze, as high, as high, let me see, what shall I say?"—and he looked all around to find some object of comparison—"as high, I assure ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... as far west as Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri and down to North Carolina, you may find the high-bush blackberry. Its stems are sometimes ten feet high; they are furrowed and thorny and the bush grows along country roads, by fences, and in the woods. The berries are sweet, but quite seedy. They grow in long, loose ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... others, know from experience. He'll see you over all the hard places, if you ask him to, and just follow patiently. You may not be able to see the way or know where he is leading you, any more than the sheep; but the path, however flinty and thorny, will end in the fold. Of that be assured." And he gave her one or two sad chapters from his own life of which he could now ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... their heads so very high that they, of course, did not hear the low, soft cry, "Oh, will no one give me shelter?" At last there came an answer, "I will, gladly," in a shy and trembling tone, as though fearing to be presumptuous, from a thick thorny bush which helped to protect the more dainty beauties from the rough blasts of a sometimes too boisterous wind; in consideration of which service the flowers considered the briar as a good, useful sort of thing, respectable enough in its common way, but not as an ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... twilight loomed some high and tangled wall of green foliage, stretching seemingly across the very world. Most sickening sight! a matted, thorny jungle, one of those primeval woods again, but closer, thicker, darker than the park-like one before; rank and prickly herbage in a rotting swamp, crowding up about the stately trees. Must he battle his way through? Well, then, if it must be so, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... flat wooden cover over it now, with an iron bar to keep it in place, lest some one be careless and fall in, though now the wild blackberry vines have nearly hidden it from sight. Even now when only young leaves are on the brambles, the thorny stems make a network over the cover. The old Paxton House was gone before my time," Mrs. Derby said, "but a part of its fine wall remains. It was upon that ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... The thorny place is one who hears, And does the truth receive; But finds that cares of life and wealth, His mind and ...
— The Parables Of The Saviour - The Good Child's Library, Tenth Book • Anonymous
... in foreign lands we roam, Oh, why should not the exile sigh for home? A thousand snares beset our thorny way, And night is round us—why not wish for day? The storm is high, beneath its wintry wing The blossom fades—oh, why ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... feel my body must be free From that hard knot which is its richest prize, Ere medicine old or incantations new Can heal the wounds which pierced me in that wood, Thorny and troublous, where I play'd such part, Leaving it halt ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... shelter; the desire to smooth his sister's way, which had led him to devote himself in heart to the cloister, though never permitted openly to pledge himself. Then the discovery that the world was less thorny than he had expected; the allurement of royal favour and greatness; the charm of amusement, and activity in recovered health; the cowardly dread of scorn, leading him not merely into the secular life, but into the gradual dropping of piety and devotion; the actual share he ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sufficient capacity to hold acres of the leaves. In Persia, where the celebrated Shiraz tobacco is grown, the sheds are simply covered buildings without any boards on the sides, the only protection afforded from the weather being supplied by light, thorny bushes, so that the plants may be exposed to the wind. After fully curing, the tobacco is removed to another drying-house and turned every day. The drying-houses in other tobacco-growing countries ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... out her provisions, and bade him eat and welcome. He did so, and gave her many thanks, and said: "There is a thick thorny hedge before you, which you cannot get through, but take this wand in your hand, strike it three times, and say, 'Pray, hedge, let me come through,' and it will open immediately; then, a little further, you will find a well; sit down on the brink of it, and there will come up three golden ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... natural stronghold, opening sidewise on the face of the shore, so as to be invisible from the open water. It was deep enough for an ocean-liner, but too narrow for a big steamer to enter with her own power. Bedient turned into the thick, thorny undergrowth, which lined the eastern wall of the Inlet, and made his way around its devious curvings, silently and slowly. The growth on the cliffs was so dense in places that he had to crawl. The ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... civilized description, but Clover could scarcely eat for wondering how all these things had come there so soon, so very soon. It seemed like magic,—one minute the solemn peaks and passes, the prairie-dogs and the thorny plain, the next all these portieres and rugs and etchings and down pillows and pretty devices in glass and china, as if some enchanter's wand had tapped the wilderness, and hey, presto! modern civilization had sprung up like Jonah's gourd all in a minute, or like the palace which Aladdin ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... be said for a plant that is the proverbial type of a barren country or untidy cultivation, yet the Bramble and the Blackberry have their charms, and we could ill afford to lose them from our hedgerows. The name Bramble originally meant anything thorny, and Chaucer applied it ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... plucked the thorny rose, 10 And when May pulled the brier, Half the birds would swoop to see, Half the beasts draw nigher; Half the fishes of the streams Would dart up to admire: But when Margaret plucked a flag-flower, Or poppy hot aflame, All the beasts and all ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... bolder, and showed not the least fear of the camp fires, which were always kept alight. They paid no heed to the noise and tumult they caused, or even to gunshots fired at them in the darkness. A tall, thick fence of tough, thorny bushes was erected round each camp as a protection, but the lions always jumped over or broke through it when they wanted a man. In the daytime the Colonel followed their tracks, which were plainly visible through ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... spotted snakes, with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blind-worms do no wrong; Come not near our ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... that long has tost On the thorny bed of pain, At length repair his vigour lost And breathe and walk again: The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common sun, the air, the skies, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... where the great walnut-tree stump had been. The cellar was a mere dent in the sloping ground; it had been filled in by the growing grass and slow processes of summer and winter weather. But just at the pilgrim's right were some thorny twigs of an old rosebush. A sudden brightening of memory brought to mind the love that his mother—dead since his fifteenth year—had kept for this sweetbrier. How often she had wished that she had brought it to her new home! So much had changed in the world, so many had gone into the world of ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the night that was all pale and glowing around, with shadows and glimmerings and presences. Distinctly, she saw the flowers in the hedge-bottoms, she saw the thin, raked sheaves flung white upon the thorny hedge. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Austrians on this occasion: "Other roads will answer better than Silesia!" said they. [Pauli, v. 327, 332.] Baron Freytag, their Ambassador at Berlin, had negotiated the affair so far: "Circle of Schwiebus," said Freytag, "and let us have done with these thorny talks!" ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... singular imbecility of manner and appearance, 'but I meant the path was rough. It lies, all the way, by glade and dingle, and the dingles are both deep and thorny.' ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... favourably with much larger cities. A hard and disputatious element has been commented on by strangers: it would not touch Fleeming, who was himself regarded, even in this metropolis of disputation, as a thorny table-mate. To golf unhappily he did not take, and golf is a cardinal virtue in the city of the winds. Nor did he become an archer of the Queen's Body Guard, which is the Chiltern Hundreds of the distasted golfer. He did ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... highest point on some high down, and sitting on her horse survey the prospect before her—the sea of rounded hills, hills beyond hills, stretching away to the dim horizon, and over it all the vast blue dome of heaven. Sky and earth, with thorny brakes and grass and flowers and wild creatures, with birds that flew low and others soaring up into heaven—what was the secret meaning it had for her? She was like one groping for a key in a dark place. Not a human figure visible, not a sign of human occupancy on that expanse! Was this ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... wicked son of thine, O Dhritarashtra, hath his hour come. He chooseth evil, not good, though entreated by his well-wishers. Thou also followest in the wake of this wicked wretch of sinful surroundings, who treadeth a thorny path setting at naught the words of his well-wisher. This exceedingly wicked son of thine with all his counsellors coming in contact with Krishna of unstained acts, will be destroyed in a moment. I dare not listen to the words of this sinful and wicked ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... brains she made up for in warmth of heart, and though she faithfully upheld discipline, she was apt somewhat to tone down the severity of the rules, and indeed sometimes surreptitiously to soften the thorny paths of ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... sober September morning, the fact that Miss Thornton, familiarly known as "Thorny," was out of temper, speedily became known to all the little force. Miss Thornton was not only the oldest clerk there, but she was the highest paid, and the longest in the company's employ; also she was by nature a leader, and generally managed to impress her associates ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
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