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verb
Bereft  v.  Imp. & p. p. of Bereave.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bereft" Quotes from Famous Books



... long, and perhaps final farewell! If I have arrived at a moment when this capital is comparatively thinned of its population, and bereft of its courtly splendors—and if this city may be said to be now dull, compared with what its winter gaieties will render it—I shall nevertheless not have visited it IN VAIN. Books, whether as MSS. or printed volumes, have been inspected by me with an earnestness ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... immersed in another crisis, bereft of speech. He tapped a cigarette upon the counter and lit it. Fairfax, whose glass had just been refilled by the bartender, was still ghastly pale, shaking with nervousness and breathing hoarsely. Francis, tense and alert in his chair, watched the ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... as Tempest strode forth—Tempest transformed by the footlights and by her young imagination into a true king most wonderfully and romantically bereft of reason by the woes that had assailed him in horrid phalanxes. If anyone had pointed out to her that Tempest's awful voice was simply cheap ranting, or that her own woes had been as terrible as any that had ever visited a king, ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... two of his band, he drove away to another part of the town, to be sold at the post, as soon as the forms of the law, respecting notice of the sale, could be complied with. The poor widow, half distracted at being thus suddenly bereft of house and home, spent the remainder of the day in vainly endeavoring to procure some tenement into which she could remove with her furniture, or with so much of it as might yet be saved. On the next day, however, as ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... and resumed his walk up and down the room. But no longer did he rave now, no longer did he strike about him like one bereft of reason. His face, though flushed and streaming with perspiration, was set and calm; his footsteps across the carpets were measured and firm. He had cast his whip aside and his hands were clenched behind his back, and on his brow there had appeared a deep furrow, the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... happened to be on the Loire in a steamboat of which the boiler burst. Mademoiselle de Watteville was so severely injured that she lost her right arm and her left leg; her face is marked with fearful scars, which have bereft her of her beauty; her health, cruelly upset, leaves her few days free from suffering. In short, she now never leaves the Chartreuse of les Rouxey, where she leads a life ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac

... vnto the Sea (which hath requit it) Him, and his innocent childe: for which foule deed, The Powres, delaying (not forgetting) haue Incens'd the Seas, and Shores; yea, all the Creatures Against your peace: Thee of thy Sonne, Alonso They haue bereft; and doe pronounce by me Lingring perdition (worse then any death Can be at once) shall step, by step attend You, and your wayes, whose wraths to guard you from, Which here, in this most desolate Isle, else fals Vpon ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... fugitive Acadians found their way through a wilderness of forests, suffering and dying as they went, some landing in distant states, (five hundred having been consigned to Governor Oglethorpe of Georgia,) and others, lonely and bereft, found a home with the humble and laborious farmers of this hardy state, whose finest quality is an open-handed hospitality. These intermarrying with our people here, have left traces of their blood and fine moral qualities to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... haste and much agitation. Mrs. Allston, the wife of our beloved friend, died last evening, and the event overwhelmed us all in the utmost sorrow. As for Mr. Allston, for several hours after the death of his wife he was almost bereft of reason. Mr. Leslie and I are applying our whole attention to him, and we have so far succeeded as ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... saw him first, and announced the fact with a scream that brought a dozen people round her. Bereft of speech, she ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... The Children's Record. Quarry Farm, July 7, 1884.—Yesterday evening our cows (after being inspected and worshipped by Jean from the shed for an hour,) wandered off down into the pasture, and left her bereft. I thought I was going to get back home, now, but that was an error. Jean knew of some more cows, in a field somewhere, and took my hand and led me thitherward. When we turned the corner and took the right-hand road, I saw that we should presently be out of range ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... go," he thought, "or we shall both be done for." But the next moment he felt himself flung on the bank, and the tension on his arms relaxed. The current had thrown the two on the bank and pursued its own race round the promontory, bereft of its playthings. Drenched, huddled, hatless, ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope

... Word which is always joined to eternal damnation? An example of the horrible darkness into which Satan can lead men when God is silent and does not speak, is furnished by the Gentiles who have been bereft of the Word. Who is not horrified by the Romans, men of exemplary wisdom and famous before other nations by reason of their dignified discipline, who observed the custom of letting the worthy matrons worship and crown Priapus, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... a generating station, charged up and full. He made you feel what a lot of work there was to be done, and how glorious it was to be able to do it, and how needful to get started upon it that very hour. With the frame and the vitality of a giant he was cruelly bereft of all outlet for his strength, and so distilled it off in hot words, in warm sympathy, in strong prejudices, in all manner of human and stimulating emotions. Much of the time and energy which might have built an imperishable name for himself was spent ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... he drew the rein from her hand that she wellnigh stumbled. And like one bereft of mind he rode through the woods and up the hill seeking his false bride. High and low he searched, but no sign of his lost mistress did he discover. Out in the distance he saw the shining city of Baile-ata-Cliat, on the near wood side of which his gray towers stood. He ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson

... distinctly jarred on Simon. A young man just bereft of his allowance and under orders to renounce his lady-love had no right to act like that. It wasn't natural—or else he had something up his youthful sleeve. Humph. That ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... are bereft of balls and soirees we devote our time to improving our Italian. Johan and I take lessons of a monsignore who appears precisely at ten every morning. We struggle through some verbs, and then he dives into Dante, the most difficult thing ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... near the center of the town, and in a two-story brick house on William street, Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born. This has long been Delaware's pride, and will be its fame. The income of his widowed mother, who was bereft of her husband four mouths before her son's birth, was derived from the rent of a good farm lying two miles north of Delaware, on the east side of the Whetstone. This income, used with frugality, enabled her to commence the education of her children. They ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... still had I to pass through the royal gardens outside of the castle walls. These gardens had once been laid out by an old king's gardener, who had become bereft of his senses, but was allowed to amuse himself therein. They were square, and divided into 16 parts by high walls, as shown in the plan thereof, so that there were openings from one garden to another, but only two different ways of entrance. ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... ordained," replied Sudall. "Bereft of her parents in this way, the infant was taken charge of and reared by Dame Croft, the miller's wife of Whalley; but even in those early days she exhibited such a malicious and vindictive disposition, and became so unmanageable, that the good dame ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the heavy change! [A]—bereft 25 Of health, strength, friends, and kindred, see! [7] Old Simon to the world is left In liveried poverty. His Master's dead,—and no one now Dwells in the Hall of Ivor; 30 Men, dogs, and horses, all are dead; He is the sole ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... at the right, and three at the left, Two at the feet, and two at the head, The tapers burn; the friends bereft Have cried till their eyes are ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels

... rarefied bodies, which are scarcely felt, like air, for example; but he likens pain to the bodies that have much density and much weight in slight volume. But pain itself makes us aware of the importance of health when we are bereft of it. I have already observed that excess of physical pleasures would be a real evil, and the matter ought not to be otherwise; it is too important for the spirit to be free. Lactantius (Divin. Instit., lib. 3, cap. 18) had said that men are so squeamish that they complain ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... to be those of a madman. He spoke very softly, with that childish, lisping voice, which is peculiar to negroes, and his mysterious, almost menacing words, consequently, sounded all the more as if they were uttered at random by a man bereft of his reason. But his looks, the looks of those pale, cold, clear blue eyes, were certainly not those of a madman. They clearly expressed menace, yes, menace, as well as irony, and, above all, implacable ferocity, and their glance was like a flash of lightning, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... is that gliding o'er the meadow yonder? Is it the misty vapors of the moor That form a picture in the morning chill? Now it draws near.—The shade of Catiline! His spectre—! I can see his misty eye, His broken shield, his sword bereft of blade. Ah, he is surely dead; one thing alone,— Remarkable,—his wound ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... law, exactly illustrates the Zulu theory. At the moment when the husband of Jonka Dyneis was in danger six miles from her house in his boat, Jonka 'was found, and seen standing at her own house wall in a trance, and being taken, she could not give answer, but stood as bereft of her senses, and when she was asked why she was so moved, she answered, "If our boat be not lost, she was in great hazard."' (October ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... last persuaded a sort of grand jury of twenty-four clerks and laymen that he was the patron. In a year's time he won his case and saw Robert of Dore, a good abbot, well in his chair. Hugh spent a week with his almost bereft family, gave the new man a fine chased silver and ivory crook and a great glorious goblet, and amplified the ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... many trials, But strength is as thy day; Do not despair or say, my child, "I have no heart to pray." For God's ways are not your ways, And tho' thou art bereft Of all that's most endearing, There ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie

... the Scorpion bends his arms into two curves, and, with his tail and claws bending on either side, he extends his limbs through the space of two signs of the zodiac. As soon as the youth beheld him, wet with the sweat of black venom, and threatening wounds with the barbed point of his tail, bereft of sense he let go the reins in ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... at her as though bewildered, then like one bereft of his senses by some spell, he rose in the boat, and turned his face towards the open sea. "My time is come," he said solemnly and sadly, and without another word to his frightened companion he sprang out of the boat and ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... succession occurs in every movement, and one part comes after another, the fact that we reckon before and after in movement, makes us apprehend time, which is nothing else but the measure of before and after in movement. Now in a thing bereft of movement, which is always the same, there is no before or after. As therefore the idea of time consists in the numbering of before and after in movement; so likewise in the apprehension of the uniformity of what ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... want to say a few words to your brother, my dear ladies. Wait for me a moment. I shall be back in a moment." And she rushed out, leaving the dressmakers stupefied, gazing after her with open mouths, and asking themselves if the grand calamity had bereft ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... I am to have you back. Sit down here and let me see you. How well you look, dear—not any thinner yet, I see! It will be delightful to have you at home for good, for Vere is away so much that I have felt quite bereft. Sit up, darling—don't stoop! It will be so interesting to have another girl to bring out! There are plenty of young people about here now, so you need not be dull, and I hope we shall be great companions. You were a sad little hoyden in the old days, but now that you have passed eighteen you will ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... unsteadily. He tried to speak and command the situation that in some subtle way had escaped his control, but he felt bereft and desperate. Now that Sandy was quite beyond recall, to whom could he turn? His strength and spirit were crushed and degraded—he moved up and sullenly took the plate and cup that were pushed toward him! Once he glanced at Molly. She leered at him over the ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... second, are the sacrifice of Iphigenia, [68] the tribute to Empedocles and Epicurus, [69] the description of himself as a solitary wanderer among trackless haunts of the Muses, [70] the attack on ambition and luxury, [71] the pathetic description of the cow bereft of her calf, [72] the indignant remonstrance with the man who fears to die. [73] In these, as in innumerable single touches, the poet of original genius is revealed. Virgil often works by allusion: Lucretius never does. All his effects are gained ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... Chesnel was thunderstruck. But for the strength of his devotion, he would have succumbed to this blow. Tears streamed from the eyes that might well have had no tears left to shed. For a few moments he was a child again, for a few moments he was bereft of his senses; he stood like a man who should find his own house on fire, and through a window see the cradle ablaze and hear the hiss of the flames on his children's curls. He rose to his full height—il se dressa en pied, as Amyot would have said; he seemed to grow taller; he raised ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... peace. The backward glance of this generation is too apt to stop at the transition period, when the factory had taken the interesting manufactures out of the hands of the housewife and left the homestead bereft of its best, when the struggle to make it a modern money-making plant, for which it was never designed, drove the young people away to less arduous days and more ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... both of justice and law; warrants, committals, and constables, cleared the land. Many fled—a few were seized, escorted ostentatiously by a serjeant and twelve of Sir Ulick's corps, and lodged in the county jail to stand their trial, bereft of all favour and purtection, bona fide ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... his fields, accidentally turning towards his house, suddenly discovers a vast column of smoke bursting forth, and ascending in black curling volumes to heaven. "Oh my God! my house!" he exclaims, "my poor wife and children!" Then, half bereft of his senses, he sets off and runs towards his house. — Still, as he cuts the air, he groans out, "Oh, my poor wife and children!" Presently he hears their cries: he sees them at a distance with outstretched arms flying towards ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... our friends for what they are to-day—not for what they will be when we come to make unreasonable demands on them. The sun is beautiful and delightful. It will not shine for us in the night nor, in the daytime shine for us alone. We were bereft of our minds did we, therefore, enter a cave and forswear all further ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... the poor girl had just received fifty lashes on her bare person, the young lady fainted and fell on the floor. The servants placed their mistress on the sofa, and went in pursuit of their master. Little did the preacher think, on returning to his daughter, that he should soon be bereft of her; yet such was to be his lot. A blood-vessel had been ruptured, and the three physicians who were called in told the father that he must prepare to lose his child. That moral courage and calmness, ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown

... bridegroom, whom she now fears; it only beats for Conrad, who has owned his love to her. Darkness comes on and the gnomes appear with their Queen, who reveals to the frightened girl the origin of her bridegroom and entreats her to give back the son to his poor bereft mother. When the gnomes have disappeared, Conrad overtakes Anna, and she tells him all, asking his help against her mysterious bridegroom. Conrad, seeing that she returns his love, is happy. He has just obtained a good situation and will now be able ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... bereft strew wide the ashes dim; Rich hearts, poor hands, the lovely, the unlearned, Bemoan the angel of the age in him, A star unto ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... is true that I am blind (it was not always thus), But oft it comes into my mind how God can comfort us. For if, of some good gift bereft, we bend before His will, He ever has a blessing left which should our sorrows still. This very morn I found it so; scarce had the day begun, Ere with small, pattering, restless feet that hither swiftly run, The children ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various

... shall I hail more blest, your queen or you? While without other either falls to wrack, And light must eyes, or eyes their light must lack. She without you, a diamond sunk in mine, Its worth unprized, to self alone must shine; You without her, like hands bereft of head, Like Ajax rage, by blindfold lust misled. She light, you eyes; she head, and you the hands, In fair proportion knit by heavenly hands; Servants in queen, and queen in servants blest; Your only glory, how to serve her best; And hers how best the adventurous might ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... thine ear hath been bereft; Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left— For, high-soul'd Maid, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... see them, having left our schools and colleges, full of the knightly chivalry of youth, torn in the world of business between the ideal of Christlikeness and the selfish rivalry of commercial conflict. We watch them growing sordid, disillusioned, mercenary, spoiled at last and bereft of their youth's fine promise. You wish us to preach human brotherhood in Christ, and then we see that the one chief enemy of brotherhood between men and nations is economic strife, the root of class consciousness and war. You send some of us as your ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... Shelley was sick at heart, bereft, perplexed, in sore straits, and to whom should he turn for advice in this time of undoing but to Godwin, the philosopher! Besides, Godwin had been the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, and the splendid precepts of these two had nourished into being all the latent excellence of the youth. Yes, he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... knowledge to comfort many a bereft heart, and enough too to make us pray persistently and believingly for loved ones because of prayer's uncalculated and incalculable power. Be sure the prayer-fact is in the case of your friend, ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon

... was not accustomed to analyzing his emotions. But as he sat in his Katy-bereft 10x12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the keynote of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss of her ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... Chateau de la Haute Maison, and secondly at Baron de Rothschild's Chateau de Ferrieres—the German staff usually installing itself in the lordly "pleasure-houses" of the French noble or financial aristocracy, and leaving them as dirty as possible, and, naturally, bereft of their timepieces. Baron Alphonse de Rothschild told me in later years that sixteen clocks were carried off from Ferrieres whilst King (afterwards the Emperor) William and Bismarck were staying there. I ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... hast left us; Here thy loss we deeply feel; But 'tis God that hath bereft us: He ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... that haunted it,— My fool, my lost jester, my Shadow-of-a-Leaf! And "why," I said, "why, all this while, have you left me so Luckless in melody, lonely in mirth?" "Oh, why," he sang, "why has this world then bereft me so Soon of my Marian, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... Thou hast done it and so there is no further need of thee. Out of this corruptible body I shall rise in Jerusalem, my mission accomplished, into the incorruptible spirit. His passion rising again and into flood, he seemed like one bereft of reason, for he said that all men must drink of his blood if they would live for ever. He who licked up one drop would have everlasting life. Joseph recalled the murmurings that followed these words, but Jesus would not desist. These murmurings seemed to sting him to declare his ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... noise of trampling feet we hear. My father, looking thro' the shades, with fear, Cried out: 'Haste, haste, my son, the foes are nigh; Their swords and shining armor I descry.' Some hostile god, for some unknown offense, Had sure bereft my mind of better sense; For, while thro' winding ways I took my flight, And sought the shelter of the gloomy night, Alas! I lost Creusa: hard to tell If by her fatal destiny she fell, Or weary sate, or wander'd with affright; But she was lost for ever to my ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... bias toward the voluptuous, reveling in a world of sense, and demanding attention as her right. Milton began diving into his theories and books, and forgot the poor child who had no abstract world into which to withdraw. Suddenly bereft of the gay companionship that her father's house supplied, she felt herself aggrieved, alone; and tears of vexation and homesickness began to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... is piteous! most piteous!" said the mother-superior, in a mournful tone. "We do the very best we can for these poor, deserted babes; but young infants, bereft of their mother's milk, which is their life, and of their mother's tender love and intuitive care, suffer more than any of us can estimate, and are almost sure to perish, out of this life, at ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... summed up in him, in like manner as Christ's obedience and possession of salvation are the property of all mankind united under him as their head."[572] In the first Adam we offended God by not fulfilling his commandments; in Adam humanity became disobedient, wounded, sinful, bereft of life; through Eve mankind became forfeit to death; through its victory over the first man death descended upon us all, and the devil carried us all away captive etc.[573] Here Irenaeus always means that in Adam, who represents all mankind as their head, the latter became doomed to death. ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... by this circumstance, he succeeded in reaching the bushes in sufficient time and Paul Hover had just hurried the breathless Ellen into the tangled bush, as Ishmael gained the summit of the rock, in the manner already described, where he stood like a man momentarily bereft of sense, gazing at the confusion which had been created among his chattels, or at his gagged and bound children, who had been safely bestowed, by the forethought of the bee-hunter, under the cover of a bark roof, in a sort of irregular ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... question, what was I to do? My plight was almost as desperate as it could well be; for not only was I utterly bereft of every one of those who were nearest and dearest to me, but I was likewise homeless, and literally penniless. The house which I called home was destroyed; every horn and hoof of my father's stock had been stolen, and would probably never be recovered; and as to money, there was none, for my ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... "one authority, one law, one language" hegemony had been replaced by an all pervading diversity. The closely knit Greco-Roman Empire had been superseded in Europe by a sparsely inhabited, roadless wilderness, largely bereft of trade, using waterways as the easiest means of communication and transport. The economy was built around wood cutting, charcoal burning, backward animal husbandry, hand-tool agriculture, hand-craft industry, the rudiments of commerce and finance centered in trading cities. The great houses of ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... our estate and us, The orphaned brood of him, our eagle-sire, Whom to his death a fearful serpent brought Enwinding him in coils; and we, bereft And foodless, sink with famine, all too weak To bear unto the eyrie, as he bore, Such quarry as he slew. Lo! I and she, Electra, stand before thee, fatherless, And each alike cast out and ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... no answer. To his surprise, Vicenti found that the old man was suffering from the scene even more keenly than he had feared. Like one suddenly bereft of strength, General Rojas had sunk into his chair. His bloodless, delicate hands trembled upon the table. Great tears crept down his white, wrinkled face. In the two years through which the young doctor had watched his patient he had never before seen in his ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis

... own head a poetical, dramatic, and yet most legitimate interest. The great purpose of the present history must be found in its illustration of the creative power of civil and religious freedom. Here was a little republic, just born into the world, suddenly bereft of its tutelary saint, left to its own resources, yet already instinct with healthy vigorous life, and playing its difficult part among friends and enemies with audacity, self-reliance, and success. To a certain extent its achievements ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... and slothful spirit which too ofter veils itself under the pretence or religion. It will have no putting off of justice to a far-off day of reckoning, and it is ever spurred on by the feeling, "The night cometh, when no man can work." Bereft of all hope of a personal future, it binds up its hopes with that of the race; unbelieving in any aid from Deity, it struggles the more strenuously to work out man's salvation by his own strength. "To us ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... where she was confined, which seems to have been still the upper chamber of her tomb, he found her lying on a low and miserable bed, in a most wretched condition, and exhibiting such a spectacle of disease and wretchedness that he was shocked at beholding her. She appeared, in fact, almost wholly bereft of reason. When Octavius came in, she suddenly leaped out of the bed, half naked as she was, and covered with bruises and wounds, and crawled miserably along to her conqueror's feet in the attitude of a suppliant. Her hair was torn from her head, her limbs ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... read seventeen or eighteen), and insisted on the advantage of giving every girl a profession by which she could earn her living, if the need arose. Speaking to Mrs. Hall on the subject of some girls who had been suddenly bereft of fortune, she exclaimed: 'They do everything that is fashionable imperfectly; their drawing, singing, dancing, and languages amount to nothing. They were educated to marry, and had they had time, they might have gone off with, and hereafter from, husbands. I desire to give every girl, no matter ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... he was silent because he was literally bereft of words. This woman was dying and fancying strange things! He looked from one to the other of the stern, pale faces of those who were gathered around her bedside. Seven of them there were—the same seven. At that moment their eyes were ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... doubt the course I took no longer, Since those I love seem satisfied. The bond between them will grow stronger As they go forward side by side; Then will my pains be jusfied. Their joy is mine, and that is best— I am not totally bereft; For I have still the mem'ry left— Love ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... ween I heard the rumour, How the Lord of rings (1) bereft thee; From thine arms earth's offspring (2) tearing, Trickfull he and trustful thou. Then the men, the buckler-bearers, Begged the mighty gold-begetter, Sharp sword oft of old he reddened, Not to stand in strife ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders

... reason bereft, Soon ended her sorrows and sank cold in death; Thus died that slave mother, poor heart broken ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various

... please your grace to understand that witches and sorcerers within these last four years are marvellously increased within this your grace's realm. Your grace's subjects pine away even unto the death; their colour fadeth—their flesh rotteth—their speech is benumbed—their senses are bereft! I pray God they may never practise further than ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... friend and helper in Australia, to Dr. J. Hood Wilson, Barclay Free Church, Edinburgh, I resolved to deliver them that evening; and I prayed the Lord to open up all my path, as I was thus thrown solely on Him for guidance and bereft of the aid of man. Dr. Wilson and his lady, neither of whom I had ever seen before, received me as kindly as if I had been an old friend. He read my letters of introduction, conversed with me as to plans and wishes (chiefly ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... love thee." I cannot be healthy if I am bereft of fellowship. If I ignore the house of prayer I impoverish my home. The peaceful glow of the fireside is not unrelated to the coals upon the common altar. The sacrament is connected with my ordinary meal. To love the Church of Christ is to become ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... physically-exhausting road took me from Sha-chiao-kai to Yin-wa-kwan, the most elevated pass between Yuen-nan-fu and Tali-fu, and continued over barren mountains, bereft of shelter, and void of vegetation and people, to Pupeng. A rough climb of an hour and a half then took me to the top of the next mountain, where roads and ruts followed a high plateau for about thirty li, and with a precipitous descent I entered the plain of Yuen-nan-i. Then over and between barren ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... serious. Suppose the Tower of Brass violated and the Princess carried away by the jinn or upon the magic carpet—whichever it was—to a world where none of them could follow her. Suppose John Wollaston bereft again. Would not Mary's old place be hers once more? Would not everything be just as it had been during those two years before her ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... calamity, drew from her a burst of passionate sorrow, such as hardly any bereavement but the loss of a very near relative could have impelled. Another year had just ended, when a calamity, equally sudden, bereft a wide circle of her likewise, with her husband and infant son. Little did I fear, when I bade her a confident Good-by, on the deck of her outward-bound ship, that the sea would close over her earthly remains, ere we should meet again; far less that the light of my eyes and the cynosure of my ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... around Cyrus, standing alone and solitary on his height, there had gathered the great illusion that makes theft honest and falsehood truth—the illusion of Success; and simple John Henry Pendleton, who, after nineteen years of poverty and memory, was bereft alike of classical pedantry and of physical comforts, had grown a little weary of the endless lip-worship of a single moment in history. Granted even that it was the greatest moment the world had seen, still why couldn't one be satisfied to have it take its place ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... legislation. But, alone of the seemingly unadjustable disputes pending between the United States and Great Britain, it was on the blacklist issue that the latter had an unanswerable defense. The British stand left official Washington's complaint bereft of foundation under international law. The only ground on which the American protest could be justified was by contending that the blacklist violated international comity. In other words, if it was not illegal—there was no doubt of its legality—it ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... smile, and all his gums were on view when the heavy stone struck into his open mouth with a crash of splintering teeth. The first pebble was followed by a second, which took him between the eyes. Stunned and blinded, he reeled back and dropped the torch. His comrades, bereft of their guiding light, upon which they had counted so much, hesitated for a moment and hung upon the next step. There was no hesitation with Jack. Things stood at too desperate a pass with him that he should let things hang in the wind. No sooner did he see the Kachin with the torch reel ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... but let me remind you of a fact often true in missionary experience. After the poor devils have been bereft of the objects of their fond and credulous worship, by proof that their deities are indifferent, they cease to have any faith at all"; and with a cold and rather formal bow he left her side ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... sort o' likes me in streaks. After he gets bereft of them thirteen or fifteen offspring he turns morose a whole lot, an' I used to go 'cross in my dugout an' cheer ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... he proceeded, "the miller had a happy wife, and two innocent, glad-hearted children. Now, his wife, bereft of reason, is in a mad-house, and his son the occupant of a felon's cell, charged with the awful ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... hand. Moved by his son's grief, Pilumnus entreated Ceres' revenge on the faithless nymph, and Lalage died in giving birth to the twins Amyntas and Amarillis. This but added to Philaebus' despair, so that he died upon her tomb, and the bereft father having once more sought the aid of the goddess, the oracle pronounced ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... The love that we dreamed of,—is all things to you? That come what there may,—desolation or loss, The prick of the thorn, or the weight of the cross— You can bear it,—nor feel you are wholly bereft, While the bosom that beats for you only, is left? While the birdlings are spared that have made it so blest, Can you look, undismayed, on the wreck of ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston

... God, he will not be able to come forth as the Supreme whose life and love are in everything that He has brought forth out of His eternal and inexhaustible life. "There is nothing," says the Beloved, "moving or unmoving, that may exist bereft of me;"[1] and unless the man can work that into his nature, unless he can love everything that is, not only the beautiful but the ugly, not only the good but the evil, not only the attractive but the repellent, unless in every form he sees the Self, he cannot climb the steep path the ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant

... breath in great, sobbing gasps. But his pursuers had seen and came on amain with mighty halloo, and though (judging by what I could see of them at the distance) they were a wild, unlovely company, yet to me, so long bereft of all human fellowship, their hoarse shouts and cries were infinitely welcome and I determined to make them the means of my release, more especially as it seemed by their speech that some of them were Englishmen. To this ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... Turk, with a glow of generous indignation that suddenly animated his countenance, 'is it wonderful that I should pine in silence, and mourn my fate, who am bereft of the first and noblest present of nature—my liberty?' 'And yet,' answered the Venetian, 'how many thousands of our nation ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... to leap into a perfectly Corsican fury of bitterness, sank back at once to its ordinary level of passive mutual repudiation. Rose and Millicent were not bereft of the finer feelings which distinguish humanity from the beasts of the jungle; sometimes they could be almost affectionate. There were, however, moments when to all appearance they hated each other with a tigerish and crouching hatred such as may be found only ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... General found himself in fresh difficulty. The corner in Muscogee Air Line, was as evasive as a huckleberry in a mouth bereft of its armament. Indeed, to use still further the homely but suggestive figure, the General found that his tongue was in more danger than his huckleberry. His notes, too, secured by fraudulent collaterals, were approaching ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... and Dived beneath the water's surface; And the foaming surging waves then Closed the whirlpool where he vanished. And afar rang out his laughter, For, the battle of the crab had Ended now, one lay there bleeding, Of the tail bereft ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... resided at Malta for a short time; thence he proceeded to Naples, where he was received with almost pageant honours. In the spring he visited Rome; but "the world's chief ornament" had few charms for one bereft of all hope of healthful recovery. His strength was waning fast, and he set out to return with more than prudent speed to his native country. He travelled seventeen hours for six successive days, and, in descending ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various

... done; and peace the traitor's bosom left, Of every comfort, every joy bereft. Rack'd by despair, in vain he sought repose: Round all his steps a cloud of horror rose, From keen reflection's maddening sting he fled, And rush'd on further crimes devoid of dread; Touch'd the abyss, and lest his eye might view Th' abandon'd ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... the English planter saw her, And the picture of the maiden at her beadwork Haunted long his memory as he sat alone In the home bereft of woman's love and care. Long he mused and sadly on his mournful fortunes Since the fateful shipwreck on Bermuda's shore That had left him lonely, left a gloomy shadow On his New World home. Then he broke the silence: "Others who have loved and lost to grief consent not. Rouse them ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman

... joy, to cut capers, and give vent to many other manifestations totally excusable in the first moments of rejoicing over your sudden transformation from a poor notary clerk into a millionaire! Why don't you answer me? Heavens! I fear his sudden happiness has bereft him of his senses!" ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue

... to wonder at, these were, and the wonder brought no illumination. She only knew there were times when they two seemed of different worlds, bereft of power to communicate; and at these times his superbly assured ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... other were killed by the elephants, which got close to one another and to the human beings, still others were slain by the Romans; many also were captured alive, men as well as elephants. For since the beasts, bereft of the men to whom they were used, became furious, Metellus made a proclamation to the prisoners, offering preservation and forgiveness to such as would check them: accordingly, some keepers approached the gentlest of the animals, controlling them by the influence of their accustomed presence, ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... Bereft of her with whom his life Was harmony without a flaw, He took no other for a wife, Nor sighed for any that he saw; And if he doubted his two sons, And heirs, Alexis and Evander, He might have been as doubtful once ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... for an individual, and still more so for a nation, to lose the illusions of youth, if not of innocence, and to awake to the knowledge of an unbeautiful reality, bereft of all fictitious adornment. When, however, the naked truth can be discovered—and that is seldom the case—it must be faced; if the national or individual mind cannot receive it, the fault lies with the immaturity or morbid condition of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... lips are cold,— Are dumb! Thy love where hast thou left? Who bath me of thy love bereft? (She ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... meets the eye, In earth, or air, or sky, Tribute we bring. Barren this world would be, Bereft of shrub and tree: Now, gracious Lord, ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston

... connection that all Paynterites had with some of its chief personages. Did not the sister-in-law of John Randolph Weyland sit and preside over them daily, pouring their coffee morning and night with her own hands? And did not the very girl whose fortune had been stolen, the bereft herself, come now and then to sit among them, occupying that identical chair which Mr. Bylash could touch by merely putting out his hand? Henry G. Surface's story? Why, Mrs. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... London hall. I had got to the middle of what I had to say when it seemed to me that the whole machine of the mind suddenly ceased to work. It was as though an immense loneliness descended on me. I saw the audience before me, but apart from vision I seemed bereft of all my faculties. If I had in that instant been asked for my name I am doubtful whether I could have got anywhere near it. Happily some one in a front row, thinking I was pausing for a word, threw out a suggestion. It was like magic. I felt the machine of memory start again ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... treasure should my soul sustain! But Hope and Care are now at strife, nor ever may unite again. Ambition, Fashion, Show and Pride, I part from all forever now; Grief, in an overwhelming tide, has taught my haughty heart to bow. By Death, stern sheriff! all bereft, I weep, yet humbly kiss the rod; the best of all I still have left—my Faith, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... distinctly the best of the situation. Tallente, who had expected a very different visitor, was for the moment bereft of words. Lady Jane, who, among her minor faults, was inclined to be a supercilious person, with too great a regard for externals, gazed upon this strange figure which had found its way into her sanctum with an astonishment which ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... those who ought to reign, to wit, birth and the courage to dare. Wherefore am I thrust out from the territory which all the world knows to have been possessed by my ancestors? To whom could I better address myself than to you, when all the supports of my race have disappeared? To whom, bereft as I am of honorable protection, should I have recourse but to you? By whom, if not by you, should I be restored to the honors of my fathers? Please God things turn out favorably for me and for my fortunes! Rejected, what, can become of me save to be exhibited as a spectacle to all who look on ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... fighting; others, too weak to stand to deliver a stout blow, were taken as prisoners: we three were amongst these. Our captors cured us of the fever, then handed us over to the priests at Vera Cruz. A year we spent in prison. We have been on the rack; the thumbscrews bereft us of thumbs, for they crushed them so badly that we were fain to have them off, fearing the arm might mortify. The villains cropped us of one ear, so that they might track us if we chanced to escape. By the mercy of ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... city, and which for long months had been resisting the Austrians! And Garibaldi starts with a handful of men to deliver the city, charters thirteen fishing barks, loses eight in a naval engagement, is compelled to return to the Roman shores, and there in all wretchedness is bereft of his wife, Anita, whose eyes he closes before returning to America, where, once before, he had awaited the hour of insurrection. Ah! that land of Italy, which in those days rumbled from end to end with the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... deep; There for the weary still a haven smiles, Though the fair goddess long has ceased to weep, And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep For him who dared prefer a mortal bride. Here too his boy essayed the dreadful leap, Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide; While thus of both bereft the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... tears. Look on me, I am still the same. What, again and again, I repeat that I love thee, and yet thou wilt not say that thou lovest me! Can it be that thy beauteous eyes are for ever closed, that they are for ever bereft of daylight? O Death! need'st thou have taken so cruel a dart, and, regardless of my eternal being, endangered my own life! How oft, ungrateful deity, have I swelled thy dark empire by the contempt or the cruelty of a fierce and proud fair one? How many faithful lovers, since I must confess it, ...
— Psyche • Moliere

... as I have read of men doing, whom a sudden fortune has bereft of reason. For the time, at all events, I was a gibbering madman. Certainly, there was to be no sleep for me that night! But, in the full tide of my frenzy, I suddenly noticed something that brought me up sharp. Out beyond the doorway it was growing ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... with Hopes of seeing, she now beheld in Streams of his Blood; but what must poor Maria's Case be? besides the Grief for her Father's Fate, she must view that dear Man, lately Happy in her Embraces, now folded in the Arms of Death, she finds herself bereft of a Parent, her Love, her Honour, and the Defender of it, all at once; and the greatest Torment is, that she must bear all this Anguish, and cannot Ease her Soul by expressing it. Belvideera sat wiping the Blood from her Father's Wound, whilst mournful Maria sat by Dangerfield, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... here,—and I were where you lie, Would you, beloved, give your little span Of life remaining unto tear and sigh? No!—setting every tender memory Within your breast, as faded roses kept For giver's sake, of giver when bereft, Still to the last the lamp of work you'd burn For purpose high, nor any moment spurn. So, as you would have done, I fain would do In poorer fashion. Ah, how oft I try, Try to fulfil your wishes, till at length The scent of those dead roses ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... joys from my life are missed, And I of the whole world stand bereft, Yet dawns will be purple and amethyst, And I cannot be sad ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... you went away and left Me and pain alone, By fortune's theft I stood bereft Of all I'd counted on— And this also, I ne'er could go On my shepherd life, Without I had the grace to ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett

... She felt her love as a misfortune; it was too strong and too unsatisfied to be felt in any sense as joy, though it strung her nature to a painful appreciation of joy. She saw life with a cold, appraising eye; it was like a landscape robbed of all sunlight, and, so robbed, so bleak, and so bereft, it was easy to appraise it, to see, since one could have no warmth or light, what were the next best things to have. She had missed the next best things again and again, when the moment had come for taking them; she had drawn back sick, blanched, shaken with the throes ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... through which a glimpse of blue heavens with golden gleams of sunlight are seen. A turn in the road and the grand entrance is before them, on either side of which are flower beds in full bloom. A conservatory is all around the octagon south wing, now bereft of its floral beauties excepting its orchards and ferns. It is really a fine old place, large and massive, in grey stone and with the grandeur of other days about it; the arms and motto show well in the sculptor's work over the entrance; the words "Always ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... riveted upon two middle-aged ladies in black who came out through a side door of the cathedral—slow-paced women, bereft, full of pity. As they crossed the yard, a gray squirrel came jumping along in front of them on its way to the park. One stooped and coaxed it and tried to pet it: it became a vital matter with both of them to pour out upon the little creature which had no need of ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen

... to chant oracles in verse, and hence surnamed Carmenta (for the Romans call verses carmina); whereas it is generally admitted that her right name was Nicostrate. Some explain the name of Carmenta more plausibly as meaning that during her prophetic frenzy she was bereft of intellect; for the Romans call to lack, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... breathless ... white as marble, cold and inanimate as stone, Heliobas left him. Not in indifference, but in sure knowledge—knowledge far beyond all mere medical science—that the senseless clay would in due time again arise to life and motion; that the casket was but temporarily bereft of its jewel,—and that the jewel itself, the Soul of the Poet, had by a superhuman access of will, managed to break its bonds and escape elsewhere. But whither? ... Into what vast realms of translucent light or drear ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... something more vile than mere cruelty. She glanced quickly over her shoulder and saw the girl raise her two hands to her head, then let them fall again on her lap. Fyne in front of the fire was like the victim of an unholy spell—bereft of motion and speech but obviously in pain. It was a short pause of perfect silence, and then that "odious creature" (he must have been really a remarkable individual in his ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... obliterated, perishing together in a watery tomb, or ground to atoms by floating timbers and wreck; households were suddenly bereft—some of fathers, others of mothers, others of children, neighbors and friends; frantic efforts were made to rescue the victims of the flood, render aid to those who were struggling against death, and mitigate ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... only a child's death, a common thing, almost as common as family existence, but it gave a new color to my life, establishing forever a sympathy with the common grief, and a community of sorrow with all bereft fathers and mothers, in the premature dissipation of the hopes of their future, and the lapse of a dear companionship into the eternal void. This is the human brotherhood of sorrow, sacred, ennobling, sanctifying where it abides, the deepest ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... voice stopped, she seemed to dilate bodily, and moved towards Alfred pale and lowering. Yes, for once this gentle quiet lady looked terrible. She confronted Alfred, "Is this true, sir?" said she, in a low stern voice. "Are you not insane? Have you never been bereft of your reason?" ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... sister, her hair; and from his wife, her necklace of pearls. The mother willingly gives her right hand, and the sister her hair, but the wife refuses the necklace. The love of a mother is often described by the image of swallows, clinging to their own warm nest; or of tender doves, bereft of their young ones. The rights of a mother are respected with true filial piety, even by the barbarian hero Marko, who never fails to pay his ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... sordidness of the miser, the avariciousness of the extortioner. A feeling of surprise at such conduct may flit across your bosoms, gentlemen, and you may perchance doubt that I can show a man of this city, so bereft of charity, so utterly oblivious to all the better feelings of humanity, but I shall before long call his name, and give such evidence of the truth of my assertions, as will be beyond contradiction ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams

... above two weeks you've left me, Just two cents a day I'll take, And, unless my mind's bereft me, Payment you must straightway make. Treat your books as if to-morrow, Gabriel's trump would surely sound, And all scribbling, to your sorrow, 'Gainst your credit would be found. Therefore tear not, Spot and wear not All these books ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... the sum of all the garments worn at polite social gatherings in communities somewhat to the west. Nevertheless, the company stood aghast. They were doubly horrified—first, at the effrontery of the girl, and second, at the revelation of her real person, for they saw that she was doomed, helpless, bereft of hope, slim beyond ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... You've struck a heap of trouble— Bust in business, lost your wife; No one cares a cent about you, You don't care a cent for life; Hard luck has of hope bereft you, Health is failing, wish you'd die— Why, you've still the sunshine left you, ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service

... the covenant," said the old man; and Godfrey Schalken unconsciously attested the instrument which for ever bereft him of his ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... if evil were known as unreal, then there were no need of moral effort, no quarrel with the present and therefore no aspiration, and no achievement. That which is man's highest and best,—namely, a moral life which is a progress—would thus be impossible, and his existence would be bereft of all meaning and purpose. And if the highest is impossible then all is wrong, "the goal being a ruin, so is ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... and the paltry policy of Agamemnon, who, not daring himself to call the Thracian king to account, nevertheless beguiles him into the hands of the captive women. Neither is it very consistent that Hecuba, advanced in years, bereft of strength, and overwhelmed with sorrow, should nevertheless display so much presence of mind in the execution of revenge, and such a command of tongue in her accusation ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... then? Could it be true that for ten years she had been his wife, and that the tie between them was forever dissolved? From this day he was to be dead to her and to all the world. He was about to pass voluntarily into a condition of death amid life, as utterly bereft of all that had once been his as if the grave had closed over him. Roland Sefton was to ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... gave to the men to make dry; however exclusive of those five we have an abundant stock to last us back; and we always take care to put a proportion of it in each canoe, to the end that should one canoe or more be lost we should still not be entirely bereft of ammunition, which is now our only hope for subsistence and defence in a rout of 4000 miles through a country exclusively inhabited ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... to their rest; all, excepting Halbert, the gray-haired harper of Wallace; and he, like herself, was too unaccustomed to the absence of his master to find sleep visit his eyes while Ellerslie was bereft of its joy and ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... He was bereft of words for a moment, and in that moment she escaped, having passed him on deftly to one of the ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... fain when paused at their doors Angus, son of Hector, son of Lachlan, son of Murdoch, son of Angus that was named for Angus Mor, who was great-grandson of Hector of the Battles, who was son of Lachlan Lubanach! But here I am a landless man, with none to do me honor,—a wretch bereft of liberty"— ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... blood of myriads of their fellow-creatures, can call their murders "religion, justice, attention to the good of mankind." Poor Agnes knew no sophistry to calm her sense of guilt: she felt herself a harlot and a murderer; a slighted, a deserted wretch, bereft of all she loved in this world, all she could hope ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... is mossing over; All is unused, and dim, and damp; Nor light, nor warmth, the rooms discover— Bereft for ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

... extraordinary beings, greater, more refined, more perfect. The day that people, abandoning this respect and veneration which is the support and mainstay of monarchies,—the day that they regard us as their equals,—all the prestige of our position will be destroyed. Bereft of beings superior to the mass, who act as their leaders and supports, the laws will only be as so many black lines on white paper, and your armless chair and my fauteuil will be two pieces of furniture of the selfsame importance. Personally, I should like to gratify ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... form, and realised the dreadful truth that the stranger whom we had taken for the advance guard of our enemy was in truth none other than Vicar Pinfold, and that it was the rhythmic pat of his stick which we heard mingling with his footfalls. Fascinated by the sight, we lay bereft of all power to warn him—a line of staring eyeballs. One step, two steps, three steps did the haughty Churchman take, when there was a rending crack, and he vanished with a mighty splash into the swift-flowing stream. He must ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... utterly bereft of hope, who had resolved on the final sacrifice. Her clear voice rang through the room, and Hortebise turned pale as he heard the footsteps of the servants pacing to and fro outside the door, as ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... the desert sunrise, changed Monument Valley, bereft it of its night gloom and weird shadow, and showed it in another aspect of beauty. It was hard for me to realize that those monuments were not the works of man. The great valley must once have been a plateau of red rock from which the softer strata had eroded, ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey



Words linked to "Bereft" :   unloved, sorrowful, grief-stricken, unbeloved, mourning, lovelorn, grieving, sorrowing



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