"Burnt-out" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suffering alone. It was somewhere in the big room, hidden amongst the furniture; which was less stiffly arranged here than in the outer apartments. There were books and newspapers on the table, the fireplace was half-full of the ashes of a burnt-out fire, there were faded flowers in a tall vase near the window, there was the undefinable presence of life in the heavier and warmer air. At first the Baroness had thought that the cry came from some small animal, hurt and forgotten there ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... journeyed through desolation, in a burnt-out world where nothing had colour except the sad violet sky which at evening flamed with terrible sunsets, cruelly beautiful as funeral pyres. The fierce glow set fire to the black rocks which pointed up like ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... man, who had a dozen orders on, and might have passed for a Marshal of France, she condescended to invite me. The Claverings are to be there on the same evening. Won't it be exciting to meet one's two flames at the same table?" "Two flames!—two heaps of burnt-out cinders," Warrington said. "Are both the ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wake, And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; The soul partakes of the season's youth, 90 And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. What wonder if Sir Launfal now Remembered the keeping ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the door of wrath, Now 'tis a burnt-out coal; Petals fall on the orchard path; Darkness falls on ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... suggestion was promptly corrected by the wonderful serenity of her face—a pale, unhealthy-looking face, with sunken eyes, high cheek-bones, and thin lips that seemed never to have troubled themselves to smile: a burnt-out face that had apparently surrendered to the past, and had no hope for the future. The Puritan simplicity of the woman's dress made her seem taller than she really was, but this was the only illusion about her. Though her appearance was uncouth ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... from his head, there stood an altar, rude as the rest, but still an altar of God, with a black iron crucifix, whose pale ivory Christ glimmered in the gathering evening, upright upon it. Before the crucifix, and at either end, were the burnt-out evidences of tallow candles, while flanking the holy Symbol there stood two wooden crosses, their pieces held together by bindings of thread. Before one there lay a heap of little withered flowers, frail things of the forest and the spring, and every one was snowy white. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... Miriam roughly through dark and tortuous streets, bordered by burnt-out houses, and up steep stone slopes deep with the debris of the siege. Indeed, they had need to hasten, for, lit with the lamp of flaming dwellings, behind them flowed the tide of war. The Romans, driven back from this part of the city by that day's furious ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... list grows long of live and dead pretenders To that which none will gain—or none will know The conqueror at least; who, ere Time renders His last award, will have the long grass grow Above his burnt-out brain, and sapless cinders. If I might augur, I should rate but low Their chances;—they're too numerous, like the thirty[594] Mock tyrants, when Rome's annals waxed ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... him all the way, but she seemed thinking to herself rather than talking to him. Why should the strange, burnt-out old cinder of a satellite be the star of lovers? The answer lies hid, I suspect, in the mysteries ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... have been difficult to accuse Gay of doing it on purpose, however, for she appeared blandly unconscious of the neighbourhood of fellow beings. She gave a little flick of her whip, and away she went over a great burnt-out patch of veld, leaving the long, white, dusty road to those who had no choice but ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... him, while I lay Upon his bosom, all these happy hours The venom of a shameful secret lurked Within his breast. Oh, monster of deceit, Thou never lovedst as I! That I should give The untouched treasure of my virgin heart For some foul embers of a burnt-out love, And lavish on the waste a wanton left My heart, my soul, my life! Oh, it is cruel! I will never see him more, nor hear his voice, But ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... show the least surprise. He pressed down the burning tobacco with one horny finger, and carefully laid the last glowing bit of the burnt-out wooden ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... or the demi-god, A part past playing now. My only course To make good showance to posterity Was to implant my line upon the throne. And how shape that, if now extinction nears? Great men are meteors that consume themselves To light the earth. This is my burnt-out hour. ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... nothing—no, nor wrinkles nor infirmity; he might look old, indeed, and be somewhat disagreeably connected with a gaunt old figure much the worse for wear, but the true, the essential Peter was a young man of high hopes just entering on the world. At the kindling of each new fire his burnt-out youth rose afresh from the old embers and ashes. It rose exulting now. Having lived thus long—not too long, but just to the right age—a susceptible bachelor with warm and tender dreams, he resolved, so soon as the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... looked towards the Spanish quarters were stationed some hundreds of men who hurled missiles into their camp without ceasing. On the other side also were gathered a concourse of priests awaiting the ceremony of my death. Below the great square, fringed round with burnt-out houses, was crowded with thousands of people, some of them engaged in combat with the Spaniards, but the larger part collected ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... before the fire, watching the violet ashen bit of burnt-out paper, the cause, the stupid cause ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... a secondary excitement in overcoming the difficulties of rhythm and rhyme, no doubt, but this is not the emotional heat excited by the subject of the "poet's" treatment. True poetry, the best of it, is but the ashes of a burnt-out passion. The flame was in the eye and in the cheek, the coals may be still burning in the heart, but when we come to the words it leaves behind it, a little warmth, a cinder or two just glimmering under the dead gray ashes,—that ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sea - till our voices die away in silence, and the pipes go out - till we, common-place, everyday young men enough, feel strangely full of thoughts, half sad, half sweet, and do not care or want to speak - till we laugh, and, rising, knock the ashes from our burnt-out pipes, and say "Good-night," and, lulled by the lapping water and the rustling trees, we fall asleep beneath the great, still stars, and dream that the world is young again - young and sweet as she used to be ere the centuries ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... bridegroom she had professed to dread, but had really anticipated with complacency; for though Julius had bidden the bells to be rung for afternoon service, Raymond was obliged to go back to Wil'sbro' to make arrangements for the burnt-out families, and she had to go as ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kept a cigar-shop in Havana, in the Calle del Comercio; a narrow street, with a footpath scarcely wider than an ordinary kerbstone. It was the veriest section of a shop, without a front of any kind; presenting, from the street side, much the same appearance as a burnt-out dwelling would exhibit, or a theatrical scene viewed by an audience. During the hot hours of the day a curtain was suspended before the shop to ward off the powerful rays of the sun, under whose influence the delicate goods within might otherwise be prematurely dried, while the effect would be equally ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... career had been one long, unending dissipation. At last, broken down by a life he had not the moral courage to resist, he had succumbed and taken to his bed; thence, wavering between life and death, like a burnt-out candle flickering in its socket, he had been ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... their respective political prejudices, but in the very heart of their emotional life. Once more the Russian hero is placed between God and Satan; and this time Satan conquers. Love, however, survives the burnt-out fires of passion; but it survives only as a vain regret—it survives as youth survives, only as an unspeakably precious memory. . . . The three most sinister women that Turgenev has ever drawn are Varvara Pavlovna, in "A House of Gentlefolk;" Irina, in "Smoke;" ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... gone! There was a great roll in the plain between me and home, so that I could see nothing of our place—all around the country was black, without a trace of vegetation. Behind me were the smoking ruins of the forest I had escaped from, where now the burnt-out trees began to thunder down rapidly, and before, to the south, I could see the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... soothed me, and gradually and very gently my irritation and annoyance slipped away. Why should not a young girl, radiant in youth and beauty, affect a young man of her generation? What has an old fellow, with all his money and worldly experience and burnt-out youth, to give in exchange for that intoxication which every girl may properly regard her lawful gift? Undoubtedly I should make a better husband, as husbands go, than my romantic nephew, and any woman of rare common sense would see the advantages of my position, but ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... been to Tobolsk; after which he had to make a long, dreary journey in a wretched car, until a high mountain arose before him. In its torn and craggy flank the mountain showed a colossal opening similar to the mouth of a burnt-out crater. Fetid vapours, which almost took away his breath, ascended ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... year, there fell on him a heaviness of spirit which daily increased upon him. He began to question of his end and what lay beyond. He had always made pretence to mock at religion, and had grown to believe that in death the soul was extinguished like a burnt-out flame. He began, too, to question of his life and what he had done. He had made a few toys, he had filled vacant hours, and he had gained an ugly kind of fame—and this was all. Was he so certain, he began to think, after all, that death was the end? Were there not, perhaps, in the vast house ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Alixe had been, whatever she now was, she showed to her little world only a pale brunette symmetry—a strange and changeless lustre, varying as little as the moon's phases; and like that burnt-out planet, reflecting any flame that flared until her clear, young beauty seemed pulsating with the promise of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... about everything now," he told her, the red ember of a burnt-out match dropping to the floor. "Those boxes contain cartridges. Now let's go back ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... the Continental movements from the darkest point of view. He cannot admit as a possibility the renovation of European society upon more liberal principles, and considers it as the complete dissolution of European civilization which will, like Asia, soon present but the ashes of a burnt-out flame. This is most atheistic, godless, and un-christian doctrine, and he cannot himself believe it. The art of printing and the rapid dissemination of thought changes all ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... was a withered old woman, yellow as parchment, with a mass of thick grey hair gathered in a single knot at the back of her head. She wore heavy rings on her fingers, and large earrings; her small piercing eyes had a look of burnt-out passion; and her countenance wore in a stronger degree the furtive, ratlike expression which her ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... gazed down at Franklin Winslow Kane while, in three flashes, searing and swift, like running leaps of lightning, three thoughts traversed her mind: Gerald—All that money—A child. It was in this last thought that she seemed, then, to fall crumblingly, like a burnt-out thing reduced to powder. A child. What would it look like, a child of hers and Franklin Kane's? How spare and poor and insignificant were his face and form. Could she love a child who had a nose like that—a neat, flat, sallow little nose? A spasm, half ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... As an illustration of the spirit which characterises British merchants in their intercourse with the Japanese, it may be mentioned that a liberal subscription was promptly got up for the re-establishment of these burnt-out villagers; but, although the Japanese Government seemed thoroughly to appreciate the kindly spirit in which it was offered, national pride came in the way of its acceptance, and the people were only induced ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... discussion, and sent her to another confessor. Germinie went once or twice to confess to this other confessor; then she ceased to go; soon she ceased even to think of going, and of all her religion naught remained in her mind but a certain far-off sweetness, like the faint odor of burned-out incense. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... father, Leonora would remain in charge of Signora Isabella; and bashful, shrinking, half bewildered, would spend the day in the salon of the former ballet-dancer, with its coterie of the latter's friends, also ruins surviving from the past, burned-out "flames" of great personages long since dead. And these witches, smoking their cigarettes, and looking their jewels over every other moment to be sure they had not been stolen, would size up "the little girl," as they called her, to ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... South Africa may very clearly be traced the way in which this practice came to assume proportions which shocked public opinion. It must be admitted that the results have not justified it, and that, putting all moral questions apart, a burned-out family is the last which is likely to settle down, as we hope that the Boers may eventually settle down, as contented British citizens. On the other hand, when a nation adopts guerilla tactics it deliberately courts those sufferings to the whole country which such tactics invariably ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... reactions with the atmosphere of life must go on, whether he will or no, as between his blood and the air he breathes. As to catching the residuum of the process, or what we call thought,—the gaseous ashes of burned-out thinking,—the excretion of mental respiration,—that will depend on many things, as, on having a favorable intellectual temperature about one, and a fitting receptacle.—I sow more thought-seeds in twenty-four hours' travel over ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... soon after he went out Courthorne went to sleep, but Winston sat by an open window with a burned-out cigar in his hand staring at the prairie while the night wore through, until he rose with a shiver in the chill of early morning to commence his ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... speedy travellers, Pocahontas; they take long journeys backwards to my father's and mother's people. They wander among old trails in the forests and they meet old friends by the side of burned-out campfires. Yet, when like weary hunters who have been seeking game all day, they return at night to their lodge, so mine return in gratitude to Wansutis. For she hath not sought to hinder them from travelling old trails, ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... he asked gently, "or Ruller I, Bellevan's world, or Labath?" There was no answer to this and he knew it. There was only one alternative to a dead, burned-out, empty planet. Mureess was in the wrong stage of development, and it would have to be brought in line. The Sirian Combine had to, and would remove any intelligent unknown menace from a position from which it could threaten its Master plan of integrated ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... suffer in the darkness, alone and uncomforted, if angels will but visit us. John Bunyan can well be content in Bedford gaol, if God but puts a dream in his head and heart that will last in the memories and characters of men, when the sun is a burned-out cinder and the stars are dying ash heaps. We can well be satisfied to have sorrows unutterable and griefs inexpressible, if heavenly visitants ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... 2. Hold a burned-out electric lamp in a basin of water, break its point off, and ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... me off on that dagger point now for ten years. Good God! women don't martyrize themselves to a past these days. What are you doing with your life? Sacrificing it on the altar of the old burned-out husk of a marriage? ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... had started late, the horses carried us thirty-five miles, and I camped at the site of a burned-out village. The Turk made no objection to this. Previously coming over the same route with an ox-cart, my Macedonian driver had objected to camping except in occupied villages where there were garrisons. He feared Bashi-Bazouks ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... and yet have left to him strong claws to drag his prey down. "Money will do anything in India or anywhere else!" the old nabob growled, forgetting that even all the yellow gold of the Rand or the gleaming diamonds of the Transvaal will not avail to fill the burned-out ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... put off a date across ten years, and across a hundred worlds, and there can be whiskey and women to dance for him. But there was a ship with burned-out jets lying in the desert outside this crumbling city, and it was the night of Bani-tai, the night of expiation in distant Darion, and Ransome knew that for him, this was ...
— Bride of the Dark One • Florence Verbell Brown
... not a man in sight. Dick's captors had broken camp; they were gone. The only thing left in the gorge to show they had ever been there was a burned-out campfire. ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... fragments of a rough-and-ready meal still littered the green turf that spread in such a fresh, delicious carpet all around the spot. But now the dell was deserted. The feeling of desolation always conveyed by the sight of a burned-out fire, a forsaken hearth, struck chilly on Mr. Grey's senses, and he turned away in disappointment from the tenantless place. Then the two men gazed blankly into each other's eyes. The children could ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... up. It shone obliquely down into all that rock-lined basin, surrounded by the stern, forbidding hills—the ancient, burned-out furnace of gold that man was reheating with his passions. Afar in all directions the lighted tents presented a ghostly unreality, their canvas walls illumined by the candles glowing within. A jargon of dance-hall music floated on the air. Outside it all was ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the opposite bank, into which we joyfully turned our horses. When they had filled their stomachs, we packed up and pushed on about two miles, overtaking the Manchester boys on the side-hill in a tract of dead, burned-out timber, ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... Pacific—blue, vague, mystical gulfs that seemed filled with something less substantial than water. On the other hand was the vast crater of Haleakala, two thousand feet deep, and many miles across, in which the shadows were deepening, and which looked like some burned-out Hades. ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... reading, or self-culture, no opportunity for broadening her mental outlook by traveling or mingling with the world! But this is nothing compared to the anguish she endures, when, after the flower of her youth is gone and there is nothing left of her but the ashes of a burned-out existence, the shreds of a former superb womanhood, she awakes to the consciousness that her children are ashamed of her ignorance and desire to keep ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... far-seeing mind of man knows a time must come when the present force of attraction [Page 21] shall have produced all the heat it can, and a new force of attraction must be added, or the sun itself will become cold as a cinder, dead as a burned-out char. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... through a succession of burned-out villages, deserted towns, and forsaken country. The fields were covered with a rich and abundant harvest, ready to be gathered, and impossible for the invaders to destroy. But most of the farmers were hiding on the mountainsides, fearing to come down. The few courageous men ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... have your gun?" he said, as though asking a question. "If you mean business, go ahead. I'll let you get your gun out—and then I'll get you—and you know it!" And with insulting ease he flicked his burned-out cigarette in ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... Smoke from chimneys in the valley was mixed with the strong scent of horses, hay and grain from the street of King's Stables. There was the smell of furry rodents, of nesting birds, of gushing springs, of the earth itself, and something more ancient still, as of burned-out fires in ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... superiority in that line. Finally, above the uproar, Cowan's bellow was herd, and he kept it up until some notice was taken of it. "Shut up! Shut up! For God's sake, quit! Never saw such a bunch of tinder—let somebody drop a cold, burned-out match in this gang, an' hell's to pay. Here, all of you, play cards an' forget about cross-tag in the scrub. You'll be arguing about playing marbles in ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... gladsome songs. The scene before the grim battle-scarred old fort was not without its picturesqueness. The low vine-covered cabins on the hill side looked more like picture houses than like real habitations of men; the mill with its burned-out roof—a reminder of the Indians—and its great wheel, now silent and still, might have been from its lonely and dilapidated appearance a ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey |
