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Defile   Listen
verb
Defile  v. t.  (Mil.) Same as Defilade.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Defile" Quotes from Famous Books



... the steep and craggy mountains of the Danube, in its wild outlines and dilapidated castles, the imagination embraces a bolder range. At one time the river is confined within its narrowest limits, and proceeds through a defile of considerable altitude, with overhanging rocks menacing destruction. At another it offers an open, wild archipelago of islands. The mountains have disappeared, and a long plain bounds on each side of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... regain his love? They say your people Are learned in these questions. Once I thought There was no spell like duty—that devotion Would bulwark love for ever. Now, I'd distil Philtres, converse with moonlit hags, defile My soul with talismans, bow down to spirits, And frequent accursed places, all, yea all— I'd forfeit ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... and of caste. It is the caste that keeps him rigidly to himself, since, as a rule, he can touch no food that others have handled. He sits apart, over his own tiny fire, baking his unappetising little cakes; and in many cases even the shadow of a passer-by falling across his cookery is held to defile it beyond possibility of his eating it. As a rule he has but one idea in life—to make enough money to carry him back to end his days in comfort by the waters of ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... Morgarten, resisted with growing success the Savoyard and the Hapsburg sovereignty, and divided in ever changing alliances the fermenting elements of the tottering feudal society. The horn of the Alps, sounding the tocsin over the rocky defile of the Swiss Thermopylae, announced the approaching end of the feudal rule of the middle ages and the dawn ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... the other answered quickly, the flush deepening on his face, "but in the name of that most unhappy, most pitiable maiden, and as the representative of her noble Macedonian house, which you would defile with shame and infamy; in the name of the inhabitants of this city, whom you despoil and tread under foot; in the interests of the whole world, which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... root of it, is essential to his nature, as also I have proved now, as is the root, such are the branches; and as is the spring, such are the streams, unless the channels in which those streams do run, should be corrupted, and so defile it; but I know no channels through which this love of Christ is conveyed unto us, but those made in his side, his hands, and his feet, &c. Or those gracious promises that dropped like honey from his holy lips, in the day of his love, in which he spake them: and seeing his ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... on Master Porges, hard put to it, "to answer you were to defile the tongue God hath given me for her ladyship's service. To obey is better than sacrifice. Her present obedience is that I should request your presence in the ante-chamber the instant of ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... bridal hour of Genius and Humanity. Who shall rehearse the tale of their after-union? Who shall depict its bliss and bale? Who shall tell how He between whom and the Woman God put enmity forged deadly plots to break the bond or defile its purity? Who shall record the long strife between Serpent and Seraph:—How still the Father of Lies insinuated evil into good, pride into wisdom, grossness into glory, pain into bliss, poison into passion? How the "dreadless ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... stragglers, who had collected in an old work, on the right of the main fort. Their fire being ineffectual, and the object trifling, I determined not to break in upon the order of retreat, but continued passing the defile in front. I cannot conclude this relation without expressing my wannest thanks to Lord Stirling, for the full patronage I received from him in every stage of the enterprize. I must also return my thanks to the cavalry, for their ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... ter pass through One Tree Gulch," he declared. "We c'n overtake them in the defile, goin' by way of Poison Spider Creek and the old Buffalo Trail, droppin' on 'em when they least ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... time was the office of the Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung. Reckoning from the market-place of Jena, it lies on the south-west border of the town, between the Engelgatter and the Neuthor, in a hollow defile, through which a part of the Leutrabach flows round the city. On the top of the acclivity, from which there is a beautiful prospect into the valley of the Saal, and the fir mountains of the neighbouring forest, Schiller built himself a small house, with a single chamber.[32] It ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... where a roughly-constructed causeway of planks had enabled the infantry to cross the waters almost in single file, while the cavalry had floundered through as best they might. Those who were acquainted with the country reported that beyond this defile there was an upland heath, a league in extent, full of furze and thickets, where it would be easy enough for Varax to draw up his army in battle array, and conceal it from view. Maurice's scouts, too, brought information that the Spanish commander had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... mee is comely, and the whole keepeth [73] an harmonicall proportion. Lastly, am I costly to bee prouided? or hard to bee maintayned? No, cheapnesse is my purueyour, easinesse my preseruer, neither doe I make you blow away your charges with my breath, or taynt your nose with my sent, nor defile your face and fingers with my colour, like that hellborne murderer, whom you accept before me. I appeale then to your valiant Princes, Edwards, and Henries, to the battayles of Cresey, Poyters, Agincourt, ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... upon their northward route, Tontz's band were struggling wearily on when they were met by a solitary Indian, who, though he carried a long bow, had not an unfriendly aspect. He eyed the little band silently as they passed by him in defile, then ran after them, and inquired if the Pere Francois Xavier, of Mission St. Ignace, was not of their number. He was informed that the reverend father had remained a short distance behind to write in his journal, but that he would soon ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various

... save our own sons and bring in a better and purer state of things, enabling them to fight the battle of their life at less tremendous odds; then, and then only, shall we be able to evolve the true manhood, whose attitude is not to defile and destroy, but "to look up ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... merely as a matter of tactical prudence. At Nachod (June 27, 1866) the Prussian Advanced Guard hurriedly established a defensive position and kept at bay the whole Austrian Army, while the Prussian Army emerged in security from a defile and manoeuvred into battle array. The Pass of Thermopylae was occupied in B.C. 480 by 1,400 Greeks under Leonidas, King of Sparta, to withstand the Persian hosts of Xerxes, and although the Greek force was destroyed by an attack from the rear (through ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... be titled of forbears vile * O whose ape-like face doth the tribe defile! Nay, I'm rending lion amid mankind, * A hero in wilds where the murks beguile. Al-Hayfa befitteth me, only me; * Ho thou whom ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Tell had concealed himself in a defile in the mountain through which Gessler would have to pass on his way to Kussnacht. There he lay in wait for his persecutor who followed in ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... conjecture was neutralized by the testimony it bore to his integrity of purpose, his unwillingness to conceal his disloyalty. When temples are shattered and altars crumble, we save our idol and flee into the wilderness, exulting in the assurance that no clay feet defile it. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... considerations of decency, pity and mercy; as unmoved by such feelings as will be the savage beasts which spared you but will rend me to shreds. I am at the end of my crimes; let me hide them. My doom is at hand. Why should I defile your ears with the tale of my ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... after the sheep were folded, and we were all seated beneath the myrtle that shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and Leuctra, and how, in ancient times, a little band of Spartans, in a defile of the mountains, withstood a whole army. I did not then know what war meant; but my cheeks burned. I knew not why; and I clasped the knees of that venerable man, till my mother, parting the hair from off my brow, kissed ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... past wraps you and enfolds you in the dreamy mist of Gothic beauty, where the lazy meadows sloping riverward deny the passage of the centuries, where the very clouds are secular, it is the cathedral town of Durdlebury. No factory chimneys defile with their smoke its calm air, or defy its august and heaven-searching spires. No rabble of factory hands shocks its few and sedate streets. Divine Providence, according to the devout, and the crass stupidity of the local authorities seventy years ago, ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... maketh mad, and the Furies that pursued Orestes, defile the day when I cross this step again,' he muttered as he swung under the arch and ran to follow ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... "Lose no time, and follow 'em up like hell. They'll break away into the hills, of course. But the chances are they'll concentrate again in the gorge and try to catch the main body as it passes through. So if they give you the slip now, ride straight on and secure the defile for us. I'll send out a detachment of infantry at the double to crown the heights; and I can safely leave all minor ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... rushed upon the two farms already mentioned. His watchword was to carry them and hold them as long as possible, as they commanded the pass of Musone, where the bulk of the army, with the baggage, must defile, and there was no other way than this pass by which the route of Ancona could be gained. The first farm, although warmly defended, was carried, and a hundred prisoners were taken. Six six-pounders were immediately brought up, in ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... of the old gateways, it rises slightly to the highest part of the mass of rock upon which Domfront is perched. The streets are narrow and parallel to accommodate themselves to the confined space within the walls. At the western end of the granite ridge, and separated from the town by a narrow defile, stands all that is left of the castle—a massive but somewhat shapeless ruin. At the western end of the ramparts, one looks down a precipitous descent to the river Varennes which has by some unusual agency, cut itself a channel through the rocky ridge if it did not merely occupy ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home

... had Florence, and Florence alone, understood the beatings of his heart in every page! And now!—it so chanced that the work was reviewed in the paper he read—it was not only a hostile criticism, it was a personally abusive diatribe, a virulent invective. All the motives that can darken or defile were ascribed to him. All the mean spite of some mean mind was sputtered forth. Had the writer known the awful blow that awaited Maltravers at that time, it is not in man's nature but that he would have shrunk from this petty gall upon the wrung withers; but, as I ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Spenser must soon have become acquainted with some of the scenes and necessities of Irish life. Within three weeks after Lord Grey's landing, he and those with him were present at the disaster of Glenmalure, a rocky defile near Wicklow, where the rebels enticed the English captains into a position in which an ambuscade had been prepared, after the manner of Red Indians in the last century, and of South African savages now, and where, in spite ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... very important topographic features of mountain-regions. Inasmuch as the ranges themselves are obstacles to communication, it follows that the latter must be concentrated at such cross valleys or gaps as may be traversed. Khaibar Pass, a narrow defile in the Hindu Kush Mountains, between Peshawur and Jelalabad, for many years was the chief gateway between Europe and India. Even now the cost of holding it is an enormous ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... the dark defile known as the "Devils' Descent." And, in fact, it needed all the noon sunshine to light up the gloom of that fearful pass. Here the delight of the impressible young ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... water from the fountain of Castalia. Also he was wont to keep the birds from the temple—for they would come from the woods of Parnassus hard by, eagles, and swans, and others—lest they should settle on the pinnacles or defile the altar with their prey. And for this end he carried arrows and a bow, slaying the birds if need was, but rather seeking to frighten them away, for he knew that some carried messages from the Gods to mortal men, and ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church

... roads. Over a broad, zigzagging, roughly-paved road, said to have no less than ninety-eight curves from bottom to top, we ascend for thirty li, and then descend for the remainder of the journey through a narrow defile along the northern bank of the river, the opposite side being a vertical sheet of rock rising to at least a thousand feet sheer up, very similar to the gorges of the Mekong at the western end of the province, which I crossed in ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... cervo. Deface forigi, surstreki. Defame kalumnii. Defeat venki. Defeat (n.) malvenko—ego. Defect difekto—ajxo. Defend defendi. Defer prokrasti. Deference respektego. Deficiency deficito. Defile (n.) intermonto. Defile (soil) malpurigi. Define difini. Definite difinita. Definitive definitiva. Deform malbonformigi. Deformed malbelforma. Defraud trompi. Defray elpagi. Defunct mortinto. Defy kontrauxstari. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... river pent within this narrow chasm, dashed furiously round the projecting rocky columns, and discharged itself at the northern extremity in a sheet of foam. The canoes, after being lightened of part of their cargoes, ran through this defile without sustaining any injury. Accurate sketches of this interesting scene were taken by Messrs. Back and Hood. Soon after passing this rapid, we perceived the hunters running up the east side of the river, to prevent us from disturbing a herd of musk oxen, which they had observed grazing on the ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin

... they crossed the Creosote Flats and were seen by a sheep-herder at a distance. The sun was high in the heavens before they reached the defile which served as a gateway between the foothills and the range beyond. It had passed the meridian by the time they were among the summits where they could look back upon rounded hills numberless as the billows of a sea. Deeper and always deeper they plunged into the maze of canons ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... frontier is the ramparts of the Dolomite and Carnic ranges through which an important offensive was possible for neither belligerent. The main pass, at Ampezzo, 5,000 feet high, makes a sharp detour toward the west to circumvent the mass of Cristallo, and here the road is a narrow defile commanded by a hundred points of danger. The adjacent passes of Misurina and the Monte Croce are no better, and the defiles to the east contain little more than bridle paths. The lowest pass, which leads from the valley of the Fella by Pontebba to the upper ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains as a precipitous defile through narrow canyons and deep gorges. Nothing is farther from the fact. One can drive through this Pass for several miles without realizing that the dividing line between the waters of the Pacific and those of the Atlantic has been passed. ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... intent; the antient rule of your order is deserted; and not a few of your fellow monks and brethren, as we most deeply grieve to learn, giving themselves over to a reprobate mind, laying aside the fear of God, do lead only a life of lasciviousness—nay, as is horrible to relate, be not afraid to defile the holy places, even the very churches of God, by infamous ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... her—hoping, perhaps, someone would see her while she was feeling so nice and new. Then, dropping the blind, she went back to the glass and began to pin her hair up. When this was done she stood for a long minute looking at her old brown skirt and blouse, hesitating to defile her new-found purity. At last she put them on and drew up the blind. The sunlight had passed off the pear-tree; its bloom was now white, and almost as still as snow. The little model put another sweet into ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... dispatched his aid, Capt. Francis Kinloch, to reconnoitre; while he moved forward on the road to Beaufort ferry. Kinloch returning soon, stated the supposed force of the British, and that they were near upon the road; Moultrie now pushed on to gain a defile, but found it occupied by the enemy. There being no alternative, he then drew up his men in open ground, with two field pieces in the centre, and one on the right. The British force was two companies of picked light ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James

... unguarded word, from any warm emotion or eagerness, which caused such a mist, as it then could neither prevent nor remedy, having so often experienced its own efforts, to be useless, and even hurtful, as they did nothing else but sill more and more defile it. There is in such case no other way or means of remedy, but in waiting till the Sun of Righteousness dissipate those fogs. The whole work of purification comes from God only. Afterward this conduct becomes natural; then the soul can say with the royal prophet, ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... days. To-morrow we shall see them in the Piazza, and at Florian's, and St. Mark's, and the Ducal Palace; and the young ladies will cross the Bridge of Sighs, and will sentimentally feed the vagabond pigeons of St. Mark which loaf about the Piazza and defile the sculptures. But now our travelers are themselves very hungry, and are more anxious than Americans can understand about the table-d'hote of their hotel. It is perfectly certain that if they fall into talk there with any of our nation, the respectable English father will ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... cut off the retreat of the enemy. Here we are: see this kloof? Three platoons are to lie in ambush at that spot, another—yours, Mr. Wilmshurst—will take up a position two miles to the north-west, in case any stragglers attempt to break through the smaller defile shown on the map. It looks nothing more than a native path. We'll ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman

... you may retire thither, if you find the Company grow troublesome; and while they are drinking and joking, you may entertain yourself with Christ your Spouse, praying, singing, and giving Thanks: Your Father's House will not defile you, and you will make ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... station about two days' journey from Lillehammer, on the main road to Trondhjem, I passed through a very steep and rugged defile in the mountains, with jagged rocks on the right and the foaming waters of the Logen on the left, where my attention was called by the skydskaarl to a small monument by the roadside hearing an inscription commemorative of the death of Colonel Sinclair. If I remember ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... Jim came. They make a strong party, all armed, and determined to fight their way through. They are already twenty miles away; but we will overtake them to-morrow. I am to guide them. I know every cave and defile. Will you come?" ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... last became convinced that the King of Poland was but trifling with him, and in the last week of September started to take the command of the centre, which was facing the entrance to the defile, at Pirna. Marshal Keith had been sent, a week after Fergus was wounded, to assume the command of the western column, hitherto commanded by Prince ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... thanks." At best, the autograph original of a modern work is a literary curiosity, it reveals the author's mechanism, not his mind. But old manuscripts are in a different case; their age has increased their charm, mellowed and confirmed their graces, whether they be canonical books, which "defile the hand" in the Rabbinical sense, or Genizah-grimed fragments, which soil the fingers more literally. And when the dust of ages is removed, these old-world relics renew their youth, and stand forth as witnesses to Israel's unshakable devotion to ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... they fed on the dead bodies of their enemies; a report which was occasionally justified, and which the king of the Thafurs took care to encourage. This respectable monarch was frequently in the habit of stopping his followers, one by one, in a narrow defile, and of causing them to be searched carefully, lest the possession of the least sum of money should render them unworthy of the name of his subjects. If even two sous were found upon any one, he was instantly expelled the society of his tribe, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... to fall (fall that broke my leg, three weeks ago) Was flying over rough country when bad gust came thru hill defile. Wing crumpled. Up at 400 ft. Machine plunged forward then sideways. Gosh, I thought, I'm gone, but will live as long as I can, even a few seconds more, and kept working with elevator, trying to right her even a little. Ground coming ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the northern Indians coming down upon them from this mountain rampart through some defile known only to themselves. It is, indeed, a wondrous path. A demon, it might be fancied, or one of the Titans, was travelling up the valley, elbowing the heights carelessly aside as he passed, till at ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... old longings and resolves, and the old fearless eyes to look out upon the world, but the old companions as well, with their glorious boy-faces, untouched then by any imprint of the base emotions and aims sure almost, a little later, to enter in and defile! The rain pattered ceaselessly; the heavy scent of the lilacs came in through the open windows; the martins screamed about their boxes under the eaves of the stable, and I could hear the twitter of innumerable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... slit, wound; slight, ignoration; sarcasm, taunt; notch, groove, chamfret; defile, passage; kerf; slice, piece; fashion, style, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... like the voice of great waters, and the earth shone with its splendour." Ver. 7. "And He said unto me, son of man, behold the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever, and the house of Israel shall no more defile my holy place." Zech. ii. 14 (10): "Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion; for, lo, I come and dwell in the midst of thee," with an allusion to Exod. xxix. 45: "And I dwell among the children of Israel, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... share our [223-258]spoil. Then we build seats on the winding shore and banquet on the dainty food. But suddenly the Harpies are upon us, swooping awfully from the mountains, and shaking their wings with loud clangour, plunder the feast, and defile everything with unclean touch, spreading a foul smell, and uttering dreadful cries. Again, in a deep recess under a caverned rock, shut in with waving shadows of woodland, we array the board and renew the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... boche there was no chivalry in war. He fought as the barbarians would have fought, if they had had all his knowledge and equipment, but were still uncivilized. Women and children never called forth his pity or his mercy. He would defile and destroy a church or a cathedral with greater pleasure than he would a ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... incumbency, which may last many years. Thus he must live at the sacred dairy and may never visit his home or any ordinary village. He must be celibate; if he is married he must leave his wife. On no account may any ordinary person touch the holy milkman or the holy dairy; such a touch would so defile his holiness that he would forfeit his office. It is only on two days a week, namely Mondays and Thursdays, that a mere layman may even approach the milkman; on other days if he has any business with him, he must stand at a distance (some say a quarter of a mile) and shout his message ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... and horses, and some people too. We had one dangerous place to pass, and our guide told us if there were more wolves in the country we should find them there; and this was a small plain, surrounded with woods on every side, and a long, narrow defile, or lane, which we were to pass to get through the wood, and then we should come to the village where we were to lodge. It was within half-an-hour of sunset when we entered the wood, and a little after sunset when we came into the plain: we met with nothing in the first wood, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... smiled the more for Mademoiselle Julienne's indignation. Suddenly, however, a shrill shout made him descend hastily, and the old Turk's voice might be heard in its highest key, no doubt shrieking out maledictions on all the ancestry of the son of a dog who durst defile his eyes with gazing at the shameless daughters of the Frank. Little Ulysse was, however, allowed to disport himself wherever he pleased; and after once, under Arthur's protection, going forward, he found himself ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Women, pleading that they also may be allowed to take Pikes, and exercise in the Champ-de-Mars. Why not, ye Amazons, if it be in you? Then occasionally, having done our message and got answer, we 'defile through the Hall, singing ca-ira;' or rather roll and whirl through it, 'dancing our ronde patriotique the while,'—our new Carmagnole, or Pyrrhic war-dance and liberty-dance. Patriot Huguenin, Ex-Advocate, Ex-Carabineer, Ex-Clerk of the Barriers, comes deputed, with Saint-Antoine at his ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... experiences, her dreams and visions, her fears and conflicts. Night after night she would dream that somebody was setting meat and fish before her, tempting her to eat, whilst she turned away determined not to be tempted, not to defile herself, not to lose the merit she had stored up for herself all these many years. Day and night her mind was in confusion. She dreaded the night with its visions, and could not welcome the day that would only bring her unrest. In her agony she cried out, "No, I will ...
— Everlasting Pearl - One of China's Women • Anna Magdalena Johannsen

... morning the Austrian army—the first that ever entered the country—made its appearance in the pass, headed by Duke Leopold and his formidable cavalry. Suddenly, when the whole narrow defile was blocked with horse and foot, thousands of heavy stones and trees were hurled among them from the neighboring heights, where the peasant band, forming the Swiss force, lay concealed. The suddenness and vigor of this unexpected attack quickly threw the first ranks of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the passes of the Vosges, but the conquest was vigorously opposed and took more time than the French had reckoned on. As soon as it had become master of the Donon and the passes, the first French army pushed forward into the defile of Saarburg. At St. Blaise it won the first German colors, took Blamont and Cirey (August 15, 1914), seized the defiles north of the canal of the Marne and the Rhine, and reached Saarburg. Here a connection was established with the army of Lorraine, which had commenced its operations on the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... freshen the yolks a little, then add the liquor, and at last the whites newly frothed. This is the only simon-pure Christmas egg nogg. Those who put into it milk, cream, what not, especially rum, defile one of the finest among ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... his men marched stealthily on them in the night, passing through the woods and up a narrow defile. It was about one o'clock in the morning that they gained Wayne's left. Grey was a most cruel wretch, called the no-flint general because of his orders to his soldiers to take the flints from their guns; his object being to compel them to use the bayonet; his orders ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley

... and it was truly glacial, that silent defile of scornful noses and mouths with their corners disdainfully turned down at the luckless man, who was left alone in the vast gorgeous dining-room, engaged in sopping his bread in his wine after the fashion of his country, crushed beneath the weight ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... explained elsewhere, was sweating and swearing at the heat in Bear Canon. The sun had crept around so that it shone full into a certain bowlder-strewn defile, and up this sunbaked gash old Applehead was toiling, leading the scrawniest burro which Luck had been able to find in the country. The burro was packed with a prospector's outfit startlingly real in its pathetic ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower

... jaded palate by introducing a duel fought with butchers' knives by the light of lanterns. One genius subsists by murder, as another does by bigamy and adultery. Scott would have recoiled from the blood as well as from the ordure, he would have allowed neither to defile his noble page. He knew that there was no pretence for bringing before a reader what is merely horrible, that by doing so you only stimulate passions as low as licentiousness itself—the passions which were stimulated ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... front of all is a Miller, who has been drinking over-night, and is now but indifferently sober. There is not a door in the country that he cannot break by running at it with his head. The pilgrims are all ready, the host gives the word, and they defile through the arch. The Miller blows his bagpipes as they issue from the town; and away they ride to Canterbury, through the boon sunshine, and between the white hedges of the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... to cover in about a week. In fact, it took them ten days, for the roads were very rough and the pack-beasts slow. Once, too, after they had entered the territory of Venice, they were set on in a defile by four thieves, and might have met their end had not Grey Dick's eyes been so sharp. As it was he saw them coming, and, having his bow at hand, for he did not like the look of the country or its inhabitants, ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard

... Lambert, out of which the Emperor had seen the troops advancing. It was easy to see, however, why there had been so long a delay in their leaving one wood and reaching the other, because between the two ran the deep defile of the Lasnes, which had to be crossed. Sure enough, a long column of troops—horse, foot, and guns—was streaming down one side of it and swarming up the other, while the advance guard was already among the trees on either side of me. A battery of Horse Artillery ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... wheat, of good and bad, of sincere believers and hypocrites, of sheep and goats, &c., now as well as it was then? Is there not as great cause to separate and distinguish by church power, between the precious and the vile, the clean and the unclean, (who are apt to defile, infect, and leaven one another,) now as well as then? Ought there not to be as great care over the holy ordinances of God, to preserve and guard them from contempt and pollution, by a hedge and fence of government, now as well as then? Is it not as necessary that by government sin ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... pack and harden snow about the granite boulders of the mountains in the Val Seriana, and sent the giant snow-balls thundering down, crushing bloody lanes through the ranks of the Venetian cavalry massed in the narrow defile below, and striking chill terror to the hearts of Doge and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... the Rhone breaks out from its broad upper valley into its broader lower valley through the Defile of Donzere. Here the foothills of the Alps and the foothills of the Cevennes come together, and behind this natural dam there must have been anciently a great lake which extended to the northward of where now is Valence. The Defile is a veritable ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... here lay down the bloody staff, under which you thought yourselves licensed to perpetrate your crimes and to defile the fair light of heaven with deeds of darkness. Depart to the right and to the left. We shall never more have ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... that is to say: the females of man, nothing more. They are above all what men make them, and as we are generally vicious and spoilt, since from the most tender age we take care to defile ourselves in the street, in the workshop or on the school-benches; as the atmosphere we breathe is corrupt, we have no claim to believe that our wives, our sisters and our daughters can remain unspotted by our touch, and that this same atmosphere ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... fairly dark, he resolved to attempt the passage of the Gap, for he was so tired of inaction that peril and hardship seemed preferable to doing nothing. Returning to the road, he pursued his way with due diligence through the narrowing defile of the mountains, till he suddenly came upon a sentinel, who challenged him. Before he started from his hiding place, Tom had carefully loaded the revolver which he had taken from the rebel soldier; and, as he walked along, he carried the weapon in his hand, ready for any emergency that ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... River and accepts its crystal tribute. Then, in its turn, the Little Ossipee joins forces, and the river, now a splendid stream, flows onward to Bonny Eagle, to Moderation and to Salmon Falls, where it dashes over the dam like a young Niagara and hurtles, in a foamy torrent, through the ragged defile cut between lofty ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... away early this morning, and were stopped by a fog bank, so I saw the Defiles. The Defiles are considered the thing to see; and they are interesting enough; we passed the Third Defile down the river somewhere. At this the Second the river narrows and the mountains rise pretty steeply on either side, and are clothed with grand trees and jungle. It is less distinctive scenery than that of the wider valleys of the Irrawaddy; you might see similar features in many other ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... Barbarians defile the land Where the Greek race was born! And where the loves flew garlanded, Night-bats roam to and fro! And in our night, as a glowworm, The ancients' memory Sends forth its greenish counterfeit Of light! It is a night That our undying sun cannot Dispel with its bright beams! From depths ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas

... sixty-six feet), the road winds for over, five miles through the Coconino Forest, mainly following the railway track until Bass Station appears (elevation six thousand four hundred and seventeen feet). The road now enters a narrow defile known as the Bright Angel Wash, giving one a fine opportunity to learn the singular drainage system of the Canyon plateau, which, as has been explained elsewhere, is away from the Canyon for many miles. The Wash is picturesque and rugged, the side walls occasionally appearing as bare masses ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... determined to push the war at once into their own country; which was no sooner discovered by them, than they instantly collected their whole force to oppose him. The only passage into their country was through a dark defile or gap in the mountain, which it was resolved should be forced as rapidly as possible. A forlorn hope of thirty brave fellows were ordered to explore the dangerous pass: and Marion, though but a young ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... to save him, his death could not be too formal, too solemn, too public. Even an ordinary military execution is always carried out with grave and striking forms: there is a grand parade of the troops, that all may see with their own eyes the last act of the law. After the execution the troops defile past the body, that all may see the criminal actually dead: There was nothing of all this in the execution of Ney. A few chance passers, in the early morning of the 7th of December 1815, saw a small body of troops waiting by the wall of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... speed was now necessary, for a sufficient reason. The next safe halting-place of the Kalmucks was on the east bank of the Toorgai River. Between it and them rose a hilly country, a narrow defile through which offered the nearest and best route. This lost, the need of pasturage would require a further sweep of five hundred miles. The Cossack light horsemen were only about fifty miles more distant from the pass. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... will let you come on, and suddenly, when you see cover, make a dash for it and escape. 3. Do not get lost. 4. Do not allow yourself to think of the enemy as being in one direction only. 5. In entering or passing through woods take an extended skirmish line formation. 6. In passing any short defile bridge or ford, send one man ahead. 7. If you suspect the presence of the enemy under certain cover, a good way to find out is to let one man approach within a reasonable distance and then, acting as though he had been discovered, ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... band of Indians belonging to the Blackfeet tribe encamped in a gloomy defile of the Rocky Mountains, not far from Mac's Fort. It was easy to see that they were a war-party, for, besides being armed to the teeth, their faces were hideously painted, and they had no ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne

... providence that this should be done, but of His providence that when men wish to rule and do rule by means of the holy Divine things, they should choose falsity in place of truth and evil in place of good, for otherwise they would defile holy things, and render them abominable before angels; but when holy things no longer exist this cannot be done. Take as an example what has been done with the Holy Supper instituted by the Lord: they have separated the bread and the wine, giving the bread ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg

... language and knowledge of man, infinite was the time that Satan sought before he was able to defile any of the sons and daughters of Jehovah. But out somewhere in the eternity sin began to steal into the souls of the sons of the mighty. And they began to hate Jehovah and to envy his glory in a great dispensation. Satan diminishing them after his ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen

... entered to defile. I see her in the evening by the fire, And in her eyes, illumined ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... neglect the natural means of healing. The inscriptions show that great attention was paid to diet, exercise, massage and bathing, and that when necessary, drugs were used. Birth and death were believed to defile the sacred precincts, and it was not until the time of the Antonines that provision was made at ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... along in search of a more practicable opening. This at length was found; and as the valley was much broader, and the sand slanted more gradually on either side, there appeared a fair prospect of our being able to pass through. The whole caravan then entered the defile between the sand-hills; but we were fully three hours travelling between those prodigious masses of sand. Sand was below our feet, sand in front and behind, sand on each side. A sudden blast would inevitably cover us with it for many feet. ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston

... recounted are not imaginary. Not very long ago the sacrilege which Unorna attempted was actually committed at night in a Catholic church in London, under circumstances that clearly proved the intention of some person or persons to defile the consecrated wafers. A case of hypnotic suggestion to the committal of a crime in a convent occurred in Hungary not many years since, with a different object, namely, a daring robbery, but precisely as here described. A complete account of the case will be found, with authority and evidence, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... passion's restless stings, Rome for her Caesar yearns. In safety range the cattle o'er the mead: Sweet Peace, soft Plenty, swell the golden grain: O'er unvex'd seas the sailors blithely speed: Fair Honour shrinks from stain: No guilty lusts the shrine of home defile: Cleansed is the hand without, the heart within: The father's features in his children smile: Swift vengeance follows sin. Who fears the Parthian or the Scythian horde, Or the rank growth that German forests yield, While ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... be put on the high racks eight feet up to be safe from them; even empty tins are carried off, boots, hats, soap, etc., are esteemed most toothsome morsels, and what they can neither eat, carry off, nor destroy, they defile with ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... General Hill; and, two days after the Fleetwood fight. General Hooker moved up the river with his main body, advancing the Third Corps to a point near Beverley's Ford. But these movements were disregarded by Lee. On the same day Ewell's corps moved rapidly toward Chester Gap, passed through that defile in the mountain, pushed on by way of Front Royal, and reached Winchester on the evening of the 13th, having in three days ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... defile from out my Fatherland and from the society of my friends,[1] and out of the house of my father into a strange land, to campaign against the enemies of our king. Therefore I would cast myself with life and soul upon Thy divine bosom ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... difficult to convey to the reader an adequate conception of the strange character of the hilly country we had now entered: no parts of Wales or even the varied groupings of the Swiss mountains offer a correct analogy. After passing the defile of the Suffaed K[a]k the hills recede to a distance of about two miles on either side of the road, and the whole space thus offered to the labours of the peasant is very highly cultivated; but the barren rocks ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem

... body a forlorn-hope of thirty men was chosen, to force the perilous entrance to the foe. The command of this devoted corps was assigned to Francis Marion, still a lieutenant under the command of Moultrie, in the provincial regiment of Middleton. The ascent of the hill was by means of a gloomy defile, through which the little band, headed gallantly by their leader, advanced with due rapidity; a considerable body of the army moving forward at the same time in support of the advance. Scarcely had the detachment ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... on as rapidly as possible in order to cross in daylight the very dangerous defile at Lead Mines. This place, distant 71 miles from Pitsani, was passed ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... I consider all the consequences which this word implies, I only have offered to my thoughts a husband, children, and a home; and I see nothing in all this to defile the imagination, ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)

... man proves that he is the son of a heavenly Father by his service for his least brother. When that dignity, heaven born, is in a man's heart there is nothing in the dirt he may touch by deeds of kindness that can defile him; ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... a fabulous mountain. Such seems to be the view of Major Keppell, who looked on it towards the east with the eye of a soldier, and certainly in the Sophia Pass, which I followed, there is no narrow defile, and no ascent sufficiently difficult to stop, or delay for long time, a train of ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... Philip proposed that the Inquisition should carry on its work far more actively than hitherto and put an end to the heresy which appeared to him to defile his fair realms. The Inquisition was no new thing to the provinces. Charles V had issued the most cruel edicts against the followers of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin. According to a law of 1550, heretics who persistently ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... paganism. [305:1] At a subsequent period all provisions sold in the markets, in some parts of the empire, were sprinkled with the water or the wine employed in idolatrous worship, that the Christians might either be compelled to abstinence, or led to defile themselves by the use of polluted ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... pointed toward the plain, where perhaps twenty tents had been pitched within the last two weeks. Bill gave an unwilling glance, shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and resumed progress up the difficult defile. ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... is not purified by the drinking of the holy (?) water which has touched the feet of his priest, at least that soul cannot be contaminated by it. But who does not clearly see that the drinking of the vile questions of the confessor contaminate, defile, and damn ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... name? How they would spit on me, these dogs of hell! Spurn me, and put on me the brand of shame. A white man's honour! what of that, I say? Shall these black curs cry "Coward" in my face? They who would perish for their gods of clay — Shall I defile my country and my race? My country! what's my country to me now? Soldier of Fortune, free and far I roam; All men are brothers in my heart, I vow; The wide and wondrous world is all my home. My country! reverent ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... of large eyes, beholding them ready to lay violent hands on her, rebuked them and said, 'Defile me not by your touch!' And in a great alarm she then called upon her spiritual adviser, Dhaumya. Jayadratha, however, seized her by her upper garment, but she pushed him with great vigour. And pushed by the lady, that sinful wretch fell upon the ground like a tree severed from its roots. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... to have taken an unfortunate turn, and both the girls experienced a feeling of relief when they entered the long gulch or defile that led to Indian Spring. The track now becoming narrow, they were obliged to pass in single file along the precipitous hillside, led by this escort. This effectually precluded any further speech, and Christie at once surrendered herself to the calm, ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte

... thee touch this reptile, I would purchase its freedom." "By my confession to Heaven, neither will I sell it nor set it free." "It is true, lord, that it is worth nothing to buy; but rather than see thee defile thyself by touching such a reptile as this, I will give thee three pounds to let it go." "I will not, by Heaven," said he, "take any price for it. As it ought, so shall it be hanged." "Willingly, lord, do thy good pleasure." And ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... Malays and Polynesians is especially rich in nautical terms, the Kirghis shepherd tribes who wander over the highlands of western Asia from the Tian Shan to the Hindu Kush have four different terms for four kinds of mountain passes. A daban is a difficult, rocky defile; an art is very high and dangerous; a bel is a low, easy pass, and a kutal is a broad opening ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... may know. Sisteron is an old Roman city, most strongly and picturesquely built in a narrow defile of the Durance. On one side the river is the high, bare rock of La Baume; on the other, a higher rock where houses, supporting each other by outstretched buttresses, seem to cling to the sheer hillside as shrubs in mountain crevasses, and are dominated and protected by a large and ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... the whole of the two-mile journey we sat waiting for the swish-swish of the bombs, wishing that saddles were placed on the bellies of the horses instead of on their backs. Then as we were descending into the nullah he would let fly in the hope of catching us in the narrow defile. ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... sea also came idle rumors, as false reports steal into history and defile fair fames. Was it longer ago than yesterday that I walked with my cousin, then recently a widow, and talked with her of the countries to which she meant to sail? She was young, and dark-eyed, and wore great hoops of gold, barbaric gold, in her ears. The hope of Italy, the thought of living there, ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... Depuis ce defile jusqu'a Acre les montagnes sont peu elevees, et l'on y voit beaucoup d'habitations qui, pour la plupart, sont remplies d'Arabes. Pres de la ville je rencontrai un grand seigneur du pays nomme Fancardin. Il campoit en plein champ, et portoit avec ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt

... it is exactly half-past one, we will proceed to business. Smith, hand the 'Odontoglossum Pavo' round, that everyone may inspect its beauties, and be careful you don't let it fall. Gentlemen, I must ask you not to touch it or to defile its purity with tobacco smoke. Eight perfect flowers in bloom, gentlemen, and four—no, five more to open. A strong plant in perfect health, six pseudo-bulbs with leaves, and three without. Two black leads ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... traditions of the old wars did not aspire to. "John," says the mother, "You'll burn your head to a crisp in that heat." But John does not hear; he is storming the Plains of Abraham just now. "Johnny, dear, bring in a stick of wood." How can Johnny bring in wood when he is in that defile with Braddock, and the Indians are popping at him from behind every tree? There is something about a boy that I like, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... above the timber-line, the trail ran around Crater Lake and gained the rocky defile that led toward Happy Camp and the first scrub-pines. To pack his heavy outfit around would take days of heart-breaking toil. On the lake was a canvas boat employed in freighting. Two trips with it, in two hours, would see ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... refuse. The world he thought to be eternal. He maintained that there were infinite worlds, all made by God, who wills to do what he can do, and therefore produces infinity. The religious orders of Catholicism defile the earth by evil life, hypocrisy, and avarice. All friars are only asses. Indulgence in carnal pleasures ought not to be reckoned sinful. The man confessed to having freely satisfied his passions to the utmost ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... trappers would be compelled to seek some other employment. In company with five men of a decidedly higher order than the common run of trappers, he struck for the head waters of Arkansas river. Following this stream down along the immense defile which nature seems to have opened for it through the Rocky mountains, they approached Fort Bent, which is about one hundred and fifty miles east of that ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... noon of a cloudless day, beneath them a tumultuous sea of pines surged, heaved, rode in giant crests, stretched and lost itself in the ghostly, snow-peaked horizon. The thronging woods choked every defile, swept every crest, filled every valley with its dark-green tilting spears, and left only Table Mountain sunlit and bare. Here and there were profound olive depths, over which the gray hawk hung lazily, and into which blue jays dipped. A faint, dull yellowish ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... of Heaven!" said Issachar lifting up his eyes, "how long will you suffer that this murderous and accursed race should defile the ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... ground on which to receive Burgoyne's attack, at one of these places where the heights crowd upon the river, thus forming a narrow defile, which a handful of men could easily defend against an army. At this place the house of a settler named Bemis stood by the roadside. Our army filed off the road here, to the left, scaled the heights, and encamped along a ridge of land, running west ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake

... captive youth, "purposed in his heart not to defile himself with the King's meat or the wine which he drank," or be swerved from his fidelity to the living and true God by threats of the lion's den. When the lives of the wise men of Babylon were in danger of being suddenly taken by royal command, he is introduced to King Nebuchadnezzar with the ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... as he needeth to reach his home in safety, by our faith confirmed. And I establish this PEACE on the part of ourselves and of our kinsmen, our friends and belongings, alike of women and of men, bondsmen and thralls, youths and adults. Be there any truce-breaker who shall violate this PEACE and defile this faith, so be he rejected of God and expelled from the community of righteous men; be he cast out from Heaven and from the fellowship of the holy; let him have no part amongst mankind and become ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown

... which emperor and people took such delight; twelve of Epigrams, edited separately, and partially revised for each edition; [53] two of Xenia and Apophoreta, written before the tenth book of Epigrams, and devoted to the flattery of Domitian. The obscenities which defile almost every book make it impossible to read Martial with any pleasure, but those who desire to make his acquaintance will find Book IV. by far the least objectionable in this respect, as ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... in the perfect mercy of God, there is no man but may dwell in the house of God alway and feel life's sacredness amidst a thousand desecrations, and know its preciousness amidst all that seeks to obscure, defile, and ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... know, right away, how to keep itself alive and well and doing well. It wants brought up for consideration the wrongs which oppress it, the evils which defile it, the crimes which degrade it; to have their causes investigated, and their remedies suggested. This is live work; and it is such work as this which occupied the attention of the Woman's Congress. No uncertain sound there. Those "at a distance," those at the very ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz

... Champ-de-Mars, after the ceremony at the Invalides, of the Consular Guard returning from Marengo. I was at a window of the Ecole-Militaire, and I can never forget the commotion, almost electrical, which made the air resound with cries of enthusiasm at their appearance. These soldiers did not defile before the First Consul in fine uniforms as at a review. Leaving the field of battle when the firing ceased, they had crossed Lombardy, Piedmont, Mont Cenis, Savoy, and France in the space of twenty-nine days. They appeared worn by the fatigue of a long journey, with faces browned by ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... Foul birds defile my skull. The new king's praises fill the land. He clings to precept, simple, dull; HIS pyramids on bases stand. ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet

... your pockets; you haven't the pluck to strike me. I wish you had"—his eyes flashed ominously—"for I might be tempted to give you the thrashing you deserve and I'm longing to give you. And yet—no, I shouldn't; for I wouldn't defile my hands by ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... his diocese will keep their churchyards 'neat and decent, taking the profits of the herbage in such manner as may rather add beauty to the place.' But he implies that there were many incumbents who turned their cattle into the sacred precincts, 'to defile them, and trample down the gravestones; and make consecrated ground such as you would not suffer courts before your own doors to be.'[964] And there were some who were not satisfied with turning in their cow and horse.[965] ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... the Zerafshan. Our four days' journey of 180 miles along the regular Russian post-road was attended with only the usual vicissitudes of ordinary travel. Wading in our Russian top-boots through the treacherous fords of the "Snake" defile, we passed the pyramidal slate rock known as the "Gate of Tamerlane," and emerged upon a strip of the Kizil-Kum steppe, stretching hence in painful monotony to the bank of the Sir Daria river. This we crossed by a rude rope-ferry, filled at the ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... hunting the cowboys in Fishkill mountain, in the Revolution. By his son, Theodorus Van Wyck, Esq., of Fishkill Hook, who remembers to have been shown, within the last forty years, by an individual then living, the bones of a "skinner," or cowboy, still lying unburied in a defile of the mountains. ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson

... is hardly ever used for an altar, but let us not anticipate. In the eighteenth century we shall again find abbes—among how many other monsters—who defile holy objects. One Canon Duer occupied himself specially with black magic and the evocation of the devil. He was finally executed as a sorcerer in the year of grace 1718. There was another who believed in the Incarnation ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... gallant partisan, Mark Bozzaris, that all should unite to hem in the Serasker; but a wound, received in a skirmish, defeated this plan. In September following, however, the same Mark intercepted and routed Hassan Pacha in a defile on his march to Yannina; and in general the Turks were defeated everywhere except at the headquarters of the Serasker, and with losses in men enormously disproportioned to the occasions. This arose partly from the necessity under which they lay ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... was I crossing a great plain, but winding among the hills, while Arno, noisier than before, fled past me in an ever narrower bed among the rocks and buttresses of what soon became little more than a defile between the hills. Though the road was deep in dust, there was shadow under the cypresses beside the way, there was a whisper of wind among the reeds beside the river, and the song of the cicale grew fainter and the hills were touched ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... Replied: 'It is the law; we must seek a youth or a maiden of clean life, and under age, to receive messages and admonitions.' We conversed with many more words, but it is not lawful for me to set them down. Pen and ink would degrade and defile the thoughts she uttered, and which my mind received that day. I broke the ring, and she passed, but to return once more next day. At even-song, a long discourse with that ancient transgressor, Mr B. Great horror and remorse; entire atonement and penance; whatsoever ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... looking back on the grim defile the train was just leaving. It was evident that they had passed the water-shed, and the train was descending. In a few minutes they ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward



Words linked to "Defile" :   blot, disgrace, fleck, defilement, notch, sully, impair, befoul, taint, dishonour, stain, attaint, mountain pass, maculate, shame, vitiate



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