"Recede" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... considered in another light, at least since they are allowed to have a negative. If I am mistaken, I desire to be excused, as talking out of my trade: only there is one thing wherein I entirely differ from this author. Since in the disputes about privileges, one side must recede; where so very few privileges remain, it is a hundred to one odds, the encroachments are not on the inferior clergy's side; and no man can blame them for insisting on the small number that is left. There is one fact wherein I must take occasion to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... but sadder still, as I recede from thy shores, bound on a distant pilgrimage. Acme! dear Acme! would I ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... being so serene we felt no motion in the car, and we could only know we were quietly moving, from seeing the grappling irons (which hung from the car) pass over the earth rapidly from field to field; whilst the scene seemed to recede from our view like a moving panorama. At our greatest altitude a solemn stillness prevailed, and I cannot describe its awful grandeur and my excitement. We then let loose a pigeon, and having a favourable country below, we prepared to descend, and Mr. Green hailed some men with the cry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... tourists from elsewhere each year, who go home aware not only of monuments and marble halls of state but of crucial Civil War battlefields, dark mountain ridges overlooking classic river valleys, rolling Piedmont estates, and the wooded headlands of Virginia and Maryland that recede behind one another into haze as one looks down ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... a poor man, and quite unable." I could scarcely speak—like the driver of the one-horse chaise, I could neither advance nor recede. ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... is a large, open space where eleven rows of black stones are aligned at symmetrical intervals. They diminish in size as they recede from the ocean. Cambry asserts that there were four thousand of these rocks and Freminville has counted twelve hundred of them. ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... man (though once she beheld him with an eye not wholly indifferent) whom she thought capable of premeditated guilt. Nor, give me leave, on the other hand, to say, is it to be wondered at, that the man who found it so difficult to be forgiven for the slighter offences, and who had not the grace to recede or repent, (made desperate,) should be hurried on to the commission of ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... questions arise between the ages of four and six. After school entrance, questions recede gradually until by the ninth, tenth, or eleventh year children have reached what is called the questionless age. This is not an indifferent age—quite the opposite—but spontaneous questions are less frequent. Possibly they ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... from mechanical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laid down will afford some light either to that or some truer method ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... to a very large size, the nostrils may become almost closed, and the head and throat may swell to the point of suffocation. The swellings not infrequently disappear from one portion of the body and develop on another, or may recede from the surface and invade the intestinal mucous membrane. The mucous lining of the nostrils and mouth show more or less dark-red or purple spots. There may be a discharge of blood-colored serum from the nostrils; the tongue may be swollen so as to prevent eating ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... the apostle: "Forgetting the things that are behind, we press forward to those that remain." And, so long as this precept is soberly applied, no conduct can be more worthy of praise. Improvement is the appropriate race of man. We cannot stand still. If we do not go forward, we shall inevitably recede. Shakespear, when he wrote his Hamlet, did not know that he ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... view the hills at length recede, And, less luxuriant, smoother vales extend: Immense horizon-bounded plains succeed! Far as the eye discerns, withouten end, Spain's realms appear, whereon her shepherds tend Flocks, whose rich fleece right well the trader knows - Now must the pastor's arm his lambs defend: For Spain ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... animals, and a large proportion of those most useful to man, are also natives of the elder continent. On the other hand, the bulk of the edentata, a group remarkable for defects and meanness of organization, are American. The zoology of America may be said, upon the whole, to recede from that of Asia, "and perhaps in a greater degree," adds Dr. Prichard, "from that of Africa." A much greater recession is, however, observed in both the botany ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... resolves itself into the feeling of muscular effort, that is, takes on a human character. To produce no other examples, we see that so far as concerns the last term of this slow regression, the imagination is not yet completely annulled, although it may have had to recede incessantly before a more solid and better ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... whole society. The president's trembling hand stole the sketch back to the portfolio, afraid doubtless it might be claimed in form, or else compensation expected by the artist. Lady Penelope was disconcerted, like an awkward horse when it changes the leading foot in galloping. She had to recede from the respectful and easy footing on which he had contrived to place himself, to one which might express patronage on her own part, and dependence on Tyrrel's; and this could not be done ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of the timid, the resistance of the refractory and incorrigible, and the sneers, the censures, and the sarcasms of the curious and the malignant vanish, as the gloomy chills and shades of the night recede before the glorious ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... attempted to drive the dog from him, when looking around, he espied a bit of rope, with which he made him fast to a post, and then clambered up the ship's side. Poor Nep, keeping his eye upon his master, laid him quietly down, until the lines were cast off, and the ship began to recede from the shore. O, Harry, could you leave the companion of your infancy thus, made fast to a yard rope, to shiver in the night air? It was his only alternative, for in taking Neptune with him he well ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... night the barrage continued. At times it seemed to creep closer and then recede again. Finally it withdrew, pulling back to the American lines, to alternately advance and recede. At last I went to sleep. The Han officer seemed to be a relatively good-natured fellow, for one of his race, and he promised to awake me if anything ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... that which was appointed me was done; if well done, what mattered the rest? This quietness came to me through a chain of thought. I had been experiencing, as many others have, the weariness of a long-winded job, the end of which seemed to recede with each day's progress; and there came to ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... to believe du Maurier's art England is a petticoat-governed country. The men in his pictures are often made to recede into the background of Victorian ornament merely as ornaments themselves. As for the women, the mask of manner, the pleasantness concealing every shade of uncharitableness, all the arts of the contention for social precedence—in the interpretation of this sort of thing du Maurier is often quite ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... preceding century, the tongue of land now occupied by the Nameless Castle was part of the lake; and it may have been true, for Neusiedl Lake is a very capricious body of water. During the past two decades we ourselves have seen a greater portion of the lake suddenly recede, leaving dry land where once had been several feet of water. The owners of what had once been the shore took possession of the dry lake bottom; they used it for meadows and pastures; leased it, and the lessees built farm-houses and steam-mills on the "new ground." They cultivated wheat and maize, ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... whether it were approaching or going from him. It seemed somehow to recede, to have got almost to the end of the road, past all the turnings; in which case, he reflected, the poor thing could not be ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... rejectest, the enjoyment of women; nay, they took their pleasure of them and their company even as thou renouncest them, and it did them no hurt in things temporal or things spiritual. Wherefore do thou recede from thy resolve and thou shalt praise the issue of thy case." Rejoined the shepherd, "All thou sayest I deny and abhor, and all thou offerest I reject: for thou art cunning and perfidious and there is no honesty in thee nor ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... he continued, "thy power and glory recede! Man flies over thee—thou mayst go and learn ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... leading to it is two miles long, and not so much as a quarter of a mile wide: in some parts we had nineteen fathoms, but in others it was deeper; it runs through a chasm in the hills, which rise abruptly, and occasionally recede and form bights, in which, in the wet season, the rains form some very considerable mountain torrents. No fresh water was seen in any part of the gulf; but as it was near the end of the dry season when we were there, it might probably be found in a more advanced season in every part ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... irrational bias. The absolute flux cannot be physically arrested; but what arrests it ideally is the fixing of some point in it from which it can be measured and illumined. Otherwise it could show no form and maintain no preference; it would be impossible to approach or recede from a represented state, and to suffer or to exert will in view of events. The irrational fate that lodges the transcendental self in this or that body, inspires it with definite passions, and subjects it to particular buffets ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... recede hinc dierecte. ut pulsat propudium! comesse panem tris pedes latum potes, 580 fores pultare nescis. ecquis in aedibust? heus, ecquis his est? ecquis hoc aperit ostium? ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... cannot allow Lady Beauchamp to be one of those women, who having insisted upon a wrong point, can be convinced, yet not know how to recede with a grace.—Be so kind to yourself, as to let Sir Harry know, that you think it right for Mr. Beauchamp to return; but that it must be upon your own conditions: then, madam, make those conditions generous ones; and how will Sir Harry adore you! How will Mr. ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... The men of the new generation have their new loves and worships: it remains to be seen to whom the worthy amongst them will turn long ere the frosts of age begin to gather and the winds of the human autumn to blow. Wordsworth will recede through the gliding ages until, with the greater Chaucer, and the greater Shakspere, and the greater Milton, he is yet a star in the ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... the piano and the painted warrior, the musician lay on a sofa, bundled in a rug. There was not much space on the sofa, yet, as Jones entered, he seemed to recede. Then, cavernously, he spoke. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... guardian rights of spiritual liberty. That adversary was Gregory VII. Already the tremendous threat had issued: "Appear at Rome on a given day to answer the charges against you, or you shall be excommunicated and cast from the body of the Church." But the infatuated monarch, too proud to recede, hurried on by his impetuous arrogance, and by the unprincipled favorites and corrupt prelates who shared his bounty, loaded the Papal legates with scorn and contumely, and drove them ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... nature too thoroughly to mistake the result of your ambitious career. My darling, ambition is the mirage of the literary desert you are anxious to traverse; it is the Bahr Sheitan, the Satan's water, which will ever recede and mock your thirsty, toil-spent soul. Dear little pilgrim, do not scorch your feet and wear out your life in the hot, blinding sands, struggling in vain for the constantly fading, vanishing oasis of happy ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... produced. At that price, however, society can go on for some time longer; could go on perhaps forever, if population did not increase. The price, having attained that point, will not again permanently recede (though it may fall temporarily from accidental abundance); nor will it advance further, so long as society can obtain the supply it requires without a second increase of the cost ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... the decision. The issue cannot be dodged. Absolute inaction in such a case is a decision as truly as the most vehement action. We can now advance, but, the conditions of the world being what they are, if we do not advance we recede; for there is involved not so much a particular action as a question of principle, pregnant of great consequences in one direction ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... to recede. The grass grew so thin and dry that they did little harm by passing through it. It sprang up in front of their feet as they moved backwards in their white dresses. All colour had passed from the earth. The ripple of the river and the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... fatal work, sweeping the vital tide along channels through which it no longer returned to the fount of life, and leaving the weary face with a pallor that overmastered the flush that awhile before brought a momentary hope. His eyes grew dim, and the light from the lamp seemed to recede, as though it feared him, and would elude his gaze. The figures in the room became mixed and commingled, and took shapes which at times he failed to recognise. Then a sensation of falling seized him, and he planted his hands on the ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... after all; for, indeed, Anglesea behaved in such a frank, noble, generous manner, confessing the whole case to me, telling me how they—himself and Odalite—drifted into this attachment unawares, until it was too late to recede; and how, when he perceived that he loved her with all his heart and soul, he would have gone away rather than have sought to win her from the youth her parents had chosen for her husband; but how, when he discovered that his love was returned by her, he felt ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... lo! with gentle motion, between banks Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream, 400 Beneath a woven grove it sails, and, hark! The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar, With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods. Where the embowering trees recede, and leave A little space of green expanse, the cove 405 Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes, Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave Of the boat's motion marred ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... There can be no more important field than for us to thus learn of the past. To read the story of primitive man, to walk with him the earth in ages long ago, with him to wage war on the huge animals of a previous epoch, to recede with him before the relentless march of the ice of the Glacial Age, to watch his advance in culture, to investigate whether there are any races of men now living which are the direct descendants of ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... meat of which so much complaint has been made in recent years is not likely to recede. The high price is not due to manipulations of the market, but to natural causes, the chief of which is the limitation of pasturage and is the consequence of a decrease in the number of livestock. As the country becomes more and more densely settled, the difficulty of supplying ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... "My dear fellow, we have accepted, and it is too late to recede. You were the first to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... together. It was a purple wine, so cool that the cup into which it was poured became covered with vapory dew; yet it seemed to warm the veins with strange fire. To Ming-Y, as he drank, all things became more luminous as by enchantment; the walls of the chamber appeared to recede, and the roof to heighten; the lamps glowed like stars in their chains, and the voice of Sie floated to the boy's ears like some far melody heard through the spaces of a drowsy night. His heart ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... lighted Say would have seen how flushed Okoya's face became, notwithstanding the tawny colour of his complexion. The boy saw at once that he had confessed much more than he had intended,—that the secret of his interview of the morning was divulged. Recede he could not; neither could he conceal his embarrassment. He began to twist the end ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... had much credit and authority with him; insomuch, that it is thought he would have desisted from prosecuting the war, if it had not been for the Moors and the caymals, who represented that it would be a great disgrace to his character to recede after the assemblage of so great an army, and that it was to be expected the rajah of Cochin might now agree from fear to do what the zamorin had desired him. The zamorin then desired his sorcerers to point out a fortunate day for marching forward with his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... gave public notice, that, if the treaty entered into by "that damned arch traitor, John Jay, with the British tyrant should be ratified, a petition will be presented to the next General Assembly of Virginia praying that the said State may recede from the Union, and be left under the government and protection of one hundred thousand free and independent Virginians!" A meeting at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, resolved, "that it was weary of the tardiness of Congress in not going to war with England, and that they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Her voice had seemed to recede from me, a retreating whisper at the last word. "No! I will not go. I must—I will know more of you. You are no phantom. Who are you? Where—when can I see you ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... out. A long waved line of sea-shells and drift-wood marked the place to which it had risen the last time before it began to recede. They were unconsciously following this line of ocean debris. Occasionally Marie would stop to pick up a spotted shell which was more pretty than the rest. Finally, when they had gotten as far north as the semi-circular drive-way which extends around the ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... gasping almost their last gasp, the heat seemed to recede, swiftly. At once the guard rolled back the leaden shade opened the door and window again. His grin was broadly triumphant. Something clutched at Hilary's heart; he understood now. The beastly invaders! He struggled furiously at his bonds, but they ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... immediately caused by some antediluvian event. And this is true even though we can start from any event in the present, no matter how trivial, and go back to an event causally antecedent, and from that to another, even until we recede into the stellar dust itself. But this only amounts to saying, what is undoubtedly true, that neither I nor the toothbrush could now exist if the stellar dust, and the whole series of intervening events, had not existed. But this is ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... kept to their original plans; one wanted to advance, another thought it better policy to recede; some went to the right, others made a rush to the left: how can ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... perfectly plain, than the 7. or 8. part of a Line. And then he leaveth it to be judged, whether a Glass of such a Length being found, we ought to hope, that a Turn can be firm enough to keep such a piece of Glass in the same Inclination, so that a Mandril do not recede some Minutes from it: and, though even the Glass could be fastned perfectly perpendicular to the Mandril, that those two Mandrils could be put in one and the same Plain, & that that little Inclination, which is requisite, could be given, and the Mandril be continued to be pressed in that ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... knew naught save hunger and its satisfaction, they had attained wisdom that enabled them to make paths such as we have just travelled and to look out upon those waters! And laya upon laya thereafter, time upon time, they went upon the paths and watched the flood recede; saw great bare flats of steaming ooze appear on which crawled and splashed larger things which had grown from the tiny hungry ones; watched the flats rise higher and higher and green life begin to clothe them; ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... know, Monty," he said, "my daughter is awfully cut up about this business. She is plucky and tries not to show it, but after all a girl doesn't get over that sort of thing all in a moment. I am not saying"—it seemed necessary to recede a step "that it would be an easy matter to patch up. But I like you, Monty, and if any man could ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the prophetic spirit in the man. At times the world about him would recede from him, and he would be left, as it were, alone upon some vast immeasurable height, seeing as in a dream the things of God and the mysteries of the heavenlies stretched out before him. Such a moment came upon him late in that day as he journeyed. ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... feel herself near Franklin. It didn't disturb her, standing by him in the background, that Miss Robinson should not appreciate him. After all, deeper than anything, was the knowledge that Helen had appreciated him. Recede as far as he would from the gross foreground places, Helen's choice of him, Helen's love—for after a fashion, Helen must have loved him—gave him a final and unquestionable value. It was in this assurance of Helen's ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... similar illusion seems to haunt nations through every stage of the long progress from poverty and barbarism to the highest degrees of opulence and civilisation. But if we resolutely chase the mirage backward, we shall find it recede before us into the regions of fabulous antiquity. It is now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would be intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shopkeepers breakfasted ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her that he understood her meaning about the name, and she gave him a little wave of her hand as if to say good-bye, and began to recede slowly, gliding backward, only her head seen ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... of this decisive step reached Napoleon soon after the battle of Wagram, and he was inclined to disapprove of the conduct of Miollis as too precipitate. It was now, however, impossible to recede; the Pope was ordered to be conveyed across the Alps to Grenoble. But his reception there was more reverential than Napoleon had anticipated, and he ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... takes about two or three days to get out, then it begins to fade and the skin to peel off in tiny, branny scales, so small and thin as to be almost invisible—unlike the huge flakes of scarlet fever. At the same time all the other symptoms recede. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... has, in less enlightened ages than our own, been made illustrious by *those who have sacrificed life rather than deny or suppress beliefs* which they deemed of vital moment. It can hardly be anticipated that the civilized world will recede so far into barbarism as to light again the death-flame of persecution; but it may be questioned whether the chronic sacrifice of all which men most desire in life requires or manifests less of heroism than in earlier times furnished ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... behind the other, is certainly not more, altogether, than three-quarters of an inch from the flat ground, and the one in front does not in reality project more than the one behind it, yet, by mere drawing,[132] you see the sculptor has got them to appear to recede in due order, and by the soft rounding of the flesh surfaces, and modulation of the veins, he has taken away all look of flatness from the necks. He has drawn the eyes and nostrils with dark incision, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... race. The struggle between good and evil.] So much for the future of the individual. Regarding the future of the race Hinduism speaks in equally cheerless terms. Its golden age lies in the immeasurably distant past; and the further we recede from it the deeper must we plunge into sin and wretchedness. True, ages and ages hence the "age of truth" returns, but it returns only to pass away again and torment us with the memory of lost purity and joy. The experience of the universe is thus an eternal renovation ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... must know something of what this 'highest good' is. We must make this 'higher ideal' stand and unfold itself. If it cannot be made to do this, if it vanishes into mist as we near it, and takes a different shape to each of us as we recede from it; still more, if only some can see it, and to others it is quite invisible—then we must simply set it down as an illusion, and waste no more time in pursuit of it. But that it is not an illusion ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... the real date of Ptolemaeus seems still to recede, but I will not endeavour any further to put a numerical value upon it which might be thought to be prejudiced. It will be best for the reader to fill up the blank according to ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... Elizabeth addressed her as one of her maids of honour, of whom she affected to be jealous. He was conscious that he had been hurried by the enthusiasm of the moment farther than he either wished or intended. It was difficult to recede, when her majesty seemed disposed to advance; but Sir Walter Raleigh, with much presence of mind, turned to the foreigner, whom he accosted ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... we can behold the Libyan Desert, of which we afterwards never entirely lose sight, though we sometimes approach and sometimes recede from it. I became conscious of certain dark objects in the far distance; they developed themselves more and more, and at length I recognised in them the wonder-buildings of ancient times, the Pyramids; ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... fresh note of despair. "He's taking me away! He's taking me away! Oh, come! come!" Sure enough the sounds began to recede. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... turn; the first murmuring menace of new encroachments began to be heard under Henry VII.; as we listen they grow louder on the ear; the waves advance with a steady, deliberate march, unlike the first impetuous onslaught of the Normans; they advance and do not recede, till they recover all the ground they had abandoned. The era which we dated from the Red Earl's death, in 1333, has exhausted its resources of aggression and assimilation; a new era opens with the reign of Henry VII.—or more distinctly still, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... senses returned; the tide of terror that had overwhelmed his faculties began to recede. But with the return of his senses he became singularly unconscious of the object of his fear. He saw the moonlight gilding the coffin, but no longer the coffin that it gilded. Raising his eyes and turning his head, he noted, curiously ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... (104) what motives hast thou (now that my heart is doting on thee, having rested awhile from so many cares and griefs which formerly it endured, beholding the evil passages which thou preparedst for me;) to recede thus from my love, giving occasion to me to weep. My agony is great on account of thy recent acquaintance with a rich man; for every thing is abandoned for money's sake. What I most feel, O Callee, of the devils is, that thou abandonest me for a rich man . . . I spit upon thy beauty, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... retrograde motion, backward movement, motion in reverse, counter movement, counter march; veering, tergiversation, recidivation|, backsliding, fall; deterioration &c. 659; recidivism, recidivity[obs3]. reversal, relapse, turning point &c.(reversion) 145. V. recede, regrade, return, revert, retreat, retire; retrograde, retrocede; back out; back down; balk; crawfish* [U.S.], crawl*; withdraw; rebound &c. 277; go back, come back, turn back, hark back, draw back, fall back, get back, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... ancient in obtaining the private objects of ambition, or selfish policy which had induced them to rise up against the crown. Amongst these late penitents, the well known marquis of Montrose was distinguished, as the first who endeavoured to recede from the paths of rude rebellion. Moved by the enthusiasm of patriotism, or perhaps of religion, but yet more by ambition, the sin of noble minds, Montrose had engaged, eagerly and deeply, upon the side of the covenanters He had been active in pressing ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... gone too far to recede. Could she now have recalled her innocence, even that remnant she brought with her to London, experience would have taught her to have given up her child, lived apart from him, and once more with the brute creation, rather ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... reed The long, strong tides recede, Jostle and surge, And toss and urge, And foam and merge, Where lily roots shine bright ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... force, misleading amiable and high-minded people into blind paths. Now this is at an end, and, apart from their historic interest, the permanent elements of beauty draw us to them with a delight that does not diminish, as we recede further and further from the impotence of the aspirations which thus married themselves to lofty and stirring words. To say nothing of Rousseau, the father and founder of the nature-worship, which is the ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... the Indians to Christianity. At one time, when treating for the sale of some of his lands in Swanzey, he insisted very pertinaciously upon the condition that the English should never attempt to draw off any of his people from their religion to Christianity. He would not recede from this condition until he found that the treaty must be broken ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... hoping that something would now be said by Alfred, that might direct him whether to advance or recede; but Alfred only observed, that probably the end Mr. Sharpe proposed to himself by speaking was to make himself understood, and that this desirable end he had ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... bliss that awaits me so strong Is my yearning that yearning is pain; One hour is a hundred years long; My litter, it bears me in vain; It moves not, or seems to recede; Such speed would I make if I might: O, the road, it is weary indeed, Where lies—at the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... not as yet crowned with snow. For many miles after leaving Geneva, the Mole is the principal object; its blue-black outline veering and shifting, taking on a thousand strange varieties of form as you approach it, others again as you recede. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... hill, and Clare watched it go with an unpremeditated hope that Tess would look out of the window for one moment. But that she never thought of doing, would not have ventured to do, lying in a half-dead faint inside. Thus he beheld her recede, and in the anguish of his heart quoted a line from a poet, with ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... it not in my power, even if I were willing, to release you from this engagement. I am pledged to your father, and cannot, as a man of honor and a gentleman, recede from that pledge. All these objections and difficulties only bring you exactly up to my theory, or very near it. We shall marry upon very original principles; so that altogether the whole affair is very gratifying ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... round and gave a shrill whistle. The faithful soldier, whose watch he had assumed, immediately rushed forward, had his musket thrust back into his hands, with an injunction from Hardinge to keep silence. The latter had barely time to recede into the darkness when the relief-guard, consisting of a corporal and two privates, came to the spot and the usual formality of changing ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... of the vast, clear sky, Where range upon range the remote grey hills Far in the distance recede and die, There is no space ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... gone too far to recede, and his embarrassment was beginning to pass into something like indignation that he and all he could offer were ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... a number of her guests whizzed past in one of Scott's motors; there came a swift hail, a gust of wind-blown laughter, and the car was gone in a whirl of dust. She stood in the road watching it recede, then walked forward ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... track, dazed, staggering, crushed, watching his fortune recede and disappear, heedless of the great drops of rain that began to fall upon his bare head. Then, when the others rushed toward him, surrounded him and overwhelmed him with questions: "Isn't the Bey going to stop?" he stammered a few incoherent words: "Court intrigues—infamous ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... certain time—after the world suspects that two people are engaged to each other, it is scarcely possible for the woman to recede: when they come within a certain distance, they are pressed to unite, by the irresistible force of external circumstances. A woman is too often reduced to this dilemma: either she must marry a man she does not love, or she must ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... had gone too far to recede. His rifle was already at his shoulder, and the next moment I saw the flash, and heard the sharp crack. The "thud" of his bullet, too, fell upon my ear, as it struck into the branch against which I was leaning. Good marksman as he was reputed, the sheen of my pistols had spoiled his aim, ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... shudder. If she could have cut it out of her life and memory altogether, that would have been well; but how could she forget the agony of that awful farewell; the sense of utter loneliness with which she saw the shores recede; the conviction then borne in upon her—and never wholly eradicated from her mind—that some mysterious doom had overtaken her, from which there was no escape. The influence of that time, and of the time that succeeded it, still dwelt upon her, and overshadowed her with its gloom. She had ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the trees; and as I did so, the figure seemed to me to recede, and disappear; a faint rustling of a woman's dress sounded in my ears, or seemed so to sound, as the figure melted from my sight. But again I had good reason to attribute these fancies to the state of my own brain, after that long day of ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... checkerboard you can see it as black on red, or red on black, as series of horizontal, vertical or diagonal steps which recede or protrude. The longer you look the more patterns you can trace, and the more certain it becomes that there is no single way of looking at the board. So with political issues. There is no obvious ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... and we began to recede from the shore, cutting diagonally across the decidedly swift current. Once beyond the protection of the point the star-gleam revealed the sturdy rush of the waters, occasionally flecked with bubbles of foam. Sam handled the unwieldy craft with the skill of a practiced boatman ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... disappearing in the direction of home threw back the unstable Spanish colony into doubt and despondency. The brief encouragement afforded by Ojeda's report soon died away, and the actual discomforts of life in Isabella were more important than visionary luxuries that seemed to recede into the distance with the vanishing ships. The food supply was the cause of much discomfort; the jobbery and dishonesty which seem inseparable from the fitting out of a large expedition had stored the ships with bad wine and imperfectly ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... short, stertorous gasps, his throat was parched and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. The slope of the hill is precipitous here, and the house—nigh to the summit—seemed to recede farther and farther with ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... call of the Rev. Samuel Hopkins to a pastorate in Newport, R. I., where Dr. Stiles was then preaching, the latter says: "If I find him (Hopkins) of a Disposition to live in an honorable Friendship, I shall gladly cultivate it. But he must not expect that I recede from my Sentiments both in Theology and ecclesiastical Polity more than he from his, in which I presume he is immovably fixed. We shall certainly differ in some things. I shall endeavor to my utmost to live with him as a Brother; ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... still as a stone, her hands between her knees. Slowly she felt the blood recede from her face, prickling her kin down below her neck. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... Laws of. 1. Two rectilinear currents, the directions of which form an angle with each other, attract one another when both approach to or recede from ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... find it is a fur coat fluttering and flapping in the wind. To me, as to you, the earth seems motionless, and the sun appears to move; for the rays of the afternoon withdraw more and more, as they touch my face, until the air becomes cool. From this I understand how it is that the shore seems to recede as you sail away from it. Hence I feel no incredulity when you say that parallel lines appear to converge, and the earth and sky to meet. My few senses long ago revealed to me their imperfections ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... to put down the seditious." Sir, we have heard all this blustering before; and we know in what it ended. It is the blustering of little men whose lot has fallen on a great crisis. Xerxes scourging the winds, Canute commanding the waves to recede from his footstool, were but types of the folly of those who apply the maxims of the Quarter Sessions to the great convulsions of society. The law has no eyes: the law has no hands: the law is nothing, nothing but a piece of paper printed by the King's printer, with ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the high-road. The morning sunshine, pouring joyously through all the gates and balconies of the Spanish horizon, had now inundated the fields with brilliant light. The wide sky, undimmed by a single cloud, seemed to grow wider and to recede further from the earth, in order to contemplate it, and rejoice in the contemplation, from a greater height. The desolate, treeless land, straw-colored at intervals, at intervals of the color of chalk, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... under her breath. She felt her heart beat quicken, the blood flood her face and then recede. Her imagination had suddenly become too horribly vivid. Suppose they—they had already gone ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... say it was practicable, I give it just to show you what the man had in him," he said. "Big ideas that strike in deep, the kind that change whole cities." Instead of a street like a canyon with sheer walls on either side, the front of each building was to recede in narrow terraces, floor by floor, so letting floods of sunlight down into the street below and giving to each apartment a small terrace garden. As she listened, Ethel grew intent. It was not the mere plan ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... the sun or mist, at the undulations of the road, which sometimes rose almost straight up in the air, sometimes followed a horizontal line, while skirting the open abyss at the right. The Arve, wending its course like a silvery ribbon, seemed at times to recede, while the ridges of the perpendicular rocks stood out more plainly. At times, the noise of a falling avalanche was repeated, echo after echo. A troupe of German students below me were responding to the voice of the glaciers by a chorus from Oberon. Following ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... district; it consisted of corn, rice, oil of Sesamum, ghee or butter, and cotton: he then, in a most minute and accurate manner, describes the approach to the harbour; the extraordinarily high tides, the rapidity with which they roll in and again recede, especially at the new moon, the difficult pilotage of the river, are all noticed. On account of these dangers and difficulties, he adds, that pilots were appointed by the government, with large boats, well manned, who put to sea ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... intend thus to allow the pirates to escape with impunity?" said Dick to Lancelot and me, as we watched the Moorish city recede from our eyes. "I much fear that your relatives will be left to ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... as ye fast recede The pain of parting rends my weary breast. I must regret—yet there is little need That I should mourn, for only wild unrest Is mine while in my native land I roam. Thou gav'st me birth, but cannot give ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... nearer, Orde tried in vain to catch sight of her face. She looked down, watching the waters advance and recede; she wore a brimmed hat bent around her head by means of some sort of veil tied over the top and beneath her chin. When she had arrived nearly opposite Orde she turned abruptly inland, and a moment later began laboriously to climb ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... like a solid wall. I leant back against the gate; I was not frightened, but I was mightily excited. The man like Caesar looked fiercely at me, swayed a long way back on his haunches, and imperiously motioned the crowd to recede. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... has taken of the subject; and it is confirmed in still extending our observations westward through the kingdom of France, where we find the ridges of the Jura, and then those of Burgundy gradually diminishing in their height as they recede from the centre of elevation, but still preserving a certain degree of regularity in ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... to them by Jerris. While history never exactly repeats itself, a parallel could be drawn between the history of the Empire and the history of England between, say, 1550 and 1950. But, while England's empire had begun to recede with the coming of democratic government, the Terran Empire continued to spread—more slowly ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... danger appeared! The tide turned and the sea began to recede. Further misfortunes now befell the ships. Many were left high and dry; most of them were damaged in some way or another. Alexander sent horsemen to the seashore with instructions to watch for the return of the tide and to ride back in haste so that ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... the graves of those Who gave him freedom and repose! And can no rev'rence for the dead Ye heartless crew, no sense of dread To place your names on aught so high As e'en the tombs where heroes lie, Force you with horror to recede From such a sacrilegious deed? Go, spread it to the winds of heaven, That they, who to our isle have giv'n Their blood, their services, their breath, Sleep in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various |
