"Drop away" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and flapped heavily across the valley. The effect of their flight was simple, but laid hold on the imagination in a peculiar manner. As they flew in a horizontal line the sloping hillside appeared to drop away beneath them like the subsiding of a great wave. It was just the touch needed to add a sense of mystic instability to the earth and to subtilise the prosaic farmland into the realm of illusion. Looking at the fields in this glorified light ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... of larks and a tinkling from distant flocks break the brooding noonday stillness; above, the wind-hover hangs motionless, a black dot on the blue. Prone on his back on the springy turf, gazing up into the sky, his fleshy integument seems to drop away, and the spirit ranges at will among the tranquil clouds. This way Nirvana nearest lies. Earth no longer obtrudes herself; possibly somewhere a thousand miles or so below him the thing still "spins like a fretful midge.'' ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... fade away. It bases a demand for mutual help and love, upon the fact that we are all on a pilgrimage—high, low, honored, degraded, master, slave, we go forth together, and these earthly distinctions all drop away. Rich man with rows of real-estate, with money safe in bank, with solid securities walled around you—you will carry no more away than Lazarus yonder—in God's eyes you are no richer than he. Because here we have no continuing city. The destinies of our common humanity flow forward ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... mine in responsibility and in consequences. Thus guarded, we may be wholly right in thinking of all the evils which still cleave to the renewed Christian soul as not being part of it, but destined to drop away. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... me. It shall be the last time, if you will only be patient. There is an hour coming, if you persist in your present course, when you will wish you had never been born; an hour when all human aid must fail, and all human interests and splendor drop away from you like rotten rags; when your soul, affrighted and shrinking, will go forth, obeying the inexorable laws, of the Creator, to meet its Almighty Judge. When the shadows will fall darkly around your way, Helen, and phantoms of darkness lie in wait, until the irrevocable sentence ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... went into immediate and violent hysterics. They remained several hours, and decided it to be that terrible death in life, entire paralysis of brain, nerve, and muscle. He might linger some days; he might drop away ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Germans are leaving Brussels," whispered a companion; "and wouldn't we grow wild or faint or crazy to see those guards drop away and we should find ourselves ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... tasted, by them. The harvest is gathered, and the symptoms of the fall appear. Is it that some faculty becomes a little impaired, some taste a little dulled; or is it that the friends and companions of our life are beginning to drop away from us? Long since, those whom we loved of the generation before us have been gathered to the grave; now those of our own generation are falling fast also—brothers, sisters, friends of our early youth, a wife, a husband. We are surrounded by a younger generation, to whom the half of ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... growled. "He's an artilleryman. We've been in the dill together half a dozen times." Freddy was staring below, trying to understand the terrain from this perspective. While Joe was tripping the lever which let the tow rope drop away from the glider, the Telly reporter said, "Both of them used to fly lightplanes for sport. When you started this new glider angle, they must've seen the possibilities and took it up immediately. But you oughta be able to fly circles ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... and ordinary man. In what manner does his dream run? Since he has ceased to read he has begun to drop away a little from ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... how themselves; the grinders cease, because they are few, and those that look out of the windows are darkened;" the strongest members of the body fail, the limbs bend beneath the weight of decrepitude and the effects of paralytic distempers, the teeth drop away, while the eyes grow dim and languid; "the doors are shut in the streets when the sound of the grinding is low," the mouth becoming sunken and closed; they "rise up at the voice of the bird," awakened from imperfect slumber when the cock crows or the birds begin their early songs; and ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... listening to him and Miss March, as they gradually became more friendly; a circumstance natural enough, under the influence of that simple, solitary place, where all the pretences of etiquette seemed naturally to drop away, leaving nothing but the forms dictated and preserved by true ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... was her first and a woman doesn't allow her first man to drop away without expostulation. She justifies the first transfer of affection to herself by swearing that it is ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the fire on my own hearth, that I might learn to make that of others bright My dear, one's life never need be empty of love, even though, after seeing all near kindred drop away, one lingers to be an old maid of ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... was in readiness, and the earth began to drop away beneath them, the dogs put their noses in the air and chorused a canine Arctic dirge. But their howls were lost in the noise of ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... particularly because he told them they might load the sloop back with rice and provisions; but I seemed backward to going, when the old surgeon stood up and persuaded me to go, and with many arguments pressed me to it; as, particularly, if I did not go, there would be no order, and several of the men might drop away, and perhaps betray all the rest; and that they should not think it safe for the sloop to go again if I did not go; and to urge me to it, he offered himself to ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... awakening at Givre, three days before, when it had seemed as though all her life had gone down in darkness. Now Darrow was once more under the same roof with her, and once more his nearness sufficed to make the looming horror drop away. She could almost have smiled at her scruples of the night before: as she looked back on them they seemed to belong to the old ignorant timorous time when she had feared to look life in the face, and had been blind to the mysteries and contradictions of the human heart because her own had not ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... part of her study. What sat on her face was perplexity, wonder, amazement, and something else, I know not what. Something of her perfect poise and confidence, her quality as woman of the world, seemed to drop away. A strange and childlike quality came into her face, a pathos unlike anything I had seen there before. She took my ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... of a tete-a-tete with him, it is probable that, whatever its utility, she would not have pressed it, but the underlying motive was the stronger. Chilcote had been a satellite for years, and it was unpleasant that any satellite should drop away into space. ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... time they are discovered and drop away. [Footnote: Like the leaves of a flower; pursuing the last metaphor. So says Moore, in The Last Rose of Summer: "the gems drop away." Jacobs: fallt sie von selbst zusammen. Pabst: sturet in sich selbst zusammen.] As a house, a ship, or the like, ought to ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... now companioned—of Malkiel, of that portentous and unseen lady who dwelt beside the secret waters of the Mouse, of those imagined offshoots of the prophetic tree, Corona and Capricornus—this would drop away. He would be free once more, light-hearted, a happy and mildly intellectual man of the town, emerged from the thrall of bogies, and from beneath the yoke which he already felt laid upon his shoulders by those august creatures who were the centre of ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... it," said Lazaro, "You have my sympathy; but I must urge you, for your own sake and for mine, to attempt no harm to Merriwell. Leave him to me, and you shall have the pleasure of seeing all his plans go wrong, his fortune dwindle, his friends drop away, his sweetheart taken from him, his strength sapped, his beauty destroyed, and, at last, his life crushed ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... of his observations on dead dogs in the river Thames, that the lower jaw, not being secured by very firm ligaments to the bones of the head, and being a weighty affair, would easily be knocked off, or might drop away from the body as it floated in water in a state of decomposition. The jaw would thus be deposited immediately, while the rest of the body would float and drift away altogether, ultimately reaching the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... the Roman people. And then the subject states of Carthage were mostly of another race, language, and religion from their Phoenician conquerors, and were ready, upon the first disaster to the ruling city, to drop away from their allegiance; while the Latin allies and Italian dependencies of Rome were close kindred to her in race and religion, and so, through natural impulse, for the most part remained loyal to her during even the darkest periods of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... far possible. Fields bearing fruit, wine-bearing mountain slopes and pastures for cattle will have vanished. Man will have gained in gentleness and morality seeing he no longer lives on the murder and destruction of living beings. Then also will the difference drop away between fertile and barren districts; perchance deserts may then become the favorite homes of man being healthier than the damp valleys and the swamp-infected plains. Then also will Art, together with all the beauties of human life reach full development. No longer ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... shall then unfold the consciousness of the "I am I" that which rules the personality that which has been called Soul-Consciousness. You shall then be Chaitanya-Spiritually awake. You shall then know no Fear. Fear shall drop away like a worn-out sheath. All fear-thoughts are due to undeveloped race-consciousness which reacts upon individual consciousness and is stamped more or less upon every atom of matter. You 'fear' because ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... delusive mine, As on we toil, from day to day, By sudden blasts, or slow decline, Our social comforts drop away. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... tired and breathless, when our herculean guide signed to me to look upwards. My eye following the lead of his finger, travelled across a curtain of foliage—the delicate ash leaf, faded and ready to drop away; the sturdier oak, brown, yellow, dull green, or blotted with crimson. At the top of all was a hut perched on the edge of the cliff; that was Laurie's hut, Basil whispered. I could see the wall, built of rough stones, and a miserable little hole meant ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... a little at a loss as to how she was to supply this deficiency. It would scarcely be possible for her to break into the enclosures of Dungemarsh Court—especially since she had allowed herself to drop away from North Farthing House ... she had been a fool to do that—Sir Harry might have helped her now. But then ... her lips tightened.... Anyhow, he would not be at home for Christmas—since Martin's death he had ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... deadly missiles, too many by far for even the keenest eye to guard against them all. One and another of those gallant defenders drop away; only because death had claimed them, not because of fear or of ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... noise, not a footfall, not a solitary soul abroad, not a wave nor a vestige of the great restless sea of humanity which a little space before surged through it, and which, in a little while to come, would rise and swell to its full, and then ebb, and fall, and drop away once more ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... one by one I've seen them drop away; Unheeding all the tears and prayers That vainly bade them stay. And here I hang alone, alone— While life is fleeing fast; And sadly sigh that I am left The ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... peace between capital and labor is not lasting in our present society and it will scarcely last in Milwaukee. Already there are signs of what is likely to happen, and the business-men admirers of Milwaukee Socialism are beginning to drop away. A few more strikes, and Berger and his associates may be forced to abandon completely their claim that it is to the interest of employers, with some exceptions, to elect ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... supports held together (as in small left-hand diagram) by a band round the mine-casing. The mine goes overboard and sinks like this to the bottom. The band is then released by a special device, and the supports drop away, leaving the mine free to float to the surface (as in small right-hand diagram). I. A heavy iron sinker which acts as an anchor, holding ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... are what are called in philosophy elementary rights; which is the same thing as a right to the elements, of which land is one, and a principal one. I say a principal one; for, if there was no land to stand on, we should drop away from air, and couldn't enj'y that; we should lose all our water in vapour, and couldn't put it to millin' and manafacterin' purposes; and where could we build our fires? No; land is the first elementary right, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... their efforts to get a "Mark Twain story," all incidents being viewed in the light of his present fame, until the volume of "Twainiana" is already considerable and growing in proportion as the "old timers" drop away and the stories are retold second and third hand by their descendants. With some seventy-three years young and living in a villa instead of a house he is a fair target, and let him incorporate, copyright, or patent himself ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... coffee and conversation must come to an end at last, and so the end of this evening came. People began to drop away one by one, bidding their hostess good-night with the air of individuals who had performed a duty, and were relieved to find it performed and disposed of for the time being. So Dolly, leaving her companion with a bright farewell, and amiably ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... This was true enough, if he had minded what he was about; but then he did not. So far from it, he was saying to himself, "One 'ud ha' thought now she might ha' took a sort of pride in it," when the bottom of the world seemed to drop away from under his feet, and his irrelevant meditations ended in a shattering thud down on the rocky pavement a long way below. He never heard the shouts and shrieks which the incident occasioned above his head. Once only he became dimly conscious ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... habit of pretense. "Courses" are offered in this or that field of human learning frankly appealing to the victim's desire to shine at a party. Books are sold, clothes and cosmetics are peddled, by playing continually upon this desire to appear what we are not. Artificiality is one curse that will drop away the moment we kneel at Jesus' feet and surrender ourselves to His meekness. Then we will not care what people think of us so long as God is pleased. Then what we are will be everything; what we appear will take its place far down the scale of interest ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... yourself a feminist, but you, and women like you, are feminists only when it's convenient. There are no real feminists except ugly women like me or old ones like Meuriot. You others come about us in a swarm and then drop away one after another to go off to some man. As soon as a lover condescends to throw the handkerchief you're up and off to him. You want to be slaves. Go, my dear, and take your lover. That's your fate. Good-night. ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... brokenly, "he is asleep. Touch his eyes with kindly fingers that the scales may drop away. Put the hollow of thy hand around his heart and kindle there the love that means the brotherhood of man, for I love him—I ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... in ripened bloom unmatched Must fall the earliest prey;[be] Though by no hand untimely snatched, The leaves must drop away: And yet it were a greater grief To watch it withering, leaf by leaf, Than see it plucked to-day; Since earthly eye but ill can bear To trace the change to ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... here in ceaseless woe to moan! Impending desolation hangs around, 90 And ruin hovers o'er the trembling ground: The blooming spring droops her enamell'd head, Her glories wither, and her flowers all fade: The sprouting leaves already drop away; Languish the living herbs with pale decay: The bowing trees, see! o'er the blasted heath, Depending, bend beneath the weight of death: Wrapp'd in the expansive gloom, the lightnings play, Hoarse thunder mutters through the aerial way: All Nature feels ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... headed for the phone, and ten years seemed to drop away from him. He lit the screen with a flick, dialed and said crisply, "That's him, Jerry. Going down the walk now. Don't let ...
— Subversive • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... times, and the evening had always passed off pleasantly. But on this evening I drank more wine than was good for me. Probably it was doctored, but I don't know. All my life, whenever I have taken a glass too much, one sure result has followed. All the restraints of conduct which I ordinarily feel drop away, and I become reckless. ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... Sam walked through the town toward the country. At the edge of town where the houses became scattered and the road started to drop away into a deep valley some one helloed behind him. Turning, he saw the soft-eyed Jewish girl running along a path ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... Russell's seventy-ninth birthday was celebrated at Pembroke Lodge by the school children under the cedar in the garden. "His serene and cheerful mind, a greater blessing year by year as enjoyments one by one drop away. He looks back with gratitude, he accepts the present with contentment. He looks forward, I think, without dread." In September they went abroad, and took for the second time the house at Renens-sur-Roche, in Switzerland, where they had ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... at him in the gullies with exhausted malice. At last he gained the plateau and saw the road-house light beneath, so drove his heels into the flanks of the wind-broken creature, which lunged forward gamely. He felt the pony rear and drop away beneath him, pawing and scrambling, and instinctively kicked his feet free from the stirrups, striving to throw himself out of the saddle and clear of the thrashing hoofs. It seemed that he turned over in the air before something ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... dimly seen in the light of the moon, seemed to drop away below them, and the clump of trees vanished from sight, both Tom and Mr. Damon wondered who it was that had called for help, and if the matter were at all serious. They were inclined to think it was not, but Tom could not rid himself of a faint suspicion ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... in such speeches as these to draw any two nearer and nearer to each other as they walked side by side—to fill the morning air with an intensity of life, to seem to cause the world to drop away and become as nothing? As they had been isolated during their waltz in the crowded ballroom at Dunholm Castle, so they were isolated now. When they stood in the narrow green groves of the hop garden, talking simply of the placing of the bins and the stripping and measuring of the vines, there ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... suddenly stiffened in sympathy, as I saw all vegetable sloth drop away and each bird become a detached individual, plucked by an electric emotion from the appearance of a thing of sap and fiber to a vital being of tingling nerves. I followed their united glance, and overhead there vibrated, lightly as a thistledown, the first incoming ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... machine in the sub-surface engine-room was replacing the lost air rapidly, and now the increasing pressure was strong enough to hold the translucent sheet against the wall by its own force. Jim saw the extended arms drop away. The manikin waved down to him, then turned to the shell again, as if to examine the emergency repair. For a moment Darl stood thus, then he was running along the girder, was climbing, ape-like, along a latticed beam that curved up and in, to swing down and merge with the bulge ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... inhabitants. In the face of this hostile manifestation of Providence, which washed out ardor and bred disaffection and something of superstitious terror, as it held them fast behind the impassable river, Buckingham's followers began to waver; then to drop away; and finally, when it became known that his very castle of Brecknock had been seized by Sir Thomas Vaughan, and that almost before he was out of sight of its towers, they forsook him forthwith, ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... their edge; but when conscience gets hold of them, and they pass out of the realm of fact into the mystical region of remembrance, all the wrappings, and all the apologies, and all the soft phrases drop away; and the ugliest, briefest, plainest word is the one by which my conscience describes my own evil. 'I beheaded him! I, and none else, was the murderer.' Oh! dear brethren, do you see to it that what you store up in these caves and treasure-cellars ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... fierceness seemed all to drop away from him, whelmed in the immensity of his astonishment. "You?" Then he laughed loud in scornful disbelief. "You think to save him," ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... things, with six legs and no wings. They feed on water-insects, and for a long time swim about in this state. When ready, they climb up the stem of some plant, and sit in the sun till the ugly brown shells drop away, and the lovely winged creatures appear. They grow in an hour to be perfect dragon-flies, and float away to lead happy lives in ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... exhausted what little oxygen was left to him. He knew faintly that the wreck had seemed to drop away from him, that he was swinging up through the water—and just as the water seemed to be growing lighter, everything went black before his eyes, there was a rush of stars, and ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... not now. But last night something in the music caused the years to drop away and I was back there again and she rose before me. Really, I felt her very presence. I saw her as plainly ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... idea which caused her to widen the breach between wife and husband by every subtle means in her power; and it was when this idea began to lose colour and substance and drop away among the wreckage of past hopes, that the Baroness ceased to compliment and began to taunt Preston Cheney with his dependence upon his father-in- law, and to otherwise goad and torment the unhappy man. And Preston Cheney grew into the habit of staying anywhere ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... if we lived in the true understanding of what prayer really is—the emptying out of our inmost desire and thoughts before our Brother, who is likewise our Lord—questions as to what it was permissible to pray for, and what it was not permissible to pray for, would be irrelevant, and drop away of themselves. If we had a less formal notion of prayer, and realised more thoroughly what it was—the speech of a confiding heart to a sympathising Lord—then everything that fills our hearts would be seen to be a fitting ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a share!) Still let me feel for what thy pangs are sent, And be my guide, and not my punishment! Of Leah Cousins next the name appears, With honours crown'd and blest with length of years, Save that she lived to feel, in life's decay, The pleasure die, the honours drop away; A matron she, whom every village-wife View'd as the help and guardian of her life, Fathers and sons, indebted to her aid, Respect to her and her profession paid; Who in the house of plenty largely fed, Yet took ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... I follow, When friendships decay, And from Love's shining circle The gems drop away. When true hearts lie withered, And fond ones are flown, Oh! who would inhabit This ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... comprehension of thought, and that of Virgil is grace and splendour of diction. The beauties of Homer are, therefore, difficult to be lost, and those of Virgil difficult to be retained. The massy trunk of sentiment is safe by its solidity, but the blossoms of elocution easily drop away. The author, having the choice of his own images, selects those which he can best adorn; the translator must, at all hazards, follow his original, and express thoughts which, perhaps, he would not ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... while he was languidly giving my traveling-bag to a footman. Peter looked like a literary version of what Sam called "the last of pea-time," which is a very vivid expression to a person who has just seen her poor peas drop away in the August garden. ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... said Annie-Many-Ponies, letting her hand drop away from the knife. "I awful hongry. We eat, then ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... seem favorable, for his steel bar, while very sharp at the point, was not intended for chopping work. He could pierce the body of the reptile, but could not weaken its strength so that the coil would drop away. ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... prevailed upon to favor us with a pas de deux; after which Mueller sang a comic song with a chorus, in which everybody joined; and then the orchestra was bribed with hot brandy-and-water, and dancing commenced again. By this time the visitors began to drop away in twos and threes, and even the fair Josephine, to whom I had never ceased paying the most devoted attention, declared she could not stir another step. As for Dalrymple, he had disappeared during supper, without a word of leave-taking to ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... cross-your-legs 'n' clear-your-throat, 'n' I see as I was in for it 'n' just let him pour, for feelin's catches us all ways 'n' whatever he felt about old Mrs. Ely it was plain as some one had got to hear it to the last drop. So I let him drop away, 'n' I will in all fairness say, as a more steady spout I never see no one under. He never seemed to consider as how me or any one might perhaps enjoy to maybe make a remark from time to time, 'n' even when he ain't talkin' he 's got that way o' rubbin' ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... comments. He merely flung back an occasional comment of his own and hurried on until he reached the rear. Then in the dusk of the road he found four or five men limping along, and ready when convenient to drop away in the darkness. Harry wasted no time. The fire in his blood that had come from Jackson was still burning. He snatched a pistol from his belt and, riding directly ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... worldly honors; than place or power? And is he not serenest and happiest whose life rests on these as a house upon its foundations? You cannot shake such a man. You cannot throw him down. Wealth may go, and friends drop away like withering autumn leaves, but he stands fast, with the light of heaven upon his brow. He has faith in virtue—he has trust in God—he knows that all will come out right in the end, and that ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... but people came as people went; and it was not till long shadows and slant sunbeams began to give note of supper time, that the influx lessened and the friends gathered in Mrs. Derrick's parlour began to drop away without others stepping in to ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... shall choose between a wife and the wuddy. To-morrow morning, ye shall either marry my daughter Meg, or swing from the branch o' the nearest tree, and the bauldest Scott upon the Borders shanna tak ye down, until ye drop away, bone by ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... going to meet the Kings!" And on we would run proudly along the white road, while the shrewd north wind blew sharp behind us, until our old church tower would drop away and be hidden behind the trees. We could see far, far down the wide straight road, but it would be bare! In the cold of the winter evening all would be dumb. Then we would meet a shepherd, wrapped in his long brown cloak and leaning on his staff, a silhouette ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... among them here and there. However, though these willing serfs in a free age do some little hurt, and cause some annoyance at present, they cannot continue long; our country is fated to a grand, independent existence, and, as its laws develop, these parasites of a bygone period must wither and drop away. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... were on the point of going out: "Lord, man, how can you be so impenetrably dense? Don't you see that she's really of the softest finest material that breathes, that she's a perfect flower of plasticity, that everything you may have an apprehension about will drop away from her like the dead leaves from a rose and that you may make of her any perfect and enchanting thing you yourself have ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... soon as they realize that God can be truly worshipped only by acts and attitudes that are moral and spiritual, i.e. acts and attitudes that attach to the deliberate consent of the inner spirit, Whichcote thinks that "rites and types and ceremonies, which are all veils," will drop away and religion will become one with ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... morning dawned; the discovery by the lost men of the broad pool of water that saved their lives—all this Midwinter's fast-failing attention mastered painfully, Allan's voice growing fainter and fainter on his ear with every sentence that was read. Soon the next words seemed to drop away gently, and nothing but the slowly sinking sound of the voice was left. Then the light in the room darkened gradually, the sound dwindled into delicious silence, and the last waking impressions of the weary Midwinter came ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins |
