A great city is a great desert. [ Gr. and Law Proverb ]
A tree in the desert is still a tree. [ Talmud ]
Alas! our young affections run to waste,
Or water but the desert. [ Byron ]
It is more your goodness, than my desert. [ Proverb ]
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. [ Gray ]
Curst be the gold and silver which persuade
Weak men to follow far fatiguing trade!
The lily peace outshines the silver store,
And life is dearer than the golden ore.
Yet money tempts us over the desert brown,
To every distant mart and wealthy town. [ Collins ]
Traverse the desert, and then ye can tell
What treasures exist in the cold deep well,
Sink in despair on the red parch'd earth,
And then ye may reckon what water is worth. [ Miss Eliza Cook ]
Desert and rewards very often go not together. [ Proverb ]
Till taught by pain,
Men really know not what good water's worth:
If you had been in Turkey or in Spain,
Or with a famish'd boat's crew had your berth,
Or in the desert heard the camel's bell,
You'd wish yourself where truth is - in a well. [ Byron ]
The desert is mute, and dead men tell no tales. [ Laboulaye ]
Vain-glorious man, when fluttering wind does blow
In his light wings, is lifted up to sky;
The scorn of knighthood and true chivalry,
To think, without desert of gentle deed
And noble worth, to be advanced high,
Such praise is shame, but honour, virtue's meed.
Doth bear the fairest flower in honourable seed. [ Spenser ]
How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air.
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain
Breaks the serene heaven:
In full-orb'd glory yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads,
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night! [ Southey ]
The fountain of my heart dried up within me, -
With nought that loved me, and with nought to love,
I stood upon the desert earth alone.
And in that deep and utter agony,
Though then, then even most unfit to die
I fell upon my knees and prayed for death. [ Maturin ]
Now began
Night with her sullen wing to double-shade
The desert; fowls in their clay nests were couched.
And now wild beasts came forth, the woods to roam. [ Milton ]
Friends got without desert, will be lost without cause. [ Proverb ]
Expediency is a law of nature.
The camel is a wonderful animal, but the desert made the camel. [ Beaconsfield ]
Rose of the desert! thus should woman be Shining uncourted, lone and safe, like thee. [ Moore ]
Misfortune makes of certain souls a vast desert through which rings the voice of God. [ Balzac ]
Life is a desert waste: to beguile the ennui of the journey across it, heaven gave us the kiss. [ S. Marichal ]
Desert being the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one without the other. [ Washington Allston ]
Envy sets the stronger seal on desert; if he have no enemies, I should esteem his fortune most wretched. [ Ben Jonson ]
Without settled principle and practical virtue, life is a desert; without Christian piety, the contemplation of the grave is terrible. [ Sir William Knighton ]
Beauty, wit, high birth, vigor of bone, desert in service, love, friendship, charity, are subjects all to envious and calumniating time. [ William Shakespeare ]
The avaricious man is like the barren sandy ground of the desert, which sucks in all the rain and dews with greediness, but yields no fruitful herbs or plants for the benefit of others. [ Zeno ]
Observation made in the cloister or in the desert will generally be as obscure as the one and as barren as the other; but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over-fearful of a little dust. [ Colton ]
Secrecy of design, when combined with rapidity of execution, like the column that guided Israel in the desert, becomes the guardian pillar of light and fire to our friends, and a cloud of overwhelming and impenetrable darkness to our enemies. [ Colton ]
The love of a mother is never exhausted; it never changes, it never tires. A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands; but a mother's love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; she still remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of Iris childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy. [ W. Irving ]