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More "Pitiful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... away—small socks and bonnets tied with pink and blue. The ruthless hand of man had ransacked each drawer and crevice, and all that calls forth the sacred care of women lay tossed and tumbled in the dirt of floor and passage. To those who had time to think, a sad, heart-rending sight, pitiful evidence of the degrading influence of war. During the first year of the struggle there was not a man in the British army who would have pushed a woman aside to ransack the sacred corners of her chamber. But war's brutal influence in time blunted the finer instincts. How could ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... Most pitiful of all was the fate of those who fell into the hands of the English garrisons in Galway and Mayo. Galleons had found their way into Galway Bay—one of them had reached Galway itself—the crews half dead with famine and offering a cask of wine for a cask of water. ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... Indian Colonel ripening for pension on the shelf of General Duty is an object at once pitiful and ludicrous. His profession has ebbed away from him, and he lies a melancholy derelict on the shore, with sails flapping idly against the mast and meaningless pennants ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... men." By chance we met a caravan there, which was going east towards Rhadames, and had come too far north. The camels' humps, shrunken and shaking, bespoke the sufferings of the troop. Behind came a little gray ass, a pitiful burrow, interfering at every step, and lightened of its pack because the merchants knew that it was going to die. Instinctively, with its last strength, it followed, knowing that when it could stagger no longer, the end would come and ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... Do you believe there may lie something compelling in his eyes that charm and sadden—almost terrify, holding one pitiful yet reluctant?" ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... hopes in his mercy; Psalm cxlvii. 11. The Publican, therefore, whatever the Pharisee might think, stood all this while upon sure ground, and had by far the start of him for heaven. Alas! his dull head could look no further than to the conceit of the pitiful beauty and splendour of his own filthy righteousness. Nor durst he leave that to trust wholly to the mercy of God; but the Publican comes out, though in his sins, yet like an awakened, enlightened, resolved man, and first abases himself, then ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... chivalry would never have allowed him to harm a woman even under the guise of a wolf. Instinctively, he set himself firm, leaning a little forward, with half outstretched arms, and hands curved ready to clutch again at the throat upon which he had left those pitiful marks. But the creature as she sprung eluded his grasp, and just as he expected to feel her fangs, he found a woman weeping on his bosom, with her arms around his neck. The next instant, the gray wolf broke from him, and bounded howling up the cliff. Recovering himself ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... man gifted with surpassing genius, and holding in his hand the destinies of Europe, should condescend to such pitiful and puerile hypocrisy; but throughout the whole of the Memoirs attributed to Richelieu himself, the reader is startled by the mass of petty manoeuvres upon which he dilates; as though the dispersion of an insignificant cabal, or the destruction of some obscure ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... drew on with the men and dogs sleeping torpidly; with the old Wolf chuckling grimly as the shadows closed about him, and with the child in the cold above sobbing out pitiful prayers for her lover, for only yesterday she had plighted her troth to Davy Gethin, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... themselves. Here, in the autumn of 1800, he strove to finish "Christabel," and did finish the second part. In the winter and spring he suffered from a complicated illness, in which he again had recourse to laudanum; and from the spring of 1801 he was confirmed in the opium habit, sinking often to pitiful depths of moral and physical misery. He was in the Mediterranean, chiefly at Malta, from 1804 to 1806. His wife and children remained at Keswick, where Southey and his family had become co-tenants with them of Greta Hall. ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... street came "The Ragamuffins," the little Fourth of July procession, which in the old days had seemed so funny, so exciting to me. I laughed no more. It filled me with bitterness to think that such a makeshift spectacle could amuse anyone. "How dull and eventless life must be to enable such a pitiful travesty to attract and hold the attention of girls like Ella and Flora," I thought as I saw them standing with their little sister to watch ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... not share it. He is the least respectful of the sentiments entertained by me. Pray, spare me the mention of him, as you say of your husband. He has that pitiful conceit in men, which sets them thinking that a woman must needs be susceptible to the declaration of the mere existence of their passion. He is past argument. Impossible for him to conceive a woman's having a mind above the conditions of her sex. A woman, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said, "a voice seemed to speak, though what it said I may not reveal. Go to your palace now, O Pharaoh, and O Queen Ahura, and take your rest side by side. I think that in your sleep a sign will come to you, for Amen is pitiful, and loves his children who love him. According to that sign so speak to the Prince Abi, speak without fear or doubt, since for good or ill it shall ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... the thought that God, our heavenly Father, is omniscient. Our griefs are not hidden from him. He knows our hearts, and with all this knowledge he is good—so tender, so pitiful! Oh, to love him as he deserves! Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing his praises! Tell the sick, tell the sorrowing, tell the broken-hearted of this God; tell the wretched, the guilty, the wayward prodigal of this ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... hurt you to hear me, and I am sure one of the others will be back in a moment; you are never alone," he said, detaining her almost forcibly. "I love you; you must know that I do. What is that land, or any land, beside my love? You are my country! I can give you lands, title, rank, luxury— Be pitiful to me, Mistress Katharine. What can I do or say or promise? You shall grace the court of the king, and be at the same time queen of my heart," he went on impetuously, his soul in his eager whisper. She turned and walked over to the lee ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... is the motif of the following book: that whether we are conquerors or conquered, triumphant or despairing, prosperous or pitiful, well or ailing, we are all these things through Him that loves us. We are here, I believe, to learn rather than to teach, to endure rather than to act, to be slain rather than to slay; we are tolerated in our errors and our hardness, in our conceit ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... herself, wiped away the tears, and said aloud, with a whimsical but none the less pitiful self-reproach, "Kitty- Kitty Tynan, what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hit by a shell direct, and one man crushed by a Tank—yet he had never been impressed with the same sense of the utter futility of war as now, in face of this boy dying in the bed opposite. To have come so far and then to pay the big price; it was so hard—so very pitiful; and Vane turned over to shut out the sight. He felt suddenly frightened of the thing that was coming nearer and nearer to the dying boy; furious at the inability of the science which had struck him down to save him. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... In another flash of lightning she slowly raised her head and looked at me long and earnestly. She was very beautiful, like the Virgin of Beltraffio in the National Gallery,—more beautiful than I had supposed possible, her deep, passionate eyes very tender and pitiful in their pleading, beseeching glance. I hardly think I was frightened, or even startled, but lay looking steadily at her as she stood in the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... common a soul as could well be. His conception of life was vulgar, and his experience of it was probably vulgar. He had a good mind enough, with abundance of that humorous brightness which may hereafter be found the most national quality of the Americans; but his ideals were pitiful, and the language of his heart was a drolling slang. Yet his doom lifted him above his low conditions, and made him tragic; his despair gave him the dignity of a mysterious expiation, and set him apart ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... de Tourville said upon the subject, and the more gesture and emphasis he used to impress the belief in his truth, the less Caroline believed him, and the more dislike and contempt she felt for the duplicity and pitiful meanness of a character, which was always endeavouring to seem, instead of to be.—He understood and felt the expression of her countenance, and mortified by that dignified silence, which said more than words could express, he turned away, and never afterwards addressed to her ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... if you could but see the food we eat here! For dinner we have a stew—oh, such a stew!—and for breakfast only bread and coffee who is not coffee!" And with both hands he combed his whiskers in a despair that was comic and yet pitiful. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... Mani having sent two bullets through his right shoulder and one through his thigh; another had his cheek cut open, but whether this was caused by a bullet or not I could not tell. I, being young and green, felt very pitiful and wanted Hannah to bring the badly-wounded man on board; but he, like a sensible man, said he would see me hanged first, and that we ought to ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... cow got her horseradish first, and I could see she was trying to hold it without giving the snap away, till her husband, the bull, got his. Well, it was pitiful, and I made up my mind I would never play a joke on the sacred cattle again, 'cause it seems like sacrilege. The bull finally got his horseradish down, and he was the most astonished animal I ever saw. He swelled up, and then bellowed until the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... hour passed and the night seemed interminable. But somehow we kept going, and the poor crying brutes kept going. All misery has its ending, however, and ours ended when I least looked for it. Un- expectedly the dogs' pitiful cries changed to gleeful howls and they visibly increased their efforts. Then Korganuk put his face close to mine and said: "Ramah! Ramah!" and quite suddenly we stopped before the ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... induced him to pocket up his wrongs and his "merced" together. The states-general also sent the correspondence to the Walloon provincial authorities, with an eloquent address, begging them to study well the pitiful part which La Motte had enacted in the private comedy then performing, and to behold as in a mirror their own position, if they did not recede ere it was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Minna, who came to meet me, of my failure, she informed me in despair that Hermann Pfau, whom I have mentioned before, had also come to us in the most pitiful plight, and actually in want of food, and that she had had to give him the last of the bread delivered by the baker that morning. The only hope that now remained was that, at any rate, my lodger Brix, who by a ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... bushes, and then over the wall came an active figure, at the sight of which Sam was almost ready to dive out of sight, for, of all possible boys, who should it be but Ben, the last person in the world whom he would like to have see him in his present pitiful plight. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... different races to each other,—for instance, of the wolf to the goat, of the goat to man, of man to God, much less of God to man. The attribution of justice, equity, and love to the Supreme Being is pure anthropomorphism; and the adjectives just, merciful, pitiful, and the like, should be stricken from our litanies. God can be regarded as just, equitable, and good, only to another God. Now, God has no associate; consequently, he cannot experience social affections,—such as goodness, equite, and justice. Is the shepherd ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... her weeping was very pitiful, her attitude was full of an utter and poignant despair, there was something touching in the extreme in the utter abandonment to grief shown by this young and lovely creature who seemed framed ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... a trade or profession is of enormous importance in settling our aim in life. Men often fail from having adopted a calling for which they are entirely unfitted. The round man in the square hole is a pitiful spectacle. It is difficult to lay down any special rule in regard to the choice of a profession or business. Some are obliged to take whatever opportunity offers, and others have to begin work at too early an age to permit them to form a true idea ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... derived from it. That weary round of giving a self-regarding hospitality, and then getting a return dinner or evening entertainment from each guest, which makes up so much of the social life among us, is a pitiful affair, hollow and selfish. What would Jesus say—what does Jesus say—about it all? The sacred name of hospitality is profaned, and the very springs of it dried up by much of our social customs, and the most ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the enemy. Jerusalem fell not by assault, but by famine. The siege lasted eighteen months, and ended when 'all the bread in the city was spent.' The pitiful pictures in Lamentations fill in the details of misery, telling how high-born women picked garbage from dung-heaps, and mothers made a ghastly meal of their infants, while the nobles were wasted to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... region and saw the wreck, they drew nigh to see whether they could find anything. They thought that they would surely find some pillage, and therefore began to break open the boat in the part open to view. Consequently, when they had made a small hole, the pitiful voice of the religious who was crying for aid was heard. The greedy Indians were frightened, and were about to flee from the terror caused them by so unexpected a petition. But proceeding, after the encouragement given them by one of their number who ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... It seemed one more pitiful straw that the lonely bundle should be left in such a vault of doom, with no last touches of care from its fellow-beings, and no heap of kind earth to hide it. But whether the place is deadly or not, man dares not venture into it. So they took Hank from the tree that night, ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... played, and that he may as well pay the stake calmly? There was a true British composure about the unutterable atrocity of this villain—murderer he was, and a most detestable murderer too—but his character belongs to our country as fully as that of our heroes. Hunt and Probert were pitiful wretches, fit for the Bicetre. Doubtless the agony of Hunt's feelings until his reprieve came, would, if properly divided into chapters, make a good ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... striker, revenging the mangling of his own body with a slight wound. Halfdan, now conqueror, allowed the conquered man to ransom the remnant of his life with a sum of money; he would not be thought shamefully to rob a maimed man, who could not fight, of the pitiful remainder of his days. By this deed he showed himself almost as great in saving as in conquering his enemy. As a prize for this victory he won Thorhild in marriage, and had by her a son Asmund, from whom the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... mouths mumbling, their feet stumbling and heavy. They begged for coal, and the agent gave to each, while he could, what one might carry in a cloth, men standing over the supply with rifles to see that fairness was enforced. After obtaining such pitiful store, men started back home again, often besought or ordered not to leave the town, but eager to die so much ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... into cupboards and corners, and the whole house rendered a splendid promenade, most brilliantly lighted with glass chandeliers and lustres. This blaze of light is further increased by reflection from the large glasses and mirrors which are found in every room. In England, the glasses are pitiful to a degree. In France, even in the inns, they reach in one undivided plate from the top of the room to the bottom. The French furniture moreover is infinitely more magnificent than in England. Curtains, chair-covers, &c. are all ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... If she had screamed when she said she did, so some one cried out loudly now. I think that pitiful person was myself. They say I had been standing straight up in my place for the last ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... man, with love only for his yellow gold. He frowned impatiently when Koerg interrupted his selfish dreams, and, for answer to his pitiful story, threw him a loaf of bread and a pudding, bidding him begone and be satisfied. And Koerg went forth with a heavy heart, ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... American Ambulance Hospital sprang up. It undertook the most grievous cases, making a specialty of facial mutilations. American girls performed the nursing of these pitiful human wrecks. Increasingly the crusader spirit was finding a gallant response in the hearts of America's girlhood. By the time that President Wilson flung his challenge, eighty-six war relief organizations were operating ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... day, being Christmas-day, at her (witness's) house; and witness did not at any time see defendant steal or cause to be stolen from plaintiff the said boots and breeches, nor did she believe Miss Sidebottom to be capable of such an act; 'and particular,' she said in conclusion, 'from such a pitiful old scamp as Tom Hardesty;' and glancing around triumphantly at the audience, and scornfully at the plaintiff, she ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... be hasty. How do you know Lady Kingsland detests you? That is impossible, I think. She will be a kind mother to my little motherless girl. Ah, pitiful Heaven! that agony ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... boy?" Then, as she still stared at him, her face pitiful, his hand patted her shoulder. "Dear girl, tell me." He bent ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... every drop of their own springs for the last twelve hours, and was very insufficient for the poor animals then. Strachan loosened his horse's girths and rubbed him down with a palm-leaf or two, doing what he could for him after his gallant efforts. It was pitiful to hear him whinny as he smelt the water in the distance, and not to be able to get him any. But perhaps a little could be spared from what trickled ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... colony smoulder'd on the refluent estuary; Lastly yonder yester-even, suddenly giddily tottering— There was one who watch'd and told me—down their statue of Victory fell. Lo their precious Roman bantling, lo the colony Camulodune, Shall we teach it a Roman lesson? shall we care to be pitiful? Shall we deal with it as an infant? ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... quite motionless, staring, with the street lamp lighting up a queer, rather pitiful defiance on his face. The voices swell. There comes a sudden swish and splash of water, and broken yells ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the sake of the money; but one of the principal parts in my composition is a kind of pride of stomach; and I scorn to fear the face of any man living: above every thing, I abhor as hell the idea of sneaking in a corner to avoid a dun—possibly some pitiful sordid wretch, whom in my heart I despise and detest. 'Tis this, and this alone, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... that he had expected to meet his wife. Helene allowed the child to answer him, and followed them without uttering a word. As the trio passed under the porch a pitiful voice sang out: "Charity, charity! ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... one of the musket-barrels, watched her while she folded the few pitiful garments, waited until she had guided the shrunken arms into the sleeves of the soiled wrapper and had buttoned it over the baby's chest. Then, when the lump in my throat was about to stop my breathing, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... pair was in a condition so much worse than that of his companion that to him is accorded greater prominence in the narrative; or, one may have run away while the other remained. The demoniac was in a pitiful plight. His frenzy had become so violent and the physical strength incident to his mania so great that all attempts to hold him in captivity had failed. He had been bound in chains and fetters, but these he had broken asunder ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... and Adelaide's anxious faces. Sorer than the really trifling wound was the deep cut into his vanity. How his fellow-workmen were pitying him!—a poor blockhead of a bungler who had thus brought to a pitiful climax his failure to learn a simple trade. And how the whole town would talk and laugh! "Hiram ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... on these pitiful memorials of the children—from those graves to the new mound which covered Rosemarie. The ache that had been in his throat for so many hours grew more excruciating. He realized that a father in those circumstances would weep, but he did not feel like shedding tears, and he was ashamed of himself ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... men in the present are flung across the abysm into the future state is exhibited amusingly, and with a rough pathos, in an old tradition of a dialogue between Saint Patrick and Ossian. The bard contrasts the apostle's pitiful psalms with his own magnificent songs, and says that the virtuous Fingal is enjoying the rewards of his valor in the aerial existence. The saint rejoins, No matter for Fingal's worth; being a pagan, assuredly he roasts in hell. In ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Hardy, who left Atlanta for Palatka, I sent her money regularly and wrote occasionally, while she replied through the same medium. Loving, pitiful letters they were, and would have moved the heart of any man who was not a brute and steeped to the dregs in pride and cowardice. I burned them as soon as I read them, for fear they might be found. ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... and for whom this illumination had been made and these festoons hung, had been turned away from the gates, and the few who felt they must remain, because their hostess showed no disposition to let them go, wore any but holiday faces, for all their forced smiles and pitiful attempts ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... whole story beats this indictment of prosperity into the brain. Lear's great speeches in his madness proclaim it like the curses of Timon on life and man. But here, as in Timon, the poor and humble are, almost without exception, sound and sweet at heart, faithful and pitiful.[188] And here adversity, to the blessed in spirit, is blessed. It wins fragrance from the crushed flower. It melts in aged hearts sympathies which prosperity had frozen. It purges the soul's sight by blinding that ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Desert racing up to the end of each, make all the town. A mile or so up stream under palm trees are bungalows of what must have been cantonments, some machinery repair-shops, and odds and ends of railway track. It is all as paltry a collection of whitewashed houses, pitiful gardens, dead walls, and trodden waste spaces as one would wish to find anywhere; and every bit of it quivers with the remembered life of armies and river-fleets, as the finger-bowl rings when the rubbing finger is lifted. The most unlikely men have done ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... used and touched by him, and there was deep joy in the thought. She would be always deprived of him, it was true, but the impossible must remain the impossible, and she would have drawn herself as near to him as could be. For a whole year she fed in fancy upon her pitiful little happiness. Alone, and with her eyes intent upon her work, she lived in another world, and believed herself to be his wife in a humble measure. The hours flowed on slowly like the motion of her needle; her hapless imagination was relieved. And then she at times indulged ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... that spring, most of which found its way into the Atlantic. "Edward Mills and George Benton," one of the contributions of this time, is a moral sermon in its presentation of a pitiful human spectacle and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a pitiful, a monstrous thing. Hugh made no further protest, but that his queenly sister, after walking untouched through swarms of rich and talented suitors, should fall a victim to a poor and unknown architect, who was a failure at his own business as well ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... her pallor, arose quickly and went to Alix's side, "What is it, dear?" she cried. "What was in that letter? You are as white as a ghost." Receiving for answer a pitiful little smile that was not so much a smile as a grimace of pain, she placed her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Why ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... interpreted, now, into 'Let justice be done, and the court fall.' No one wishes to see it continued, and the approaching convention will send it to the Capulets, if it do nothing else to be commended. It was a pitiful imitation of the House of Lords system, with this striking difference; the English lords are men of education, and men with a vast deal at stake, and their knowledge and interests teach them to leave the settlement ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... King Richard the Third, containing his treacherous Plots against his Brother Clarence, the pitiful murther of his innocent Nephews, his tirannical usurpation, with the whole course of his detested Life, and most deserved Death, as acted by his Majesties Servants, 4to. Lond. printed by Tho. Creede, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... her little, bare, brown-eyed baby was pitiful." Alaire leaned forward with an earnest appeal in her face, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... for he commanded only an "Army of Reserve," which nevertheless he had greeted with the title of Grand Army before he entered upon the campaign. It is scarcely conceivable that Bonaparte, possessing as he did an extraordinary mind, should have descended to such pitiful artifices. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... lamentable effusions has survived; but the poor, pitiful story of common misfortune, with its tragic irony, uncommon circumstance, and far-reaching consequence, found its vates sacer in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... following the fight in Eagle Butte, the Ramblin' Kid had found shelter in the hut of "Indian Jake"—a hermit Navajo who, long ago, turned his face toward the flood of white civilization rolling over the last pitiful remnants of his tribe and drifted far toward the land of the rising sun. Among the scenes of desolation around the grimly cold volcano, alone, the old Indian made his last stand, and in a rude cabin, beside a tiny spring that ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... in this difficult task, and has in many cases separated truth from long-accepted fiction and given us a clear picture of what has hitherto been blurred and distorted by unfaithful friends and foes. The story is a most hopeless and pitiful one, its gloom brightened and its bitterness sweetened by but few of the consolations which belong to average human lives. The causes of this are apparent enough: they were constituents of Poe's brain and heart; but for him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... He sank on his knees and tried to see her face; but she hid it, and said nothing. At last, as though making an effort over herself, she got up and pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but it was only the more pitiful ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... times his voice broke, and he was forced to stop reading for the pitiful hopelessness that ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... worked uncomplainingly for a sweater all day and far into the night, pinching and saving and stinting herself, with black bread and chickory coffee as her only fare, in order that she might carry her pitiful earnings to her big, lazy lout of a son in Brooklyn. He never worked. My friends' difficulty was a very real one, for absolutely every attempt to relieve the widow was wrecked upon her mother heart. It all went over the river. Yet would you have had ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... will not," Mrs. Upround answered, with tears coming into her kindly eyes. "I never heard of anything more pitiful. I had no idea Mr. Mordacks was so good. He looks more like an evil spirit. I always regarded him as an evil spirit; and his name sounds like it, and he jumps about so. But he ought to have gone to the rector of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... pitiful state, he sadly turns from him, but Merlin in despair promises his soul to the demon, if he but assist to deliver his King and his country. The demon breaks the chains and Merlin rushes with the knights into battle. During his absence Vivien prepares herself to receive ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... with shame at the pitiful spectacle he has afforded to his followers—Uraga returns within his tent like an enraged tiger. Not as one robbed of its prey—he is still sure of this as ever; for he has other strings to his bow, and the weak ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... impassable barrier between them and us! and, with the exception of the youngest of them, how brutal and low! To see such splendidly-formed men spend their time squatted on the earth, playing jack-straws, or some equally silly game, from morning to night, is pitiful. And then their yelling and laughter are more like wild beasts or demons than human beings. These people seem to me the lowest, meanest, most treacherous, and hardened of the human race. I do not wonder that it is so difficult to civilize or ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... below her bosom to stop its great heaving, and stood as one smitten by the sudden hearing of her sentence. The sight was pitiful, for her face scarcely changed; the anguish was expressionless. Rinaldo ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... naturally demand that there should be an element of delight somewhere in life. Notoriously it is rather hard to come by. City crowds at night present the spectacle of people making huge and fevered efforts to run delight to earth and often achieving only pitiful failure. I believe the normal way in which delight ought to enter the lives of married people is just through their satisfaction in each other's society, enriched by the society of their children. When a man and a woman have made the right ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... from this point forward his claims to supremacy are embarrassed and complicated with the long series of failures, vexations, miseries, insults, that have rendered his career as a planter of colonies and as a ruler of men most pitiful and remarkable. ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... stood there irresolutely. An old man approached her. He, too, seemed to be waiting for a car. He wore an overcoat with a black fur collar, his gray mustache was waxed into little points, and his eyes were watery. He kept thrusting his face up near hers. Her hat blew off and he ran after it—a stiff, pitiful skip he had—and brought it back to her. Then, while she was pinning her hat on, her cape blew up, and he held it down for her, looking at her intently. His face worked as if he were going to cry or were frightened. He leaned over and whispered something to her. It struck ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the crowns amused, nor the cherubs' dove-winged races— Holding hands forlornly the Children wandered beneath the Dome; Plucking the radiant robes of the passers by, and with pitiful faces Begging what Princes and Powers refused:—"Ah, please will you let us ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... then, when that first tempest of passionate excitement had abated, came a revulsion of feeling when the vivid recollections of that pitiful scene returned and would not be thrust away; when she saw again the change from affection and delight at beholding her to suspicion and fear, then terror, come into the face of the boy she had loved; when she witnessed the dreadful blow and watched him when he swerved and ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... (though what use in working, when the ground would yield no crop?)—crawling about, their tongues cleaving to the roof of their mouths, in vain searching after a drop of water. Fearful and sickening sights must Obadiah have seen that day, as he rode wearily on upon his pitiful errand. And the thought of what a pitiful errand he was going on, and what a pitiful king he served, must have made him all the more miserable; for, instead of turning and repenting, and going back to the true God, which was the plain and the only way of escaping ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... and a tremor ran through the quivering frame, while Winston set his lips tightly as his hand grew warm. The thing was horrible to him, but the life he led had taught him the folly of weakness, and he was too pitiful to ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... had fought a hundred battles, and had a hundred wives picked from the princesses of the kingdom,—for there were none so noble but felt honored in his smiles,—loved this dark-skinned foreigner. It was pitiful! ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... Elec. Within; for they have found a loving hostess. Aegis. And did they say distinctly he was dead? Elec. Ah no! they showed it, not in words alone. Aegis. And is it here, that we may see it plain? Elec. 'Tis here, a sight most pitiful to see. Aegis. Against thy wont thou giv'st me cause for joy. Elec. Thou may'st rejoice, if this be ground of joy. Aegis. I hid you hush, and open wide the gates That all of Argos and Mycenae ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... well-married couple, there is nothing so beautiful in the world as the myth of the divine huntress. It is no use for a man to take to the woods; we know him; St. Anthony tried the same thing long ago, and had a pitiful time of it by all accounts. But there is this about some women, which overtops the best gymnosophist among men, that they suffice to themselves, and can walk in a high and cold zone without the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the day was the vigorous chase, by some of the party, of an old pair of moulting gray geese with their young, all, of course, unable to fly. It was pitiful to watch the clever and fearless actions of the old birds as decoys, falling victims, at last, to parental love. Indeed, they were not worth eating, and to kill them was a sin. But when were there ever scruples over food on Peace River, that theatre ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... pent up in her bosom, the poor child went up to her room every night, and there it all burst forth. There, with loud whispers and sobs, restlessly pacing up and down, lying on the hard floor, courting cold and weariness, she told to the pitiful listening night the anguish which she could pour into no mortal ear. But always sleep came at last, and always in the morning the reactive calm that enabled her to ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... 'The pitiful folly of it!' said the ex-king, following his thoughts. 'Firmin,' as an ex-professor of International Politics, I think it falls to you to bury them. There? . . . No, don't put them near the well. People will have to ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... except it be, perhaps, the perfume of warmed towels. Alas! God's satire weighs heavily on me. The great Author of the universe, the Aristophanes of Heaven, was bent on demonstrating, with crushing force, to me, the little, earthly, German Aristophanes, how my wittiest sarcasms are only pitiful attempts at jesting in comparison with His, and how miserably I am beneath him in ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... vignettes were admired, I've heard him say, in his dry way, 'I copied them from Christian's paintings;' and the fellows used to stare, for you know he couldn't draw a line. And when—But I say, Gertrude, for Heaven's sake, don't devour everything I say with those great pitiful eyes of yours. I am a regular ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... have so unblushingly, for the mere sake of money, turned their backs on those principles of freedom of which they boasted for so many years, flouting us the while for being behind them in the race of philanthropy! It is pitiful and painful to see pride brought so low. We of the Federal Union are striving, heart and soul, to uphold our government—a government which has been a great blessing to England and to the world. Who shall say what revolutions, what tremendous disasters, would not ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... passage showing admirably the two different conditions: wings closed and the selective instinct picking out its descriptive expressions; then suddenly wings flashing open and the imagination in the firmament, where it is always at home. Follow the pitiful inventory of insignificances of the forlorn being he describes with a pathetic humor more likely to bring a sigh than a smile, and then mark the grand hyperbole of the last two lines. The passage is from the poem ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... dull and flushed, and his eye had a look which even a very little experience understands. His air was haggard, spiritless, hopeless; so unlike the alert, self-sufficient, confident manner of old, that Dolly's heart got a great wrench. And something in the whole image was so inexpressibly pitiful to her, that she did the very last thing it had been in her purpose to do; she fled to him with one bound, threw herself on his breast, and burst into ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... against the servants of Jesus Christ, namely, in the trial of Messrs. Kid and King: and though he got their lives pleaded away, and his conscience kept quiet for a little, yet shortly death did arrest him; and then his conscience awakened; and under the horror of that, he died in a very pitiful and shocking manner.—History ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... said, and his voice shook. A pitiful figure he made, standing there with the water dripping from him. A red stream was running slowly from his chin; his head ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Cleeve cast a pitiful glance at Father Halloran's back. The priest neither answered ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... inscrutably at this miracle of physical unfitness. Under his gaze the pitiful and insignificant figure bore itself as with a majesty ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... the plan that had been carried out. His reception by Lady Humbert, and her kindness to the lonely Petronella when her pitiful story was told, quite decided Cuthbert to confide the golden secret to her. She listened in amaze, but was highly pleased at being the first person to know it. She laid her hand on Cuthbert's head, and spoke to him of the ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Northern Virginia, although but a fragment, was dangerous. In these its last hours, reduced almost to starvation and pitiful in numbers, it fought with a courage and tenacity worthy of its greatest days. It gave to Lee a devotion that would have melted a heart of stone. Whenever he commanded, it turned fiercely upon its remorseless ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... death. His imagination was alive as well as his memory; he shuddered, not for himself, but for Stephen. How could he allow the girl to suffer in such a way as she might, as she infallibly would, if it were made apparent to her in such a brutal way? How pitiful, how meanly pitiful, is the aftermath of death. Well he remembered how many a night he woke in an agony, thinking of how his father lay in that cold, silent, dust-strewn vault, in the silence and the dark, with never a ray of light or hope or love! Gone, abandoned, forgotten ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... the storm continued without surcease, and still the tribe huddled close in shivering fear. In constant danger from falling trunks and branches and paralyzed by the vivid flashing of lightning and the bellowing of thunder they crouched in pitiful misery until the ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sudden her heart wrenched, and turned over as she realized what it was. He was pitiful and wretched, a little drunk, and ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Prince, as I have related, fell entirely into the hands of the Abbe Dubois. This person has played such an important part in the state since the death of the King, that it is fit that he should be made known. The Abbe Dubois was a little, pitiful, wizened, herring-gutted man, in a flaxen wig, with a weazel's face, brightened by some intellect. In familiar terms, he was a regular scamp. All the vices unceasingly fought within him for supremacy, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... pored over and thought about. His Divine majesty, the beauty and grace of His life, the pathos of His death on the Cross, affected her inexpressibly. But it was His love, so strong, so tender, so pitiful, that won her heart and devotion and filled her with a happiness and peace that suffused her inner life like sunshine. In return she loved Him with a love so intense that it was often a pain. She felt that she could not do enough for one who had done so much for her. As the years passed she surrendered ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... first time in her life, she superintended the distribution of her own charities, flying in the motor with Kathleen from church to mission, eager, curious, pitiful, appalled, by turns. Sentiment overwhelmed her; it was ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... for there seemed to me to be something pitiful in that grand forest monarch, at whose feet we had supped the ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... from a great thorn-bush, and its trunk cried out, "Why dost thou rend me?" When it had become dark with blood it began again to cry, "Why dost thou tear me? hast thou not any spirit of pity? Men we were, and now we are become stocks; truly thy hand ought to be more pitiful had we been the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... that he saw that expression—the cornered soul gesticulating, shrieking for mercy from the living eyes in the half-dead face. When the murderer raised his axe, he saw the soul's pitiful cowardice and how it shrank. The axe came crashing down. There was no need to strike twice; he fell limply backward, throwing his arms out wide—and there was an end of El Dorado and of all his dreams ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... taken the place easily, they had little cause for rejoicing. The town was "a little pitiful Place," with a few thatched huts, or "wild houses made of Cane," and "but one Church in it." The fort "was only Stockadoes," designed merely as a frontier post "to keep in subjection the Indians" or as a lodging for men employed in the gold mines. There was no ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... Reine Blanche, they did not have enough to eat; and what they did have was not of the right sort. Instead of letting the sailors file their teeth against the rim of a hard sea-biscuit, they baked their bread daily in pitiful little rolls. Then they had no "grog"; as a substitute, they drugged the poor fellows with a thin, sour wine—the juice of a few grapes, perhaps, to a pint of the juice of water-faucets. Moreover, the sailors asked for meat, and they ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... of these griefs I have scanty knowledge. It seems to me from my personal experience that there is kindness everywhere in different proportions, and more goodness and tenderheartedness than we read of in the moralists. People have been kind to me, even without understanding me, and pitiful to me, without approving of me:—nay, have not the very critics tamed their beardom for me, and roared delicately as sucking doves, on behalf of me? I have no harm to say of your world, though I am not of it, as you see. And ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... scarcely refer to it without losing patience, even now when I understand more completely the circumstances under which it was written. It was not too plainly written or coherent and seemed to imply that other letters had preceded it. Morley begged for money. He was in "pitiful straits," he declared, compelled to live as no gentleman of birth and breeding should live. As a matter of fact, the remnant of his resources, the little cash left from the Captain's fortune which he had taken with him had gone and he was earning a ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... audible reply, and shuffled so feebly with his feet that Marriott took his arm by way of support. He noticed for the first time that the clothes hung on him with pitiful looseness. The broad frame was literally hardly more than a frame. He was as thin as a skeleton. But, as he touched him, the sensation of faintness and dread returned. It only lasted a moment, and then passed off, and he ascribed it not unnaturally to the distress ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... cheese nor drink. They cannot make them, nor will they learn. Their butter is very indifferent, and one would wonder how they could contrive to make it so bad. They use much pottage made of coal-wort, which they call kail, sometimes broth of decorticated barley. The ordinary country-houses are pitiful cots, built of stone and covered with turfs, having in them but one room, many of them no chimneys, the windows very small holes and not glazed. The ground in the valleys and plains bear very good corn, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "ashamed to give any credit to the visions of a jealous fellow, who brought nothing else with him from Italy? Is it possible that the story of the green stockings, upon which he has founded his suspicions, should have imposed upon you, accompanied as it is with such pitiful circumstances? Since he has made you his confidant, why did not he boast of breaking in pieces my poor harmless guitar? This exploit, perhaps, might have convinced you more than all the rest; recollect yourself, and ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... headquarters; but on the third day, so rapidly are these little dramas played, the female bluebird reappeared with another mate. Ah! how the wren stock went down then! What dismay and despair filled again those little breasts! It was pitiful. They did not scold as before, but after a day or two withdrew from the garden, dumb with grief, and gave ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... It would be pitiful to tell how their days were spent to accomplish this end; how the dollars had been saved for thirty years and the picayunes hoarded; and yet, not half enough gathered! But Ma'ame Pelagie felt sure of twenty years of life before her, and counted ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... half-way there before he noticed his isolation, and a sudden flush of scarlet in his cheeks betrayed his emotion at the discovery. It was too late to retreat to his seat, and too late to pretend not to notice his position. With a pitiful attempt at a swagger, he completed his passage to the door, and ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... woman holds her sucking child; opening out her night-gown impatiently, and holding it close, and brooding over it, and murmuring foolish little words, as over one whom his mother comforteth, and who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful and strange to see her wasted dying look, keen and ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... there. Tarleton burnt it—set it afire with all its beautiful furniture and silver and linen! His hussars ran through it, setting it afire and shooting at the mirrors and slashing the silks and pictures! And when the Major's young wife entered the smoking doorway to try to save a pitiful little trinket or two, an officer—never mind who, for his descendants may be living to-day in England—struck her with the flat of his sword and cut her and struck her to her knees! That ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... matters were exactly as he had foreseen. His uncle was scarcely polite; Kitty gave him sharp, indignant glances when their eyes met, and then averted hers; and from time to time his mother looked at him in so pitiful and imploring a manner that one moment he felt as if he were an utter scoundrel, and the next that he would do anything to take her in his arms and try and convince her that he was not so bad ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... the pitiful story of what the colony had suffered during his absence: lack of food and illness had carried off nearly half the colonists, and those that remained were weak and discouraged. Death had taken both of his enemies and of his friends, but some who had been opposed to him formerly had been ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... and not even ultimately paid, is very common. There is no fixed rule for satisfying all such claims once a week, and thus debts to laborers are contracted, and when contracted are ignored. With us there is a feeling that it is pitiful, mean almost beyond expression, to wrong a laborer of his hire. We have men who go in debt to tradesmen perhaps without a thought of paying them; but when we speak of such a one who has descended into the ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... more, but the din drowned his voice. As he paused, the people set up their loud shouts again. "Oh, you wicked god! You eat the storm-apple! You have wrought us much harm. You have spoiled our harvest. How you came down in great sheets last night! It was pitiful, pitiful! We would like to kill you. You might have taken our bread-fruits and our bananas, if you would; we give you them freely; they are yours; here, take them. We feed you well; we make you many offerings. But why did you wish to have our huts ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... mouthpiece to his lips, and began to blow into the bag, alas! it would hold no wind. He flung it from him in anger and cried again. Turkey left him crying in the middle of the bog. He said it was a pitiful sight. ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... Low pitiful sobs and sighs were the only sounds the little fellow made till set down in the veranda; but then clinging to his grandfather's hand, he burst out afresh, "O grandpa, I can't go in! I can't, I can't see mamma, for she can't ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... long time ago he very carelessly engaged himself to a giddy little butterfly in Salt Lake City, and he doesn't want to marry her at all, but he feels it is his duty because they have been engaged for so many years. Isn't it pitiful?" ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... the days of Herod," called "the Great," a monster of cruelty, a vassal of Rome, who ruled the Jews with savage tyranny. The political slavery of the people was only less pitiful than their spiritual decline, for religion had become an empty form, a mere system of ceremonies and rites. However, God is never without his witnesses and his true worshipers. Among these were "a certain ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... with what, to Johnny, seemed uncanny swiftness, and squatted, grinning and sinister, in a relentless half circle, the book slipped unheeded to the floor with a clatter that failed to rouse the painter, whose ears were dulled to all else than the pitiful blat of a shivering, panic-stricken calf whose nose sought his mother's side for her comforting ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... Mr. B—y, "what! cruel to a fair female! Oh fie! fie! fie!—a fellow who can be cruel to females and children, or animals, must be a pitiful fellow indeed. I wish we had had him here in the sea. I should like to have had him stripped, and that kind of thing, and been well banged by ten of our clippers here with a cat-o'-nine-tails. Cruel to a fair female? Oh ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... replacing the New York Central's masonry viaduct approaches with a fine steel elevated system. This fraud cost the public treasury about $1,200,000, quite a sizable sum, it will be admitted, but one nevertheless of pitiful proportions in comparison with previous and later transactions of the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... out of the room. This they did, but the prayer would not come. I fell into heavy doubting and despair, and murmured against the Lord that He plagued me more sorely than Lazarus or Job. Wretch that I was, I cried, "Thou didst leave to Lazarus at least the crumbs and the pitiful dogs, but to me Thou hast left nothing, and I myself am less in Thy sight even than a dog; and Job Thou didst not afflict until Thou hadst mercifully taken away his children, but to me Thou hast left my poor little daughter, that her torments may increase mine own ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... clung to me.... As far as it affected my devotion to you it might have happened in another phase of creation." That was the amazing part of it, that he should expect her to be content with such an explanation, that he should try to deprive her of a wife's last poor pitiful privilege, a sense of indignity. She was not only to condone what he had done, but as nearly as possible she was to give ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... January, 104, when Marius entered Rome in triumph, accompanied by evidences of his victories, the greatest of which was the pitiful Numidian king himself, who followed in the grand procession, and was afterwards ruthlessly dropped into the horrible Tulliarium, or Mamertine prison, to perish by starvation in the watery chill. He is said to have exclaimed as he touched the water at the bottom of the prison, "Hercules! ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... said Aunt Cyrilla firmly, "and I've some presents in it that I was taking to my nephew's children. I'm going to give 'em to these. As for the money, I think the mother is the one for it to go to. She's been telling me her story, and a pitiful one it is. Let's make up a little purse among us ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... seldom fail to give a certain character of rude poetry to their thoughts. Perhaps also this same observation may explain the sterility of the salons, their emptiness, their shallowness, and the repugnance felt by men of ability for bartering their ideas for such pitiful ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... do some little good in the way of saving souls. Noble work this! So let me intreat you never to let your other avocations interfere with this glorious calling. It is painful to see some men merge the ministerial character in some pitiful clerkship—some book-keeping affair. And worst of all, these parties take it into their head, generally amongst us, to consider themselves and their office as much higher than that of the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... strange old maid took her place among the singers. Her face was full of wrinkles, her chin trembled, and one foot was supported by crutches. The old woman began her song in a grating voice. She sang of her beautiful youth, the happy days in the house of her parents, and the pitiful ways of the present, when all joy had vanished. Then she sang of her lovers, who came in hosts to woo her, and how she had repulsed them all. She concluded ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... can be accomplished; one thirsts for soul, spirit, and actual life. Ah! composing is a misery, and the pitiful children of my Muse appear to me often like foundlings in a hospital, wandering about only as ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... the ground. Verily, for this reason, I would deem death to be preferable to life. O hero that never swervest from virtue, had I with my brothers met with destruction ere this at the hands of our enemies on the battle-field, I would not have found thee in this pitiful plight, thus pierced with arrows. Surely, O prince, the Maker had created is to become perpetrators of evil deeds. O king, if thou wishest to do me good, do thou then instruct me in such a way that I may be cleansed of this ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... neither understanding, and each looking down upon the other—Alan with the scornful pity of the scholar who has delved in the dust of dreary negatives which generations of doubters have gradually heaped up; and Caleb with the pitiful scorn of one who has been into the sanctuary of God, and so learned to understand the ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... is in myself. My career should be the Church, my pursuit the cure of souls, and—and—this pitiful infirmity! How can I speak the Divine ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they would. They would do anything to repair the injury done to God; and if, by any slight neglects, which appear crimes to them, they have offended their neighbour, what return are they not willing to make? But it is pitiful to see the state of that one who has driven away her Beloved. She does not cease to run after Him, but the faster she goes, the further He seems to leave her behind; and if He stops, it is only for a ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... It would be much nearer the truth to say that of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: He's succeeded again. Here, too, the rhyme may be questioned, but the reason is sound. An entirely successful man is the most pitiful object in the universe. Not only has he nothing to look forward to, but he has nothing to look back upon. Having no regrets, no shadows, in his life, he has no chiaroscuro, no depth, no solidity in his picture. It is painted in the flat. "Regret," says George Moore, to change the figure ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... that in the time of the first triumvirate, when our hero was withstanding the machinations of Caesar and Pompey against the liberties of Rome, he was open to be bought. The augurship would have bought him. "So pitiful," says the biographer, "was the bribe to which he would have sacrificed his honor, his opinions, and the commonwealth!" With no more sententious language was the character of a great man ever offered up to public scorn. And on what evidence? We should have known nothing ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... sea made things dim, but in a crowd of queer people and bundles and voices I saw Sam standing and looking perfectly helpless, while that Commissioner of Agriculture stood over by the window, evidently perfectly furious and growling out expletives to the saddest crowd of pitiful people I ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... torch was lit for a few moments while they ate the pitiful scraps of food that Guy distributed with ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... fellow was coming on. The brute ought not to pull through. But it was too late: a new regime had begun; his little period of sway had passed, leaving as a last proof of his art this human jetsam saved for the nonce. And there rose in his heated mind the pitiful face of a resolute woman, questioning him: "You held the keys of life and death. Which have ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... northeast of the village, and before long Count Bismarck discovered in a remote place about twenty men dreadfully wounded. These poor fellows had had no attention whatever, having been overlooked by the hospital corps, and their condition was most pitiful. Yet there was one very handsome man in the group—a captain of artillery—who, though shot through the right breast, was talkative and cheerful, and felt sure of getting well. Pointing, however, to a comrade lying near, also shot in the breast, he significantly shook his head; it ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... selected from the Koran at a venture and a name beginning with that letter is chosen. Some common names are those of the hundred titles of God combined with the prefix abd or servant. Such are Abdul Aziz, servant of the all-honoured; Ghani, the everlasting; Karim, the gracious; Rahim, the pitiful; Rahman, the merciful; Razzak, the bread-giver; Sattar, the concealer; and so on, with the prefix Abdul, or servant of, in each case. Similarly Abdullah, or servant of God, was the name of Muhammad's father, and is a very favourite one. Other names end with Baksh or 'given ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... raked from the polluted stream and held in their finger-like drooping branches human bodies in all shapes and attitudes with a semblance of naturalness which made an everlasting picture on my distraught mind. Of this pitiful gruesome ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... who after months of exposure and fatigue were now obliged to walk ashore penniless. A number of these four hundred passengers had brought back an aggregate of about $4,000,000 from the Klondike; but many among them had brought back only disappointment, and their haggard faces were pitiful to see; indeed, the Doctor told me that out of the thousands who went fortune hunting to Alaska, only about 3 per cent. came back richer ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... family lives in a single room, with only a screen to divide it for decency's sake. Already the coffin was standing in their midst—a plain but decent shell which had been bought ready-made. The child, they told me, had been a boy of nine, and full of promise. What a pitiful spectacle! Though not weeping, the mother, poor woman, looked broken with grief. After all, to have one burden the less on their shoulders may prove a relief, though there are still two children left—a babe at the breast and a little girl of six! How painful to see ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... centre of a vast galanty-show: the phantom houses came and went; from some there shone bright lights; the doors were open, and little figures flitted in and out, the tiny coaches glided to and fro, manikins grotesque but pitiful crept across ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... his return to Bettles too long. When his food was exhausted and he had to go, there came on that terrible cold spell. A little memorandum-book in his pocket told the pitiful story. Day by day he lingered hoping for a change, and day by day there was entry of the awful cold. He had no thermometer, but he knew the temperature was -50 deg. or lower by the cracking noise ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... done before her, Angel dragged out the weary years, almost hopeless; and the one object of her toil and solicitude, was only a pitiful wreck of the former stalwart William Way. Only a miserable, wretched creature, that grovelled in the mire of its own degradation, and from whose bosom the last spark of manhood seemed to have forever fled. To look upon him, you would ask, 'Can ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... into some melancholy scruples, as I stood there, leaning with one hand against the battered timbers. The homelessness of men, and even of inanimate vessels, cast away upon strange shores, came strongly in upon my mind. To make a profit of such pitiful misadventures seemed an unmanly and a sordid act; and I began to think of my then quest as of something sacrilegious in its nature. But when I remembered Mary I took heart again. My uncle would never consent to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vicissitudes, Rupert Gunning, arrayed in a green swallow-tailed calico coat, short white cotton trousers, and a skimpy nigger wig, presented a pitiful example of the humiliations which the allied forces of love and jealousy can bring upon the just. Fanny Fitz has since admitted that, in spite of the wrath that burned within her, the sight of Mr. Gunning morosely dabbing his long nose with the repulsive sponge that was shared by the ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... she told herself in the fever of the night, had not yet come. Her pitiful achievements, her beauty, her French and Spanish, her sober book reading, and her little affectations of fine linen and careful speech, all seemed to crumple to nothing. She seemed again to be the furious, helpless, seventeen-year-old Harriet of the Watertown ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... too well for his own peace of mind the pitiful diversions of the old man's day. It sapped his powers of resistance. In the morning there was the doctor, a weary little man, untemperamental and mercifully impervious to insult, who chugged up ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... others suffered violent death or else slavery, passing through years of precarious existence with people to whom their strangeness was an object of suspicion, dislike or fear. We read about these things, and they are very pitiful. It is indeed hard upon a man to find himself a lost stranger, helpless, incomprehensible, and of a mysterious origin, in some obscure corner of the earth. Yet amongst all the adventurers shipwrecked in all the wild parts of the world there is not ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... Little-Faith would have had their revenge and satisfaction upon Christian and Hopeful had they seen those two so Pharisaical old men taken in the Flatterer's net. For it was nothing else but the swaggering pride of Hopeful over the pitiful case of Little- Faith, taken along with the hard and hasty ways of Christian with that unhappy youth Ignorance, that so soon laid them both down under the small cords of the Shining One. This word of the wise man, that pride goeth before destruction, ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... pretence of intercourse with the spirits of the dead through the legs of their tables and chairs, seemed to me the most melancholy testimony to an utter want of faith in things spiritual, of belief in God and Christ's teaching, and a pitiful craving for such a faith, as well as to the absence of all rational common sense, in the vast numbers of persons deluded by such processes. In this aspect (the total absence of right reason and real religion demonstrated by these ludicrous and blasphemous juggleries ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... she never named you and evidently meant not to name you.... Poor child! She may have thought herself strong, and then things have come over her wave on wave. Her grandfather—that dark upbringing on tenets harsh and wrathful—certainty of disgrace. Pitiful!" ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... swift-footed and silent, was too much for Sir Philip. He sank on his knees by the side of his unconscious son, whimpering like a child—a weak and helpless old man. There was no trace of the dignity of the Herediths or pride of race in the wrinkled face, now distorted with the pitiful grin of senility, as Sir Philip crouched over his son, stroking his ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... frightened, now, and snuffling, clinging desperately to the hand of the loved mistress she had run away to serve. The flute-player, almost fainting from the heat and weariness, strove bravely to conceal this from his daughter, and, with pitiful assumption of fine strength, smiled down at her, through the thick gloom, from time to time, with reassurance, attempting to instill in her a courage which he, himself, she ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... quenches the spark of both. It is not that Lord Byron is sometimes serious and sometimes trifling, sometimes profligate, and sometimes moral—but when he is most serious and most moral, he is only preparing to mortify the unsuspecting reader by putting a pitiful hoax upon him. This is a most unaccountable anomaly. It is as if the eagle were to build its eyry in a common sewer, or the owl were seen soaring to the mid-day sun. Such a sight might make one laugh, but one would not wish or expect it ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... sudden pallor of their men, by men who heard the cry of their women? I heard it in the streets, spoken quite brutally sometimes, by men afraid of breaking down, and with a passionate tenderness by other men, sure of their own strength but pitiful for those whose spirit fainted at the spectre of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... midst of all his sufferings he murmurs not nor for a moment gives way to revenge; he leaves the persecutor in the hands of God. Stand off, Christian; pity the poor wretch that brings down upon himself the vengeance of God. Your pitiful arm must no strike him—no, stand by, 'that God may have his full blow at him in his time. Wherefore he saith avenge not yourself—"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." Give place, leave such an one ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... rest in his bed till he had cleared it all up and settled it for ever, one way or the other. If Tilgate wasn't his, by law and right, he wanted none of it. If his father was trying to buy off the real heir to the estate with a pitiful pittance, in order to preserve the ill-gotten remainder for Lady Emily's son, why, Granville for his part would be no active party to such a miserable compromise. If some other man was the Colonel's lawful heir, let that other man take the property ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Dirk's cry was very pitiful, and, whether he understood the fact of the gun being loaded or not, he turned and swam slowly ashore, climbed on the rock and stood dripping and disconsolate, without trying to scatter the ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... smile was charming, and her large blue eyes expressed both gentleness and goodness. Seen beside this smiling and serene countenance, the appearance of the stranger was downright repulsive, and Monsieur de Lamotte could hardly repress a start of disagreeable surprise at the pitiful and sordid aspect of this diminutive person, who stood apart, looking overwhelmed by conscious inferiority. He was still more astonished when he saw his son take him by the hand with friendly kindness, and heard ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... odd mixture of thankfulness and reserve, put himself into the doctor's hands with almost a boy's confidence, but kept himself free, with a determination that in the circumstances was touching, however pitiful, from the stretched-out hands of ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... very pitiful. Her hand came to his. "But this—this is different. Why should you do without her? You know ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... blessed Torello, and commend them to him, that by means of his prayers God would restore their health. And going to him, she commended them to him with faith and tears and hope beyond the power of words to describe. And truly it was not in vain; for the holy man, who was most pitiful, kneeled down and prayed to the Lord for her and her children as only the true servants of God pray; and having so done, he took some water from the spring of which he usually drank and gave it to the children, and they were entirely ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... you choose. It is pitiful to observe what sort of troubles most unhappy people are afflicted with. I have seen a beautiful young woman grow care lined and faded just from imagining she was being "slighted" or ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... paper and all, and crammed it into the dying fire. Then suddenly she burst into tears. The world was all wrong, justice was wrong and suffering was wrong and mankind wrong, all was wrong and inexplicable and pitiful too. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... scolded in the beech-trees. Nellie, who had broken her prison bars, called again and again from the playground, while slowly but surely up the roof crawled the ever-increasing flames. But 'Mazin' Grace heard nothing, saw nothing; she lay unconscious on the roof, an absurdly pitiful little figure in her ragged dress and pink ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... blood and birthplace, a time-server, had to hurry away. I took his measure; nor did his protestations of alarm excite my sympathy, and yet somehow I did not feel unkindly towards him; a weak man is a pitiful object in times of trouble. Some of our countrymen who were living in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State at the outbreak of the war have been placed in such difficult positions and torn by so many conflicting emotions that they must be judged very tolerantly. How few men are ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... part and depredations on the settlements. In the year named two of them were caught stealing pigs, and were sent to the workhouse and given thirty-nine lashes on the bare back. When set free they went home in a fury, and told a pitiful tale of the disgrace they had suffered, being whipped by the black driver of the workhouse in the presence of felon slaves. The story roused the blood of all their fellows, who felt that they had been outraged by this ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... doing so with a sharp eye to the advantages to be derived from it. That weary round of giving a self-regarding hospitality, and then getting a return dinner or evening entertainment from each guest, which makes up so much of the social life among us, is a pitiful affair, hollow and selfish. What would Jesus say—what does Jesus say—about it all? The sacred name of hospitality is profaned, and the very springs of it dried up by much of our social customs, and the most literal application of our Lord's ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... with the folly which it had shown in the Anglo-Russian attack upon Holland, raised against it a Maritime League under the leadership of a Power which England had offended as a neutral and exasperated as an ally. Since the pitiful Dutch campaign, the Czar had transferred to Great Britain the hatred which he had hitherto borne to France. The occasion was skilfully used by Bonaparte, to whom, as a soldier, the Czar felt less repugnance than to the Government ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... knows well he is not my father's heir. He has known it since the hour of my father's death. He knows that I know it. Yet he has kept the lands to this day." Another uneasy perambulation. "Do you think of that when you talk of revenge? Manliness? He has none. He is a pitiful, truculent, groveling coward, ready to buy profit at any price. He has robbed me of my inheritance. He stands in my place. He is a living lie. Revenge? It ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... dear maid!" said Cicely encouragingly. "May be it shall be better than we might fear. 'The Lord is very pitiful, and of ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... attributes it to jealousy. "It was strongly suspected," says he, "that he was fretting with chagrin and envy at the singular honor Dr. Johnson had lately enjoyed." It needed the littleness of mind of Boswell to ascribe such pitiful motives to Goldsmith, and to entertain such exaggerated notions of the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... very little more; that scarcely mattered however, as I easily concluded that the persons tucked away in so snug a corner were Jasper Nettlepoint and Mr. Porterfield's intended. Tucked away was the odious right expression, and I deplored the fact so betrayed for the pitiful bad taste in it. I immediately turned away, and the next moment found myself face to face with our vessel's skipper. I had already had some conversation with him—he had been so good as to invite me, as he had ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... found himself ebbing down through some soft and feathery emptiness that he seemed to hear a pitiful and imploring voice call thinly out, "Mack!" Still fainter he seemed to hear it, "Mack! Come up! I'm dying!" He remembered, lazily, that it sounded like the distant voice of Keenan—but where ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... satisfaction came to him. He hoped his task would be easier than he had anticipated. His evil nature rose to the occasion, and, for the moment, his own troubles and fears were forgotten. There was a cat-like licking of the lips as he contemplated the pitiful picture before him. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... to be so stingy another time." So we both ran home laughing, in spite of our disappointment. But we were not so fortunate as to get off without a scolding. The next day the lady came to Madama and complained of our impertinence. Madama scolded us a little; but when she heard what a pitiful buona mano the lady had given us, she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... her stage associates, and her paramours, she was still a little unschooled in the world. Her heart was essentially poetic and innocent. No one had ever given her much of anything—not even her parents. Her allowance thus far in life had been a pitiful six dollars a week outside of her clothing. As she surveyed these pretty things in the privacy of her room she wondered oddly whether Cowperwood was growing to like her. Would such a strong, hard business man be ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... up a pitiful whimper, and tried to possess herself of his hand; she kissed his coat-sleeve instead. "That you will return with ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... once all the journey, and that was about half way, to complain in a sort of hopeless, pitiful tone that she was cold. It was ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... friendship in which nothing was to be counted upon except the unaccountable. So that when vanquished suitors withdrew discomfited and returned to renew an earlier allegiance or to swear a new one; when "that good child of old Marvin's" had withdrawn her pitiful little face and her disappointment into the remote fastness of settlement work; when her mother resigned all claims upon the victoria and loudly affirmed her preference for the brougham, then things in general—and Mr. Stevenson in ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... made his rage into a dark and stormy specter, that possessed him and made him dream of abominable cruelties. The tormentors were flies sucking insolently at his blood, and he thought that he would have given his life for a revenge of seeing their faces in pitiful plights. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... lamenting, it cruelly devours him. It is thus with the hypocrite, who, for the smallest matter, has his face bathed with tears, but shows the heart of a tiger and rejoices in his heart at the woes of others, while wearing a pitiful face. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... beliefs, that have come to weigh upon humanity through twenty centuries of Gothic Christianity. But that can only be upon condition that it is a generous faith, earnestly desirous of the good of others. But instead of that, what happens? The most pitiful egoism. A handful of loose-living men and women trying to give their senses the maximum of pleasure with the minimum of risk, while they take good care that the rest shall drudge for it.—Yes, no doubt, they have their parlor Socialism!... But they ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... pale woman with a sadly-bereaved face: her arms were stretched out above her as one in supplication. "False God!" she cried in a voice cold and bitter, in which there was no trace of tenderness or pitiful earnestness, "Thou hast made me a lie upon Thy cruel earth. Tribulation Thou hast given me; patience the world forced upon me; hope Thou ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... camp could scarcely walk, by the twenty-eighth, and their sensations of hunger were deminishing. This condition forebode delirium and death, unless stayed by the only means at hand. It was in very truth a pitiful alternative offered to ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... they have no clan, no family-names among them, therefore. This idiot-boy, chosen by God to be anointed with the holy chrism, is only "Tom,"—"Blind Tom," they call him in all the Southern States, with a kind cadence always, being proud and fond of him; and yet—nothing but Tom? That is pitiful. Just a mushroom-growth,—unkinned, unexpected, not hoped for, for generations, owning no name to purify and honor and give away when he is dead. His mother, at work to-day in the Oliver plantations, can never comprehend why ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... They hung the baby to a tree later, and when they got ready they killed its mother. It was the only merciful thing they done, I guess, in all their raid, for they made her die a thousand deaths before they really cut off her poor pitiful life." ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... say, which is poured out in self-denials and sacrifices to bless others. But really the wasted lives are those which are devoted to pleasure and sin. Those who live a merely worldly life are wasting what it took the dying of Jesus to redeem. Oh, how pitiful much of fashionable, worldly life must appear to ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... direction of Purvis's eyes and saw Kate sitting on a rock at a little distance from the shanty in which she lived with her father. She made a pitiful figure, her chin cupped in her hand, and her eyes staring fixedly down the valley. He was recalled from her by the general ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... establishment, which is only to exist for one year, costs L2,000 or L3,000 more or less, and to declare that the sum actually spent by Lord Gosford shall be the maximum of Lord Durham's expenditure, is so manifestly absurd that it proves the pitiful and spiteful spirit in which the motion was conceived. Suppose they had succeeded, and that after such a vote Durham (as he well might) had resigned the appointment. This must have been an enormous embarrassment to the public service, incurred without any object of commensurate importance. ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... me if it was the Prince. I answered that it was, and instantly brought him in.' Among all the stout Highland hearts which were ready to risk everything for him, Charles never found one more brave and pitiful than that of the girl who was introduced to him in ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... and with trembling, pitiful fingers touched the velvet muzzle. Then suddenly indignation, fierce, overwhelming, headlong, swept over her, crowding out even her horror. She stood up and faced Nap in such a tornado of fury as had never ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... astonishment as they straggled out of the woods, a worn-out army of perhaps six hundred men, with faces haggard, clothing in tatters, and many barefooted and bareheaded. Over eighty had died in the wilderness, and a hundred were on the sick list. So pitiful and so ludicrous was their appearance that one man wrote in his diary that they "resembled those animals of New Spain called {30} orang-outangs," and "unlike the children of Israel, whose clothes waxed not old in the wilderness, theirs hardly ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... village was laid out with some regularity and had taverns, stores, butchers' shops and monte tables." One cannot but smile at the idea of "monte tables" in connection with the Drytown of to-day; pitiful as is the reflection that men had braved the hardships of the desert and toiled to the waist in water for gold, only to throw it recklessly in the ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... only by the keen air of the hills, was creased and soiled, and his boots were thickly covered with mud and clay. His face and hands were unwashed, and his hair hung unbrushed over his forehead. Phebe's whole heart was stirred at this pitiful change, and she laid her hand on his shoulder with ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... entirely with a view to their difficulty of handling or their attractiveness at conversaziones when done. He had a great contempt for the sections the "theorizers" produced. They proved all sorts of things perhaps, but they were thick, unequal, pitiful pieces of work. Yet an indiscriminating, wrong-headed world gave such fellows all sorts ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... with neglecting her lover to the common danger.... The inspector said the man was in a pitiful state, morally quite uncombed and infested with ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... he knew so well; the acceleration and the total energy necessary to drive a ship to the nearest stars. Even a ship's Pulsors, pouring energy out steadily, were pitiful compared to that job. Schoolboys knew the figures; mankind had dreamed ...
— Tulan • Carroll Mather Capps
... Saviour to save him from his sins, to lift him above his weakness, to help him overcome his bad habits; that His name was called Jesus, because he shall save his people from their sins. John listened with a strange new thrill. This was what he needed—a Friend, all- powerful, all-pitiful, who would undertake for him and help him to overcome himself—for he sorely felt how weak he was. Here was a Friend that could have compassion on the ignorant and them that were out of the way. The thought brought tears to his eyes and ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... cross, and say, "Behold your God! This He did, this He condescended, this He dared, this He suffered for you, and such as you. This is what He, the Maker of the universe, is like. This is what He has been trying to make you like, in your small degree, every time a noble, a generous, a pitiful, a merciful emotion crossed your heart; every time you forgot yourself, even for a moment, and thought of the welfare ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... flock. Domestic disasters in his parish came to his ears from time to time; cases of young girls whose heads were turned by soldiers, so that they were about to become mothers. They seemed to him pitiful indeed; but he could not forgive them for their giddiness, for putting temptation in the way of brave young men, fighting, or about to fight. The glamour which surrounded soldiers was not excuse enough. When the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and the baker, fully confiding in its judgment, was not disappointed. The sailors were very fond of it, and treated it as a companion; but the pilot, a cruel, heartless man, abused the animal, despite its pitiful looks and gestures, as it placed its hand upon its heart, and then stretched it towards him, to tell the pain it felt. However, it did not resent his continued ill-treatment, but refused to take any nourishment; five days after it died of hunger and a broken ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... told of priests or children meeting them playing by a stream, and taunting them with future damnation, which threat never failed to turn the joyful music into pitiful wails. Often priest or children, discovering their mistake, and touched by the agony of their victims, would hasten back to the stream and assure the green-toothed water sprites of future redemption, when they invariably resumed ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Kirsty Barclay, that he had run a race with her, and that she had left him alone at the foot of the Horn. That he could not be open with his mother, no one that knew her unreasoning and stormy temper would have wondered; but the pitiful boy, who did not like lying, actually congratulated himself that he had got through without telling a downright falsehood. It would not have bettered matters in the least had he disclosed to her the good advice Kirsty gave him: she would only have been furious at the impudence of ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... everything! Not if I can help it. I'll expose him. I will indeed. Such a pitiful ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... spawn? Is not humanity the commonest and cheapest thing in the world?" But as yet his faith was unshaken, and he repelled the doubt as a temptation of Satan. Blessed is the man who can assign promptly everything which is not in harmony with himself to a devil, and so get rid of it. The pitiful case is that of the distracted mortal who knows not what is the degree of authority which his thoughts and impulses possess; who is constantly bewildered by contrary messages, and has no evidence as to their authenticity. Zachariah had his rule still; the suggestion ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... the voice of honor and patriotism, but reflection and solitude induced him to pocket up his wrongs and his "merced" together. The states-general also sent the correspondence to the Walloon provincial authorities, with an eloquent address, begging them to study well the pitiful part which La Motte had enacted in the private comedy then performing, and to behold as in a mirror their own position, if they did not recede ere it ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is all pitiful," she continued, her voice deep and broken with almost a sob in it. "Denzil is so like you—it was an easy transition to find that I loved him—because I was only loving the imaginary you I had made for myself. ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, Sadly sang the Birde as she sat upon the tree! There seemed a crimson plain, Where a gallant Knyghte lay slayne, And a steed with broken rein Ran free, As I laye a-thynkynge, most pitiful to see! ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... paused to think that they would look on it as their honour which she had played with. His rather pitiful dignity hurt her more than anything that had ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... neck and look mournfully around at the unsightly leg which he had come to understand was the cause of all his misery. There would come into his great eyes a look of such pitiful melancholy that one might almost fancy tears rolling out. Then he would be roused by an exasperated driver, who jerked cruelly on the lines and used his whip as if it ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... well-garnished table. Under the pretext of good humor and of sentiment people tolerate these poverties: but this good humor and this sentiment ought to be carefully proscribed. The Muses of the Pleisse, in particular, are singularly pitiful; and other Muses respond to them, from the banks of the Seine, and the Elbe. If these pleasantries are flat, the passion heard on our tragic stage is equally pitiful, for, instead of imitating true nature, it is only an insipid and ignoble expression ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... been summoned by the tactful Masha appeared in the doorway, waiting an order to remove his young master. It was time. Madame Dravikine's voice could no longer override the noise from below. Moreover, Ivan had now ceased to eat, and was sitting motionless, his mouth drawn into a pitiful line, a spot of vivid red flaming from each pale cheek, his great eyes wistfully, anxiously, seeking those of his mother, which as persistently avoided them. Suddenly there came from below a piercing scream: a scream holding in it a note at which Caroline, forgetting ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... norice** in this case *believe **nurse It had been hard this ruthe* for to see: *pitiful sight Well might a mother then have cried, "Alas!" But natheless so sad steadfast was she, That she endured all adversity, And to the sergeant meekely she said, "Have here again your ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... is affable as ever when he sees me, but growing more and more preoccupied with his own thoughts I do not know whether to look upon him with execration or profoundest pity, nor can any man guide me or satisfy my mind as to whether I should blame his jealousy or Orrin's pride for the pitiful tragedy which once darkened my life, and turned our pleasant village ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... for all that; he feels his weakness, and tears them off the distant mountains with the mercilessness of an avalanche. The Stone pines of the two Italian compositions are fine in their arrangement, but they are very pitiful pines; the glory of the Alpine rose he never touches; he munches chestnuts with no relish; never has learned to like olives; and, by the vine, we find him in the foreground of the Grenoble Alps laid utterly and incontrovertibly on ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... mumbling, their feet stumbling and heavy. They begged for coal, and the agent gave to each, while he could, what one might carry in a cloth, men standing over the supply with rifles to see that fairness was enforced. After obtaining such pitiful store, men started back home again, often besought or ordered not to leave the town, but eager to die so much the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... to keep it, were Worse than to swear it; call it back to thee; Such vows as those never ascend the Heaven; A tear or two will wash it quite away: Have mercy on my youth, my hopeful youth, If thou be pitiful, for (without boast) This Land was proud of me: what Lady was there That men call'd fair and vertuous in this Isle, That would have shun'd my love? It is in thee To make me hold this worth—Oh! ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... remembered that Isabelle was "queer," but there was something passionate about the way she threw herself into their reminiscences, that struck her as unnecessary. They spoke of Mrs. Benjamin, with tears on Agnes's part. She told of Mr. Benjamin's pitiful efforts to go on with the school. He had been forced to give up the struggle, and Agnes lamented the necessity of going to a new school when she ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... cared all the time—cared still! It was written in the lines of suffering on his face, in the quiet endurance of the close-shut mouth. Despite the bitter, pitiful misunderstandings of their married life, despite his inexplicable friendship for Adrienne, despite all that had gone before, Diana was sure, in the light of this larger understanding which had come to her, that ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... 4th—the marvellous audacity with which half-a-dozen lawyers belonging to a pitiful minority in a Chamber elected by universal suffrage walked into the Hotel de Ville and said, "The Republic is established, and we are its Government," history has told too recently for me to narrate. On the evening of the 5th the Council of Ten met again: the Pole; the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... before her she could see the inherited results of fruitless labor—and more pitiful yet in the bent shoulders of the older ones she could see the beginnings of deformity that would soon be permanent. And as these things came to her, she clasped the poor wondering things to her side with a convulsive wish to make life ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... you not try to bring that time?" he said with pitiful simplicity. "When you speak I believe all you say; other people would ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... be more pitiful than the manner in which the infamous affair of Cracow is treated on all hands. There is not even the affectation of noble feeling about it. La Mennais and his coadjutors published in La Reforme ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... supply—has been despised because of his unsettled habits, but I was told that there was a special deity to look after him. In the town we had left there was delightful woodwork, but most of the draper's stuff was pitiful trash made after what was supposed to be foreign fashions. I may also mention the large collection of blood-and-thunder stories upon Western models which were piled up in the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... black heap. I left it there, with the water rippling round it, under the still stars, and giving it a wide berth pursued my way towards the yellow glow of the house; and presently, with a positive effect of relief, came the pitiful moaning of the puma, the sound that had originally driven me out to explore this mysterious island. At that, though I was faint and horribly fatigued, I gathered together all my strength, and began running again towards ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... I don't always say it; I don't think I ever said it," she answered quietly. "I know that one cannot like people who are not likable. But Georgie," (with much earnestness,) "I know, and you know, that it is God's will, that it is God's command, that we should be kind, and tender, and gentle, and pitiful to every one, whether we ...
— The Old Castle and Other Stories • Anonymous
... whether Jennie had learned about his bad record, but he took no chances—he told her everything, and thus took the sting out of it. Yes, he had been trapped into evil ways, but it wasn't his fault, he hadn't known any better, he had been a pitiful victim of circumstances. He told how he had been starved and driven about and beaten by "Old Man" Drubb, and the tears glistened in Jennie's grey eyes and stole down her cheeks. He told about loneliness and heartsickness and misery in the orphan asylum. ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... than the pain by which it was necessary that a dear and erring soul should be taught its lessons. But at heart she did not doubt that, though she could not forgive Paris for being the scene of those infinitely sad and pitiful memories. Then she shook those thoughts off; they concerned that past which was absolutely dead in so far as it was painful and bitter, and lived only in the greater tenderness and pity of which her own ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... and reproaches. "If she were my wife," said blunt old Bruce, "I'd pack her off home to that doting father she's always prating about, and I'd keep her there until she arrived at years of discretion. It is simply pitiful to see a big, stalwart, soldierly fellow like Forrest led around by the nose like a ringed bull by that ridiculous and lackadaisical creature." Beyond doubt there would have been far more happiness all around if Forrest had firmly set down ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... month's absence has almost entirely vanished. Wappers's hand, as I thought, seemed to have grown old and feeble, Verboeckhoven's cattle-pieces are almost as good as Paul Potter's, and Keyser has dwindled down into namby-pamby prettiness, pitiful to see in the gallant young painter who astonished the Louvre artists ten years ago by a hand almost as dashing and ready as that of Rubens himself. There were besides many caricatures of the new German school, which are in themselves caricatures ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sight; it was a delightful sight. They were so sure of themselves, the maids particularly; so interested in themselves, so happy, so eager, so convinced (without any conceit) that their importance transcended all other importances, so gently pitiful toward men and women of forty-five, and so positive that the main function of elders was to pay school-fees, that I was thrilled thereby. Seldom has a human spectacle given me such exciting pleasure as this gave. (And they never suspected it, those preoccupied demigods!) ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... a tense silence for a moment or two. Benson, his face marked with baffled desire and scarcely controlled fury, glared at the others. Blake's expression was pitiful, but his lips were resolutely set; and Harding's eyes were very ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... her in the watches of a sleepless night, when, through the tears of disenchanted passion, she stared back upon her past. There it lay before her, her sole romance, in all its paltry poverty, the cheapest of cheap adventures, the most pitiful of sentimental blunders. She looked about her room, the room where, for so many years, if her heart had been quiescent her thoughts had been alive, and pictured herself henceforth cowering before a throng of mean suspicions, of unavowed ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... a great share of pride, which always kept her in mind of her former influence at court; and she therefore holds her present husband as cheap as the dust under her feet, and keeps him in a most pitiful state of subjection. He dares not sit down before her, unless she permits him, which she very seldom does; and she is moreover so jealous, that there is no slave in her harem who does not excite her suspicions. ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... eyes were dry, for he was suffering according to the way of strong men with the agony that clutches at the breast and twists a cord about the temples. In his helplessness before the peril he was pitiful to see, since all his confidence had gone, his pride in his power, his faith in his ability to surmount all things by the mere force of his will. And the present weakness of the man augmented the girl's own sorrow, even though his being there ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... "The beasts! the wretches! the unmanly brutes! Oh, how can those poor blacks be such pitiful, miserable cowards, and not rise up and kill the villains who seize them and treat them in ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... "Art thou on the gallows, thief, or at thy last moment, to use pitiful entreaties of that sort? Cowardly, spiritless creature, art thou not in the very place the fair Magalona occupied, and from which she descended, not into the grave, but to become Queen of France; unless the histories lie? And I who ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... intrinsic merits. Any one can steal a squaw, and if he chooses afterward to make an adequate present to her rightful proprietor, the easy husband for the most part rests content, his vengeance falls asleep, and all danger from that quarter is averted. Yet this is esteemed but a pitiful and mean-spirited transaction. The danger is averted, but the glory of the achievement also is lost. Mahto-Tatonka proceeded after a more gallant and dashing fashion. Out of several dozen squaws whom he had stolen, he could boast that he had never paid for one, but snapping ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... is no danger of tiring God: we come ceaselessly, endlessly. The cries of earth go up to Him, pitiful, ignorant, foolish cries; but they find God ready to hear and answer, fortunately not according to our ignorance but according to His great mercy. We think of the clouds of prayer in all ages, from all nations, in all tongues, and the very vastness of them ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... have absolutely no officers. There is nothing but what you see there in the forest; the rest are pitiful remnants—some 200 soldiers ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... He let himself become a prisoner, and was thankful to gain a three years' accession of life in captivity. He was tamed like a wild beast by his belly, and by wine; Antony took himself out of the world in a cowardly, pitiful, and ignoble manner, but, still in time to prevent the enemy having his person ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
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