|
|
|
More "Spiritless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pity an author who is present at the murder of his works."—"Nay, it is but seldom that it can happen," returned the poet; "the works of most modern authors, like dead-born children, cannot be murdered. It is such wretched half-begotten, half-writ, lifeless, spiritless, low, grovelling stuff, that I almost pity the actor who is obliged to get it by heart, which must be almost as difficult to remember as words in a language you don't understand."—"I am sure," said the player, "if the sentences ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... service had only just begun, there were very few people; I looked round me, and suddenly, near a window, caught sight of a familiar profile. For the first instant, I did not recognise it: that pale face, that spiritless glance, those sunken cheeks—could it be the same Liza I had seen a fortnight before? Wrapped in a cloak, without a hat on, with the cold light from the broad white window falling on her from one side, she was ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... perhaps I might prefer that also!" There is a common note in these three illustrations of the modern idyll; and it must be owned the god goes among us with a limping gait and blear eyes. You wonder whether it was so always; whether desire was always equally dull and spiritless, and possession equally cold. I cannot help fancying most people make, ere they marry, some such table of recommendations as Hannah Godwin wrote to her brother William anent her friend, Miss Gay. It is so charmingly comical, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and decay; an immense stimulus was given on the one hand to the political activity, on the other, to the thought and knowledge of the world as a whole, but at the centre Greece was 'living Greece no more,' her politics sank to the level of a dreary farce, her philosophy died down to a dull and spiritless scepticism, to an Epicureanism {211} that 'seasoned the wine-cup with the dust of death,' or to a Stoicism not undignified yet still sad and narrow and stern. The hope of the world, alike in politics and in philosophy, faded as the life ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... spent, my life shrunken up within me, my energy burned out, a puny, spiritless remnant of the strong woman who lay down upon that couch, I lay despondent, vacant of all interest in the world hitherto so exciting to me. I had not seen Monsieur since this apparent commencement of recovery. A great, good-natured nurse kept watch over me, and fed me with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Lady Canning is not satisfied with Stapleton's book, particularly with that part of it in which he attempts to answer Lord Grey's speech, which she thinks poor and spiritless; he is not disposed to be very severe on Lord Grey, being in a manner connected with him. She is persuaded that that speech contributed to kill Canning; his feelings were deeply wounded that not one of his friends said a word in reply to it, although some of them ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... thoughts—what need had he of company? If anything could have added to his enjoyment it would have been the possibility of being waylaid by bandits, or set upon in some desolate pass by wild animals. But, alas, the nearest approximation to a bandit that fell in his way was some shabby, spiritless tramp who passed by on the further side without lifting an eyelid; and as for savage animals, he saw nothing more savage than a monkish chipmunk here and there, who disappeared into his stonewall convent the instant ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in one mouth the expression of real misery, and in another is a protestation against real misery. Religion is the moan of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... network of pearls was all her head-dress. Her eyes had strange depths of passion, perfumes breathed from her skin, lustreless like dead ivory. Not thus came the maidens of Israel to wedlock, demure, spotless, spiritless, with shorn hair, priestesses of the ritual ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... went by. By this time the Count had gained possession of Diane's hand; it felt cold and spiritless. The beautiful hand, with all the treasures in its grasp, might have been supple wood; there was nothing of Diane in it; he had taken it, it had not been given to him. As for Victurnien, the spirit had ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... conviction; and with this corroboration of it he grew so spiritless that he could offer no retort. He slid to a despondent sitting posture upon the door sill and gazed wretchedly upon the ground, while his companion went to replenish the licorice water at the hydrant—enfeebling ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... our camp, that no better medicine was found than that of absence, and deferring this undertaking to another time. The assistance from Tydore was of no consequence. They proved lukewarm friends, and all the rest was spiritless. Heaven knows the other reasons. There must have been some stronger ones; for, in reality, the camp was raised, and after embarking returned to Manila, without having had any greater effect than to increase the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... as he had recovered the power of respiration he sat up and listened. There was not a sound in the gloom beyond the spiritless stir of the summer wind. Feeling about for the obstacle which had flung him down, he discovered that two tufts of heath had been tied together across the path, forming a loop, which to a traveller was certain overthrow. Wildeve pulled off the string that bound them, and went on with ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... my companion as rapidly as my feeble limbs would allow, to inform her of the discovery I had made. Alas! I found that I was unheeded. I could not believe that her fine spirit had fled; no, she moved her hand; but the dull spiritless gaze seemed to warn me that her dissolution was fast approaching. I looked for the spirit flask, and found a few drops were still left there; I poured these into her mouth, and watched the result with the deepest anxiety I ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... In his mind there was an element of picturesqueness in that joint page of Holton-Montgomery history. He wondered whether Phil looked like her mother. Phil was pretty enough, though in repose she seemed rather spiritless. She was swinging herself in the swivel chair, carelessly, and since his reference to the old scandal he saw or imagined that he saw her manner change from courteous interest to a somewhat frosty indifference. His pride was pricked by the sense of his blunder. He flattered ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... this aside, what is more inept than the verse Harsh and troublesome, by Jupiter!, however Catullan. Nevertheless, Borbonius thought his epigram concluded elegantly in that line because he found in Catullus a similar one.[39] But, leaving aside such spiritless imitators, one can truly affirm of those ideas that conclude epigrams that there is a good deal of elegance in them when they are themselves distinguished and nicely cohere with the preceding chain of thought. For, since nothing so sticks in the reader's mind as the conclusion, what ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... blackguard because of his birth; there is nothing too bad for him to do, and very little so bad but what he has done it. He is a gambler, a swindler, and, as I believe, a forger and a card-sharper. He has lived upon the wages of the woman he has professed to love. He has shown himself to be utterly spiritless, abominable, and vile. If my clerk in the next room were to slap his face, I do not believe that he would resent it." Sir Harry frowned, and moved his feet rapidly on the floor. "In my thorough respect and regard for ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... aunt, if any serious trouble or grief fell upon you, you would find Mr. Bazalgette a much greater comfort and a better stay than poor spiritless me." ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... the "conservatism" of the American workingman will cause him to patiently endure all this is to brand him a spiritless slave, deserving not only slavery, but the shackles and the knout. He will not endure it much longer, and when his patience reaches its utmost limit— when he tires of filling his belly with the East wind supplied him in ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... their strength gradually gave out under their unhealthy diet, and when they were ready to travel, they were in a pitiful condition to endure its fatigues. Their horses were even worse off than themselves. Worn with privation to skeletons, they were drooping and spiritless; and had not the wanderers used great exertion to collect the young grass for them, they would have perished, for they were too languid to crop ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... past sorrows are a great reality in our present life, and exert a great influence over our present life, whether for good or ill. As you may see in the trembling knees of some poor horse, in its drooping head, and spiritless paces, that it was overwrought when young: so, if the human soul were a thing that could be seen, you might discern the scars where the iron entered into it long ago,—you might trace not merely the enduring remembrance, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... "gyarden spots" about them, and in the centre of the Square a great mass of coals, a flame flickering here and there, and two gaunt and tottering chimneys where once the court-house had stood. At some distance—for the heat was still intense—were grouped the slouching, spiritless figures of the mountaineers. On the porches of the houses, plainly visible in the unwonted red glow, were knots of women and children—ever and anon a brat in the scantiest of raiment ran nimbly in and out. The clouds ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... ledger, took up a pencil, and began to jot down figures on the back of one of the envelopes. Already, by remodelling the the theatre, he had lost two month's headway, and spent three times too much money, and if Sunday performances were to be eliminated.... He threw down the pencil, and sat back spiritless. The good-wishes of all his friends, last night, had turned sour in his possession. To reach his goal, he should have to contrive, somehow, to fill nearly every seat at nearly every performance for the balance of the year. It was all well enough ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... romances the strained artificiality and silken softness of aristocratic existence. Her style also possesses the needful lightness and grace, and she accordingly succeeds admirably in her sketches of high life, with all its elegant nullities and spiritless pomp. One of her best works is the romance of Cousinerna, (The Cousins,) which, as well as the other works of Knorring, Bremer, and Flygare, has been placed before the German public by our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... Burger, Pfeffel, the blind poet, and Claudius, gave utterance, in Schubart's coarse manner, to a few trite truisms. Musaeus was greatly admired for his amusing popular stories. As for the rest, it seemed as though the spiritless writers of that day had found it more convenient to be violent and savage in their endless chivalric pieces and romances than, like Schiller, steadily and courageously to attack the vices and evils of their age. Their fire but ended in smoke. Babo and Ziegler alone, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... a letter came from the manager: "Trust you are rested and will soon be back. The prompter read your lines, but everything has gone to pieces. Slack, slovenly, spiritless, stupid, nobody acting, and nobody awake, it seems to me. 'All right at night, governor,' and the usual nonsense. Shows how much we want you. But envious people are whispering that you are afraid of the part. The blockheads! If you succeed this ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... into gloom, Jim Dodge crossed the empty library and paused at the open door of the room beyond. The somber light from the two tall windows fell upon the figure of the girl. She was sitting before Andrew Bolton's desk, her head upon her folded arms. Something in the spiritless droop of her shoulders and the soft dishevelment of her fair hair suggested weariness—sleep, perhaps. But as the young man hesitated on the threshold the sound of a muffled sob escaped the quiet figure. He turned noiselessly and went away, sorry and ashamed, because unwittingly ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... were equally unskilled in the arts of constructing, besieging, or defending regular fortifications. They trusted more to their numbers than to their courage; more to their courage than to their discipline. The infantry was a half-armed, spiritless crowd of peasants, levied in haste by the allurements of plunder, and as easily dispersed by a victory as by a defeat. The monarch and his nobles transported into the camp the pride and luxury of the seraglio. Their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... the moment one would hardly have recognized the sallow, spiritless face, that with all the delicacy of boyhood still, at times looked so exceedingly old. "No, no, Mr. Halifax, who ever heard of a ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Egerton's one thought was to get away as quickly as possible. He read a very short psalm, in a spiritless voice, and they all knelt for a moment while he led in prayer. He took a hurried farewell of the family; the elder scarcely spoke and Mrs. Johnstone regarded him with ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... stood, and made a ring round him with their colours.[61] Tribunes and centurions were allowed no approach: the common soldiers even called out, 'Beware of the officers.' The whole camp resounded with confused shouts of mutual encouragement. It was quite unlike the wavering and spiritless flattery of a civil mob. As new adherents streamed in, directly a soldier caught sight of one of them, he grasped him by the hand, flung his arms round him, kept him at his side, and dictated the ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... sir, so far forgotten myself as to venture to think of applying for temporary assistance; however—" Dandy Joe began to shuffle off in a spiritless way, when— ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... connected with the notion of suffering. It is therefore a passive state, just as the opposite is an active state of the mind, with which, when great, patience is incompatible. It is the innate virtue of a phlegmatic, indolent, and spiritless people, as also of women. But that it is nevertheless so very useful and necessary is a sign that the world ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... subscribed "Old Play,"[120] was naturally used as an argument.[121] Scott's own judgment in the matter was expressed thus: "Nothing so easy when you are full of an author, as to write a few lines in his taste and style; the difficulty is to keep it up. Besides, the greatest success would be but a spiritless imitation, or, at best, what the Italians call a centone [sic] from Shakspeare."[122] When Elliston became manager of Drury Lane in 1819 he applied to Scott for plays, but without effect.[123] Scott seems ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... at first the popular favour was entirely on the side of Eric, while Montagu found few or none to back him. But he fought with a fire and courage which soon won applause; and as Eric, on the other hand, was random and spiritless, the cry was soon pretty fairly divided ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... remarkable, for Mr. Copley never was an exact man in matters of the toilet. It was not merely that. But Dolly's eye saw that his step was unsteady, his face 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 ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... must be a living ghost—a ghost we can respect, a ghost we can listen to. The poor spiritless addle-headed ghost that has hitherto haunted our blue chambers is of no use to us. I remember a thoughtful man once remarking during argument that if he believed in ghosts—the silly, childish spooks ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... have driven Friedrich Wilhelm nearly mad; and he, in turn, is driving everybody so. He more than suspects Friedrich of an intention to fly; which is horrible to Friedrich Wilhelm: and yet he bullies him occasionally, as a spiritless wretch, for bearing such treatment. "Cannot you renounce the Heir-Apparentship, then; your little Brother is a fine youth. Give it up; and go, unmolested, to the—in fact to the Devil: Cannot you?"—"If your Majesty, against the honor of my Mother, declare that I am not your eldest ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... of but he did not see what had happened when the red headed woman started to give the alarm. The Senorita da Cordova was not a cowed and spiritless girl and in spite of the terror of her situation, when she saw the intention of her jailer she glided the length of the cell with remarkable swiftness and caught the arm of the woman. The senorita was not a delicate ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... was, however, broken by fatigue, trembling with emotion. An instant after Fouquet called Gourville, who crossed the gallery amid the universal expectation. At length, he himself reappeared among his guests; but it was no longer the same pale, spiritless countenance they had beheld when he left them; from pale he had become livid; and from spiritless, annihilated. A living specter, he advanced with his arms stretched out, his mouth parched, like a shade that comes to salute friends of former days. On seeing him thus, every one cried out, and ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... must be found in war and rapine; nor are they so easily persuaded to cultivate the earth, and await the produce of the seasons, as to challenge the foe, and expose themselves to wounds; nay, they even think it base and spiritless to earn by sweat what they might purchase ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... him a spiritless, dishonored slave, father," said the count, answering the ecclesiastic's speech before it was yet finished, "and gentlemen would have refused him ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... in spiritless fashion. "It will be better than a music hall, at any rate. I am not at all sure, Seaman, that the hardest part of my task over here will not be this ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... never thou Associate with Achaia's Chiefs, to form The secret ambush.[21] No. The sound of war Is as the voice of destiny to thee. Doubtless the course is safer far, to range 285 Our numerous host, and if a man have dared Dispute thy will, to rob him of his prize. King! over whom? Women and spiritless— Whom therefore thou devourest; else themselves Would stop that mouth that it should scoff no more. 290 But hearken. I shall swear a solemn oath. By this same sceptre,[22] which shall never bud, Nor boughs bring forth as once, which having left Its stock ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... fought in the passes, and a greater number still, probably, from exposure to fatigue and cold, and from falls among the rocks and glaciers, and diseases produced by destitution and misery. The remnant of the army which was left on reaching the plain were emaciated, sickly, ragged, and spiritless; far more inclined to lie down and die, than to go on and undertake the conquest of Italy ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... stir. Dead France woke suddenly to life, wherever the great news traveled. Whereas before, the spiritless and cowed people hung their heads and slunk away if one mentioned war to them, now they came clamoring to be enlisted under the banner of the Maid of Vaucouleurs, and the roaring of war-songs and the thundering of the drums filled all the air. I ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... think things through and out. Any fisherman knows that. And the others readily join in. They see the good sense of it. But the fish don't catch. And the morning finds them tired in body and more tired in the spiritless uncertainty that hangs over them like a clinging ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... the Potomac, and after trifling away over one month's time, at last, on the 15th of July, got within nine miles of Winchester and Johnston's Army. Barring a spiritless reconnaissance, Patterson—who was a fervent Breckinridge-Democrat in politics, and whose Military judgment, as we shall see, was greatly influenced, if not entirely controlled, by his Chief of staff, Fitz John Porter—never got any nearer to ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... spiritless premiership of the Duke of Portland, Canning was allowed free hand. The two years and a half during which he directed the foreign office were marked by a succession of moves which gave a new aspect ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... driver, did not think much of the gunners. What an easy life fellows like them had! While he—what had he not got to see to? He went up to his team and looked anxiously at Turk, the horse he was to ride. With drooping head the gelding stood there limp and spiritless. He had refused his food that morning. What could one do mounted on a sick wheeler? Sickel had told the gun-leader about this; but it was too late to replace the horse, as the baggage-waggon was already under weigh. Poor Turk ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... route, they made no other stand until General Miles headed them off near Bear Paw Mountain in Northern Montana, and captured nearly all their horses. Then they were compelled to fight or surrender. They made a four days' fight, but it was a spiritless one, and finally succumbed to the inevitable, and laid ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... poets; our leading personage abroad of late seems to be the Honorable "Buffalo Bill" [laughter], and we use our adjectives so recklessly that the polite badinage indulged in toward each other by your New York editors to us seems tame and spiritless. In mental achievement we may not have fully acquired the use of the fork, and are "but in the gristle and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." We stand toward the East somewhat as country to city ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... merely wondering about Antha," replied Katherine. "Now we've got Anthony where we understand him; but Antha is still the spiritless cry baby she was when she came. She hasn't a particle of backbone. I'm getting discouraged about her." She pulled a patch of moss from the rock beside her and tore it ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... and spiritless, so unlike the woman of the morning that, albeit with an ill grace, he tacitly consented, and turned away to bring his blankets. But in the next moment she was at his side, following him like a dog, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... come to think that it was not the Indians who were killing; and the nesters, though a spiritless, shiftless lot, had always been honest enough. But the bunk-house on the MacDonald ranch was often filled with the material of which horse and cattle thieves are made, and Ralston hoped that he might get a clue from some word ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... opinions of the constitution at that time. "If there is any radical weakness of authority proceeding from the Constitution; if in any respects it opposes the genius, temper or habits of the governed, I fear, unless a remedy can be provided, in less than seven years, government will sink in a spiritless langour, or expire in a sudden CONVULSION. It would be foreign to my present purpose to suggest any of those alterations, which, in my apprehension are necessary to enable the constitution to ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... hunt winding through the greenwood aisles in much magnificence of environment, and heard the blare of horn and bay of hound dying away in the distance as the splendid assembly pursued the gorgeous if somewhat theatrical and spiritless pleasures of the chase. It may have happened on such an occasion that an early return of the green-and-gold-clad cortege has indicated a failure of the day's sport, and the word "Courance" has passed from lip to lip as explaining the disappointment. And then, perhaps, Madame Busque, the polite ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... reminiscences of Raphael's, Correggio's, Buonarroti's draughtsmanship. Yet they satisfied the patrons of that time, who required hasty work, and had not much money wherewith to reward the mature labors of a conscientious student. In relation, moreover, to the spiritless and insincere architecture then coming into vogue, this art of the Mannerists can scarcely be judged out of place. When I divulge the names of Giorgio Vasari, Giuseppe Cesari (Cav. d'Arpino), Tempesta, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... "Spiritless, mad, or hypocritical!" cried Roland, with mingled wonder and contempt. Then grasping his strange companion by the arm, he cried, "Harkee, man, if you would not strike a blow for yourself,—would you not strike it for another? What if you had a wife, a parent, a ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... him and submit to him joyfully." These hard thoughts he nourished and fed upon; and his guardian came no more to him for good or for evil; and the child, much broken by his hard usage and his angry thoughts, crept about neglected and spiritless, with nothing but fear and dismay in ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that Godolphin had written to her were so few, and so restrained, in comparison with those which she had received in the former periods of absence, that—ever alive as she was to impulse, and unregulated by settled principles of hope—her only relief to a tearful and spiritless dejection was in paroxysms of ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in Dublin, he was in no hurry to repair to his quarters in Trinity; they were not particularly cheery in the best of times, and now it was long vacation, with few men in town, and everything sad and spiritless; besides this, he was in no mood to meet Atlee, whose free-and-easy jocularity he knew he would not endure, even with his ordinary patience. Joe had never condescended to write one line since he had left Kilgobbin, and Dick, who felt that in presenting him to his ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... energy, and he had lost the zest of muscular exertion which had done so much to sweeten his labour in the fields. It was as if a clog fettered his simplest no less than his greatest emotion; and his enjoyment of nature had grown dull and spiritless, like his affection for his family. With his sisters he was aware that a curious constraint had become apparent, and it was no longer possible for him to meet his mother with the gay deference she still exacted. There were times, even, when he grew ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the main subjects of instruction. It mattered little if the student could neither speak nor write Danish correctly, but he must be able to define the finest points in a Latin grammar of more than 1200 pages. Attendance at religious services was compulsory; but the services were cold and spiritless, offering little ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... priesthood, to a man, would lend to it the influence of all its spiritual authority. Paris was every hour agitated by rumors of the approach of the armies of invasion. The people all believed that Louis wished to escape from Paris and head that army. The king was spiritless, undecided, and ever vacillating in his plans. Maria Antoinette would have gone through fire and blood to have rallied those hosts around her banner. Such was the position of the Girondists in reference to the Royalists. They were ready to ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... appearance at that moment, as usual, with a child in either hand, and a very sad picture it was, so mournful and spiritless was his countenance, with the hectic tint of decay evident on each thin cheek, and those two fair healthful creatures clinging to him, thoughtless of their past loss, unconscious of that which impended. Little Owen, after one good stare, evidently recognized a friend in Miss Charlecote, and ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Orleans, held by the dauphin's adherents, was besieged. It was the key to the situation. Its fall meant the fall of the kingdom, the conquest of France. When this happened, that infant at the Louvre would really be the wearer of the crown. So hopeless was the situation that the spiritless Charles was only in doubt whether to take refuge in Scotland or ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... radiant from her dressing-room, to watch her from her rear as she stood like some power about to descend on the stage, to see her falcon-like stoop upon the said stage, and hear the burst of applause that followed, as the report does the flash; to compare this with the spiritless crawl with which common artists went on, tame from their first note to their last; to take her hand when she came off, feel how her nerves were strung like a greyhound's after a race, and her whole frame in a high even glow, with the great Pythoness ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... not, however, leap from the car with the spring of anticipation that Bob did, and noticing his spiritless step his friend ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... not prepared for the light of eager joy that leaped into Edith's eyes at this confession—the new life and hope that swept over her face and animated her manner until she seemed almost transformed, from the weary, spiritless appearing girl she had seemed on her entrance, into a ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Fort George and Aberdeen; rather, much rather would I hold the office of him who every returning noon plays upon the music-bells of the good town of Edinburgh;[38] and rather, much rather would I be condemned to pass the next seven years of my life, as a spiritless student ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... a life's ambition be more explicit? It seems impossible for human ambition to stand still. Either a man loses all stimulus of self and becomes as spiritless as a fagged animal or ambition drives him always on—he is never content with any success achieved. The millionaire to whom the first million, when he was a boy, seemed the extreme limit of human wealth and desire, ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... dreams hard enough fortune will bring dreams true. As the life which is past fades, for all its reality, into the mist-substance of dreams, why should not the reverse action occur? Had she been without the rich-colored visions which illuminated her idle hours, opportunity might have found her a spiritless creature, content to take a salary from her son and to lay it by for the miserable days of old age. Out upon such tameness! She had found life in her dreams, and the two highest expressions of that life were Mrs. Montgomery ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... enemies by occupying it with its own forces. The Foreign Minister, Count Haugwitz, appears to have recommended this step, but his counsels were overruled. King Frederick William III., who had succeeded his father in 1797, was a conscientious but a timid and spiritless being. Public affairs were in the hands of his private advisers, of whom the most influential were the so-called cabinet-secretaries, Lombard and Beyme, men credulously anxious for the goodwill of France, and perversely blind to the native force and worth ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... maddened tide, The shrinking hills in fear subside. Trembles the earth with feverous throe The wind in fitful tempest blows. No cure we see with troubled eyes: And atheist brood on earth may rise. The triple world is wild with care, Or spiritless in dull despair. Before that saint the sun is dim, His blessed light eclipsed by him. Now ere the saint resolve to bring Destruction on each living thing, Let us appease, while yet we may, Him bright as fire, like fire to slay. Yea, as the fiery flood ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... disheartened Costa Ricans, who showed them that they might easily strangle the filibuster force by seizing the ill-guarded Rio San Juan. Led by Spencer, they secretly cut a road through the forest on the Costa Rican side, found the forts scarcely watched by a few spiritless sick men, and overwhelmed and scattered them without difficulty. At the same time they surprised and seized all the Transit steamers on the river and lake, so that thenceforward communication with the Atlantic was closed to General Walker, and a large body of New ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... weakness which betrayed the want of real inner strength. How many faces one sees which, in ordinary circumstances, are comfortable, self-asserting, sufficient, and even bold; the lines of which, under difficulties, collapse and become mean, spiritless, and insignificant. There are faces which, in their usual form, seem to bluster with prosperity, but which the loss of a dozen points at whist will reduce to that currish aspect which reminds one of a dog-whip. Mr. Camperdown's countenance, when Lord Fawn and Mr. Eustace left him, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... will, when next year returns, burst out again in bloom, But can it e'er be told who will next year dwell in the inner room? What time the third moon comes, the scented nests have been already built. And on the beams the swallows perch, excessive spiritless and staid; Next year, when the flowers bud, they may, it's true, have ample to feed on: But they know not that when I'm gone beams will be vacant and nests fall! In a whole year, which doth consist of three hundred and sixty days, Winds sharp as swords ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... be going to begin. I could see how much our chance acquaintance had brightened the perspective for her, and how eagerly she had repaired all her illusions; and I thought how much better it would have been if she had been left to the dull and spiritless resignation in which I had first seen her. From that there could no fall, at least, and now she had risen from it only to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... let in warmth from the kitchen. As he undressed in the semi-darkness he could hear his mother talking with a neighbour woman who had dropped in. His mother was crying, and her speech was punctuated with spiritless sniffles. ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... tiresome monotony of life was most irksome at this period. Day after day the incessant rain poured down. The supplies were bad, scanty, and irregular; the hospitals crowded with sick; field-sports impracticable; books there were none; and a dulness and spiritless depression prevailed on every side. Those who were actively engaged around Ciudad Rodrigo had, of course, the excitement and interest which the enterprise involved: but even there the works made slow progress. The breaching ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... his long day of service in the Senate Chamber, sought the private apartments of the Doge, where Marina with her maidens was waiting for him, he found her lying back, wan and spiritless, in one of the great gold and crimson arm-chairs of the state salon; her eyes were closed, her lips were moving in prayer, but her rosary had dropped from her weak clasp. Some of her maidens, as thus doing their lady truest service, were still kneeling with ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the objections that have been urged against our Revision. Of the remainder I cannot but agree with good Bishop Westcott that no criticism of the Revision—and the criticisms were of every form and kind "pedantry, spiritless literality, irritating triviality, destroyed rhythm," and so forth—no criticism ever came upon us by surprise. The Revisers, as the Bishop truly says, heard in the Jerusalem Chamber all the arguments against their conclusions they have heard since; and he goes on to say that no restatement ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... was the spiritless drawl of the mountains, and it had now become so languid that it seemed doubtful if after the enunciation of each word whether vitality enough remained to evolve a successor. "Yes," he repeated with a yawn, as he stuck the ball of yarn upon the needles and gave the whole a toss which landed ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... forlornest of all created animals when it rains. Who can help laughing at sight of a flock of them huddled up under lee of a barn, limp, draggled, spiritless, shifting from one leg to the other, with their silly heads hanging inert to right or left, looking as if they would die for want of a yawn? One sees just such groups of other two-legged creatures in parlors, under similar circumstances. The truth is, a hen's life at best seems ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... and Elizabeth still held her hand. Beatrice, pale and spiritless, went about her duties as usual. Elizabeth never spoke to her in any sense that could awaken her suspicions, and the ghost story was, or appeared to be, pretty well forgotten. But at last an event occurred that caused Elizabeth to take ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... and dismounted near a little rancheria, Butbut by name, in a corner of the hills, the people of which had been assembled for the "Commission." These were the only physically degraded-looking people we saw on the trip; small of stature, feeble-looking and spiritless. The reason was not far to seek: it is probable that they live hungry, through lack of suitable ground for rice-cultivation, and because their neighbors are hostile. Now, I take it on myself to say that it is just this sort of thing that will come to an end if Mr. Worcester is allowed ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... nest would the female leave it, and then she withdrew but a short distance, returning as soon as I began to descend. The devotion of these wild creatures to their young is often marvellous. Mr. Audubon describes this hawk as 'spiritless, inactive, and so deficient in courage that he is often chased by the little sparrow-hawk and kingbird.' Another naturalist dissents emphatically from this view, and regards the broad-winged as the most courageous and spirited of his family, citing an instance ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... same evening. The hill near Kandy, on which the official residences of the Governor and Colonial Secretary are built, is covered in many places with the deserted nests of the white ants (termites), and these are the favourite retreats of the sluggish and spiritless cobra, which watches from their apertures the toads and lizards on which it preys. Here, when I have repeatedly come upon them, their only impulse was concealment; and on one occasion, when a cobra of considerable length could not escape, owing to the bank being nearly precipitous ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... officer ride at the head of a battalion of more wobegone, spiritless wretches than I led back from Beaufort that day. 'When I march down to de landin',' said one of the men afterwards, 'my knapsack full of feathers. Comin' back, he lead!' And the lead, instead of the feathers, rested on the heart ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... claims to set forth, or relations to criticise. A sentence in your letter of —— is the only one I intend to mention. "Having said to Lord Cornwallis, that he may be opposed by about 2000 continentals; and, as Lafayette observes, a body of ill-armed militia," you are pleased to add, "as spiritless as the militia of the southern provinces, and without any service;" which reads as if it was a part of my letter. How far your description is undeserving, I think experience has proved; and that it came from me, no American will believe. But your correspondence ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... law, that when a superior and inferior race come in contact the lower is annihilated. Every step of the white man's progress has been a step of the red man's decay. And now this tribe, once so warlike, is a nation of spiritless beggars, crouching near the white settlements for protection from their old foes, over whom in times ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... gilt the flower-crown that rested on her brow. Clinton stood directly behind her, and his countenance wore a very different expression from what it did the preceding evening. And certainly it was difficult to recognize the pale, drooping, spiritless traveler of the previous night, in the bright, beaming, blushing, shy, wildly-sweet looking fairy ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... not come off scot-free, nobody did; and upon occasion her name is amply vilified by her foes. There are some eight ungenerous lines with a side reference to the 'Conquests she had won' in Buckingham's A Trial of the Poets for the Bays, and a page or two of insipid spiritless rhymes, The Female Laureat, find a place in State Poems. The same collection contains A Satyr on the Modern Translators. 'Odi Imitatores servum pecus,' &c. By Mr. P——r,[54] 1684. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... rapid emotions he interrogates, and doubts, and is caustic; in a word, he thinks he converses while he is at his studies. Sometimes, apparently a complacent listener, we are mortified by detecting the absent man: now he appears humbled and spiritless, ruminating over some failure which probably may be only known to himself; and now haughty and hardy for a triumph he has obtained, which yet remains a secret to the world. No man is so apt to indulge the extremes of the most opposite feelings: he is sometimes insolent, and sometimes ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... horses object to the branding process. Even the spiritless little Indian ponies, accustomed to many ingenious kinds of abuse, rebel at this. A meek-eyed mule, on whom humility rests as an all-covering robe, must be properly roped ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... slumbering tribe, with heavy eyes Glazed, lifeless, dull, downward they drop their tails Inverted; high on their bent backs erect Their pointed bristles stare, or 'mong the tufts Of ranker weeds, each stomach-healing plant Curious they crop, sick, spiritless, forlorn. These inauspicious days, on other cares 380 Employ thy precious hours; the improving friend With open arms embrace, and from his lips Glean science, seasoned with good-natured wit. But if the inclement skies and angry ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... was compelled to include the name among half a dozen others he mentioned to the manager. He ascertained that Mr. Charles Holymead was a customer of the firm, but it was apparent from the manager's spiritless attitude towards Mr. Holymead that the famous K.C. was not a man who ran up a big bill with his hosier, or was very particular about what he wore. The world regarded some of the men of this type famous or distinguished, but in the hosier's mind they were all classed ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... in vain; at length her mother laughingly cried out—"Nonsense, Effie, no one would sooner resent neglect from a lover than yourself. True love, as you call it, would never make such a spiritless, meek creature out of the material ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... seemed to cover it. Yet it was noble and high, though thus beclouded; and the form looked lofty, although the head drooped, and the whole frame was bowed as with an inward grief. The horse seemed to share in his master's dejection, and walked spiritless and slow. I noticed, too, that the white plume on his helmet was discoloured and drooping. "He has fallen in a joust with spears," I said to myself; "yet it becomes not a noble knight to be conquered in spirit because his ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... full to the brim with the morning's milk. At the further end the great churn could be seen revolving, and its slip-slopping heard—the moving power being discernible through the window in the form of a spiritless horse walking in a circle and driven ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... private representation was other than mere compliment. Unfortunately for their dramatic unity, the author is impatient of the restraint which a plot imposes, and the dialogue, in consequence, rambles off hither and thither into passages as foreign to the subject-matter as they are tame and spiritless in expression. There are kings and princes, but they utter very commonplace remarks; and an uncommonly liberal amount of bloodshed and stage-machinery contribute to startling incidents, but they fail to redeem the play from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... description, after the manner of "The Bible in Spain," though being nearer home they had to be more modest in their peculiarities. He establishes Welsh enthusiasm, hospitality and suspiciousness, in a very friendly manner. The poet-innkeeper is an excellent sketch of a mild but by no means spiritless type. He is accompanied by a man with a bulging shoe who drinks ale and continually ejaculates: "The greatest poet in the world"; for example, when Borrow asks: "Then I have the honour to be seated with a bard of Anglesey?" "Tut, tut," says the bard. Borrow agrees with him that ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... foot regiment, which was just leaving for the lake on its usual road-mending detail, stood in spiritless silence to see the artillery pass; their Major, Whiting, as well as the sullen rank and file, seeming still to feel the disgrace of Cherry Valley, where their former colonel lost his silly life, and Major Stacia was taken, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Ye Gods! And she had also implored the brothers of Diogenes to continue their anvil chorus! This took the last stitch of starch from my manly bosom. Spiritless and spineless I bore all things, believed all things—but hoped ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... into the ladies' saloon, as in spiritless quest of somebody; but, after some disappointed glances about him, seats himself upon a sofa with an air ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... went up to the hovering great ships. The blueskins, said the reports were spiritless and cowardly. They permitted themselves to be robbed. They kept out of the way. It had been observed that the population was streaming out of the city, fleeing because they feared the ships' landing-parties. The blueskins had abjectly produced all they'd promised of precious ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... fund is furnished by continual wars and plunder. Nor could you so easily persuade them to cultivate the ground, or to await the return of the seasons and produce of the year, as to provoke the foe and to risk wounds and death: since stupid and spiritless they account it, to acquire by their sweat what they ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... to keep my house. I lead the life you see—a spiritless, womanish life, most men would account it—holding converse with Philosophy, with Plato, with Truth. From my high seat in this vast theatre, I look down on the scene beneath me; a scene calculated to afford much entertainment; calculated also to try a man's resolution to the utmost. For, to give ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... like hinds' feet,' what he is thinking about is that light and easy, springing, elastic gait, that swiftness of advance. What a contrast that is to the way in which most of us get through our day's work! Plod, plod, plod, in a heavy-footed, spiritless grind, like that with which the ploughman toils down the sticky furrows of a field, with a pound of clay at each heel; or like that with which a man goes wearied home from his work at night. The monotony of trivial, constantly recurring ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... talking in this spiritless, resigned way, complaining only on account of Celine; for, said she, it was enough to make one's heart break to see such an intelligent child obliged to tramp the streets after getting on so well at the Communal School. She could feel too that everybody now kept aloof from them on account of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... her, poor child. I got up jaded and depressed, almost ready to faint under the burden of life, and dreading to meet Helen, who is doubly sad on these anniversaries. She came down to breakfast dressed as usual in deep mourning, and looking as spiritless as I felt. The prattle of the children relieved the sombre silence maintained by the rest of us, each of whom acted depressingly on the others. How things do flash into one's mind. These words suddenly came to ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... teacher who is uninteresting; he scolds, worries and punishes his pupils, when he himself is the fitter subject for the lash. He awakens the sense of fear which should lie dormant, while the other faculties of his pupils slumber in spiritless inactivity. ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... standing-point in the invisible world. Besides which, the deep, loving loyalty which he felt for his old leader made the shock intensely painful. It was the first great wrench of his life, the first gap which the angel Death had made in his circle, and he felt numbed, and beaten down, and spiritless. Well, well! I believe it was good for him and for many others in like case, who had to learn by that loss that the soul of man cannot stand or lean upon any human prop, however strong, and wise, and good; but that He upon whom alone it can stand and lean will knock ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... a November morning, and Fleda had been doing some of the last jobs in her flower-beds. She was coming in with spirits as bright as her cheeks, when her aunt's attitude and look, more than usually spiritless, suddenly checked them. Fleda gave her a hopeful kiss and ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... the devotion she had the night before shown for her sister had partially counterbalanced the spitefulness he had observed in her manner when speaking of Ada at the party. Notwithstanding Bridget's precautions, he saw, too, that she was pale and spiritless, but he attributed it to her anxiety for her sister, and this raised her in his estimation. Lucy divined his thoughts, and in her efforts to appear amiable and agreeable, a half-hour passed quickly away. At the end of that time she ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... just finished. All sorts of garish triumphal arches were put up for the Queen, and they have got smoky, and have been looked out of countenance by the sun, and are blistered and patchy, and half up and half down, and are hideous to behold. Spiritless men (evidently drunk for some time in the royal honour) are slowly removing them, and on the whole it is more like the clearing away of "The Frozen Deep" at Tavistock House than anything within your knowledge—with the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... endeavouring to have all my books ready and perfect against the Parliament comes, that upon examination I may be in condition to value myself upon my perfect doing of my own duty. At noon home to dinner, where my wife mighty musty,—[Dull, heavy, spiritless]—but I took no notice of it, but after dinner to the office, and there with Mr. Harper did another good piece of work about my late collection of the accounts of the Navy presented to the Parliament at their last session, which was left unfinished, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... radical in the direction of Democracy; two wholly new Republics added to the list, one being China, the oldest and most populous country in the world, the other little Portugal, long accounted the most spiritless and unprogressive nation in Europe; a shift from autocratic British rule toward democratic home rule through all the vast region of South Africa; a similar shift in much-troubled Ireland; Socialism reaching out ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... Letter is certainly a Man of good Sense; but I am perhaps particular in my Opinion on this Occasion; for I have observed, that under the Notion of Modesty, Men have indulged themselves in a Spiritless Sheepishness, and been for ever lost to themselves, their Families, their Friends, and their Country. When a Man has taken care to pretend to nothing but what he may justly aim at, and can execute ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... you let that bow-legged cross between a bulldog and a flamin' red sunset tromp on you so? It looks to me like you're plumb spiritless." ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... however, and his sister told him at once, that the key, which was in her possession, should not pass into his hands that day. "No," she continued, "nor sorra the ring you'll put on the same girl with my consent. Aren't you a purty young omadhaun, you spiritless creature, to go to marry sich a niddy-nauddhy, when you know that the best fortunes in the glen would jump at you! Yes, faiks! to bring home that mane, useless creature, that hasn't a penny to the good! A purty farmer's wife she'll make, and purtily she'll fill my poor mother's ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... fill'd with various heaps Of old domestic lumber; that huge chair Has seen six monarchs fill the British throne: Here a broad massy table stands, o'erspread With ink and pens, and scrolls replete with rhyme: Chests, stools, old razors, fractured jars, half-full Of muddy Zythum, sour and spiritless: Fragments of verse, hose, sandals, utensils Of various fashion, and of various use, With friendly influence hide the sable ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... from the wet sole of her shoe with beaming satisfaction. Her skirt, wet around the hem, was drawn up to her knees, her coat, well sprinkled, was on the back of a chair, and in her lap her hat lay limp and spiritless. ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... seemed spiritless, and the charming face held a gravity that was quite foreign to it. In the searching winter sunlight he could even discern one or two faint lines about the violet-blue eyes, while the curving mouth, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Killicrankie unseen; but this disturbed us little at a time when we had seven miles to travel in the dark, with a poor beast almost sinking with fatigue, for he had not rested once all day. We went on spiritless, and at a dreary pace. Passed by one house which we were half inclined to go up to and ask for a night's lodging; and soon after, being greeted by a gentle voice from a poor woman, whom, till she spoke, though we were close to her, we had not seen, we stopped, and asked if she could tell ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night. And would have told him half his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... anxious period had the unfortunate city of Berlin yet to pass through. With fear and trembling did the inhabitants await the approach of each morning, and in spiritless despondency they seemed to have lost all ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... him, ye spiritless coofs, ye!" she replied; "gae tell him that Madge Gordon defies him and a' his men, as she despises you, and wad shake the dirt frae her shoon at baith the ane and the other o' ye. Shame fa' ye, ye degenerate, mongrel race! for, if ye had ae drap o' the bluid o' the men in yer veins wha bled wi' ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... 6th Massachusetts foot regiment, which was just leaving for the lake on its usual road-mending detail, stood in spiritless silence to see the artillery pass; their Major, Whiting, as well as the sullen rank and file, seeming still to feel the disgrace of Cherry Valley, where their former colonel lost his silly life, and Major Stacia was taken, and still ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... summoned to breakfast about half an hour after nine. Slowly did the mournful congress meet. Each, lifelessly and spiritless, took our places, with swoln eyes, inquiring, without expecting any tolerable ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... deceptive, sensuous inventions of man when the Church is honored with success. The Holy Spirit then withdraws in measure; frigid formality quickly follows; the services, however beautiful, become artificial and spiritless. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... Stupid, worthless, spiritless, sick, not more than a dozen years old, no delight in the eyes of the young men of her village, she had been consigned by her disappointed parents to the cooking-pot. When Captain Van Horn first encountered her had been when she was the central ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... go yourself," replied Peterkin; "for, to say truth, I'm pretty well knocked up to-day. I don't know how it is—one day one feels made of iron, as if nothing could tire one; and the next, one feels quite weak and spiritless." ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... anaesthetize^, put under; assify^. inure; harden the heart; steel, caseharden, sear. Adj. insensible, unconscious; impassive, impassible; blind to, deaf to, dead to; unsusceptible, insusceptible; unimpressionable^, unimpressible^; passionless, spiritless, heartless, soulless; unfeeling, unmoral. apathetic; leuco-^, phlegmatic; dull, frigid; cold blooded, cold hearted; cold as charity; flat, maudlin, obtuse, inert, supine, sluggish, torpid, torpedinous^, torporific^; sleepy ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to become the wise, sensible, self-helpful, cultured mother, with proper opportunity to exercise maternal function for the highest good of the future child, and without being herself dragged into a spiritless machine, we must have her fortified, not only by a "higher education," but a better ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... now the performance must be going to begin. I could see how much our chance acquaintance had brightened the perspective for her, and how eagerly she had repaired all her illusions; and I thought how much better it would have been if she had been left to the dull and spiritless resignation in which I had first seen her. From that there could no fall, at least, and now she had risen from ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... these two Black-Artists have driven Friedrich Wilhelm nearly mad; and he, in turn, is driving everybody so. He more than suspects Friedrich of an intention to fly; which is horrible to Friedrich Wilhelm: and yet he bullies him occasionally, as a spiritless wretch, for bearing such treatment. "Cannot you renounce the Heir-Apparentship, then; your little Brother is a fine youth. Give it up; and go, unmolested, to the—in fact to the Devil: Cannot you?"—"If your Majesty, against the honor of my Mother, declare that I am not your eldest ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... dejected, thro' the evening dusk, She now went slowly to that small kiosk, Where, pondering alone his impious schemes, MOKANNA waited her—too wrapt in dreams Of the fair-ripening future's rich success, To heed the sorrow, pale and spiritless, That sat upon his victim's downcast brow, Or mark how slow her step, how altered now From the quick, ardent Priestess, whose light bound Came like a spirit's o'er the unechoing ground,— From that wild ZELICA whose every glance Was thrilling fire, whose ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... are the lines which they call flat and spiritless, I wish mine could be flat and spiritless too! And, therefore, to make short work, I shall only beg Mr. Dryden's leave to congratulate him upon his admirable flatness, and dulness, in a rapture of ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... but it was a spiritless affair. Every ear was turned to hear the muffled roar of the voices outside, which every moment increased in power as the mighty ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... and went to the doorway, looking out over Bud's shoulder at the spiritless donkeys trailing in to water. Beyond them the desert baked in its rim of hot, treeless hills. Above them the sky glared a brassy blue with never a could. Over a low ridge came Monte and Pete, walking ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... by the exuberance of his fancy, and the rapidity of his elocution. But take any one of his sentences to pieces, analyze it, strip it of its gaudy clothing and fanciful decorations, and you will be astonished what skeletons of bare, shallow, and spiritless ideas ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... courtship, which he since often reproached himself with having gathered much too green, when, yielding to the inability to resist him, and overborne by desires, he had wreaked his passion on a mere lifeless, spiritless body, dead to all purpose of joy, since taking none, it ought to be supposed incapable of giving any. This is, however, certain; my heart never thoroughly forgave him the manner in which I had fallen to him, although, in point of ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... kindly, for the devotion she had the night before shown for her sister had partially counterbalanced the spitefulness he had observed in her manner when speaking of Ada at the party. Notwithstanding Bridget's precautions, he saw, too, that she was pale and spiritless, but he attributed it to her anxiety for her sister, and this raised her in his estimation. Lucy divined his thoughts, and in her efforts to appear amiable and agreeable, a half-hour passed quickly away. At the end of that time she unfortunately asked, in a very sneering tone, ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... ahead of him, darkness behind, one thick pall hanging in the air on every side. Still for a while he toiled along. Every step was an effort. The ground seemed to sink under him. It was like walking on mattresses. He began to feel tired and nervous and spiritless. A cold sweat broke out on his brow, and at length, when the sound of a river came from somewhere near, though on which side of him he could not tell, he had no choice but to stop. "After all, it is better," he thought. "Strange, how things happen for the best! I must sleep to-night, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... is shadowed by an unequal yoke! Hapless am I, to whose pedigree is bound the lowliness of a peasant! Luckless issue of a king, to whom a common man is equal by law of marriage! Pitiable daughter of a prince, whose comeliness her spiritless father hath made over to base and contemptible embraces! Unhappy child of thy mother, with thy happiness marred by consorting with this bed! thy purity is handled by the impurity of a peasant, thy nobility is bowed down by ignoble commonness, thy high birth is impaired ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... from his long day of service in the Senate Chamber, sought the private apartments of the Doge, where Marina with her maidens was waiting for him, he found her lying back, wan and spiritless, in one of the great gold and crimson arm-chairs of the state salon; her eyes were closed, her lips were moving in prayer, but her rosary had dropped from her weak clasp. Some of her maidens, as thus doing their lady truest service, ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... eleven, one by one they appeared with their followers. The excitement had died down. Ranger Steele was out of the way and Linrock was once more wide open, free and easy. Blome alone seemed sullen and spiritless, unresponsive to his comrades and their admirers. And now, at the time of my arrival, the whole gang, with the exception of old Snecker, were assembled in ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... like comrades after a desperate battle. Not one was there who did not claim a grasp of the boy's hand, and who did not pour out welcomes and greetings, while in the midst, the released captive looked, to say the truth, very spiritless, faded, dusty, nay dirty. The court seemed spinning round with him, and the loud welcomes roared in his ears. He was glad that Dennet took one hand, and Giles the other, declaring that he must be led ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... disgust, was written on every face. The singing was spiritless, and as the people filed out of church and gathered in knots about the door, the old-time head-shaking was resumed, and the comments were ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... reached by the empty and frivolous than by others, is yet inwardly vain; so in Art the quickly attained harmony of the exterior, without inward fulness. And if it is the part of theory and instruction to oppose the spiritless copying of beautiful forms, especially must they oppose the tendency toward an effeminate characterless Art, which gives itself, indeed, higher names, but therewith only seeks to hide its incapacity to ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... speech was the spiritless drawl of the mountains, and it had now become so languid that it seemed doubtful if after the enunciation of each word whether vitality enough remained to evolve a successor. "Yes," he repeated with a yawn, as he stuck the ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... less frequent. When the Kindergarten was first opened, many of the children were quite listless, they did not know how to play, did not care to play. Now they play with pleasure and with vigour, and one can hardly believe they are the listless, spiritless children ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... prodigious stir. Dead France woke suddenly to life, wherever the great news traveled. Whereas before, the spiritless and cowed people hung their heads and slunk away if one mentioned war to them, now they came clamoring to be enlisted under the banner of the Maid of Vaucouleurs, and the roaring of war-songs and the thundering of the ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... camp for the reception of the militia of the neighborhood, as well as those which had been summoned from the interior. It was to Marion that Lincoln chiefly looked for the proper drilling of the militia. In his hands they lost the rude and inefficient character, the inexpert and spiritless manner, which, under ordinary commanders, always distinguish them. Feeling sure of their Captain, he, in turn, rendered them confident of themselves. Speaking of Marion's "PATIENCE with the militia"—a phrase of great importance in this connection—Horry, in his own memoirs, which now lie before ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... my son and brother? Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand. Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dread in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, And would have told him half his Troy was burnt; But Priam found the fire ere he his tongue, And I my Percy's death ere thou report'st it. This thou wouldst say: "Your son did thus and thus; ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... lost all its pride and dignity, and seemed a poor, reeling, spiritless thing. The deck was deserted save for the little group about the hatch who strove with might and main to launch this last poor medium of rescue. The abrupt pitch of the deck made their frantic efforts seem all but hopeless, ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... at Fort Mulgrave on its blind side might have retrieved the day; but a panic seized part of the supports, whom Sidney Smith describes as rushing like swine towards the sea though the enemy was only in a condition to attack "faintly." Hood was furious at this spiritless acceptance of defeat; and in his despatch to Whitehall censured the troops for not making a timely effort;[270] but as David Dundas had all along opined that the place was untenable, he decided to hold a council of war. It registered ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... within their tents, and conducted themselves with most remarkable cowardice. This occasioned general dissatisfaction among the Florentines; for they found themselves involved in an expensive war, from which no advantage could be derived. The magistrates complained of these spiritless proceedings to those who had been appointed commissaries to the expedition; but they replied, that the entire evil was chargeable upon the Duke Galeazzo, who possessing great authority and little experience, was unable to suggest useful measures, and unwilling to take the advice of those who ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... so changed since the day of the picnic that I should scarcely have known her for the same person; it seemed incredible that three days could make such a difference in a bright, healthy, vigorous girl. All her youthful vivacity was gone; she was pale and spiritless with deep rings beneath her eyes and the lids red with crying. After the services were over, I approached her a moment as she stood in her black dress aloof from the others at the edge of the little family burying-ground. ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... anything great. But he had good spirits, and he concealed about his person a heart of gold; and after he left Thetford Grammar School, boys found that somehow the games in the old playground seemed flat and spiritless. They said that things weren't as they used to be ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... monsieur." This voice was, however, broken by fatigue, trembling with emotion. An instant after Fouquet called Gourville, who crossed the gallery amid the universal expectation. At length, he himself reappeared among his guests; but it was no longer the same pale, spiritless countenance they had beheld when he left them; from pale he had become livid; and from spiritless, annihilated. A living specter, he advanced with his arms stretched out, his mouth parched, like a shade that ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... came out into the open air, she found the servant seeking his comfort in the brandy-bottle, and the horses sunk in a spiritless stupor. She admonished him to take care of these, and charged him earnestly both with threats and promises of reward, to think about his employers and watch over their safety. She herself gave to her horse fodder and water, patting him the while, ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... fewer judgments correct *objectively; but they would be so, SUBJECTIVELY, at least; that is, they would contain in themselves the exact relation between the person giving the judgment and the object. We can perceive this by observing how modestly subdued, even spiritless and desponding, is the opinion passed upon the results of untoward events by those who have been eye-witnesses, but especially if they have been parties concerned. This is, according to our view, a criterion ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... was substituted for the handicraft system and workers with common interests were thrown together in the towns, they had every impulsion towards organization. They not only felt the need of sociability after long hours spent in spiritless toil but they were impelled by a new consciousness—the realization that an inevitable and profound change had come over their condition. They had ceased to be journeymen controlling in some measure their activities; they were ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... tribe, with heavy eyes Glazed, lifeless, dull, downward they drop their tails Inverted; high on their bent backs erect Their pointed bristles stare, or 'mong the tufts Of ranker weeds, each stomach-healing plant Curious they crop, sick, spiritless, forlorn. These inauspicious days, on other cares 380 Employ thy precious hours; the improving friend With open arms embrace, and from his lips Glean science, seasoned with good-natured wit. But if the inclement skies and angry Jove Forbid the pleasing ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... in a hesitating, spiritless manner, and the young woman, huddled up on her low chair, continued gazing dreamily at the flame without listening. Laurent ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... is all your work: it is useless for you to defend yourself," said she, tossing away her husband's hat from the arm-chair, and then throwing herself in a spiritless ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... troubles between the followers of Joe Smith and their neighbors. On one occasion, Joe Smith was himself on trial, and the Christian populace of the neighborhood, long incensed against him and his people, broke into the court-room clamoring for his life. The sheriff, a feeble-bodied and spiritless official, showed signs of yielding, and the judge, promptly assuming a power not vested in his office, appointed a stalwart Kentuckian sheriff, and ordered him to summon a posse and clear the room. By these means the defendant's life was saved, ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... this fatalistic conception of life that caste is rooted; but for this belief that all things are predestined, no people would ever have been so spiritless as to submit to the tyranny of the caste system. Perhaps it should also be added that the belief in the transmigration of the soul has also had a not inconsiderable influence. Though you have fared ill in this life, a million rebirths may be yours ere you finally win absorption into Brahma, and ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... boudoir-bred degenerate, If ne'er he knew the nobler state, The birk-clad brae, the roaring spate, The tod's dark lair, Too spiritless to grin ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... society did its best to place the peccant husband above the suffering wife. Some called her a poor spiritless thing, and declared, that, with a little of her sister's spirit, she might have brought to reason any Sir Philip whatsoever, were it the termagant Falconbridge himself. But the greater part of their acquaintance affected candour, and saw faults on both sides; though, in fact, there only existed the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... utterly nerveless and servile and altogether devoid of so much as the desire for efficient action. It was no time to stay with the party of weakness; it was right to strengthen rather than to hamper a man so pacific and spiritless as Mr. Jefferson; to show a readiness to forward even his imperfect expedients; to display a united and indignant, if not quite a hostile front to Great Britain, rather (p. 055) than to exhibit a tame and friendly feeling towards her. It was for these reasons, which had already controlled ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... saw that mischievous boys had been mounting him on his horse, which needed only one slap to make it go a mile; but she was a spiritless woman, and replied ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... 'Thou makest my feet like hinds' feet,' what he is thinking about is that light and easy, springing, elastic gait, that swiftness of advance. What a contrast that is to the way in which most of us get through our day's work! Plod, plod, plod, in a heavy-footed, spiritless grind, like that with which the ploughman toils down the sticky furrows of a field, with a pound of clay at each heel; or like that with which a man goes wearied home from his work at night. The monotony of trivial, constantly recurring doings, the fluctuations in the thermometer of our own ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... policy, tissue ballets, and intimidation at the South, while a gigantic, bold, and matchless system of fraudulent voting was pushed with vigor in the North, there was little show of success for the Republican ticket. The contest on the part of the Republicans was spiritless. It was difficult to raise funds or excite enthusiasm. The Republican candidate had only a local reputation. He had been to Congress, but even those who had known that had forgotten it. A modest, retiring man, Gov. Hayes was not widely ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... however, because a revealing flash of thought told her that it was not alone Lassiter who was thrillingly welcome, but also his fatal weapons. They meant so much. How she had fallen—how broken and spiritless must she be—to have still the same old horror of Lassiter's guns and his name, yet feel somehow a cold, shrinking protection in their law and might ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... the subject is nervous, dropsical, consumptive and derangement of the important functions follows almost invariably. Excessive intellectual activity often produces weak state of the system, and the person thus affected becomes languid, spiritless, and an easy prey to disease. This mental cause and its bodily results may be classified in the following order. Mental Cause: EXCESSIVE MENTAL EXERTION, which produces waste of the brain ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the tiresome monotony of life was most irksome at this period. Day after day the incessant rain poured down. The supplies were bad, scanty, and irregular; the hospitals crowded with sick; field-sports impracticable; books there were none; and a dulness and spiritless depression prevailed on every side. Those who were actively engaged around Ciudad Rodrigo had, of course, the excitement and interest which the enterprise involved: but even there the works made slow progress. The breaching artillery was defective in every way: the rain ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the zest of muscular exertion which had done so much to sweeten his labour in the fields. It was as if a clog fettered his simplest no less than his greatest emotion; and his enjoyment of nature had grown dull and spiritless, like his affection for his family. With his sisters he was aware that a curious constraint had become apparent, and it was no longer possible for him to meet his mother with the gay deference she still exacted. There were times, even, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... gave him notice, and told the cashier to pay me my salary to date. He had long before summed me up as a spiritless drudge. I don't believe he gave another thought to me after I left ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... of heavy cypress, lifted up on pillars, grim, solid, and spiritless, its massive build a strong reminder of days still earlier, when every man had been his own peace officer and the insurrection of the blacks a daily contingency. Its dark, weatherbeaten roof and sides were hoisted up above the jungly plain in a distracted way, like a gigantic ammunition-wagon ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... to it; but in a few moments, he told himself, the driver would get clear of the congestion and then the horse would begin to trot; and while the thought passed through his mind, the driver cracked his whip and the slow, spiritless horse began to move more rapidly ... and as it gathered speed, resolution suddenly came to John out of a sudden vision of a ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... cats themselves were so continually torn and scratched that the wounds never had a chance to heal and became infected until they were a mass of sores. On occasion they died, or, when they had become too abjectly spiritless to attack even a rat, were set to work on the tight- rope with the doped starved rats that were too near dead to run away from them. And, as Miss Merle Merryweather said: the bonehead audiences, tickled to death, applauded ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... plucked it. Some few rain-drops just then fell; the sky, from a bright day, became overcast; and I was a type of our first parents, after eating of that fatal fruit. I felt myself naked and ashamed, stripped of my virtue, spiritless. The downy fruit, whose sight rather than savor had tempted me, dropped from my hand, never to be tasted. All the commentators in the world cannot persuade me but that the Hebrew word, in the second chapter of Genesis, translated apple, should be rendered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... great poets; our leading personage abroad of late seems to be the Honorable "Buffalo Bill" [laughter], and we use our adjectives so recklessly that the polite badinage indulged in toward each other by your New York editors to us seems tame and spiritless. In mental achievement we may not have fully acquired the use of the fork, and are "but in the gristle and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." We stand toward the East somewhat as country to city ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... shake them thus; for if I strive to put the very spirit of beauty into form and give it motion, it is for thy sake alone. O throbbing heart, be quiet! If my labor be thus thwarted, there will come vague and unsatisfied dreams which will leave me spiritless to-morrow." ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... escape war by submission. The chance of revenge was offered as it had never been offered in forty years; yet she did not stir to grasp it. Her enemy gave every provocation, yet she stayed as still as if she were spiritless; and all the while she was the proudest nation on the earth, so proud that she did not need to threaten or boast. Then came the first failure, and she took it as if she had expected nothing better. She had to make war in a manner wholly ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... equinox have their varieties, —sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and casement, hurricane puffs and down-rushing rain-spouts. But this dull, dark autumn day of thaw and rain, when the very clouds seem too spiritless and languid to storm outright or take themselves out of the way of fair weather; wet beneath and above; reminding one of that rayless atmosphere of Dante's Third Circle, where the infernal Priessnitz administers ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... but I thought that in the look of mingled surprise and something like reproach which he gave me there was also a trace of grateful pleasure. But he said, in that tone of spiritless humility these ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... burst 255 Forth like a Polar summer: every word They uttered was a dart, by counter-winds Blown back upon themselves; their reason seemed Confusion-stricken by a higher power Than human understanding, their discourse 260 Maimed, spiritless; and, in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... face without the slightest provocation, and, though the victim of the outrage might be strong as an ox, no remonstrance whatever would be made. It is difficult for us to comprehend How human beings can possibly become so abjectly servile and spiritless as the lower-class Russians. But the terrors of the knout and Siberia are ever present before them. Cheap chromolithographs of Gregorian saints hang on the walls of the saloon, and with them are mingled fancy pictures of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... bedding to seventeen pounds. This had now become insufficient. As they advanced up the Sweetwater, the mountains on either side took on snow. Frequent wading of the streams chilled them. Morning would find them numb, haggard, spiritless, unfitted for ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... among the sands The gembok nations, snuffing up the wind, Drawn by the scent of water—and the bands Of tawny-bearded lions pacing, blind With the sun-dazzle in their midst, opprest With prey, and spiritless for ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... does get so very pale, Miss Isabel," said the housekeeper. "He wasn't white, not like that when he come first to Llanfeare." To this Isabel made no reply; but she, too, had remarked how wan, how pallid, and how spiritless he ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... enraged by it made answer as follows: "Artabanos, thou art my father's brother, and this shall save thee from receiving any recompense such as thy foolish words deserve. Yet I attach to thee this dishonour, seeing that thou art a coward and spiritless, namely that thou do not march with me against Hellas, but remain here together with the women; and I, even without thy help, will accomplish all the things which I said: for I would I might not be descended from Dareios, the son of Hystaspes, the son of Arsames, the son of ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... mistaken. On shipboard, he discovered that there were still depths of misery which he was called upon to plumb. Assigned to a miserable stateroom in an uncomfortable part of the ship, he suffered horribly from seasickness, and for the first half of the voyage lay foodless and spiritless in his bunk, indifferent to his environment or to his fate. His sole friend was his batman, Harry Hobbs, but, of course, he could not confide to Harry the misery of his body, or the deeper misery ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... all the delight of spring passed out of their lives. Already there were five gone out of the tribe, and four nights added three more to the number. Food-seeking became spiritless, none knew who might go next, and all day the women toiled, even the favourite women, gathering litter and sticks for the night fires. And the hunters hunted ill: in the warm spring-time hunger came again as though it was still winter. The tribe might have ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... laggingly into the ladies' saloon, as in spiritless quest of somebody; but, after some disappointed glances about him, seats himself upon a sofa with an air ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... in the high circles which her beauty and agreeable qualities so well fitted her to adorn. Ere long, however, it was surmised that Victorine found herself not quite so happy in her union with the object of her first affection as she had anticipated she should be; she was pale, spiritless, and absent; sometimes started when addressed, as if only accustomed to the accents of authority unmingled with kindness; her cheeks were hollow, her eyes sunken and ray-less, and her smile was the very mockery of mirth; evidently she was not happy, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... Ivan Petrovitch had at the same time become a patriot, at least he called himself a patriot, though he knew Russia little, had not retained a single Russian habit, and expressed himself in Russian rather queerly; in ordinary conversation, his language was spiritless and inanimate and constantly interspersed ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... will be equally hit. There is nothing sorrier, more spiritless or superficial than the large majority of our newspaper literature. If our stage in civilization and scientific attainments were to be gauged by the contents of that set of papers, it would be low indeed. The actions of men and the condition of things are judged ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... music, desultory, however, and spiritless, like everything else about the place that night, greeted us as Mrs. Ashley opened the door leading directly into the large ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... our music, are thy simple friends, Thy simple fare, and all thy plain delights, As dear to thee as once? And have thy joys Lost nothing by comparison with ours? Rude as thou art (for we return'd thee rude And ignorant, except of outward show) I cannot think thee yet so dull of heart And spiritless, as never to regret Sweets tasted here, and left as soon as known. Methinks I see thee straying on the beach, And asking of the surge that bathes thy foot, If ever it has wash'd our distant shore. I see thee weep, and thine are honest tears, A patriot's ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... were a contrast; Griffith looking very handsome and manly, all in a ruddy glow from the frosty air, and Clarence, though equally tall, well-made, and with more refined features, looked pale and effaced, now that his sailor tan was worn off. The one talked as eagerly as he ate, the other was shy, spiritless, and with little appetite; but as he always shrank into himself among strangers, it was the less wonder that he sat in his drooping way behind my sofa, while Griffith kept us all merry with his account ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... political education of the people. The aid of poetical song was called in to enliven and adorn the banquets of the great public assemblies, the Olympic and other games, and scarcely a social or public gathering can be mentioned that would not have appeared to the ardent Grecians cold and spiritless without this accompaniment. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the third; "the last day of the carnival is so dull and spiritless that one can plainly see it is nearing the end. For more than two hours we have been strolling about the boulevards, but have not met with one adventure. Everywhere the stereotyped faces and masks; the same jokes as last year; even the coffee and the cake look stale to me. Arthur, ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... arm-chair, his elbows leaned on the table before him, his hand passed through his ruffled hair, and his gray eyes straying abstractedly away from the neglected page before him. I see him before he sees me. I have time to take in all the dejection of his attitude, all its spiritless idleness. At the slight noise my skirts make, he looks up. I stop ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... and the one who directed the laborers at the abbey had but too faithfully obeyed the orders of the Abbot. Poor Beiffror was brought back, lean, spiritless, and chafed with the harness of the vile cart that he had had to draw so long. He carried his head down, and trod heavily before Charlemagne; but when he heard the voice of Ogier he raised his head, he neighed, his eyes flashed, his former ardor showed itself by the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... creature at the Prodigal's left hand is a wondrous piece of drawing. It is thrown back against him and from the spectator, in order that she may look up into his face—at the moment a dissipated, spiritless face, without even the flush of the wine which dyes her's so rosily—a face at once weak and weary, and yet revealing a possible intensity, indeed, the face of a French woman who "has lived," rather ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... her white wrists, gems of fire sparkled among her long, white fingers, a network of pearls was all her head-dress. Her eyes had strange depths of passion, perfumes breathed from her skin, lustreless like dead ivory. Not thus came the maidens of Israel to wedlock, demure, spotless, spiritless, with shorn hair, priestesses of the ritual of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Holy Sepulchre, and on her way home, having landed at Cyprus, met with brutal outrage at the hands of certain ruffians. Broken-hearted and disconsolate she determined to make her complaint to the king; but she was told that it would be all in vain, because so spiritless and faineant was he that he not only neglected to avenge affronts put upon others, but endured with a reprehensible tameness those which were offered to himself, insomuch that whoso had any ill-humour to vent, took occasion ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... General Miles headed them off near Bear Paw Mountain in Northern Montana, and captured nearly all their horses. Then they were compelled to fight or surrender. They made a four days' fight, but it was a spiritless one, and finally succumbed to the inevitable, ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... you please, and a mug of Meux's Best. How much more gentleman-like to come in the front of the battle, openly avowing one's sentiments, than to lag in on the last day, when the adversary is dejected, spiritless, laid low. Have the first cut at them. By Saturday you'll cut into the mutton. I'd go cheerfully myself, but I am no freeholder (Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium), but I sold it for L50. If they'd accept a copy-holder, we ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... believe in the theatre; he used to laugh at my dreams, so that little by little I became down-hearted and ceased to believe in it too. Then came all the cares of love, the continual anxiety about my little one, so that I soon grew trivial and spiritless, and played my parts without meaning. I never knew what to do with my hands, and I could not walk properly or control my voice. You cannot imagine the state of mind of one who knows as he goes through a play how terribly badly he is acting. I ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... under the spiritless premiership of the Duke of Portland, Canning was allowed free hand. The two years and a half during which he directed the foreign office were marked by a succession of moves which gave a new aspect ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... sitting vapidly about among mosquitoes and beetles, already looking bored to death, and I soon perceived that it was expected of me to provide amusement and entertainment for the crowd. I tried to rally, therefore, and proposed a few games, which went off in a spiritless manner enough, and apparently in consequence I began to be assailed with questions and remarks of ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... have supposed that this could be the same boy whose sobbing aroused Florella's compassion—the poor, trembling little creature, spiritless and unhappy, who had hardly dared to say his name was Florio. But so it was; and when he called so loudly in his cheery voice, Florella quickly came forth from the sweet-brier bush and ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... must, therefore, know the deficiencies. I have seen none of your acquaintance save the Biddles. To-morrow (if I should in the mean time receive a letter from you) I shall add something. You are the two most spiritless young persons I ever knew. Pray muster up energy enough to do something more than lounge on sofas. Go on Sunday to Ludlow's. Ask some of your friends often to dine with you. There is a little boy right opposite ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... one of those gray, heavy days of the early winter—one of the vacant, spiritless days of portent that wait hushed and numb before a coming storm. Not a crow, nor a jay, nor a chickadee had heart enough to cheep. But little Hyla, the tree-frog, was nothing daunted. Since the last week in February, throughout the spring and the noisy summer on till this dreary time, he had ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Wynfreda, but such a life is not for me. My nature is such that I do not like the gloomy songs you sing; nor do I care for green things, except to wear in my hair. And it seems to me that I should be spiritless and a coward if I should like such a life. I am no English girl, to tremble and hide under a mean kirtle. I am a Norse maiden, the kinswoman of warriors. I think I should not show much honor to my father and my brother were I to leave them unavenged and sit down here with you. No, I will ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... all except the pleasurable minutiae of life. Her violet eyes would remain for hours apparently insensate as, thoughtless and reckless, she basked like a cat in the sun. He wondered what the tired, spiritless mother thought of them, and whether in her moments of uttermost cynicism she ever guessed ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Graves could do nothing. He lingered near the mouth of the Chesapeake for a few days still and then sailed away to New York to refit. At the most critical hour of the whole war a British fleet, crippled and spiritless, was hurrying to a protecting port and the fleurs-de-lis waved unchallenged on the American coast. The action of Graves spelled the doom of Cornwallis. The most potent fleet ever gathered in those waters cut him ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... husband-hunting, flirting, dancing, theatres, and concerts. The last three, which Agatha liked, helped to make the contrast between Alton and London tolerable to her, but they had their drawbacks, for good partners at the dances, and good performances at the spiritless opera and concerts, were disappointingly scarce. Flirting she could not endure; she drove men away when they became tender, seeing in them the falsehood of Smilash without his wit. She was considered rude by the younger gentlemen of her circle. They discussed her bad ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... overwhelming, surpassing all imagining. I am sure that I myself would assuredly have gone mad had I not been able to lose myself a little in travel and change of scene. When the heart is tormented by some great pain, the spirit seems too utterly spiritless to do anything but despair. But life teaches us, among other things, some of the panaceas of pain. It teaches us that the mind finds it difficult to realise two great emotions at once, and that, where an emotion helps to take us out of ourselves, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... of the American workingman will cause him to patiently endure all this is to brand him a spiritless slave, deserving not only slavery, but the shackles and the knout. He will not endure it much longer, and when his patience reaches its utmost limit— when he tires of filling his belly with the East wind supplied him in such plentitude by ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... you to blot out, and once more apply to the anvil your ill-formed verses: if you choose rather to defend than correct a fault, he spent not a word more nor fruitless labor, but you alone might be fond of yourself and your own works, without a rival. A good and sensible man will censure spiritless verses, he will condemn the rugged, on the incorrect he will draw across a black stroke with his pen; he will lop off ambitious [and redundant] ornaments; he will make him throw light on the parts that are not perspicuous; he will arraign what is expressed ambiguously; he will mark what should ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
