"Disappointment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Then came the disappointment of his youthful passion,—the lassitude and remorse of premature excess,—the lone friendlessness of his entrance into life, and the ruthless assault upon his first literary efforts,—all links in that chain of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... have labored without accomplishing anything, the signs of his labor are the signs of his disappointment; and we have more sorrow in sympathy with his failure, than pleasure in sympathy ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... past, and I went to my loophole confident that I should find the coast clear, save, perhaps, for a few stragglers, whom I could disregard. The first corps was indeed past, and I could see the last files of the infantry disappearing into the wood; but you can imagine my disappointment when out of the Forest of St. Lambert I saw a second corps emerging, as ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... would ordinarily have been effective, it happened that Foster had finished his work for the day even before he had paid his visit to the closed store of Len Dardus, and thus the boy was doomed to disappointment, although he stayed at his post of observation until dark began ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... not yet. About the middle of January, Stanton became Secretary of War and soon let it be known that he, too, had views on the subject of Indian enlistment. As a matter of fact, he refused to countenance it.[160] The disappointment was the most keen for Commissioner Dole. Since long before the day when Secretary Smith had announced[161] to him that the Department of War was contemplating the employment of four thousand Indians ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... The first disappointment—alas, it was only the first—came on the evening before the appointed day. The Duke received a note from the office to the effect that late arrivals having reported very heavy weather, it was feared that the steamer might be delayed some hours. He at once inquired for ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... advice in a number of matters, having realized how clever she is, while there is no one whose approval he values more highly than hers. Most people are in the habit of portraying the Empress Frederick as a woman embittered and soured by disappointment. Yet if the truth were known, there are few whose existence at the present moment is of a more ideal character, She has lost a noble and devoted husband, but this bereavement must, to a certain extent, have been softened by the genuine sorrow manifested by all, not only ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... at hearing this unexpected resolution that he nearly burst into tears. Unhappily, however, he was soon to experience the disappointment ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of the next day Secundra and the Master must have appeared to themselves to have escaped; and twice they were circumvented. The Master, save that the second time he grew a little pale, displayed no sign of disappointment, apologised for the stupidity with which he had fallen aside, thanked his recapturers as for a service, and rejoined the caravan with all his usual gallantry and cheerfulness of mien and bearing. But it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the letter, she thought she caught a look of disappointment on his face. If she did, ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... conclusion Ned assigned envy as the prime motive on the part of the Captain and his son. They had expected to be assigned the duty of searching the ocean floor for the wreck of the mail steamer. In their great disappointment nothing was more probable than that they had resolved to hamper the efforts of their ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole or ace than if one has never had a chance of winning it. This is no doubt in part or chiefly because the prospect of success irritates the subsequent disappointment. But people have been known to pine and fall sick from holding the next number to the twenty thousand pound prize in the lottery. Now this could only arise from their being so near winning in fancy, from there seeming to be so thin a partition between them and success. When ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... words in his ear. The coroner nods, and returns to his place. Nance Burrill is sworn, and all listen eagerly, expecting to hear her rehearse the story of her life as connected with that of the dead man. But all are doomed to disappointment. She tells the story of the rescue in her cottage, much as did the others; she repeats the words of Clifford Heath, as did the others, and she turns back to her friends, leaving the case against the man who had been ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Keats; but I think the purport of the phrase extends further, and implies that Shelley's hopes generally—those animating conceptions which had inspired him in early youth, and had buoyed him up through many adversities—are now waning in disappointment. This is confirmed by the ensuing statement—that 'a light is past from the revolving year [a phrase repeated from stanza 18], and man and woman.' Next we are told that 'what still is dear Attracts to crush, repels to make thee ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... opinion of the Company's military; rejects Angria's terms; builds the Phram, a floating battery; builds a wall round Bombay; his trouble with the Portuguese; plans a second expedition against Gheriah; orders Brown to engage the Madagascar pirates; plans a fresh attack on Angria; his disappointment at failure of the expedition against Colaba; intrigues against; embarks for England; attacked on his homeward journey by Angria; rescues a ship from the Kempsant's grabs; succeeded by William Phipps; abolishes the public table at Bombay. Boscawen, Admiral, leaves ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... bosom of the Sorceress of Rome. Mr. Reding, of St. Saviour's, the son of a respectable clergyman of the Establishment, deceased, after eating the bread of the Church all his life, has at length avowed himself the subject and slave of an Italian Bishop. Disappointment in the schools is said to have been the determining cause of this infatuated act. It is reported that legal measures are in progress for directing the penalties of the Statute of Praemunire against all the seceders; and a proposition is on ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... cried, "it is enough to make a man curse his uniform to think that such a man as Wilkinson wears it, while Clark is left to rot, to drink himself under the table from disappointment, to plot with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sensation of disappointment as she laid this letter down. The next pleased her no better. 'What have my movements in the City got to do with them?' she ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... hideous beyond conception! As soon as it was day, he arose from his sleepless couch and repaired to the public baths, where, after his ablutions, he gave himself up to melancholy reflections. Mingled with grief for his disappointment was mortification at having been the dupe of what now appeared to him a very shallow artifice, which nothing but his own passionate and unthinking precipitation could have rendered plausible. Nor was he without some twinges of conscience for the sarcasms ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... poor Dupre. But he quite realizes that the fact must never be revealed." He spoke in a dry, matter-of-fact tone. "There will not be room on the pontoon for more than five or six, including ourselves and Dr. Tarnier. Doubtless some of our newspaper friends will be disappointed—if one can speak of disappointment in such a connection—but they will have plenty of opportunities of being present to-morrow and the following nights. I have arranged with the Minister of Marine for the work to be ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... widow probably went back after all," Skinny said without, looking around and with the barest trace of disappointment, now that the danger seemed past, in his voice. "Maybe they got to thinking about that telegram and decided not to come ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... Christopher's disappointment was quite as bad. Mother gave him a book with very nice pictures, particularly of beasts. The chief reason she got it for him was that there was such a very good picture of a toad, and Chris is so fond of toads. For months he made friends with one in the garden. ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... passion. The few hours for rest he spent hewing and hacking with his blunt knife, never speaking, until his watch came again,—working at one figure for months, and, when it was finished, breaking it to pieces perhaps, in a fit of disappointment. A morbid, gloomy man, untaught, unled, left to feed his soul in grossness and crime, and ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... recalled her excited little face, flushed with eagerness as she described the expected spread. Mentally also he conceived a vivid picture of the long waiting on Christmas Eve, the slowly fading hope, the final bitter disappointment. While engaging in furious snowball fights with Ginger, Douglas, and Henry, while annoying peaceful passers-by with well-aimed snow missiles, while bruising himself and most of his family black and blue on long and glassy slides along the garden paths, while purloining his family's clothes to ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... to play and she forgot everything save the music. The solemn judges never spoke, nor made a sign in any way expressive of pleasure or disappointment. Some of them scratched their pens over the paper through it all. Others looked straight at her in a severe manner ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... (with 1900 on the title-page). It was simultaneously published, in very large editions, in all the principal languages of Europe, and it was acted also, but it is impossible to deny that, whether in the study or on the boards, it proved a disappointment. It displayed, especially in its later acts, many obvious signs of the weakness incident on ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... his blue, had not Verinder's conscientiousness been more than Roman. My own belief is that the distinction was never offered, and that Verinder liked his friend all the better for it. At the same time the disappointment of what at that time of life was a serious ambition may account for a trace of acidity which began, before he left college, to flavour his comments on human affairs, and has ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... along where they were sitting a woman whose face bore traces of great beauty, but dimmed and impaired by lines of sorrow and disappointment. Just as she reached the seat where they were sitting, she threw up her hands in sudden anguish, gasped out, "Clarence! my long lost Clarence," and fell at his feet in a ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... that Anty was to die; that she was to pay for the doctor—the wake, and the funeral, and that she would have a hardship and grievance to boast of, and a subject of self-commendation to enlarge on, which would have lasted her till her death; and she consequently felt something like disappointment at being ordered to administer to Anty a mutton chop and a glass of sherry every day at one o'clock. Not that the widow was less assiduous, or less attentive to Anty's wants now that she was convalescent; but she ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... come in time, he continues, "it would be the last disappointment to her Majesty's colonies, who have so heartily complied with her royal order, and would render them much more miserable than if such a thing had never been undertaken." Time passed, and no ships appeared. Vetch wrote again: "I shall only presume to acquaint ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... all mutton, that furnished by South-Down sheep is the most highly esteemed; it is also the dearest, on account of its scarcity, and the great demand of it. Therefore, if the housekeeper is told by the butcher that he has not any in his shop, it should not occasion disappointment to the purchaser. The London and other markets are chiefly supplied with sheep called half-breeds, which are a cross between the Down and Lincoln or Leicester. These half-breeds make a greater weight of mutton than the true South-Downs, and, for this very ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... object to any works on the list, he should be prepared to explain the quality and character of those called in question, and why the library, in his judgment, should possess them. If the list is largely cut down, and he considers himself hardly used, he should meet the disappointment with entire good humor, and try again when the members of the committee are in better mood, or ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... literature to bring nothing up for debate is the same thing as to lose all its significance. The people that produce such a literature may believe as firmly as they please that the salvation of the world will come from it, but their expectations will be doomed to disappointment; such a people can no more influence the development of civilization in the direction of progress than did the fly who thought he was urging the carriage onward by now and then giving the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... away, you thieving scoundrel!" cried Archy, who was half mad with disappointment. "You come here professing to be civil, and yet you ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... transfigured in our sight. But of these Twelve Christ knew one to be a devil—like that angel, fallen from highest height to lowest depth. The apostasy of Judas had already commenced in his heart. And the greater the popular expectancy and disappointment had been, the greater the reaction and the enmity that followed. The hour of decision was past, and the hand on the dial pointed to the hour of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the signature of the deceased and that of the two witnesses. In vain Owen looked for the handsome bequest to "the faithful secretary." This was a bitter disappointment, and he considered for a moment the advisability of destroying the will. This would make valid one of the earlier wills in which he knew ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... Miniato had not betrayed the slightest surprise or disappointment. He quietly lighted a cigarette and smiled good-humouredly ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... glen, overlooking the manor-house. The shutters were shut, and only one chimney smoked. The mere aspect of the place was enough to inform him that Mrs. Charmond had gone away and that nobody else was staying there. Fitzpiers felt a vague disappointment that the young lady was not Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard so much; and without pausing longer to gaze at a carcass from which the spirit had flown, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... regenerate persons called Arshtishena. Residing in his preceptor's house, he attended to his lessons every day. Although, O king, he resided long in the abode of his preceptor, he could not still acquire the mastery of any branch of knowledge or of the Vedas, O monarch! In great disappointment, O king, the great ascetic performed very austere penances. By his penances he then acquired the mastery of the Vedas, to which there is nothing superior. Acquiring great learning and a mastery of the Vedas, that foremost of Rishis became crowned with success in that tirtha. He then ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... much, is so perfectly happy, and given up to heavenly meditations, that she cannot be persuaded to see an earthly relative. At the same time the Mother Abbess dismisses the relatives with a very sorrowful countenance, and regrets very much, in appearance, their disappointment. But the unhappy nun is never informed that her friends or relatives have called to inquire after her welfare. How amazing, that government should allow such prisons in the name ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... as it were from the flank, to capture unawares any stray guest. But aside from a chaffinch or so and a brown and white spotted calf tied to a tree, the grove was empty—blatantly empty. There was a shade of disappointment in Constance's glance. One naturally does not like to waste one's best embroidered ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... exacerbating scene of the funeral feast, in order that she might dwell tenderly upon his gestures, his glances, his remarks, the inflections of his voice. The eyes of her soul were ever beholding his form. Even at breakfast, after the disappointment of the post, she would indulge in ridiculous hopes that he might be abroad very early and would look in, and not until bedtime did she cease to listen for his ring at the front door. No chance of a meeting was too remote for her wild fancy. But she dared not breathe his name, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... Fields, she saw some naughty Boys, who had taken a Pidgeon, and tied a String to its Leg, in order to let it fly, and draw it back again when they pleased; and by this Means they tortured the poor Animal with the Hopes of Liberty and repeated Disappointment. This Pidgeon she also bought, and taught him how to spell and read, though not to talk, and he performed all those extraordinary Things which are recorded of the famous Bird, that was some Time since advertised in the Haymarket, and visited by most of the great People ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... and looked the picture of disappointment. 'I do not believe you,' I said slowly. 'You play a game with me. I have not come six thousand miles to be made a ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Queen," said Burleigh; "and soar far above a weakness which no Englishman will ever believe his Elizabeth could have entertained, unless the violence of her disappointment carries a ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the police station, which was a low room, warmed by a stove, with a glazed and grated door opening on the street, and guarded by a detachment, Javert opened the door, entered with Fantine, and shut the door behind him, to the great disappointment of the curious, who raised themselves on tiptoe, and craned their necks in front of the thick glass of the station-house, in their effort to see. Curiosity is a sort of gluttony. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... is a business partner or a rival in trade he desires dogged; and he is never so miserable as when the reports of the agency show his suspicions, whatever they may have been, to be groundless. It is but just, however, to the sagacity of the detectives to remark that he is seldom subjected to such disappointment. Whatever other foolishness they may commit, these adroit operators never kill the goose that lays their golden eggs. Beside this animated monument of distrust is a portly gentleman, his bearing in every way suggestive of plethoric ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... men of peace and purity, who compose the mass of abolitionists, would be more likely than the Clays and Wises and the great body of the followers of these Congressional leaders to betake themselves from a disappointment at "the ballot-box" to "the more potent powers of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... souls. Apart from its intrinsic merit as a work of art, "Alastor" has great autobiographical value. Mrs. Shelley affirms that it was written under the expectation of speedy death, and under the sense of disappointment, consequent upon the misfortunes of his early life. This accounts for the somewhat unhealthy vein of sentiment which threads the wilderness of its sublime descriptions. All that Shelley had observed of natural beauty—in Wales, at Lynton, in Switzerland, upon the eddies of the Reuss, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... endure unimaginable torments before succumbing; and the sight of their agonies would be one long-drawn-out rapture to those who were privileged to witness them. Oh yes; they must be guarded well, for their escape now would mean lifelong disappointment to the whole village and ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the streets, is delightful to the traveller; but if he be more of an archaeologist than an artist, and seeks to reproduce before his mind's eye something of the Constantinople of the Caesars rather than the Stamboul of the Sultans, he will experience a bitter disappointment in finding how little of ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... writing verse, because verse is the last thing that the public want to read. The young writer has usually read a great deal of verse, however, and most of it bad. His favourite authors are the bright lyrists who sing of broken hearts, wasted lives, early deaths, disappointment, gloom. Without having even had an unlucky flirtation, or without knowing what it is to lose a favourite cat, the early author pours forth laments, just like the laments he has been reading. He has too a favourite manner, the old consumptive manner, about ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... for one and yet one came not. Other letters came—the great leather bag was tossed out on the station-house steps, and thence borne off to the post-office, where five minutes later Reuben Taylor came to wait for his share of the contents. But when with the assurance which has never yet known disappointment, Reuben applied at the window, Mintie gave ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... pronounced equal), that they all should have an equal chance of raising themselves by their talents and perseverance; but, when so many competitors are permitted to enter the field, few can arrive at the goal, and the mass are doomed to disappointment. However fair, therefore, it may be to admit all to the competition, certain it is that the competition cannot add to the happiness of a people, when we consider the feelings of bitterness and ill-will naturally ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Scriptures, it was certainly not an over-enthusiastic prediction that the Egyptian monuments when fully investigated would divulge important references to Joseph, to Moses, and to the all-important incidents of the Exodus; but half a century of expectant attention in this direction has led only to disappointment. It would be rash, considering the buried treasures that may yet await the future explorer, to assert that such records as those in question can never come to light. But, considering the fulness of the contemporary Egyptian records of the XIXth dynasty that are already known, it becomes increasingly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... his own disadvantage in age; so generous in trusting her, and in hoping against hope; so considerate in anticipating all her wishes and whims, that it might have moved even Flora to pity. But her great disappointment had strangely altered and imbittered her character. She was quite merciless now, and never seemed really amused unless she was doing harm to ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... friends of the drama beheld a more explicit precursor of the coming burlesque at one of the minor theatres last summer. The great actress whom they had come to see on another scene was ill, and in their disappointment they embraced the hope of entertainment offered them at the smaller playhouse. The drama itself was neither here nor there as to intent, but the public appetite or the manager's conception of it—for I am by no means sure that ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... spread before us the marriage certificate of Lockwood Lee Prynne and Maria Teresa—alas, the shape of a fatally hot coal had burned through the rest of the name! We skipped eagerly to the next place of handwriting, the officiating clergyman and the parish—for the form was English—but disappointment waited for us there, too, for the same coal had gone through two thicknesses of the folded paper, and only the date, Jan. 26, 186-, broke the expanse of print. The initials of one witness "H.L." and the Christian name "Bertha," of another, had ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... did not go to Harpersfield. When the time drew near for me to go, Father found himself too poor, or the expense looked too big—none of the other boys had had such privileges, and why should I? So I swallowed my disappointment and attended the home district school for another winter. Yet I am not sure but I went to Harpersfield after all. The desire, the yearning to go, the effort to make myself worthy to go, the mental awakening, and the high dreams, were the main matter. I doubt if the reality would ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... drew up with a crash in front of The Nugget, and the passengers, outside and in, but none looking teacherish, hurried into the saloon. The boys scarcely knew whether to swear from disappointment or gratification, when a start from Mose drew their attention again to the stage. On the top step appeared a small shoe, above which was visible a small section of stocking far whiter and smaller than is usual in the mines. In an instant a similar ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... knew why she hadn't. It was easy to read between the lines the tale of the years of disappointment and anxiety. Such stories are not easy to tell, and he respected the widow more than ever for the simple way in which she ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... misled by disappointment caused by neglect in keeping the poisoned arrows, or by not knowing how to use them, or by trying inferior poison. If the arrows are not kept dry the poison loses its strength, and in wet or damp weather it turns mouldy and becomes quite ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... calm, moderate statement of the State's general financial and political situation with growing sense of mingled disappointment and relief. His fighting spirit and his knowledge of conditions, as they had been revealed to him, made him hope that at last an honest man proposed to clean the temple—entering upon his task with bared arms and a clarion call. This mild old ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... been raised high by the glowing accounts of Puget Sound. But a feeling of deep disappointment fell upon us when we could see in the foreground only bare, dismal mud flats, and beyond these a channel scarcely twice as wide as that of the great river we had left, bounded on either side by high, heavily timbered land. We wished ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... on too fast," she interposed sagely, "because that only means more disappointment. You haven't heard yet about my father. Listen whilst ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... silently towards the door, still gazing at Selene with passionate ardor; then he quitted the room groaning with shame and disappointment, though still with a look of radiant pride as though he had achieved some great deed. In the garden he was met by Hannah, who immediately hastened with accelerated steps to her own house where she found Mary sobbing violently ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was in the meanwhile increased by domestic troubles. In 1290 he suffered a bitter disappointment by the death of a Scottish princess who was affianced to his son, the Prince of Wales, and thus a much-cherished plan for establishing friendly relations between the two countries was frustrated. But this disappointment was quickly cast in the shade by the more severe affliction he suffered in ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Whoever has been unfortunate enough to miss a fine fat haunch either of venison or mutton, which, smoking on the board, even Dr. Kitchiner would have pronounced fit for an emperor, cannot but enter deeply and feelingly into the disappointment of that guest who, arriving, through some misdate of the invitation card, on the day subsequent to the feast, finds but, horribile dictu, cold lean ham, cold pea-soup, cold potatoes, and finally, cold mutton. Goldsmith's idea certainly was that Burke was never ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... this in his frivolous way, the way seemed, for that once, a conscious polishing of but an ugly surface. He was silent for a moment; and then proceeded with a more self-possessed air, though with traces of vexation and disappointment that ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... sorrows and happinesses. This trial strengthened you along certain lines; that one changed your point of view and made you see things with a broader sweep of vision. This grief caused you to feel the pain of others; that disappointment spurred you on to new endeavors. And each and every one of them left a permanent mark upon your personality—upon your character. All men are what they are by reason of what they have lived through and out. And though these ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the chaplain, trying hard to conceal his disappointment. 'No doubt the man's real ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... said, are discouraging. What opinion, then, ought we to entertain of the wisdom of labours, which had been undertaken without a full view of obvious causes threatening their ultimate failure? It would little alleviate the mortification of disappointment, to exclaim, as is often done on such occasions, "Who could have thought it?" But the most enlightened judges of such undertakings, will not only advert to the probable occurrence of such mischief, but also be well aware of the existence of other ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... with the utmost enthusiasm, modulating his sonorous voice to suit the different characters, and even contriving for a time to impart by his expressive reading a fictitious interest to the dull, tedious tragedy. Gradually, however, the feeling of disappointment and boredom among his audience communicated itself to him. He lost confidence; his beautiful reading began to decline in pathos and interest; and when at last he finished, and, glancing at the downcast faces round him, found ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... during the next few minutes did the waiting little bride on the doorstep watch with palpitating yearning a shadowy form appear, approach—and pass by. At the third heart-breaking disappointment, Billy wrung ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... writer, he leaves its present consideration with feelings of affectionate regret; while he would fain remain to study again and again the valuable lessons that it teaches, and to watch with unabated interest the fortunes of its future. May the latter bring to our noble friend and artist as little of disappointment as may be! and when the end shall finally come, as come it must some day to all, may he have, as a crowning and sweet reward for the manly, the heroic past, a sleep like that of him who "lies down to ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... pecuniary loss which the destruction of Iranistan would involve, as at the possibility that some of my family or visitors would be killed or seriously injured in attempting to save something from the fire. Then I thought of the sore disappointment this calamity would cause to the young couple, as well as to those who were invited to the wedding. I saw that Mr. ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... sentenced herself to tears and disappointment, he told himself sternly. She must have known he was in earnest about not coming. She had no right to think she could kid him out of something big and vital to his honor. She ought to know him by ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... of disappointment somewhat irritating. Instead of being glad at having met a friend, he was sorry ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... “Thank God I’m not a clam! I’ve seen the world and paid for it. I don’t want anything from you. You undoubtedly share my grandfather’s idea of me that I’m a wild man who can’t sit still or lead an orderly, decent life; but I’m going to give you a terrible disappointment. What’s the ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... would have ended my life, when a woman spectator, who stood near nursing a child, threw her arms around him; this, joined to my indifference, for I continued my jeers and taunts, changed his purpose, to my disappointment, for I preferred death to going back ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... never know if you live to be a thousand years old what a fearful disappointment it was when Doctor Clark told me the awful news. Where did you get it? Is it very bad? And do you have to gargle peroxide of hydrogen? Amanda says she just lived on it when her throat was bad. Are you honestly as red as ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... to my stateroom. Conseil returned to his cabin; but the Canadian, looking rather worried, followed me. Our quick trip through the Mediterranean hadn't allowed him to put his plans into execution, and he could barely conceal his disappointment. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... vizier's ambition to have his son allied to the sultan, the firm resolution he saw he had formed to be separated from the princess made him not think it proper to propose to him to have patience for a few days, to see if this disappointment would not have an end; but he left him to give an account of what he had related to him, and without waiting till the sultan himself, whom he found disposed to it, spoke of setting aside the marriage, he begged of him to give his son leave to retire from the palace, alleging ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... a hopeless but nervy eye upon Del Delano's face. In it he read disgust, admiration, envy, indifference, approval, disappointment, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... in his pocket; nobody but himself to look to; and—he was a younger man. In the matter of years he was not so very much older now; but Lionel Verner, since his marriage, had bought some experience in human disappointment, and nothing ages a man's inward ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... imposed. But I shall not give ear to such discouraging argument. It is little likely that my search will ever be renewed, and for me the Galaesus—"dulce Galaesi flumen"—is the stream I found and tracked, whose waters I heard mingle with the Little Sea. The memory has no sense of disappointment. Those reeds which rustle about the hidden source seem to me fit shelter of a Naiad; I am glad I could not see the water bubbling in its spring, for there remains a mystery. Whilst I live, the Galaesus purls and glistens in the light of ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... novels would have been stronger and more interesting; but I kept a watch over myself, which I felt I knew I needed, for I was both imaginative and affectionate. I did not want to give my heart away. I did not desire a love disappointment, even for the sake of experience. I was 30 years old before the dark veil of religious despondency was completely lifted from my soul, and by that time I felt myself booked for a single life. People married young if they married at all in those days. The single aunts put ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... hotel I found my debts treble what I had expected. I was in consequence compelled to leave the two carriages as a guarantee for part of the debt, which I had not in my power to discharge. I had hoped such success at Vienna as would enable me to state all to you; but disappointment blasted every hope, and despair, on my return to Paris, began to generate the fatal resolution which, at the moment you read this, will have matured itself to consummation. I feel that my reputation is blasted; ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... studied intensively by Itard, the French philosopher and otologist who cherished high hopes of his mental and social development. After five years spent in a patient and varied but futile attempt at education, he confessed his bitter disappointment. "Since my pains are lost and efforts fruitless, take yourself back to your forest and primitive tastes; or if your new wants make you dependent on society, suffer the penalty of being useless, and go to Bicetre, there to ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... by the repeated fruitless attacks on the fortifications, the three unsuccessful bombardments, the divided counsels, the disappointment and death of Lord Raglan, the complaints of Canrobert of the want of a single commanding intellect, and the relinquishment of his own position to Pelissier, itself a confession of failure. If there ever was a campaign begun with defeat and disaster, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... meets "won't"— What is it that halts you on the brink of tragedy, And distracts you from the temptation to answer back? It is the absorbing anxiety of watching the coffee boil! What is it that warms his veins and soothes your nerves, And turns all the world suddenly from a dismal gray vale of disappointment to a bright rosy garden of hope— And starts another day gliding smoothly along like a new motor car? What is it that will do more to transform a man from a fiend into an angel than baptism in the River Jordan? It is the first cup of coffee in ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... not, however, as if this was all that Mark Pattison did. He was a great intellectual factor at Oxford, especially in early days; in later days he was a venerable and splendid monument. But as tutor of his college, before his great disappointment—his failure to be elected to the Rectorship—he evidently lived a highly practical and useful life. There is something disarming about the naive way in which he records that he became aware that he was the ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in the afternoon they had all covered the ground so well that the four were able to make their rendezvous on the big Fence divide, south of Crawling Stone Valley. They then found, to their disappointment, that, widely separated as they had been, both parties were following trails they believed to be good. They shot a steer, tagged it, ate dinner and supper in one, and separated under Whispering Smith's counsel that both the trails be followed into the next morning—in ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... therefore, early became an important figure on the plantation and found his function as the interpreter of the supernatural, the comforter of the sorrowing, and as the one who expressed, rudely but picturesquely, the longing and disappointment and resentment of a stolen people. From such beginnings arose and spread with marvelous rapidity the Negro church, the first distinctively Negro American social institution. It was not at first by any means a Christian ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... from his opera of "Oberon," and use all in providing for his wife and children. "The following day Weber was somewhat better. He was still supported by the hopes of his benefit; he still found sufficient strength to write to his wife in such wise as to place in its least painful light his cruel disappointment. As yet, in spite of his bodily weakness, his handwriting had remained distinct and clear. In this letter, it displays the utter ruin of his strength. 'Writing is somewhat painful to me,' runs one phrase of it; 'my hands tremble so.' Fuerstenau saw only too clearly the ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... . . . yes, very lucky.' Her eyes fell, and her look was expressive of her deep disappointment. A dance—yes, but a dinner and a dance! Then she continued: 'Ah, the Castle treats us all very badly. I am glad sometimes when I hear the Land League abusing it. We come up here, and spend all our money on dresses, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... these emotions show defective knowledge and an absence of power in the mind; for the same reason confidence, despair, joy, and disappointment are signs of a want of mental power. For although confidence and joy are pleasurable emotions, they, nevertheless imply a preceding, pain, namely, hope and fear. Wherefore the more we endeavour ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... of keen disappointment that Billy had fallen again into the old dialect that she had all but eradicated during those days ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... off his feet by the violence of the shock, uttered a cry of grief and disappointment, of which I soon under-. stood the cause, when plunging my hands into the spouting torrent, I withdrew them in haste, for ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... of their loves was unbroken by any stain or disappointment, and yet always shadowed with the deepest anxiety for the future. Though treated with the utmost indulgence, she was legally a slave, and so was the boy of whom she became the mother. Cojo, her uncle, was a captain among the rebels against whom her ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Napoleon III in his alliance with Italy against Austria, but he did much to advance its prospects. He even promised the complete liberation of Italy, but this promise he failed to fulfil, to the great disappointment of Italian statesmen. Napoleon wished to see an Italian confederation, with the Pope at its head, but this plan ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... was reasonably proud of him. The lad had been taken out of his surroundings and thoroughly educated for the priesthood in Rome, but by the time he had attained to the age necessary for ordination, his artistic gifts had developed to such an extent that in spite of his father's disappointment, even the old Prince—the brother of Sister Maria Addolorata—advised Angelo Reanda to give up the Church, and to ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... against the pleasures of the table. Solomon kept a thousand concubines, and owned in despair that all was vanity. The man whose happiness is constituted by the society of one amiable woman would find some difficulty in sympathizing with the disappointment of this ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to bring him safe out of the Chateau of Fleurier, it would be necessary for me to return to Maury for my company. The attempt would be a hazardous one, and I might fail, and I did not wish to raise hopes in her for disappointment. She should not learn of my intention until after its fulfillment. In the meantime, less because I thought she would really undergo danger by remaining at Fleurier, than because I was loth to lose the new-found ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... we found that Emperor William wuzn't to home. I spoze it will be a great disappointment to him when he hears on't that Josiah and I had really been there right to his home and he shouldn't be there. I well know how bad I should feel if Potentates come to Jonesville and I happened to be off on a tower. And then I honored Emperor William for his kind heart and kind ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... with no "luck" for some time, and the faces of the harpooners grew daily longer, the great heat of those sultry waters trying all tempers sorely. But Captain Slocum knew his business, and his scowling, impassive face showed no signs of disappointment, or indeed any other emotion, as day by day we crept farther north. At last we sighted the stupendous peak of Comoro mountain, which towers to nearly nine thousand feet from the little island which gives its name to the Comoro group of four. On that same day a ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... easy enough to be a good citizen and a consistent Christian. It is poverty and contempt, suffering and disappointment that try men's souls—that proclaim of what metal they are made. Faith, Hope and Charity are man's triune transcendent—"and the greatest of these is Charity." A pharisee is either a pious fraud or a hopeless fool—he's either short on ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... then put his tired beast to a shambling trot with Isabel silent again with weariness and disappointment behind him. They passed along outside the low wall, turned the corner of the house and drew up at the odd little doorway in the angle at the back of the house. The servants had drawn up behind them, and now pressed up to ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson |
