"Melancholy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... course of things would be universally seen and acknowledged to be the wickedest of men.' To man himself, moreover, 'the most criminal actions are not more unnatural than most of the virtues.' We need not multiply from poets and divines, from moralists and sages, these grim pictures. The sombre melancholy, the savage moral indignation, the passionate intellectual scorn, with which life and the universe have filled strong souls, some with one emotion and some with another, were all to Emerson in his habitual thinking unintelligible ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity. If a man should consider the nicety of the passage of a piece of bread down his throat, he would starve. At Education-Farm, the noblest theory of life sat on the noblest figures of young men and maidens, quite powerless and melancholy. It would not rake or pitch a ton of hay; it would not rub down a horse; and the men and maidens it left pale and hungry. A political orator wittily compared our party promises to western roads, which opened stately ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... dominion over thee, who art baptized into him. Satan is defied and dared to try all his powers and terrors on Christ; for we are assured, "Death no more hath dominion over him." Death may awaken anger, malice, melancholy, fear and terror in our poor, weak flesh, but it hath no more dominion over Christ. On the contrary, death must submit to the dominion of Christ, in his own person and in us. We have died unto sin; that is, we have been redeemed from the sting and power, the control, of death. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... in the world should be fairly run away with by a set of reckless, loose young spendthrifts, was indeed a melancholy and unprecedented fact; for the body of fellows of St. Ambrose was as distinguished for learning, morality and respectability as any in the University. The foundation was not, indeed, actually an open one. Oriel at that time alone enjoyed this distinction; ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... their homes, a melancholy train, To traverse climes beyond the western main. 342 GOLDSMITH: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... all.... They are simply the Romish army for the earthly sovereignty of the world in the future, with the Pontiff of Rome for Emperor ... that's their ideal, but there's no sort of mystery or lofty melancholy about it.... It's simple lust of power, of filthy earthly gain, of domination—something like a universal serfdom with them as masters—that's all they stand for. They don't even believe in God perhaps. Your suffering Inquisitor is a ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... were talking to yourself. Don't be too melancholy. You'll soon learn the Bible verses and I'll relieve you ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... everything just as he is about to realize his aim. Is the repentance of the usurping Duke merely a ruse of Shakespeare's to bring the play to a happy ending? In Lodge's story he does not repent, but is proceeded against by his brother. Contrast Jaques and Touchstone. Is Jaques's melancholy affected? What is the main difference between Rosalind and Celia? Which is the more the friend of the other? (For valuable suggestions on these points see 'Characters in "As You Like It,"' Poet-lore, Vol. IV. pp. 31 and 81, Jan. ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... in anything else was I interested in the adventures and melancholy fate of La Salle; and I could not help wondering that American writers have done so little to illustrate the life of the brave chevalier—surely the most picturesque passage in their early history— the story and ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... account of the melancholy catastrophe of three men being poisoned, after excruciating sufferings, in consequence of eating food cooked in an unclean copper vessel, on board the Cyclops frigate; and, besides these, thirty-three men became ill from the ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... from the edges of the level, tree-clad, or grassy, alluvial meadows. In front of the ranch-house veranda was a row of cottonwood trees with gray-green leaves which quivered all day long if there was a breath of air. From these trees came the far-away, melancholy cooing of mourning doves, and little owls perched in them and called tremulously at night. In the long summer afternoons we would sometimes sit on the piazza, when there was no work to be done, for an hour or two at a time, watching the cattle on the sand-bars, and the sharply channeled and strangely ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... remarked, 'ain't so strengthening as the port what gentry has.' Tony added hot water to his ginger-wine, lay back in the courting chair, plumped his feet on Mrs Widger's lap, and sang some more of those sea songs that have such melancholy windy tunes and yet most curiously stimulate one to action. I think it must be because they echo that particular sub-emotional desperation which causes men to do their reckless best—the desperation that the ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... knee. The old lady is the mother of four comely daughters and nine stalwart sons, the eldest of whom is now a grizzled man. Besides our host, four of the brothers are here to-night; the handsome melancholy Georg, who is so gentle in his speech; Simeon, with his diplomatic face; Florian, the student of medicine; and my friend, colossal-breasted Christian. Palmy came a little later, worried with many cares, but ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... author of "The Anatomy of Melancholie," an amusing and instructive medley of quotations and classical anecdotes, showing a profound erudition. In this all the causes and effects of melancholy are set forth with varied illustrations. His nom de plume was Democritus, Jr., and he is an advocate of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... arrival of some member of the fair sex, it hardly seemed the place for a love-tryst, this melancholy Zoological Gardens, misty, with the leaves falling, gradually baring the trees at the approach ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... inhabitant of Creeper Cottage who slept that night was Annalise. Priscilla spent it walking up and down her bedroom, and Fritzing on the other side of the wall spent it walking up and down his. They could hear each other doing it; it was a melancholy sound. Once Priscilla was seized with laughter—a not very genial mirth, but still laughter—and had to fling herself on her bed and bury her face in the pillows lest Fritzing should hear so blood-curdling a noise. It was when their steps had ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... was in reality a changed man. Once among the most high-spirited and joyous of the crew, he became melancholy and silent, though he went through his duty as usual. About a month afterwards, as Adair was going forward, he saw a whitehaired man sitting on the coamings ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... These melancholy thoughts were interrupted by a step on the stairs. 'Hallo!' cried Geoffrey, 'who would have thought of their coming home just now?' and he was going to lift me down from my nail; but when the door opened, the housemaid came in alone, and he changed ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... felt—as she often had done before on similar occasions—a pang of painful regret, and even of jealousy, towards those much-loved relatives whom her husband still so deeply regretted. She laid her hand on his, and raising her large expressive eyes to his now melancholy countenance, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... seclusion was explained by the death of one of her ladies whom she loved, the Countess of Nottingham: but soon it could not be concealed that the Queen herself was seized with a dangerous illness: sleep and appetite began to fail her: she showed a deep melancholy. 'No,' she replied to one of the kinsmen of her mother's house, Robert Cary, who at that moment had come back to court and addressed friendly words to her about her health, 'No Robin, well I am not, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... in all lands a stew full of fish, as it were, for gentlemen from court, and Junker Henning von Beust had no sooner come in than he began to angle; and whereas Sir Franz's bait was melancholy and mourning, the Junker strove to win hearts by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... been a frail, delicate boy. As he was riding one evening, a strange, wild-looking being sprang out of the darkness and seized the bridle of his horse, crying, "Fly, fly! you are betrayed." The astonished youth after the shock, became melancholy; then was suddenly seized with a fit of frenzy, in which he killed four of his pages. A mad king was on the throne of France, the worst woman in Europe regent, and three uncles waiting like vultures around a dying ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... the glass of adolescence and the mold of Indiana. The hero of his earliest novel, Harkless in The Gentleman from Indiana, drifts through that narrative with a melancholy stride because he has been seven long years out of college and has not yet set the prairie on fire. But Mr. Tarkington, at the time of writing distant from Princeton by about the same number of years and also not yet famous, could not put up with failure in a hero. ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... with the faithful few Who wait their Chief, a melancholy crew: But some remained reluctant on the deck Of that proud vessel—now a moral wreck— And viewed their Captain's fate with piteous eyes; While others scoffed his augured miseries, 130 Sneered at the prospect of his pigmy sail, And the slight bark so laden and so ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... bellow, blackens Visse Time, du er kommen. heaven! Hvad de gav, de tog tilbage— Comes the hour of melancholy; Evig bortsvandt Helligdommen. Back is taken what was given,— Vanished is ...
— The Gold Horns • Adam Gottlob Oehlenschlager
... The deep melancholy in many of Gordon's poems has been attributed to the influence of Australian scenery, and to the loneliness of the earlier years of his life in the colonies. This explanation, if not wholly erroneous, is at least much ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... the thought of death, a thought so strong, so vivid, that all fear is lost, all ties broken, all duties, all obligations, all hopes forgotten, and naught remains except a fierce and wild desire to die. Thousands and thousands become moody, melancholy, brood upon loss of money, of position, of friends, until reason abdicates, and frenzy takes possession of the soul. If there be an infinitely wise and powerful God, all this was known to Him from the beginning, and He so created things, established ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... darkened and the stars brightened. After a while Stevens ceased talking and drooped in his saddle. Duane kept the horses going, however, and the slow hours wore away. Duane thought the quiet night would never break to dawn, that there was no end to the melancholy, brooding plain. But at length a grayness blotted out the stars and mantled the level ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... of the patriotism of his friends, so much interrupted by applause. The warm manner in which his conclusion is received assures him that he now is the most popular man in the State. Mr. Scranton, armed with his usually melancholy countenance, rises to the stump, makes his modestly political bow, offers many impressive apologies for the unprepared state in which he finds himself, informs his hearers that he appears before them only as a substitute ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... likeness in the sensible qualities of things. The poet's principle of association is in the effect produced on his imagination. Things which have not in themselves a single point of similarity, are connected together, because they produce the same emotions of pleasure, or pain, or hope, or melancholy. A beautiful illustration of this is found in the opening ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... the story of Thomas is after the resurrection. The first evening the apostles met in the upper room to talk over the strange things which had occurred that day. For some reason Thomas was not at this meeting. We may infer that his melancholy temperament led him to absent himself. He had loved Jesus deeply, and his sorrow was very great. There had been rumors all day of Christ's resurrection, but Thomas put no confidence in these. Perhaps his despondent disposition made him unsocial, and kept him from meeting ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... if only there had been nightingales in Ireland. There were no nightingales in Devon, so that the first Hewish was under no necessity of importing them to complete his picture. But he had his gravelled walks, his poets' avenue of yews, that grew kindly, his sundials with their graceful and melancholy admonitions, his box-hedges and white peacocks, and the fancy of some Hewish unknown had blossomed at last in a Palladian bridge of freestone, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... this legitimate festival of my birth a profound melancholy began to possess my spirit. I had lived. I had succeeded in the eyes of my fellows and of the general public. I was married to a charming woman. I had two marriageable daughters and a son who had already entered on his career as ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... of my ill-fortune!" Then I said to her, "O my cousin, I conjure thee by my life, contrive me some device whereby I may win to her!" She wept and answered, "O Aziz, O my cousin, verily my heart is full of melancholy thought and I cannot speak: but go thou again to-night to the same place and look that thou sleep not, and thou shalt surely attain thy desire. This is my counsel and peace be on thee." "God willing," said I, "I will not sleep, but ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... hope—or just a little like her mother, who is not so very ugly, either; at least, Angus says not." And Mrs. Rothesay drew up her tiny figure, patted one dainty hand—the wedded one—with its fairy fellow; then—touched perhaps with a passing melancholy that he who most prized her beauty, and for whose sake she most prized it herself, was far away—she ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... right foot loose," muttered the cochero, stifling another sigh, "I'll give him my horses, and offer him my services even to death, for he'll free us from the Civil Guard." With a melancholy gaze he watched the Three Kings ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... his mind a remote wonder why he had suddenly unbosomed himself to her in a way so extraordinarily unlike himself. It was, he thought next, because as he had taken her about from one place to another he had known that she had seen in things what he had seen in them so long—the melancholy loneliness, the significance of it, the lost hopes that lay behind it, the touching pain of the stateliness wrecked. She had shown it in the way in which she tenderly looked from side to side, in the very lightness of her footfall, in the bluebell softening of her eyes. Oh, yes, she ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... her outside, and I went, feeling that she had at last made a decision. Her attitude throughout her period of cogitation had been not unlike that of Napoleon before Waterloo. There were the same bent head and clasped hands, the same melancholy ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... whether the Roman or the Saxon derivation of its name be preferred, in either case etymology would fairly allow the inference, that its foundation was considerably more ancient. During the reign of Louis XI. Eu obtained a melancholy celebrity: a report was circulated in the summer of 1475, that it was the intention of the English to make a descent upon the coast of France, and to establish themselves there for the winter. At the same time, this town was confidently mentioned ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... was done and the spirit of the beauteous and unfortunate Jane McRea had left its mangled tenement and fled forever! [Footnote: From the various published accounts of the massacre of Miss McRea, we have followed, in our illustrations of that melancholy tragedy, as far as our limits and plan permitted us to carry them, the one deemed by us the most probable. By way of finishing the details of the horrible scene, however, it may be proper here to state, that Captain Jones, the strangely infatuated lover, having despatched, for the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... more than half a century. The other, on top of the stack, wrapped apparently in gloomy meditation, was Sam'l Todd. A solid Dales—man, he, with huge hands and hairy arms; about his face an uncomely aureole of stiff, red hair; and on his features, deep-seated, an expression of resolute melancholy. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... The latest volume of them is My Remembrances (CASSELL), in which Mr. EDWARD H. SOTHERN recounts, with the pleasant humour to be expected from him, what he quaintly (and quite unjustifiably) calls "The Melancholy Tale of Me." One has heard that Mr. SOTHERN, now that he has retired from the stage, proposes to live in England; the book explains such an intention by its evidence of the writer's intense love for this country. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... supposed that his occupation would have inclined him to melancholy. Far from it. He was a brisk, active creature, about middle height, with jet black hair, and a quick circulation. He was never overcome, as he might reasonably have been, with meditations on the flux of time. He never rose in the morning ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... Nile is dreary beyond description, as a vast desert, unenlivened by cultivation, forms its borders, through which the melancholy river rolls towards Lower Egypt in the cloudless glare of a tropical sun. From whence came this extraordinary stream that could flow through these burning sandy deserts, unaided by tributary channels? That was the mysterious question as we stepped ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... containing a meat stew, which had now gone cold, so that a rime of gray suet coated the upper half of the pot. But of human occupants there was an ample sufficiency, considering the cubic space available for breathing purposes. Sitting in melancholy array against the walls, with their legs half buried in the straw and their backs against the baseboards, were eighteen prisoners—two Belgian cavalrymen and sixteen Frenchmen—mostly Zouaves and chasseurs-a-pied. Also, there were ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... strong that "I fear, for such men as we are it is better to serve than to be free. If our appetites were let loose altogether against our neighbours, they would be like wild beasts uncaged, and bring a deluge of calamity on the whole civilised world." Melancholy words, and appropriate to our own age, when cleverness is almost universal, and genius rare indeed, and the choice between liberty and servitude hard to make, were the ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... is soon told. It is in general like that of many more who in France have broken away from religion. A clever studious boy, a true son of old Brittany—the most melancholy, the most tender, the most ardent, the most devout, not only of all French provinces, but of all regions in Europe—is passed on from the teaching of good, simple, hard-working country priests to the central seminaries, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... such melancholy forebodings intrude upon the festivities of this anniversary. Serene skies and balmy breezes are not congenial to the climate of freedom. Progressive improvement in the condition of man is apparently the purpose of a superintending Providence. That purpose will not be disappointed. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Birthday of the Prince of Peace. We all can recall disasters and disappointments which have overcast the spring, and tidings of achievement or deliverance which have been happily out of keeping with the melancholy beauty of autumn. ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... forgotten, no new theological literature has arisen, and the influence of Germany has borne no considerable fruit. The evangelical party, or Methodists, as they are called, are accused by the rest of being the cause of their present melancholy state. The rationalism of the indifferens generally prevails among the clergy, either in the shape of the naturalism of the eighteenth century (Coquerel), or in the more advanced form of modern criticism, as ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the systematists is the one most melancholy sequela of Darwinism. It seems an irony that we should read in the peroration to the Origin that when the Darwinian view is accepted "Systematists will be able to pursue their labours as at present; but they will not ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... illustrious descent is, I believe, equally true of a talent for poetry, none ever despised it who had pretensions to it. The fates and characters of the rhyming tribe often employ my thoughts when I am disposed to be melancholy. There is not, among all the martyrologies that ever were penned, so rueful a narrative as the lives of the poets.—In the comparative view of wretches, the criterion is not what they are doomed to suffer, but how they are formed to bear. Take a being of our kind, give him a stronger imagination ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... day, melancholy with the misfortunes of his friends, though he doesn't name Dickens. Landor had just fled to his (Forster's) house in London for protection ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... FAILURE, there exists amongst us, as, indeed, there has always existed, an innumerable body of those upon whom you have cast your melancholy blight. Amongst their friends and acquaintances they are known by the name you yourself bear. They are the great army of failures. But there must be no mistake. Because a man has had high aspirations, has tried with all the energy of his body and soul to realise them, and has, in the end, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... a decided victory, but the youthful Queen, instead of giving her hand to young King Edward, left the country and married the son of the King of France. She will appear with melancholy prominence in the reign of Elizabeth. Had Mary Queen of Scots married Edward, we should perhaps have been spared that tragedy in which she was called to play both the leading ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... But there is Duerer's "Knight and Death," his greatest plate; and if I had Lionardo's "Medusa" here, which he painted when only a boy, you would have seen how he was held by the same chain. And you cannot but wonder why, this being the melancholy temper of the great Greek or naturalistic school, I should have called it the school of light. I call it so because it is through its intense love of light that the darkness becomes apparent to ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... ascribe the numerous complaints which prevail? How many sweet creatures of your sex languish with a weak digestion, low spirits, lassitudes, melancholy, and twenty disorders, which, in spite of the faculty, have yet no names, except the general one of nervous complaints? Let them change their diet, and, among other articles, leave off drinking tea, it is more than probable, the greatest ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... his music at its worst is the merest drivel ever set down by a great composer; hence at anything but its best it lacks concentrated passion and dramatic intensity; more than any other composer's it has one prevailing note, a note of deepest melancholy; and therefore, when a few pieces are known, most of the rest seem barren of what is wanted by those who seek chiefly in music the expression of ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... tones in things, further strengthened by actual circumstances; and religious sentiment, that [193] system of biblical ideas in which he had been brought up, presented itself to him as a thing that might soften and dignify, and light up as with a "lively hope," a melancholy already deeply settled in him. So he yielded himself easily to religious impressions, and with a kind of mystical appetite for sacred things; the more as they came to him through a saintly person who loved him tenderly, and believed that this early ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... up for long, thinking, if his dull mind could form a thought through his melancholy dreams, that Ridgar had ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... always lived a very retired existence with an old, pious, and gloomy aunt, up to the time when the law-student, destined in the first instance to the career in which his father had left an excellent reputation, had found himself introduced to a few judges' drawing-rooms, ancient, melancholy dwellings with faded pier-glasses, where he used to go to make a fourth at whist with venerable shadows. Jenkins's evening party was therefore a debut for this provincial, of whom his very ignorance and his southern adaptability made immediately ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... fine mustache showed a mouth with a rather satirical curve and closely compressed lips A strong aquiline nose and narrow bright blue eyes completed a physiognomy indicating great reserve and a remarkable degree of melancholy. It is no advantage to a man to possess a Sphinx-like head. The pretty faces apparently full of secrets offer easy deceptions, and one expects that the mouth when open will reveal all that the eyes seem to mean. One is half-angry and half-inclined to laugh ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... from the Square into the drive leading to the spring at the foot of the mountain. On the meadows near the stream, is always to be found a group of Baalbekians bibbing arak and swaying languidly to the mellow strains of the lute and the monotonous melancholy of Arabic song. Among such, one occasionally meets with a native who, failing as peddler or merchant in America, returns to his native town, and, utilising the chips of English he picked up in the streets of the New-World ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... not at first see the exact purport of this oleaginous periphrasis. Presently he caught a glimpse; but said he thought confinement was hardly the thing to drive away melancholy. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... grass-grown drive in front of the blotched and weather-stained door, I had doubts as to my wisdom in visiting a man whom I knew so slightly. He opened the door himself, however, and greeted me with a great show of cordiality. I was handed over to the manservant, a melancholy, swarthy individual, who led the way, my bag in his hand, to my bedroom. The whole place was depressing. Our dinner was tete-a-tete, and though my host did his best to be entertaining, his thoughts seemed ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on which the wedding was to be, Lady Cecilia was in Lady Davenant's room, sitting beside the bed while her mother slept. Suddenly she was startled from her still and ever the same recurring train of melancholy thoughts, by a sound which had often made her heart beat with joy—her husband's knock; she ran to the window, opened it, and was out on the balcony in an instant. His horse was at the door, he had alighted, and was going up the steps; she leaned over the rails of the balcony, and ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... and its rays, which still gilded the tree-tops, left the wood below pensive and melancholy. The house stood in a solitary place on the edge of the forest, half a mile from Poissy; and these two things had their effect on my mind. I began to wish that we had brought with us half a troop of horse, or at least two or three gentlemen; and, startled by the thought of the unknown chances ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... squirrel gloats o'er his accomplished hoard, The ants have brimm'd their garners with ripe grain, And honey bees have stored The sweets of summer in their luscious cells; The swallows all have wing'd across the main; But here the Autumn melancholy dwells, And sighs her tearful spells Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. Alone, alone Upon a mossy stone She sits and reckons up the dead and gone With the last leaves for a love-rosary. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the preceding evening, remarked to him the great change in the temper of her daughter, "who from being," she said, "one of the liveliest, merriest girls in the world, was, on a sudden, become all gloom and melancholy." ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... you guess, or must I tell you? Sidney and I did the very same, and had just such a melancholy parting last night as I suspect you ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in their calculation before." Some good reason or other is always at hand. If by chance one of them do happen to win a large sum, it is ten to one that it will cost him his life,—that he will fall into a fit, or drop in an apoplexy, on hearing the news. There is a most melancholy instance of this in the very next house,—of a Jew made suddenly and unexpectedly rich, who instantly became insane in consequence, and is now the most wretched and melancholy spectacle that man can ever become,—starving in the midst of abundance, and moving like a beast about his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... violent will and incessant craving for movement as the mark of a poet, whose contemporaries adored him for what they took to be the musing sweetness of his melancholy, may seem a critical perversity. There is, however, a momentous difference between that melancholy, which is as the mere shadow projected by a man's spiritual form, and that other melancholy, which itself is the reality and substance of a character; ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... Thebes, and the chivalrous glories of her one great man. Demosthenes has yet to prove how vain is the divinest eloquence when poured to degenerate hearts. Agis and Cleomenes have yet to exhibit the spectacle, ever fraught with melancholy interest, of noble natures out of harmony with the present, and spending their energies in the vain attempt to turn back the stream of time and call again into existence the feelings and the institutions of an irrevocable past. The monarchy of Philip is yet due to fate. Macedon ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... national policy, and as I have reserved a place expressly, where it will undergo a thorough discussion, I shall not here embarrass myself with it,—being resolved to preserve all the order in my power, in the examination of this important, melancholy subject. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... misapplications or misapprehensions of the meaning of Scripture: his false glosses, and truly preposterous specimens of exegesis[235]. I am content to take leave of him, while he is flattering himself that he has "found the pearl of great price, after sweeping the house:" (p. 414:) and under that melancholy delusion, I fear he must be left,—holding the broom ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... propensity was in the first moment of its operation, we know not; but with men accustomed to company, its enjoyments and disappointments are reckoned among the principal pleasures or pains of human life. Sadness and melancholy are connected with solitude; gladness and pleasure with the concourse of men. The track of a Laplander on the snowy shore, gives joy to the lonely mariner; and the mute signs of cordiality and kindness which are made to him, awaken the memory of pleasures which he felt in society. ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... with both of them. But Marguerite could not understand her father, and her father could not understand either his daughter or George. Never could they understand! He alone understood. And his understanding gave him a melancholy, hopeless feeling of superiority, without at all lessening the strange conviction of guilt. He had got himself gripped by destiny. Destiny had captured all three of them. But not the fourth. The ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... his Majesty more deeply than you imagine," replied Don Luis. "The singer's days are probably numbered. It is a pity! She was wonderfully successful in subduing the spirits of melancholy." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the river in the glowing dusk. They stood for a while, with their elbows resting on the stone balustrade, and looked down on the dark tide beneath them. The great, grim arches of Waterloo Bridge, made melancholy by the lemon-coloured light of the lamps which surmounted them, cast big, black shadows on the water. They could hear little lapping waves splashing against the pillars, and presently a tug went swiftly down to the Pool. Neither of them spoke. Behind them the tramcars went ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... and of its robe bereft By needy man, that all-depending lord, How meek, how patient, the mild creature lies! What softness in his melancholy face, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... groom, into it, to learn what it was. 'They have something posted up about your Majesty,' reported the groom; and Friedrich, who by this time had ridden forward, took a look at the thing; which was a Caricature figure of himself: King in very melancholy guise, seated on a Stool, a Coffee-mill between his knees; diligently grinding with the one hand, and with the other picking up any bean that might have fallen. 'Hang it lower,' said the King, beckoning ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... same moment, in a tiny room four miles away, an elderly, melancholy man sat bowed over a telegraph board and drowsily plied his keys. He was the Gazette's special operator, and, having his orders from Mr. Parker, who looked after the news bureau when Hammerton was away, he was methodically going through his ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... "without any of the little refinements and luxuries, you know—not so much as a flower-pot or a basket-table"—weighed heavily on her happy soul. Needless to say she had never dreamed that Nevill would let the house remain in its present state; her intellect could never have grasped so melancholy a possibility, and the fact was somewhat unsettling to her faith in Nevill Tyson. "Isn't it—for a young bride, you know—just a little—a little triste?" And being more than a little afraid of her son-in-law, she waved ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... the way," said Wally, in tones of melancholy. "Every fortune teller I ever saw told me that no one ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... siege to the citadel cautiously, as was his way. Bluff Jack Lorrimer's courage was paralyzed by his love, and he drank deep to dispel his melancholy. Harry Bent—who was already under the spell of Netty Swinton, Dick's sister's—was indifferent, and Carnaby had been rejected ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... occurred to me when I was recalling all I had seen, that night. What if ghosts be one of the terrors of these jails? I have pondered on it often, since then. The utter solitude by day and night; the many hours of darkness; the silence of death; the mind forever brooding on melancholy themes, and having no relief; sometimes an evil conscience very busy; imagine a prisoner covering up his head in the bedclothes and looking out from time to time, with a ghastly dread of some inexplicable silent figure that always sits upon his bed, or stands (if a thing can ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... tossing on the waves out of sight of land, and not knowing where we were going. Perhaps Ali knew better than I did. He, at all events, did not seem to be alarmed, and when unemployed, he continued humming melancholy Malay airs, which certainly did not tend to raise my spirits. There is a great difference in reading of an adventure and going through it. I confess I should have felt less anxiety had Oliver been with me; ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... nobles indeed, will have packed up, and be gone for Jerusalem (Isa 34:10-17). So that the world, I say, will be left empty, void, and stripped both of treasure, beauty, and health, at the day of Jerusalem's building again. But O how melancholy a forlorn, beautiless world will this be at this day! It will be only the place of 'dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie' (Rev 22:15). It will now be the very emblem of hell, as the church at this day ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... gloom; for the first object in this world that presented itself, was a vast expanse of sea, just visible by the gleamings of the moon, bathed in watery clouds; a chill air ruffled the waves. I went to shiver a few melancholy moments on the shore. How often did I try to wish away the reality of my separation from those I love, and attempt to persuade myself it was ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... rocks towered gloomily on either hand: and of the city below, with its buildings of pure marble, and the yellow earthworks that crested Arlington Heights. The clouds over the Potomac were gorgeous in hue, but forests of melancholy pine clothed the sides of the hills, and the roar of the river made such beautiful monotone that I almost thought it could be translated to words. Our passes were now demanded by a fat, bareheaded officer, and while he panted through their contents, two ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... of all the petty difficulties into which Mr. and Mrs. Ludgate's foolish extravagance led them. The life of the shabby genteel is most miserable. Servants' wages unpaid, duns continually besieging the door, perpetual excuses, falsehoods to be invented, melancholy at home, and forced gaiety abroad! Who would live such a life? Yet all this Mr. and Mrs. Ludgate endured, for the sake of outshining ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... airs, Melancholy, wild and slow, Such, mayhap, as pleased the maidens Of a hundred ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... father, giving his head a melancholy shake, and looking towards Martin as though he would say, 'I can't deny it, sir. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... coffee, and thinking how nearly it must be his last, his father's letter was brought to him. The letter had been delayed one day, as he himself had omitted to call for it. It was necessarily a sad time for him. He was a man who fought hard against melancholy, taking it as a primary rule of life that, for such a one as he had become, the pleasures of the immediate moment should suffice. If one day, or better still, one night of excitement was in store for him, the next day should ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... more attractive pier than their fatuous ingenuity could produce. There is a spice of danger associated with the Brig, adding much to its interest; for no one should venture along the spit of rocks unless the tide is in a proper state to allow him a safe return. A melancholy warning of the dangers of the Brig is fixed to the rocky wall of the headland, describing how an unfortunate visitor was swept into the sea by the sudden arrival of an abnormally large wave, but this need not frighten away from the fascinating ridge of rock those who use ordinary care in watching ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... noticed, dry, oblong willow-leaves were fluttering, and so he knew it was not a forest but a settlement, but he did not wish to say so. And in fact they had not gone twenty-five yards beyond the ditch before something in front of them, evidently trees, showed up black, and they heard a new and melancholy sound. Nikita had guessed right: it was not a wood, but a row of tall willows with a few leaves still fluttering on them here and there. They had evidently been planted along the ditch round a threshing-floor. Coming up to the willows, which moaned sadly in the wind, the horse suddenly planted ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... on living at Ford Bank, quite unconscious of the state of her father's affairs, but sunk into a deep, plaintive melancholy, which affected her looks and the tones of her voice in such a manner as to distress Miss Monro exceedingly. It was not that the good lady did not quite acknowledge the great cause her pupil had for grieving—deserted by her lover, her father dead—but that she could not bear the ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of life; all diabetes, asthmas, consumptions of several kinds; many sorts of colics and diarrhoeas; some kinds of gouts and rheumatisms, all palsies, various kinds of ulcers, and possibly the cancer itself; and most cutaneous foulnesses, weakly constitutions, and bad digestions; vapors, melancholy, and almost all nervous distempers whatsoever. And what a plentiful source of miseries the last are, the afflicted best can tell. And scarce any one chronical distemper whatever, but has some degree of this evil faithfully attending it. The reason ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... the sentimental best. There's Whyte Melville, then, there's always something melancholy about him—'When the old horse died,' and that sort of thing—makes you cry, don't you know. You all like that. Certainly, if that dog-cart had been coming here it must have come by ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... fully than by simply saying it. Yet sombre as the event is, it seems a fit overture to the opening life of this spirit so nobly sad whom we are about to study. The tradition seems to have become established that Captain Nathaniel was inclined to melancholy, and very reticent; also, that though he was an admirable shipmaster, he had a vigorous appetite for reading, and carried many books with him on his long voyages. Those who know the inheritances that come with the Puritan ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills—but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bullfrog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and turning suddenly ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... comrades, the other lying in the first wagon among the wounded. Frau Martha had summoned sufficient courage to stand beside her husband, but the moment the procession had passed, she burst into bitter tears. Her life was bereft of all hope and the future stretched out dark and melancholy before her. ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... gormandizing maw will devour his dainty all at once. Cakes in this world will grow by being fed on, if only the feeder be not too insatiate. On all which wisdom Mr. Sowerby pondered with sad heart and very melancholy mind as he walked away from the premises of Messrs. Gumption & Gazebee. His intention had been to go down to the House after leaving Mr. Fothergill, but the prospect of immediate ruin had been too much for him, and he ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... a lump was gathering in her throat. Finally she laid her cheek to the desk and cried a little pool of her unaccountable melancholy on to the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... trials were in reserve for us. We missed the best of the many inns at Liskeard, and went to the very worst. What a place was our house of public entertainment for a great sinner to repent in, or for a melancholy recluse to retreat to! Not a human being appeared in the street where this tavern of despair frowned amid congenial desolation. Nobody welcomed us at the door—the sign creaked dolefully, as the wind swung it on its rusty ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... and to further impose upon the marquis, she fetched a kind of box marked with figures and strange emblems. Opening this, and putting together certain figures which it contained, she declared that what the marquis had told her was true, and that his situation was a most melancholy one. She added, in order to frighten him, that he was threatened by still more serious misfortunes than those which had already overtaken him, but that it was easy to anticipate and obviate these mischances by ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... though he had bought it for her himself. He resented her attitude of having ceased to recognize his existence. A sadness, a filmy melancholy, crept over him. He brooded on the unutterable silliness of humanity, especially the female portion of it, in erecting artificial barriers to friendship. It was ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Salagua and Hell's Hip Pocket bars the river's sweep, he saw that vague, impalpable haze—a smoke, a dust, a veil of the lightest skein, stirred idly by some wandering wind, perhaps, or marking the trail of sheep. And as he looked upon it his melancholy gaze changed to a staring, hawk-like intentness; he leaned forward in the saddle and Chapuli stepped eagerly down the slope, head up, as if he ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge |
