"Pathetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... malnutrition. This may indeed have been unavoidable, and not the fault of any one. I had a little further chat with one of the group, a very quiet woman, whose rather drawn, set face showed that she had passed through hard times. It was a little pathetic to me to note how sincerely she was convinced of the superior virtues of her side. "In the earlier days of the war when we had English prisoners," she said, "they were always well fed, even though we went short. Our Commandant always made a point of seeing that they were well ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... the lockup-house scene in all the fervid extasy of a father rejoicing at the escape of his son from destruction. In Crack, Dozey, Nipperkin, and other drunken characters, his drollery was irresistible. His intoxication displayed as much discrimination as his pathetic performances. Who can forget his stare in being detected in his fuddling as Dozey, and his plea for drinking to "wa-ash down your honour's health:" or his anti-polarity as Nipperkin, when his very legs seemed drunk beneath ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... said and written about battle, the greater portion of which is an exaggeration of facts. Fireside writers and reporters have composed long manuscripts, beginning and ending in frantic agonies and seas of blood, exhausting the vocabulary of pathetic epithets. That battle is dreadful cannot be denied, but those who have passed through the fiery ordeal do not experience half the convulsions and agony of soul that is written. If a comrade falls, the column still moves ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... the official members of two of the coloured Methodist Episcopal Churches in Baltimore immediately remonstrated and petitioned. The following powerful and pathetic ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... as I looked upon the pure white cloth, the snowy bread and shining cups, of the communion table, thought with a sigh: 'There won't be anything for me to-day; it is all for these grown-up Christians.' Nevertheless, when father began to speak, I was drawn to listen by a certain pathetic earnestness in his voice. Most of father's sermons were as unintelligible to me as if he had spoken in Choctaw. But sometimes he preached what he was accustomed to call a 'frame sermon;' that is, a sermon that sprung out of the deep feeling of the occasion, and which consequently ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... about his neck, determined that this day should be a killing day; vainly supposing, in the disordered state of his mind, that the flinty-hearted Molly would probably esteem her 'dear' (like venison) the better for being hung! Mystically muttering 'adoo!' three times, in the most pathetic tone, he swung off and in an instant came to his latter end—for the rope snapp'd in twain, and he found himself seated on the turf below, when he vainly imagined he was preparing himself for being placed ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... was. Her tailor-made gown of dark green cloth fitted her to perfection; she was turned out with all that delightful perfection of detail which seems to be the Frenchwoman's heritage. Her smile, half pathetic, half appealing, was certainly sufficient to turn the head of a dozen young men such as ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... seen a hare, either crouched or running in the fields, or hanging dead in a poulterer's shop, or lastly pathetic, even dreadful-looking and in this form almost indistinguishable from a skinned cat, on the domestic table. But not many people have met a Mahatma, at least to their knowledge. Not many people know even who or what a Mahatma is. The majority of those who ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... There was something so pathetic in the way all this was told, there was such an amount of pathos in the quivering voice, that Nellie's heart ached and the tears rushed to ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... Mrs. Polly from her perch, in a very pathetic voice, which set the children laughing heartily; for somehow, as Minnie said, Polly always knew how to bring in her wise sayings just when they were wanted,—and there was no doubt she was the very ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... irresolute. She paused and looked back at the house as though meditating upon the advisability of returning, and actually did take a few steps towards it, but again hesitated and looked back; the pathetic droop of his shoulders affected her keenly, and she stole back to him again. Bending her little head till it was near his, she said softly: ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... rule, inverts have no desire to be different from what they are, and, if they have any desire for marriage, it is usually only momentary. Very pathetic appeals for help are, however, sometimes made. I may quote from a letter addressed to me by a gentleman who desired advice on this matter: "In part, I write to you as a moralist and, in part, as to a physician. Dr. Q. has published a book in which, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... hear you such things speak, And I could tell What made your eyes a growing gloom of love, As a warm South-wind sombres a March grove. And it was like your great and gracious ways To turn your talk on daily things, my Dear, Lifting the luminous, pathetic lash To let the laughter flash, Whilst I drew near, Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear. But all at once to leave me at the last, More at the wonder than the loss aghast, With huddled, unintelligible phrase, And frighten'd eye, And go your journey of all days ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... days," the woman went on, trying to make her hopelessly plump and cheery face look pathetic, "because I am so far away from church. But I read my little newspaper, and say my little prayer—and mention all your names in it" (which Barbara knew was impossible, as she had never heard hers before that morning)—"and think of ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... with a round and carefully shaven face, stern eyes, and the powerful jaws of a man who compels the adoration of women by terrorising them. He was not deficient in talent, he sang true, and his ringing voice was one of extraordinary penetration and pathetic power. And his repertoire, his "Flowers of the Pavement," completed the explanation of his success; for all the foulness and suffering of the lower spheres, the whole abominable sore of the social hell created ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... These big children called men were almost to be pitied. She had expected a fight, but the man had thrown up the sponge from the outset, and now he was going to give himself into her hands. Only for that pathetic look in his eyes and that searching tone in his voice she could have found it ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... the real opinion of the Convention for justice to the colored Loyalist, not in the courts only, but at the ballot-box. The speech was in Miss Dickinson's noblest style throughout—bold, but tender, and often so pathetic that she brought tears to every eye. Every word came from her heart, and it went right to the hearts of all. Kentucky and Maryland now listened as eagerly as Georgia and Alabama; Brownlow's iron features and Botts' rigid face soon relaxed, and tears stood in the old Virginian's eyes; while the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... degrees with a confirmed ascendency: whatever tends to excite and to keep in exercise a lively interest in its behalf: in other words; full knowledge, distinct and frequent mental entertainment, and pathetic contemplations. Supposing these means to have been used in any given degree, it may be expected, that they will be more or less efficacious, in proportion as the intrinsic qualities of the object afford greater or less scope for ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... as a warning to all who should dare to befriend the house of Germanicus: no friend had courage to approach the body; one only remained true—his faithful dog. For three days the animal continued to watch the body; his pathetic howlings awakened the sympathy of every heart. Food was brought him, which he was kindly encouraged to eat; but on taking the bread, instead of obeying the impulse of hunger, he fondly laid it on his master's mouth, and ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... started past the barred gate to one of the ramps leading down into the vats below, the buzzer beside it sounded. A Jelly was standing behind the gate, fat, pathetic face ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... would ask the reader, who may be inclined to think that the principal character is too chivalrous and refined for the age, to peruse for himself the tale named the "Great Breach of Murthemney." He will there, and in many other tales and poems besides, see that the noble and pathetic interest which attaches to his character is substantially the same as I have represented in these volumes. But unless the student has read the whole of the Ultonian cycle, he should be cautious in condemning a departure in my work from any particular version ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... her voice and expression were as enchanting as her countenance and conversation. With a mellifluous-toned voice, a perfect shake and intonation, she was possessed of the double power of delighting an audience equally in pathetic strains and songs of brilliant execution, which is allowed ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... moral philosophy; and that I am more easily satisfied upon this point than I am on many others touching medicine, to which I have, nevertheless, devoted much more time. So that"—(adds the grand thinker, with a pathetic nobleness )—"so that, instead of finding the means to preserve life, I have found another good, more easy and more sure, which ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... themselves the town," continues Davies, brought to the first night copies of the old ballad on which the jeweller's play was based, meaning to mock the new tragedy with the old song; but so forcible and pathetic were Lillo's scenes that these merry gentlemen were obliged "to throw away their ballads, and take out their handkerchiefs." More tears, we learn, were shed over this 'homespun drama' than at all the ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... and we came aboard this one with the purpose and the language to do so. But there was an absolute want of material, that would hardly be credited if we went into details. The first meeting of the passengers at the dinner-table revealed it. There is a kind of female plainness which is pathetic, and many persons can truly say that to them it is homelike; and there are vulgarities of manner that are interesting; and there are peculiarities, pleasant or the reverse, which attract one's attention: but there was absolutely nothing of this sort on our boat. The female passengers were ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... near enough to see, I let the money fall in the mud and went off at my best walk without ever turning round. There is nothing in the story; and yet you will understand how much there is, if one chose to set it forth. You see, she was so ugly; and you know there is something terribly, miserably pathetic in a certain smile, a certain sodden aspect of invitation on such faces. It is so terrible, that it is in a way sacred; it means the outside of degradation and (what is worst of all in life) false ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not to say gullibility, was clearly shown by the ease with which Hodgson exposed the pretensions of Eusapia Paladino after Continental savants had pronounced her feats genuine. And it is even more strikingly exhibited by the pathetic fidelity with which they still trust in her, notwithstanding the Hodgson exposure, and the fact that they themselves have on more than one occasion caught her committing fraud. In the United States, however, psychical research worthy of the name took root early, owing to the establishment ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... my horse, going cautiously forward with my rifle. The chief however kept by me, anxiously calling out with a pathetic voice "Myen, myen," which words, as I afterwards learnt, meant Men! men! But it was not until a thought had passed in my mind of firing among the group, that I had the good fortune to discover my mistake. The figures seated and covered ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... toil who had driven his family thirty miles across the prairie, blanketed his tired horses and slept on the ground the night before, who was willing to stand all through the afternoon and listen with pathetic eagerness to this debate, must be moved by a patriotism divine. In the breast of that farmer, in the breast of his tired wife who held her child by the hand, had been instilled from birth that sublime fervor which is part of their life who inherit ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Lady.—In the new editions of Pope's Works, in course of publication, edited by Mr. Carruthers, Inverness, it is conjectured that the poet threw "ideal circumstances" into his most pathetic and melodious elegy, and "when he came to publish his letters, put wrong initials, as in other instances, to conceal the real names" (Pope's Poet. Works, Ingram, Cook, and Co., vol. ii. p. 184.). The initials are Mrs. W., niece of Lady ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... excellent, but the expression is bad. The writer has seen, but she cannot tell what she has seen; she has felt, but she cannot express her experience so as to enkindle a like experience in others. These poetical utterances of inarticulate poets are sometimes whimsical but oftener pathetic; sometimes they are like the prattle of little children who exercise their vocal organs before they have anything to say; but oftener they seem to me like the beseeching eyes of a dumb animal, full of affection and entreaty for which he has no vocal expression. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... home from the Cape, and almost lived on the way with Mr. Froude .... It was rather a sad mind, sometimes grand, sometimes pathetic and tender, usually cynical, but often relating with the highest appreciation, and with wonderful beauty of language, some gallant deed of some of his heroes of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. He seemed to have gone through every phase of thought, and come to the end ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... quiet, modest little home that Mrs. Carroll's thoughts now flew, without the slightest feeling of compunction at invading it, as she meant it to be invaded. Her letter to Miss Ashe was a masterpiece of pathetic pleading. Miss Charlotte read it with tears of pity for the poor mother, reduced from affluence and luxury to poverty and the position of an emigrant's wife torn from her children by stress of circumstance. Then she ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Scotsman speaks of the writer as being "throughout in downright almost pathetic earnestness." While The National Reformer seems to be in doubt whether the book is a covert attack upon Christianity or a serious defence of it, but declares that both orthodox and unorthodox will find matter requiring ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... of an old dramatist well over eighty years old. It is exciting, vigorous, pathetic and everywhere dignified. The characters of the old hero and the young warrior are masterly. The Chorus takes an integral part in the action—its whisperings to Neoptolemus remind the reader of the evil ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... dark—crowded in here!" Her tone did not express doubt; it was pathetic endeavor to understand their plight. "My father and his men are frightened—they have given up. And you told ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... in history more pathetic than the scene when, on the 11th of February, 1861, Abraham Lincoln bade a last farewell to his home of a quarter ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... after a moment's reflection; "he was a considerate man the deacon; he ken'd we had a' our frailties, and he lo'ed his friends. Ye'll no hae forgotten him, Robin?" This question he put in a softened tone, conveying as much at least of the ludicrous as the pathetic. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... in India, which I promised to do, and did, and in thanking me he said that my opinions would have interest for him, since among other things I knew was "that strange wild beast—the House of Commons." This saying was pathetic from him, for there never was a man who more utterly failed to understand the House ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the second week in July he received a letter from his son in Paris to say that they would all be back on Friday. This had always been more sure than Fate; but, with the pathetic improvidence given to the old, that they may endure to the end, he had never quite admitted it. Now he did, and something would have to be done. He had ceased to be able to imagine life without this new interest, but ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Oh, you cannot think how sad I have been for months, with no one to care for me," and her voice was exquisitely pathetic. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... unsought, even to Schiller, Richter had a struggle to come by; much he could never get at all. The place of "Frau Aja" in the development of the child Goethe's fancy was taken at Joditz by the cow-girl. Eagerness to learn Fritz showed in pathetic fulness, but the most diligent search has revealed no trace in these years of that creative imagination with which he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... way of the Lodge, escorted by Bab and Betty, full of glee, for hand-organs were rare in those parts, and the children delighted in them. Smiling till his white teeth shone and his black eyes sparkled, the man played away while the monkey made his pathetic little bows, and picked up the ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... almost of tomfoolery, about Dolly when she spoke of her matrimonial prospects to her father,—as when she said that she would "stick a knife" into Mr. Barry,—still there was a seriousness in all she said which was more than grave. She was pathetic and melancholy. She knew that there was nothing before her but to stay with her father, and then to devote herself to her cousins, from whom she was aware that she recoiled almost with hatred. And she knew that it would be a good thing to be married,—if only the right man would come. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... genius should have been a failure, while he, who as a born poet was the lesser light, should have been the greatest popular success of which Scotland can boast! And yet there is something almost as pathetic and tragical in the career of the man who worked himself to death, as in that of the man who drank himself to death. The most supremely fortunate writer of his day came to a mournful end, notwithstanding his unparalleled honors and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... was spent in arriving, by slow stages and with a cruel wealth of pathetic detail, at a realization of what being eight hundred dollars in ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... His message of peace. It is often so, is it not? While we are in perplexity and fear, while we think the next sound will be the knock of armed hands on the door, it is not the Jews that come, but Jesus with a message of peace. Our fears are so pathetic, so pitiful; we meet life and death with so little of the understanding and the courage that our Lord's promises ought to inspire in us! We stand so shudderingly before the vision of death, are so much appalled by the thought ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... written to me during the past ten years by people from all parts of the world, who wanted to go to the South Seas and lead an idyllic life and make fortunes, and wished me to show them how to go about it. Many of these letters are amusing, some are pathetic; some, which were so obviously insane, I did not answer. The rest I did. I cannot reproduce them in print. I am keeping them to read to my friends in heaven. Even an old ex-South Sea trader may get there—if he can dodge ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... men in the world," that "only his intimate friends could know how remarkable he was"; partly too upon the dog-like capacity of Andrey Vassilievitch to fetch and carry for his friend, to put himself indeed to the greatest inconvenience. It was pathetic to see the flaming pleasure in the man's eyes when Nikitin permitted him to wait upon him, and how ironically, upon such an occasion, would Semyonov ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... streets, and is just as reasonable as if a foreigner should take his ideas of the English music from the bladder and string, and marrowbone and cleavers. I can assure you that the music is extremely pathetic; 'tis true I am inclined to prefer the Italian, but perhaps I am partial. I am acquainted with a Greek lady who sings better than Mrs. Robinson, and is very well skilled in both, who gives the preference to the Turkish. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... an aspect of Mr. Lincoln's career, which must attract general attention and command universal sympathy. His loneliness in his office and in the performance of his duties is deeply pathetic. It is true that Congress accepted and endorsed his measures as they were presented from time to time, but there were bitter complaints on account of his delays on the slavery question, and not infrequently doubts ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... the original MS., very painfully apparent. Soon afterward he submitted to three operations, but they were in vain, and henceforth all was to be dark to him. His sole remaining work was now to improvise on the organ, and to play at performances of his oratorios. There is a pathetic story told of an incident that occurred on one occasion, when "Samson" was given. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... too pathetic to occasion mirth — it brought tears into the eyes of all present. The poor widow was put to bed again; and we did not leave the village without doing something for her benefit — Even Tabitha's charity was awakened ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... is broken. It asks for advice and information, and for consideration of the memorial. Ribadda's letters increase in pathetic eloquence as the great ...
— Egyptian Literature
... the Innocents. (This also is much ruined.) Vasari says it was the finest of all. It is very unusual to make this terrible and pathetic scene part of the life of ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... was a handsome vacancy, so to speak; a fine physical man wasted for lack of a spiritual man to carry him about and use him. His regular, finely moulded face, with its healthy pallor and its black eyes and hair, always had a dim, pathetic look of having forgotten something. His figure, symmetrical and full of strength, moved itself awkwardly and unmeaningly, as though ignorant of its own capabilities, and rather encumbered than otherwise by their redundance. His smile, which drew his features into ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... was very beautiful—I was not insensible to that fact. Her features were wonderfully aristocratic for one in her position, and there was something in the expression of her dark, gleaming eyes peculiarly earnest and pathetic. Her hair was tossed wildly and carelessly back over her shoulders—she had evidently just risen from bed, for her costume consisted of nothing more than a loose night-wrapper, which fell in graceful folds around her limbs, revealing to great advantage the ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... concede: and by a curious chance the attempt made to assassinate him outside the Palace Gates actually occurred on the very day he had submitted an outline of these terms on his bended knees to the Empress Dowager and secured their qualified acceptance. The pathetic attempt to confer on him as late as the 26th January the title of Marquess, the highest rank of nobility which could be given a Chinese, an attempt which was four times renewed, was the last despairing gesture of a moribund power. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... old Oxford man, as it happened. I pumped him a little about the history of the church, and in his delight at finding an American who cared for such matters he talked freely. "Why," he kept on saying, with a kind of pathetic enthusiasm, "I thought all you Americans were interested in was Standard Oil and tinned beef." Finally he invited me over to the vicarage for tea. As I sat by his fire and ate toasted muffins I couldn't help chuckling to think how different ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... of Thomson, in August, 1748, Collins wrote an ode to his memory, which is no less remarkable for its beauty as a composition, than for its pathetic tenderness as a ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... grisly admiration of young and ambitious criminals for a jail-mate about to be distinguished by hanging. But most of the children simply took it to be the case (a little strange, but not startling) that Penrod's mother had dressed him like that—which is pathetic. They tried to go on ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... many of the noblest virtues which can adorn mankind—generosity, self-denial, chastity, frugality, patience, protection to the feeble, the downtrodden, and the oppressed; the love of daring adventure, devotion to a pure religion and a lofty purpose, most admirably pathetic, even when in the eyes of the vulgar most fantastic—had been the proudest and most poetical of Spanish characteristics, never to be entirely uprooted from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... amid good air, and he was clean—I washed him myself—and I fancy that the stenches poisoned him simply because he could not become acclimatised to the alley again. Anyway, he was heavy and listless when he came back, and in two days I had to send for his father and mother. I am not going into any pathetic details, for that is not my line. Night after night I walked the floor with the youngster, and when the doctor said I should catch diphtheria if I kissed him, I said I didn't care a damn, for I was wild. Then my ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... not like my daughter. What was the sentence you allude to? Let me hear the very words." Mr. Challoner had come forward and now stood awaiting his reply, a dignified but pathetic figure, which all must view ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... the site of the old Ripley manse and battleground. A great quantity of arrow-heads of flint, jasper and quartz have been found in the neighboring fields, and Emerson used sometimes to bring his visitors to search for them. The Ripley family had a fine collection of Indian relics, and it is almost pathetic to think of the pains and labor the aborigines must have expended in manufacturing those household and warlike implements,—the arrows especially being often so ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... These are pathetic words. They are calculated to appeal with force to the Italian who loves his country. But when one looks more closely into the list of Italian producers one is disappointed to find the same familiar names as before:[20] Allgemeine Electricitaets Gesellschaft, ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Incidentally, a pathetic interest attaches to the illusion of 'her private means,' for, except for her small Army allowance, Kate Lee had no private funds. Reserve and independence are characteristics of the Lee family, and are, despite warm affection, ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... the good things were sometimes brought away, as loving parents bring sugar- plums from a feast to the children at home; but they are only fragments, and bear out but inefficiently the reputation which has run before them. The following pathetic incident, related on one of those occasions by Dr. Holmes, need not, ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... well, more than a hundred feet deep. What sky might have been visible above it was hidden by tier above tier of dingy, tattered washings. The stairway filled again, and throngs of outcasts of every sort went about their squalid businesses, with only a curious glance or so at the pathetic group. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... Mrs. Moss, as if shocked at the idea. Then, in a few words, she told Ben's story, unconsciously making his wrongs and destitution so pathetic by her looks and tones, that the Squire could not help being interested, and even Ben pitied himself as if ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... sign that you will make a pathetic endeavour to find happiness in a life which is cast in a ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... the Owen Saxham of this hideous prison nightmare, the man of whom the Counsel for the Crown reared up, day by day, a monstrously-distorted figure, as quite a different person from the other innocent man whom the defending advocate described in flowery, pathetic sentences as a martyr and the victim of an unheard-of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... finding more. But / surely it is ridiculous to make the defect of a foreign language a reason for / our not availing ourselves of one of the marked excellencies of our own. / "The Sonnet (says Preston,) will ever be cultivated by those who write on / tender, pathetic subjects. It is peculiarly adapted to the state of a man / violently agitated by a real passion, and wanting composure and vigor of / mind to methodize his thought. It is fitted to express a momentary burst / of Passion" etc. Now, if there be one species of composition more difficult / and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... bookselling business? We were much amused with the 'Anthology,' Your poem of the 'Killcrop' we liked better than any; only we regretted that you did not save the poor little innocent's life, by some benevolent art or other. You might have managed a little pathetic incident, in which nature, appearing forcibly in the child, might have worked in some way or ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the tomb of a Russian saint, apparently absorbed in devotion. Soon the alarm was given, and the prince, in a paroxysm of terror, threw himself upon his knees, and for once, at least, in his life, prayed with sincerity and fervor. His pathetic cries to God for help caused many of the nobles around him to weep. The prince was immediately seized, no opposition being offered, and was confined in one of the palaces of Moscow. Four nights after his capture, some agents of the conspirators entered ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... little sad to see them there, doesn't it, mamma, and I in my old gray frock?" The tears were in her eyes, but she looked up at Mrs. Warrender with a little soft laugh at herself, and at the little tragedy, or at least the suspended drama, laid up with something that was half pathetic, half ludicrous, in the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... again described their ecstasies—with what joy they have pounced upon some rare edition, and with what reverence they have ever afterwards regarded it. It is some time since Mr. Buchanan drew his quasi-pathetic picture of the book-hunter, bargaining ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... a whole lot of cattle driven to one place, and those that need it are cut out and frescoed." How many was a whole lot, how were they driven, where were they driven from, what were they cut out with, how were they branded, and when did they need it? My ignorance was hopeless and pathetic, and those to whom I applied were all too familiar with the process to be able to describe it. I might as well have asked for a full description of how a ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... containing volumes obtained only at the cost of great personal sacrifice, he was in the most active sympathy with the disease called bibliomania, and knew, as few comparatively poor men have known, the half-pathetic, half-humorous side of that ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... do, but free for a time, and hoping, a little heavily, for some adventure to break the military monotony of their lives; the shopgirls, also in hope of something to "take them out of themselves"—pathetic desire of escape from the little prison, where the soul sits, picking its oakum sometimes, in its cell of flesh!—young men making for the parks, workmen for the public houses, an old woman, in a cap, peering out of an upper ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... familiar with these bedraggled and weary wives. He was accustomed to see them sit for hours in his big wooden chair and nurse tired and fretful children. Their forlorn, aimless, pathetic wandering up and down the street was a daily occurrence, and had never possessed ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... time for deep investigation, for little Marcel eagerly dragged him towards the door of the store. To the man there was something almost pathetic in the child's excitement and joy in his new discovery. His childish treble silenced the bristling dogs that leapt out at them in fierce welcome. And his imperious command promptly reduced them to snuffing suspiciously at the furs of the scout and the white man whom they ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... at all; but for a brief moment her lip trembled. Amid all this merriment she had sat with a troubled face, and with a sore and heavy heart. She had seen in it but a pathetic bravado. He would drink Scotch whiskey—he would once more light a cigarette—merely to assure her that he was getting thoroughly well again; his laughter, his jokes, his wild sallies were all meant, and she knew it, to give her strength of ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... that invites respect; a book which is one long waste-pipe discharge of goody-goody puerilities and dreary moralities; a book which is full of pathos which revolts, and humor which grieves the heart. There are few things in literature that are more piteous, more pathetic, than the celebrated "humorous" incident of Moses and the spectacles. Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... moments of passion, Strickland remained aloof, she must have been filled with dismay, and even in those moments I surmise that she realised that to him she was not an individual, but an instrument of pleasure; he was a stranger still, and she tried to bind him to herself with pathetic arts. She strove to ensnare him with comfort and would not see that comfort meant nothing to him. She was at pains to get him the things to eat that he liked, and would not see that he was indifferent to food. She was ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. When Pope says of the Lord ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... not daring to disobey, she summons the children to her; then, sinking on her knees, entreats in moving and pathetic words to be permitted to go with them, in the lowest most menial capacity. U. RAI GYAN THOO refuses. There is no place for her in the greatness of the world yonder. "Even Kings forget," he says. "It is the command of the supreme ...
— For Love of the King - a Burmese Masque • Oscar Wilde
... happening. But where is the assistance so direfully needed, promised by both France and England to poor little Belgium with the great German army moving on Liege? Everybody has faith, however, in the Allies, and in the streets it is pathetic to hear people assuring each other, "O, oui, les Francais viennent ce soir" (Oh, yes, the French are coming to-night). There are many German troops in town already, who somehow have pushed their way in between the firing, but the city ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... changing his mind before he came close to him, he seized his hand and vowed eternal friendship, declaring with an agreeable frankness that from that time forth they were brothers in everything but personal appearance. Then he told his secret over again, with the addition of being pathetic on the subject of Miss Wackles, who, he gave Mr Quilp to understand, was the occasion of any slight incoherency he might observe in his speech at that moment, which was attributable solely to the strength of his affection and not to rosy wine or other ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... grace and a more perfect finish; Shakespeare's more passion; Milton's stand supreme in stateliness, Wordsworth's in depth and delicacy. But Cowper's unites with an exquisiteness in the turn of thought which the ancients would have called Irony, an intensity of pathetic tenderness peculiar to his loving and ingenuous nature. There is much mannerism, much that is unimportant or of now exhausted interest in his poems: but where he is great, it is with that elementary greatness which rests on the most universal human feelings. Cowper is ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... into rough bar-rooms, and knelt on their floors, and prayed what her sad heart wus full of,—for pity and mercy for her boy, and other mothers' boys,—prayed with that fellowship of suffering that made her sweet voice as pathetic as tears, and patheticker, so I ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... chord he had hoped to touch remained mute. In view of the fact that she believed love to be dead between them, this method of stimulating an outworn romance seemed sentimental and insincere. Had he loved her, she might well have thought it boyish and pathetic. What he spoke of as a disguise had seemed so natural as to escape her notice; and this indicated the height from which she had never really descended and could now never descend. He had lost his great opportunity of appearing the mayor in ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... were enough to attract an artist towards her; she was dressed in a lovely pink silk dress and her knob was arrayed by a pink feather. Her name was Margaret and she was known through all Paris as the "sweet young lady with the pathetic blue eyes!" and on the 20th of August (her birthday) not a single person omitted to give her a present. Beatrice thought her lovely and kissed her on both cheeks with hearty ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... couple of moments Mrs. Myrtle was at leisure, and Annie went up to the counter. Now that the critical instant had come, she felt her heart beating quickly, and knew that her cheeks were pale. Annie could look wonderfully pathetic when any emotion stirred her. She had a voice full of vibrations, and her eyes could assume the dumb ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... relief from the oppressive loneliness to talk to a human being; so she lingered wistfully in conversation. A pathetic eagerness came into the ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... a hopeless shake of her head to Laura, whom she suspected was to be blamed. But she was mistaken in her surmise for Alene was the real offender. Not being used to the always hungry state of a half dozen small brothers and sisters, she could not withstand the children's pathetic glances. ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... expression of satisfaction on his face that indicated a sense of happiness and content that his boy, born in that distant, humble home in Ohio, had risen to fame and brought such honor upon the name. It was, indeed, a pathetic sight to see a father venerate his son as the elder Edison did." Not less at home was Mr. Mackenzie, the Mt. Clemens station agent, the life of whose child Edison had saved when a train newsboy. The old Scotchman ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... made beautiful by the free use of "Chaulks Poudres," a box of which can be obtained at 96 Azure-street, for 25 cts. After reading another column, headed "An act of mercy," you find at its close a most pathetic appeal to your tender sensibilities in an affectionate request for you to call on Dr. Digg and have your corns extracted without pain. Despairing of finding the "intellectual treat," you lay the paper aside, and resolve upon ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... upon the attenuated creature, with a morose reflection of his loss, the latter, with a rebellion which she could not control, selected with trembling fortitude a thick slice of bread, which she buttered liberally and began to devour with pathetic haste, despite the rebuking gleam of the rat eyes opposite, an episode which, added to his already perturbed mind, exasperated his brutal temper to the point of snarling remonstrance, which was fortunately denied its utterance by the opportune arrival of the Sepoy, ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... comprising all the subjects that human life, with its joys and sorrows, its hopes and disappointments, could furnish, are noted for their sweetness and pure and exquisite polish. He particularly excelled in the pathetic; and the most celebrated of the existing fragments of his muse, the "Lamentation of Dan'a-e," is a piece of this character. The poem is based upon a tradition concerning Danae, the daughter of Acris'ius, King of Argos, and her infant son, the offspring ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... tellin' me mother that," said Matty, with a sudden look of angry alarm, which was really pathetic, as one gathered from it that the child felt she would no longer be allowed to keep her one cherished possession, if any idea of its pecuniary value were ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... would not make so much difference if I did grow old and ugly. He would have the children to give him pleasure." "I don't see what there is left for me to do," she said again and again. Sometimes she made pathetic attempts to change the simplicity of her dress. "Perhaps if I wore better clothes, I should look younger," she thought. But the result was not satisfactory. Her severe style had always been so essentially her own that any departure from it only made her look still more altered. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... parents, instead of giving me the inestimable benefit of a ten years' classical education, had kept me at home with my dear thirteen sisters, it is probable I should have liked this country of Attica, in sight of the blue shores of which the present pathetic letter is written; but I was made so miserable in youth by a classical education, that all connected with it is disagreeable in my eyes; and I have the same recollection of Greek in youth that I have ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... precaution and the most tender care in getting them out of the boat and up the ship's lofty side, the pain they suffered in the process must have been excruciating, they made light of it, declaring, with a laugh that moved those who heard it to tears—so hollow and pathetic was it—that such pain was less than nothing compared with the awful long-drawn-out torments to which they had ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... out and begged for caresses, mewing the news of the night—such a chatty creature!—and down on the beach, we made friends with the oldest man of the village, born in 1816. He was a handsome old fellow, with pathetic, faded eyes in a tanned, ruddy face; and the queer little harbour (everything is little at Clovelly, except the inhabitants) with its rustic sort of pier, and red-sailed fishing boats, looked as if it had been designed entirely ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... already described, would enclose the inner Bayle, where stood the lofty massy keep, the hall, and all the apartments and rooms belonging to the noble and potent owners. Although the curious will be inclined to join in the pathetic laments of the writer of the memoirs of Leicester, (Throsby) that the just position of the castle and its extent in former times cannot be known; yet strong probability will almost authorize us to believe that the account here given does not vary very widely from the truth; ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... she began her pathetic little narrative, hesitating at first, but gathering courage as ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... regular heads, called thoy, and usually specify the number they mean to enlarge upon; saying Epu thoygei tamen piavin, "what I am going to say is divided into two heads." Their speeches are not deficient in a suitable exordium, a clear narrative, a well-founded argument, and a pathetic peroration; and usually abound in parables and apologues; which sometimes furnish the main ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Harmony has not yet been seen; the so-called rational system of education has not yet transformed the impulses or the aims of men; and the communist of today, with a history of two thousand years of failure behind him, in the same pathetic confidence still looks for the realization of his dreams to the communism ...
— The Altruist in Politics • Benjamin Cardozo
... There is nothing more pathetic in the whole realm of school procedure than the frantic efforts of some teachers to feed their pupils instead of striving to create spiritual hunger. They require pupils to "take" so many problems, con so many words of spelling, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... glove. She had been laughed at, but she never knew it; she was treated as a bore, but she never cared. She had nothing in the world but the clothes on her back, and when she should go down into the grave she would leave nothing behind her but her grotesque, undistinguished, pathetic little name. And yet people said that women were vain, that they were personal, that they were interested! While Miss Birdseye stood there, asking Mrs. Farrinder if she wouldn't say something, Olive Chancellor tenderly fastened a small battered brooch ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... how entirely all relations between us had been broken off for many years, when I say that I did not even know the judge's private address, and was forced to send my letter to his court. In a day or two I received a very touching and grateful answer, pathetic not only in its grief, but even more in his frankly avowed inability to derive any consolation from the thoughts that my short note had suggested. Resignation to the inscrutable will of God was the ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... suspected, what we are strongly inclined to suspect, that the whole piece was one blemish, and that the passages which were meant to be fine were, in truth, bursts of that tame extravagance into which writers fall when they set themselves to be sublime and pathetic in spite of nature. He omitted, added, retouched, and flattered himself with hopes of a complete success in the following year; but, in the following year, Garrick showed no disposition to bring the amended tragedy on ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... the balance of immaterial assets. The scaffolding of much highly-prized sentiment would collapse, and the world of poetry and pageantry—particularly that of the tawdrier and more vendible poetry and pageantry—would be poorer by so much. The Man Without a Country would lose his pathetic appeal, or would at any rate lose much of it. It may be, of course, that in the sequel there would result no net loss even in respect of these immaterial assets of sentimental animation and patriotic ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... every pure heart in the assembly; it was reserved for the unfortunate Regnault, to rouse their feelings. He reminded them of the benefits and victories of Napoleon with so much eloquence and sensibility; he drew them a picture so true, so affecting, so pathetic, of the misfortunes, to which this great man, the hero of the nation, was about to devote himself without reserve, and without conditions, to ransom his country; that the eyes of his most obdurate enemies were moistened with tears, and the whole assembly ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... attended the death-bed of his father, received his last blessing, and closed his eyes for the last time!" Mr. Clapp then read parts of Mr. Stanley's will, gave an outline of his client's wanderings, and was very particular with names and dates. The sailor's return was then described in the most pathetic colours. "He brought with him, gentlemen, nothing but the humble contents of a sailor's chest, the hard-earned wages of his daily toil; he, who in justice was the owner of as rich a domain as any in the land!" The attempts of this poor sailor to obtain his rights were then represented. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... street, the professor very much the same as usual; Beatrice paler, with a pathetic droop about her mouth. ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "Almost pathetic," admitted Loring. "Well, Johnny," he said as they went back to the office, "you're up against it. While Birchard was forging the papers to get your million Gresham was establishing an alibi for himself. The only thing I see for you to do—besides laying for Gresham—is to repudiate ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... wampum, they took my advice, and prepared to leave their country and people immediately. Their relatives accompanied them a short distance on their journey, and when about to part, their old uncle, the Tall Chief, addressed them in the following pathetic ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... said to himself. "How pathetic, trying to make me jealous! Well, it's a pretty letter, and what's more, it must ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... grown with the significance of its contributors. In more than one instance have men at the head of large railroad corporations, influenced by temporary interest, become the authors of documents containing assertions and prophecies highly pathetic at the time, but subsequently shown to be so replete with falsehoods and absurdities that few railroad managers would to-day be willing to father them. Thus Alexander Mitchell, the late president of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad Company, addressed on the ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... who performs such deeds of derring-do in the noisome slum, knocks down the burly wife-beater, rescues an unmistakable Miss Clapton from the knife of a Lascar, and is all the while cultivating a virtuous consumption that stretches him on an edifying, pathetic, and altogether beautiful deathbed in the last chapter——My dear Authorling, cry my friends, we hear the squeak of that little voice of yours in every word he utters. Is that what you aspire ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... away with the first commandment!" cried poor Langley, sorely vexed. "Most lovely of human beings," he continued with a deep groan, which he intended to be a pathetic sigh, "my ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... the other girl, the pathetic droop of whose lips looked for all the world like Mary's when things went wrong. "You don't mean that, and I won't give you up," she said with fine stubbornness. "I haven't time to talk about it now. I must catch up with those girls. ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... favour by slandering him. This 'Declaration' has been so often exposed that I may safely pass it by; and pass by almost as safely the argument which some have drawn from a chance expression of his in his pathetic letter to Lady Raleigh, in which he 'hopes that God would send him somewhat before his return.' To prove an intention of piracy in the despairing words of a ruined man writing to comfort a ruined wife for the loss of her first-born is surely to deal out hard ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... school, and greeting his father, kissing his big hand; the genuine, cordial words and gestures of the old man—all this had the day before roused an instinctive feeling of respect and sympathy in Levin. This old man was a touching and pathetic figure to Levin now, and he longed to say ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... for a moment, then both hands went out in a mock despairing gesture, and she laughed. But the laugh was unmistakably forced, and a keen ear for such things would have detected a pathetic ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... reads the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on high; Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild seraphic fire; Or other holy seers ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... pointing to Miller, "is Karl von Mueller, captain in the Secret Service." A low moan broke from Kathleen, and she looked anywhere but at Miller, who had stepped forward to stand between her and the pine table with its pathetic burden. "Von Mueller," continued Heinrich, ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... in the meeting house of the First Baptist Church, Richmond, was well ordered, without the rant common to some preachers of that day, dignified and pathetic, and left a lasting impression on the audience.[54] Teague had often remarked to William Crane, "Sir, I don't hear any of your white ministers that can preach like Lott Cary." Crane was anxious to hear him and after listening to his farewell message from Romans 8:32—"He that spared not his own ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... merriest of the party. Before taking the fork or the sickle in hand, he would hitch up his soutane, and reveal a pair of still active sacerdotal legs in white linen drawers. The sight of the old man bending his back while reaping, his white beard brushing the golden corn, was pathetic or comic as the humour might seize the beholder. As gay as any of the cicadas that keep the summer's jubilee in the sunny tree-tops, he sings songs that have nothing in common with psalms, and he needs little provocation to dance. French has become ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Edinburgh, Mr. Duncan McLaren, so much esteemed that he was sometimes spoken of as the "Member for Scotland," unites in her own person all the requisites for a leader of the movement. She has the charm and dignified grace so generally found among Quaker ladies, and the pathetic eloquence which belong to her family. She is clear-sighted in planning action, and enthusiastic and warm-hearted in carrying it out, and for the past sixteen years the movement in Scotland ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... their tribe were anciently deposited, and there have passed hours in silent meditation. Influenced by this sublime and holy feeling, the sachem whose mother's tomb had been violated gathered his men together and addressed them in the following beautifully simple and pathetic harangue—a curious specimen of Indian eloquence, and an affecting instance of ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... home, the flourishing and comparatively vigorous Cisalpine Gaul. The most beautiful of his poems reflect the sweet pictures of the Lago di Garda, and hardly at this time could any man of the capital have written a poem like the deeply pathetic one on his brother's death, or the excellent genuinely homely festal hymn for the marriage of Manlius and Aurunculeia. Catullus, although dependent on the Alexandrian masters and standing in the midst of the fashionable and clique poetry of that ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... colouring, its sands, rocks, breakers and by-laws regulating the costume of bathers, merely exasperated my nerves. How far more subtle the appeal of these grey and dun-coloured opacities, these tent-cloths of fog pressed out into uncouth, dumbly pathetic shapes by the struggle for existence that seethes below it always—always! Decidedly I must begin to-morrow to practise walking. It seems a necessary step towards acquainting myself with the inner life of these inchoate millions, which must be well worth knowing. Papa, on arriving at our door, ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... honestly glad I did it. To be able to free those fine Guddus from slavery, and to save the Federation from that horrible plot—it was well worth the little suffering it'll cost me. But," and his smile was pathetic, "I do miss the uniform. I was so ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... our joys and sorrows in themselves. Anybody else, or any other occasion, would serve his purpose as well, and call forth an equal copiousness of sympathy and tears. Indeed a first rate novel, with its suffering heroine, or a good play with its pathetic scenes, would answer his purpose quite as well as any living person or actual situation. What he cares for is the thrill of emotional excitement and the ravishing sensation which accompanies all deep and tender feeling. Not love, but love's delights; not sympathy, but the rapture of the sympathetic ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... life, when his name had been inscribed on the roll of fame, he looked back to the cottage at Rohrau, "sweet through strange years," with a kind of mingled pride and pathetic regret. Flattered by the great and acclaimed by the devotees of his art, he never felt ashamed of his lowly origin. On the contrary, he boasted of it. He was proud, as he said, of having "made something out of nothing." He does not seem to have been often at Rohrau ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... sufficient to give a zest to the bitter banquets of adversity—whether, indeed, sorrow, sighing, and tears, are not the inseparable attendants of all those whose hearts are the repositories of tender affections and pathetic sympathies. ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... died: The singing furies muted ride Down wet and slippery roads to hell: And, silent in their captors' train, Two fishers, storm-caught on the main: A shepherd, battered with his flocks; A pit-boy tumbled from the rocks; A dozen back-broke gulls, and hosts Of shadowy, small, pathetic ghosts, —Of mice and leverets caught by flood; Their ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... or in England, he panted for the charms of home which he had never known. "I am fixed," he tells her, "to live a country life, and to have many (I hope) years of comfort, which God knows, I never yet had—only moments of happiness,"—a pathetic admission of the price he had paid for the glory which could not satisfy him, yet which, by the law of his being, he could not cease to crave. "I wish for happiness to be my reward, and not titles or money;" and happiness means being with her ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... her success, Mrs. Tarbell was by no means satisfied with herself, and the pathetic note in Mrs. Stiles's voice proved too much for her. "Mrs. Stiles," she said, turning round quickly, "perhaps I have been putting one side of the matter too strongly before you. If you will bring your daughter here some morning, we can discuss the subject together ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... lamp burning on a table revealed her slight figure in black, the warm white of her throat and face, the grace of the bending head, and the brown hair wreathed about it. He saw her as an exquisite vision in a dim light and shade. But it was not that which broke down his self-control so much as the pathetic look in her dark eyes, the look of one who is glad, and yet shrinks from her own gladness—tragically conscious of her own weakness, and yet happy in it. It touched his heart so profoundly that whether ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the seminary, though they were the constant subject of conversation on account of the discussion which they had excited among the clergy. This was the year of M. Jouffroy's death, and the pathetic despairing pages of his philosophy captivated us. I myself knew them by heart. We followed with deep interest the discussion raised by the publication of his posthumous works. In reality, we only knew Cousin, Jouffroy, and Pierre Leroux by those who had opposed them. The old-fashioned divinity ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... reading with less noise and more pleasure. He was extremely fond of gardens, flowers, foliage. Polyphile (La Fontaine) resembled him in this; but then Polyphile might be said to love all things. Both of them were lyrically inclined, with this difference, that Acanthus was rather the more pathetic, Polyphile the more ornate." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... supply him with every luxury he desired, and he was not to hesitate in the expression of any fancy his sickly state might prompt him to make. R—— told him, also, to join the yacht at Cowes when he returned to England. King lived to see the English shores again, and gratefully, in the blunt, pathetic language of a sailor, to thank his amiable benefactor. He fills, at this moment, his ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... thy walls, the shadow and the light; Around thy lofty pillars, tapers white Illuminate, with delicate sharp flames, The brows of saints with venerable names, And in the night erect a fiery wall, A great but silent fervor burns in all Those simple folk who kneel, pathetic, dumb, And know that down below, beside the Rhine— Cannon, horses, soldiers, flags in line— With blare of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... inborn pretension of the dog. The large dog, so much lazier, so much more weighed upon with matter, so majestic in repose, so beautiful in effort, is born with the dramatic means to wholly represent the part. And it is more pathetic and perhaps more instructive to consider the small dog in his conscientious and imperfect efforts to outdo Sir Philip Sidney. For the ideal of the dog is feudal and religious; the ever-present polytheism, the whip-bearing Olympus of mankind, rules them on the one hand; on the other, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... This they did in April. The Acadians thus found themselves, as usual, between two dangers; and unable to see which horn of the dilemma was the worse, they tried to avoid both by conciliating French and English alike, and assuring each of their devoted attachment. They sent a pathetic letter to Ramesay, telling him that their hearts were always French, and begging him at the same time to remember that they were a poor, helpless people, burdened with large families, and in danger of expulsion and ruin if they offended their masters, the English. [Footnote: "Ainsis ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... Bed of justice, so contrary to their views, to their schemes, to their projects; that to hinder it they, as guardians of the young King, would plead on his behalf, the heat, which was in fact extreme, the fear of the crowd, of the fatigue, of the bad air; that they would assume a pathetic tone in speaking of the King's health, calculated to embarrass the Regent; that if he persisted they would protest against everything which might happen to His Majesty; declare, perhaps, that in order not to share the blame, they ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... pathetic monologue that Miss Morrison had chosen for Maudie, supposed to be given by an old woman in a poorhouse. Her husband had died a drunkard and then her only son, "as likely a lad as you ever saw," had also taken to "crooked ways and left her all alone." ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... generalize and apply. The picture is poor, for the child takes only what he is sensible to. And it does seem often, as Sighele pathetically notices on a large social scale, and as the Westminster divines have urged without due sense of the pathetic and home-coming point of it, that he takes more of the bad in us for reproduction than of the good! But, be this as it may, what we give him is all he gets. Heredity does not stop with birth; it is then only ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... blue sashes engirdling their waists, and casting flowers on the ground before the Holy Sacrament; the crowd as it goes before and follows after them hushed in religious silence, and so many with their faces bent reverently to the ground; I have never heard that grave and pathetic chant, as it is led by the priests and fervently responded to by an infinity of voices of men, of women, of girls, of little children, without my inmost heart being stirred, and tears coming into my eyes. There is ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... she began, with just the faintest touch of pathetic reproach in her voice. But he did not ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... being past, They reunite, so these unite as fast. The older Songstress hitherto hath spent Her elocution in the argument Of their great Song in prose; to wit, the woes Which Maiden true to faithless Sailor owes— Ah! "Wandering He!"—which now in loftier verse Pathetic they alternately rehearse. All gaping wait the event. This Critic opes His right ear to the strain. The other hopes To catch it better with his left. Long trade It were to tell, how the deluded maid A victim fell. And now right greedily All ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... pensive, and he more insolent, till at last the monster had the assurance to offer me to a young baronet of his acquaintance." This scene is not fit for picture; it is seemingly nothing but successful villany, and of too gay a cast to be pathetic. The chapter from which it is taken would have furnished a much better one—the meeting between the Vicar and his poor Olivia. We can bear the suffering of a Cordelia, because all in that is great though villany ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... any one told me I was doing any such things I think I should, probably, have asked him how to spell the words he was using. I only knew that this man-child was there yearning for knowledge, and I was glad to share my meagre store of crumbs with him. His gratitude for my small gifts was really pathetic, and right there I learned the joys of the teacher. That man sought me out on our way home from school and asked questions that would have puzzled Socrates, but forgot my ignorance of hard questions in his joy at my answers of easy ones. When some light would break ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... chair, and explained how and where it had been found. I even told her of the little empty nest from which the young birds had long since flown away. In this tiny incident there was something pathetic that soothed her; so, presently, when she left off weeping, we examined the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... kept long waiting in the neat little back parlor, which was Miss Trant's private room. Rachel came to her looking very white, while she breathed quickly. She paused just within the door, in a hesitating, uncertain way, which seemed to Katherine very pathetic. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... astonishing and so irreparably complete, is one of the strangest events of that still imperfectly comprehended time. There had been, and were still to be, plenty of instances of the downfall of power, as ruinous and even more tragic, though scarcely any one more pathetic in its surprise and its shame. But it is hard to find one of which so little warning was given, and the causes of which are at once in part so clear, and in part so obscure and unintelligible. Such disasters had to be reckoned upon as possible chances by any one who ventured into public ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... rejected, his patience gave way, and in some of his later satires he even broke the bounds of courtesy. Lady Byron's letters at the time of the separation, especially those first published in the Academy of July 19, 1879, are to Mrs. Leigh always affectionate and confidential, often pathetic, asking her advice "in this critical moment," and protesting that, "independent of malady, she does not think of the past with any spirit of resentment, and scarcely with the sense of injury." In her communications to Mr. Hodgson, on the other hand—the first of ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... their homes which have been found on the bodies of dead Germans bear witness, in a way that now sounds pathetic, to the kindness with which they were received by the civil population. Their evident surprise at this reception was due to the stories which had been dinned into their ears of soldiers with their eyes gouged out, treacherous ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... baby in the case—a baby and mongrel dog, and a little boy and girl. They baby was small, and not particularly fair, but it had round limbs and a dimple or two, and a soft, half-pathetic, half- doggy look in its blue eyes, and the usual knack, which most helpless little babies have, of twining itself round the hearts of those who took ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... course, too much given to flattery. The effusions of the African muse are inspired by nature and animated by national enthusiasm. From the few specimens given, they seem not unlikely to reward the care of a collector. How few among our peasantry could have produced the pathetic lamentation uttered in the little Bambarra cottage over the distresses of Mungo Park! These songs, handed down from father to son, evidently contain all that exists among the African nations of traditional history. From ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... than yourself. For her you would lay down your life." And Ulrich knew that his love was the village of Alt Waldnitz, where dwelt his people, the old and wrinkled, the laughing "little ones," where dwelt the helpless dumb things with their deep pathetic eyes, where the bees hummed drowsily, and the thousand tiny creatures of ...
— The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl • Jerome K. Jerome
... see the same white wings outspread That hovered o'er the Master's head! Up from undated time they come, The martyr souls of heathendom, And to His cross and passion bring Their fellowship of suffering. I trace His presence in the blind Pathetic gropings of my kind,— In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung, In cradle-hymns of life they sung, Each, in its measure, but a part Of the unmeasured Over-Heart; And with a stronger faith confess The greater that it owns the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... interest to the people assembled by the water to watch the preparations for departure. An hour before the time set for sailing, a procession was seen coming slowly down the main street of the town, heading for the ship. It was a strange, silent, pathetic little company. At the head were two sisters of charity, following them a score of young children, evenly divided as to sex, and all under ten years of age. They were dressed with the utmost simplicity, almost severity, although with extreme neatness. ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... striking incidents, relief points in the dull monotony of every-day events, stories fitted to rouse the reader from languid weariness and stir anew in his veins the pulse of interest in human life. There are many such,—dramas on the stage of history, life scenes that are pictures in action, tales pathetic, stirring, enlivening, full of the element of the unusual, of the stuff the novel and the romance are made of, yet with the advantage of being actual fact. Incidents of this kind have proved as attractive to writers ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris |
