"Rueful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whatever he found to do. Most of his creditors, knowing him to be a man of his word, patiently bided their time, until, in the course of long years, he paid, with interest, every cent of what he used to call, in rueful satire upon his own folly, his ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... I left Will to tell Fred his story as best suited him, Fred roaring with laughter as he watched Will's rueful face, yet turning suddenly on Brown to curse him like a criminal ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... for all is to learn to the dregs our own ignoble fallibility. When we have fallen through storey after storey of our vanity and aspiration, and sit rueful among the ruins, then it is that we begin to measure the stature of our friends: how they stand between us and our own contempt, believing in our best; how, linking us with others, and still spreading ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cried he again in rueful tones. "You, return to that place now ... what good do you think you could do—eh?" But here recollecting himself, he hesitated and started upon a more plausible line of expostulation. "Pooh, pooh! You can't leave the little ones, your husband ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... with a rueful face when he heard that. What a hermit might be I did not at all know, and it meant nothing to me. I was glad enough to think that there was a roof of any sort ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... disport their hour, 120 Let them dance, fairy like, round Ossian's tomb; Let them forge lies and histories for Hume; Let them with Home, the very prince of verse, Make something like a tragedy in Erse; Under dark Allegory's flimsy veil, Let them, with Ogilvie,[335] spin out a tale Of rueful length; let them plain things obscure, Debase what's truly rich, and what is poor Make poorer still by jargon most uncouth; With every pert, prim prettiness of youth, 130 Born of false taste, with Fancy (like a child ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... that was the post had brought him—what a letter, and what a woman! He sighed, thinking with a rueful though satiric spirit of all those protestations of hers in the summer, as to independence, a maiden life, and the rest. And now she confessed that, from the beginning, it had been Faversham. Why? What had she seen in ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lying down; and after washing, and combing out her bright silken hair, she resumed the glittering, bride-like finery of the evening before. Poor Mollie looked at the silver-shining silk, the cobweb lace, the gleaming, milky pearls, with a very rueful face. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... great ease, but it brought one rueful consequence. Elspeth grew cold to me. Women, I suppose, have to condescend, and protect, and pity. When I was an outcast she was ready to shelter me; but now that I was in some degree of favour with others the need for this was gone, and she saw me without illusion in all my angularity ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... cried John, turning his rueful eyes on Mr Haredale, who had dropped on one knee, and was hastily beginning to untie his bonds. 'Look'ee here, sir! The very Maypole—the old dumb Maypole—stares in at the winder, as if it said, "John Willet, John Willet, let's go and pitch ourselves in the nighest ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... in the ditch, and they had been very kindly brought home by a passing automobile. Cecily had been at the Dower House at the moment of the rueful arrival. She had seen how an American can carry injuries. She had made sympathy and helpfulness more delightful ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... wrung out his dishcloth in the back-handed manner peculiar to his sex, hung it on a nail behind the door, dried his hands on his trousers, which for once were not "busted up," and with a less rueful expression than he had exhibited for several hours, went forth ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Sancho, "If by chance these gentlemen should want to know who was the hero that served them so, your worship may tell them that he is the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha, otherwise called the Knight of the Rueful Countenance." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... announced an addition to our party, and in bounded that light-hearted child of whim, Horace Eglantine:—"What, Blackmantle here? Why then, Tom, we can form as complete a trio as ever got bosky{14} with bishop{15} in the province of Bacchus,{16}! Why, what a plague, my old fellow, has given you that rueful-looking countenance? I am sure you was not plucked upon Maro Common or Homer Downs{17} in passing examination with the big wig this morning; or has Tom been frisking{18} you already with some of his ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... done it, the Artist (who had clapt in Miss merely as a fill-space) swore I exprest his full meaning, and the damosel bridled up into a Missionary's vanity. I like verses to explain Pictures: seldom Pictures to illustrate Poems. Your wood cut is a rueful Lignum Mortis. By the by, is the widow likely ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the three who has accomplished nothing," was Winter's rueful comment. Nor could any critic have gainsaid him, for he seemed to have been wasting precious hours while his subordinates were making ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... salt. At the present moment, when salt is five cents a pound and butter fifty, we Americans are paying, I should judge from the taste, for about one pound of salt to every ten of butter, and those of us who have eaten the butter of France and England do this with rueful recollections. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... was still staring in rueful indignation at this snub from her dog, Brice found time and thought to stare with still greater intentness up the tree, at a bunch of bristling fur which occupied the first crotch and which glared wrathfully ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... buildings look grey, its sky and its streets assume a sombre hue; the scattered, leafless trees and wind-blown dust and paper but add to the general solemnity of color. There seems to be something in the chill breezes which scurry through the long, narrow thoroughfares productive of rueful thoughts. Not poets alone, nor artists, nor that superior order of mind which arrogates to itself all refinement, feel this, but dogs and ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... crane or a swallow, so did I chatter!" said the rueful prophet. I do not write as a pessimist, hardly as a critic; still less as a censor; to waste time in deriding others' theories of life is a very poor substitute for enjoying it! I think we do very fairly ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... comments upon the luxurious habits of the people who had compelled him to carry so many of their superfluous comforts through the bush. Then he set about gathering up the sundries he had dropped. First of all he came upon a lady's parasol, white outside and lined with green. He regarded it with a rueful smile when he had tried and ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... pea-soup before he was quite dead, quite senseless. Of all drowned rats, he looked the worst, as he stood there with his white, rueful face, his shivery limbs, and his dilapidated garments, shaking the wet off him. The laborers, their duty done, walked coolly away; the tagrag withdrew to a safe distance, waiting for what might come next; and ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... brings his child to foolish, remediless catastrophe, in fancying his father's work as good, and strong, and fit to bear sunlight, as if it had been God's work. So, again, they represent the foresight and kindly zeal of men by a most rueful figure of one chained down to a rock by the brute force and bias and methodical hammer-stroke of the merely practical Arts, and by the merciless Necessities or Fates of present time; and so having his very heart torn piece ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... rueful, and almost sullen. She said she had parted with her doctors for him, but she really could not go about without stays. "They are as loose as they ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... to think there's truth in the old saw, 'It's hard to teach old dogs new tricks,'" remarked Mr. Travilla, with a comically rueful face. "I've a mind to give it up. What ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... that if a man of that kind was to fall in love with me, I'd black his boots for him," she said. Then she added, with a whimsically rueful gesture, "Still, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... again with rueful irony. "Because I've nothing to hit with, my son. Because you can break through my defence every time. If I were to kick you from here to the sea, you'd still have the best of me. Haven't you ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... I can never feel at home out-of-doors," Mary announced, with such a rueful expression that ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... a day whilst Harold was from home, there was knocking at the door of their house, and forthwith the door opened and there stood in the midst of them one clad all in black and of rueful countenance. Then, as if she foresaw evil, Persis called unto her little ones and stood between them and that one all in black, and she demanded of him his name and will. "I am the Death-Angel," quoth he, "and I come for the best-beloved of ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... into the agency store and took down two rifles hanging at the entrance, always ready for use. "We're going to kill a man," they explained, and the owner was entirely satisfied. They left the rueful Cutler inside, and proceeded to the gate of the stockade, turning there to the right, away from the river, and following the paling round the corner down to the farther right-hand corner. Looking from behind it, the lone ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... lucid, but Josie, with a flying mental leap, arrived at the conclusion that it was very important that Uncle James, whoever he was, should have a dinner, and she knew where one was to be had. But before she could speak Stephen returned, looking rueful. "No use, Lexy. That man was only old Mr. Byers, and he had seen no signs of a tramp. There is a trail of grease right across the road. The tramp must have taken directly to the woods. We'll simply have to do without ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... tumbled from the wall And hit the young man's head. "A striking likeness!" That was all The rueful ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... heard that seeing is believing; and that youth might take a warning from the punishment that sooner or later is ever tacked to the tail of crime, I took Benjie and Mungo to hear the trial; and two more rueful faces than they put on, when they looked at the culprits, were never seen since Adam was a boy. It was far different with the two Eirishers, who showed themselves so hardened by a long course of sin and misery, that, instead of abasing themselves in the face of a magistrate, they ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... profession of good Samaritan, my dear Felicia," he begged her with a certain rueful humour, "and take the poor foolish woman off my hands. Plant her where you like, so long as it is well out of my neighbourhood. She has made an egregious fiasco of her position here. As you love me, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Freshett looked awful disappointed, and he came up to father, with his back toward mother, and asked: "That's your say too, Mr. Stanton?" Father grinned sort of rueful-like, but he said to give Even So his money and let him go. He told all about getting ours back, and having had him at the house once before. He brought the money Leon took from him, but the men said no doubt he ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... stove excepted, was wet, and shining with soft soap and sand: the smell of which dry-saltery impregnated the air. In the midst of the dreary scene, the Captain, cast away upon his island, looked round on the waste of waters with a rueful countenance, and seemed waiting for some friendly bark to come that way, and take ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... broken posts, so that he could not ride far. Being painstaking and conscientious in his work, he had made not more than four miles by the beginning of the afternoon. Then he found a break that would occupy him for two hours at least. With rueful eyes he surveyed the long stretch of dilapidated fence. It was time, he reflected, that the Dean sent someone to look after his property, and dismounting, he went to work, forgetting, in his interest in the fencing problem, to insure his horse's near-by attendance. Now, the best of cow-horses are ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... The sweeper cast a rueful glance at his melancholy domain. But he had gained but little that day, and the offer was too tempting to be rejected. He heaved a sigh, shouldered his broom, and murmuring to himself that he would give her a last brush before he retired for the night, he put his long limbs into that ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a lot," she said, looking with a rueful countenance at the sum total. "Yes, I even fear the sealskin must go. I don't want to part with it. Dad gave it me ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... to go anywhere," answered Miss Forrest, half laughingly, yet with a certain rueful emphasis. "She is a slave to her babies, and as for Celestine, the nurse, she is no help to ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... Rigby, with a rueful glance at the relics of her ill-fated contrivance. "My poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world made up of just such a jumble of worn-out, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... took the bedraggled paper with a rueful face. "Everything seems to be wrong to-day," he remarked. "What is this sudden ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... blame at all," the captain assured her, adding with a rueful smile: "He didn't take you any more by surprise than he did me. I hadn't time to reach ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... obnoxious; unacceptable, unpopular, thankless. unsatisfactory, untoward, unlucky, uncomfortable. distressing; afflicting, afflictive; joyless, cheerless, comfortless; dismal, disheartening; depressing, depressive; dreary, melancholy, grievous, piteous; woeful, rueful, mournful, deplorable, pitiable, lamentable; sad, affecting, touching, pathetic. irritating, provoking, stinging, annoying, aggravating, mortifying, galling; unaccommodating, invidious, vexatious; troublesome, tiresome, irksome, wearisome; plaguing, plaguy^; awkward. importunate; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Gerbino, sword in hand, hacking and hewing on all sides among the Saracens, did ruthlessly slaughter not a few of them; till, as the burning ship began to blaze more fiercely, he bade the seamen take thereout all that they might by way of guerdon, which done, he quitted her, having gained but a rueful victory over his adversaries. His next care was to recover from the sea the body of the fair lady, whom long and with many a tear he mourned: and so he returned to Sicily, and gave the body honourable sepulture in Ustica, an islet that faces, as it were, Trapani, and went home ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... small, reluctant hand, and kissed it as devoutly as ever good Alonzo Quixada did that of the Duchess while he said, merrily quoting from the immortal story: "'High and Sovereign Lady, thine till death, the Knight of the Rueful Countenance.'" ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... is another race to whom we owe reparation," remarked Mr. Dinsmore, leaning back in his chair, and regarding the chess-board with a half rueful look. "There, Ned, my boy, I think you wouldn't have come off victor if my attention had not been called from the game by the talk ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... end of her pen, and sighed again. She was deep in her housekeeping accounts, adding and subtracting and, between whiles, regarding the result with a rueful frown. ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... hospitality. On the day after the battle of Corunna, when these gentlemen came on board, he ordered a cock to be driven into a hogshead of prime old sherry; and his satisfaction was perfect, when his steward, with a rueful countenance, communicated to him, on arriving at Spithead, that "his very best cask of wine had been drunk dry on the ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... far before they saw a cat sitting in the middle of the road, with tears in her eyes, and making a most rueful face. ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... Freddy might be willing to be ill under such conditions," said the doctor, complimentary, but rueful. He felt his patient's pulse, and prescribed for him with a softened voice. He lingered and looked round the room, which was very bare, yet somehow was not like any of the rooms in his house. How ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... me," said Hinman, with a rueful smile, "that I concocted a very pretty theory to account for that missing page. I felt quite chesty about it! I'm glad it didn't throw Miss ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... symptom of some dangerous disease. Let me quote the well-known case of Hans Andersen, whose imagination was morbidly strong. He found one morning when he awoke that he had a small pimple under his left eyebrow. He reflected with distress upon the circumstance, and soon came to the rueful conclusion that the pimple would probably increase in size, and deprive him of the sight of his left eye. A friend calling upon him in the course of the morning found him writing, in a mood of solemn resignation, with one hand over the eye ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... never thought her good. Not that she is impossibly bad. She was created for play and for laughter, and very happy babies are not often very wicked; but she is so irrepressible, so hopelessly given up to fun, that her kindergarten teacher, Rukma, smiles a rueful smile at the mention of her name. For to Chellalu the most unreasonable thing you can ask is implicit obedience, which unfortunately is preferred by us to any amount of fun. She will learn to obey, we are not ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... thus revenging the affronts he imagined he had received, and chasing the vanquished about the court, the unusual noise and uproar which ensued reached the ears of Mr Barlow, and brought him to the door. He could hardly help laughing at the rueful figure of his friend, with the water dropping from every part of his body in copious streams, and at the rage which seemed to animate him in spite of his disaster. It was with some difficulty that Tommy ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... to the ears in the lees of war, I win a rueful reminder from a stray volume of Hours in a Library. Was the world regenerated between 1848 and 1855? Were English labourers all properly fed, housed and taught? Had the sanctity of domestic life acquired a new charm in the interval, and was the old quarrel between rich and poor definitely ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... aspirants for Cairns' admiration had ranged themselves in his mind against the paragon, Beth Truba (with whom he had long comported himself with a rueful might-have-been manner, both pretty and pleasant). Beth had easily transcended. Whatever was great and desirable in woman was likely to wear a Beth Truba hall-mark for his observation. Now, that was changed, not that Beth suffered eclipse, nor that his ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... hand upon his aching head and looking round him with a rueful grin. 'That's the great comfort. It IS creditable to keep up one's spirits here. Virtue's ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... 12th of April, the travellers had the customary visit to their yard of a long line of women, who came every morning with rueful countenances and streaming eyes to lament the approaching death of the old widow. They wept, they beat their breast and tore their hair; they moaned, and exhibited all manner of violent affliction at the expected ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... nor Jack owes me anything. Jack has paid, and more than once, all he owed me. But," with a rueful smile, "don't expect too much from me in this job. I can't see ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... parties, and toad-eaters in general, or might bring into the house favourites of her own. I am sure any kind-hearted man of the world must feel for the position of these faithful, doubtful, disconsolate vassals, and have a sympathy for their rueful looks and demeanour as they eye the splendid preparations for the ensuing marriage, the grand furniture sent to my lord's castles and houses, the magnificent plate provided for his tables—tables at which they may never have a knife and fork; castles and houses of which ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in pulling it put had dropped his box of rufuses, and the jar of anti-pestilential confection. He had just ascertained his loss, and wished to go back, but this Nizza Macascree would not permit. Enraged at the delay, Leonard peremptorily ordered the porter to come on; and Blaize, casting a rueful glance at his treasures, which he perceived at a little distance in the middle of the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... began to weep and to tremble. The whole scene was played so well that a stranger would have been deceived, and would have made his preparations to tight a band of brigands. Then the grave-digger, bard and orator of the groom, took his stand before the door, and with a rueful voice, exchanged the following dialogue with the hemp-dresser, who was stationed ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... the way, we following, with rueful looks one at the other, till we reach the market-place, and there he takes us into a house of entertainment, where a dozen Moors are squatting on their haunches in groups about sundry bowls of a smoking mess, called cuscusson, which is a ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... opinion, and halted a few feet in advance of him and fired a few shots in a kneeling posture. While thus engaged, I heard the sound of a blow behind me, and looking around, I saw Ginter tumbling on the ground, his heels in the air. He quickly gathered himself up to a sitting posture with a very rueful countenance, giving vent to his feelings in sundry expletives, as soon as he could get breath enough to deliver them properly. With many a doleful grunt he examined the extent of his injuries. A bullet had struck the belt of his cartridge-box, nearly over the heart. The ball ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... some murmurs, both inwardly and to Berkeley, at the long separation in store for them; and the lover, although himself a little rueful, heartened her up with bright prophecies for their future. An immediate marriage for them was out of the question, for since Warner's death Mrs. Smith clung to her younger daughter with absolute dependence. ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... of turning away from the temptations of the gates of Destruction, and making for the gate of life. But they either failed to find it or grew weary on the way; very few went through—one man of rueful countenance, ran in earnest while crowds on all sides derided him, some mocking, {28b} some threatening him, and his kindred clinging to him, begging him not to condemn himself to lose the whole world at one stroke. ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... a snug little bay, we stood in, and went ashore. I sent my two Provincials foraging with their guns, and we who remained set about to fix our camp for the day and prepare breakfast. A few minutes only passed, and the two hunters came running back with rueful faces to say they had seen two Indians near, armed with muskets and knives. My plans were made at once. We needed their muskets, and the Indians must pay the price of their presence here, for our safety should be had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... much too frightened now to enjoy the fun any longer: she stood, gazing with rueful looks at the broken mirror—O if the cross old housekeeper should find it out! She thought the best plan would be to steal out of the room, but on turning round, she perceived that the door had become most unaccountably shut—there was no getting out. What was to be done? While ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... his rueful eyes, He saw the thatched-roof cottage rise: The prospect touched his heart with cheer, And promised kind deliverance near. A stable, erst his scorn and hate, Was now become his wished retreat; His passion cool, his pride forgot, A Farmer's ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... rueful glance at his boots, but bowing and smiling all the way. I learnt much of the neighbourhood from Mrs Collins, but with the warm colouring she judged amiable. I must except, however, the poor of the parish. There she spoke, with a censure no doubt ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... let them find it out," said Fielding. As had been foreseen, an uproar ensued in the theatre. The actor hastened to the green-room, where the author was cheering his spirits with a bottle of champagne. Surveying Garrick's rueful countenance, Fielding inquired: "What's the matter? Are they hissing me now?" "Yes, the very passage I wanted you to retrench. I knew it wouldn't do. And they've so horribly frightened me I shall not be right again the whole night." "Oh," cried the author, "I did not ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... "Rebel Troop," a sort of Cadet corps among the Charleston youths, came to me in great wrath, complaining that the corporal of our squad had kicked him after he had surrendered. His air of offended pride was very rueful, and it did indeed seem a pathetic reversal of fortunes for the two races. To be sure, the youth was a scion of one of the foremost families of South Carolina, and when I considered the wrongs which the black race had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... more than a little sorry for her, and also a bit rueful at his own plight. Things had gone wrong for him from the commencement of the evening. And this—well, the gage of battle had been flung in his face and he was no man to refuse the challenge. But his muscles were taut until the soft voice of Naomi broke in ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... emphatic imprecation upon all dark and broken stair-cases in general, but upon that one in particular. At this moment, Fanny made her appearance at the landing with a light, and was astonished to behold her new acquaintance of that afternoon, the little old man who had inquired her residence. A most rueful expression sat upon his visage, and he carried upon one arm a huge basket. The friendly light enabled him soon to reach the end of his journey; he entered the little room without ceremony, and depositing his burden ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Anne, with a rueful face, "I know how it will be. You'll have to go home for good, and you won't think of me ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... locker, looking very pale and very sea-sick. Paul was on the cabin-floor, with one hand holding on by the leg of the table, and a bottle of brandy in the other. His prayer-book he had abandoned during a fright, and it was washing about in the lee-scuppers. Jerry was delighted, but put on a rueful face. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and staring eye-balls, were approached close to the writhing features of his redoubted principal—as I think I have seen honest Sancho Panza's, in one of Tony Johannot's sketches, to that of the prostrate Knight of the Rueful Countenance. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... smiling, a little rueful and embarrassed again, with her eyes on the ground. Then, as the Boy still stood there waiting, "Joe," she whispered, glancing over her shoulder—"Joe ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... utter goose I am!" she declared out loud. "I don't believe I ever heard anyone, or saw anything. It was just my imagination that led me on. Now, I hope," Mollie gave a rueful smile and sat down to pull the brambles out of her dress, "I hope my imagination will kindly show me the ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... go-between, Captain. Here's Mr. John Clemm, the executive genius of this establishment," sung out Burke, who was standing inside the door with the rueful fat ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... not enliven him, although upon our driver it seemed to bring another fit as much beyond the proportion of my joke as his first had been. "She tires a man's spirit," said black curly, and with this rueful utterance he abandoned the subject; so that when we reached Thomas in the dim night my curiosity was strong, and I paid little heed to this new place where I had come or to my supper. Black curly had taken himself off, and the driver sat at the table ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... friend or a bottle to give him, and also gasped forth his favourite allusion to the wing of friendship and its never moulting a feather; but his faculties appeared to be absorbed in the contemplation of Miss Sally Brass, at whom he stared with blank and rueful looks, which delighted the watchful dwarf beyond measure. As to the divine Miss Sally herself, she rubbed her hands as men of business do, and took a few turns up and down the office with ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... very very well, George. Oh, I understand just what you are feeling. And oh, I do so wish that you could—(with a little sigh)—but then it wouldn't be George, not the George I married—(with a rueful little ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... have thought of it a good many times since, how much better things turned out for me than if I had had my own way. Too bad he had to go so young! We need such men. I wish we had a few like him on the Home Board." He turned toward his companion with a rueful smile. "I am rather glad that happened down at the Home to-day. It has given me a little personal experience with the Dragon that may be convenient to have." He smiled again at her, that kindly, whimsical little smile that so ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... that kind Richardson had no answer. He could only acknowledge it with a rueful smile that did not lift the shadow from his eyes. There were no sunbeams caught in Quita's 'bits of sea water' just then; and for a while silence and tobacco-smoke reigned in the room. Richardson, who appeared to be reading the closely written sheet of foolscap at his elbow, was casting about ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... whole resource to carry on their little commerce for the ensuing week. I doubt not but the paper may have had some share in alienating the minds of the people from the revolution. Whenever I want to purchase any thing, the vender usually answers my question by another, and with a rueful kind of tone inquires, "En papier, madame?"—and the bargain concludes with a melancholy reflection on the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... in her hand with a rueful look of disappointment on her face as she looked in vain for Harold or Maude to greet her. For a single moment the difference between her position and that of Nina and Ann Eliza struck her like a blow, and ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... cleft, Even of half mere daylight reft, Rueful he peered to right and left, Muttering in his altered mood: 160 'The fate is hard that weaves my weft, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... Sir Piercie Shafton looked like a man stricken by a thunderbolt, while, notwithstanding the seriousness of the scene hitherto, no one of those present, not even the Abbot himself, could refrain from laughing at the rueful and mortified expression ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... professed great joy at meeting with them, and declared that he was then on his way to their towns. They were not deceived by the artifice; for although he assumed an air of pleasantness and gaity, calculated to win upon their confidence, yet the woful countenance and rueful expression of poor Petro, convinced them that White's conduct was feigned, that he might lull them into inattention, and they be enabled to effect an escape. They were both tied for the night; and in the morning White being painted ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... though he would rather have recurred to the subject of his own uncertainties, was compelled to make a sign of rueful civility and acquiescence. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Lay that sings The haunts of happy lovers, The path that leads them to the grove, The leafy grove that covers: And pity sanctifies the verse That paints, by strength of sorrow, The unconquerable strength of love; Bear witness, rueful Yarrow! ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Allegory's flimsy veil Let Them with Ogilvie spin out a tale Of rueful length,' Churchill's Poems, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... rueful grins. "The old sport!" quoth the latter admiringly. "Damme, but I must say ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... are very hard to find,—especially round Dapplemere, I'm afraid!" said she, with a rueful little laugh. ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... Crabshaw, with equal surprise and concern, asked what had brought him there? and Timothy, after some pause, during which he surveyed his master with a rueful aspect, answered, "The devil."—"One would imagine, indeed, you had some such conveyance," said Sir Launcelot. "I have followed your cries since last evening, I know not how nor whither, and never could come up with you till this moment. But, say, what ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... knows I always mind, mother," said the old gentleman, putting on a rueful look. "I do it, thee knows, to set the children an example. Good-by now; mother will make thee as hearty as I am ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... everybody was looking at him, with a full knowledge of his vainglorious errand. The post-office was closed, and the clerk at the wicket demanded one penny as a fee for taking in the late letter. John Clare fumbled in his pockets, and found that he had not so much as a farthing in his possession. In a rueful voice he asked the man at the wicket to take the letter without the penny. The clerk glanced at the singular piece of paper handed to him, the pencilled, ill-spelt address, the coarse pitch, instead of sealing-wax, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... to be in a situation," mused the girl with a rueful grimace. "If it's only a tete-a-tete ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... did look, and the rueful expression of Rachel, set off by the inky stains, was so irresistibly comical, that, after a little struggle, she too gave way, ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... I surveyed this curt announcement and the rueful face behind it, until the comical side of the affair so completely overtopped every consideration that we both burst out ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... thought of questioning a statement made by "Captain Kinzer," but the rueful expression deepened on his face, the basket of eels dropped heavily on the grass, the tough, black fingers twisted nervously together for a moment, and then he sat mournfully ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... townspeople bellowed a little over their losses after Prince Rupert's rueful visit, but there was one among them who knew how to "raise the wind," for we find Onions, the bellows-maker, hard at work in 1650; and his descendants keep at ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell |
