"Spiritless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you let that bow-legged cross between a bulldog and a flamin' red sunset tromp on you so? It looks to me like you're plumb spiritless." ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... however, and his sister told him at once, that the key, which was in her possession, should not pass into his hands that day. "No," she continued, "nor sorra the ring you'll put on the same girl with my consent. Aren't you a purty young omadhaun, you spiritless creature, to go to marry sich a niddy-nauddhy, when you know that the best fortunes in the glen would jump at you! Yes, faiks! to bring home that mane, useless creature, that hasn't a penny to the good! A purty farmer's wife she'll make, and purtily she'll fill my poor mother's ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... appearance at that moment, as usual, with a child in either hand, and a very sad picture it was, so mournful and spiritless was his countenance, with the hectic tint of decay evident on each thin cheek, and those two fair healthful creatures clinging to him, thoughtless of their past loss, unconscious of that which impended. Little Owen, after one good stare, evidently recognized a friend ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fill'd with various heaps Of old domestic lumber; that huge chair Has seen six monarchs fill the British throne: Here a broad massy table stands, o'erspread With ink and pens, and scrolls replete with rhyme: Chests, stools, old razors, fractured jars, half-full Of muddy Zythum, sour and spiritless: Fragments of verse, hose, sandals, utensils Of various fashion, and of various use, With friendly influence hide the sable ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... from the wet sole of her shoe with beaming satisfaction. Her skirt, wet around the hem, was drawn up to her knees, her coat, well sprinkled, was on the back of a chair, and in her lap her hat lay limp and spiritless. ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... seemed spiritless, and the charming face held a gravity that was quite foreign to it. In the searching winter sunlight he could even discern one or two faint lines about the violet-blue eyes, while the curving mouth, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Killicrankie unseen; but this disturbed us little at a time when we had seven miles to travel in the dark, with a poor beast almost sinking with fatigue, for he had not rested once all day. We went on spiritless, and at a dreary pace. Passed by one house which we were half inclined to go up to and ask for a night's lodging; and soon after, being greeted by a gentle voice from a poor woman, whom, till she spoke, though we were close to her, we had not seen, we stopped, and asked if she could tell ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night. And would have told him half his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... anxious period had the unfortunate city of Berlin yet to pass through. With fear and trembling did the inhabitants await the approach of each morning, and in spiritless despondency they seemed to have lost all ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... him, ye spiritless coofs, ye!" she replied; "gae tell him that Madge Gordon defies him and a' his men, as she despises you, and wad shake the dirt frae her shoon at baith the ane and the other o' ye. Shame fa' ye, ye degenerate, mongrel race! for, if ye had ae drap o' the bluid o' the men in yer veins wha bled wi' ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... 6th Massachusetts foot regiment, which was just leaving for the lake on its usual road-mending detail, stood in spiritless silence to see the artillery pass; their Major, Whiting, as well as the sullen rank and file, seeming still to feel the disgrace of Cherry Valley, where their former colonel lost his silly life, and Major Stacia was taken, and still ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... summoned to breakfast about half an hour after nine. Slowly did the mournful congress meet. Each, lifelessly and spiritless, took our places, with swoln eyes, inquiring, without expecting any tolerable ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... deceptive, sensuous inventions of man when the Church is honored with success. The Holy Spirit then withdraws in measure; frigid formality quickly follows; the services, however beautiful, become artificial and spiritless. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... Stupid, worthless, spiritless, sick, not more than a dozen years old, no delight in the eyes of the young men of her village, she had been consigned by her disappointed parents to the cooking-pot. When Captain Van Horn first encountered her had been when she was the central ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... go yourself," replied Peterkin; "for, to say truth, I'm pretty well knocked up to-day. I don't know how it is—one day one feels made of iron, as if nothing could tire one; and the next, one feels quite weak and spiritless." ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... anaesthetize^, put under; assify^. inure; harden the heart; steel, caseharden, sear. Adj. insensible, unconscious; impassive, impassible; blind to, deaf to, dead to; unsusceptible, insusceptible; unimpressionable^, unimpressible^; passionless, spiritless, heartless, soulless; unfeeling, unmoral. apathetic; leuco-^, phlegmatic; dull, frigid; cold blooded, cold hearted; cold as charity; flat, maudlin, obtuse, inert, supine, sluggish, torpid, torpedinous^, torporific^; sleepy ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to become the wise, sensible, self-helpful, cultured mother, with proper opportunity to exercise maternal function for the highest good of the future child, and without being herself dragged into a spiritless machine, we must have her fortified, not only by a "higher education," but a better ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... now the performance must be going to begin. I could see how much our chance acquaintance had brightened the perspective for her, and how eagerly she had repaired all her illusions; and I thought how much better it would have been if she had been left to the dull and spiritless resignation in which I had first seen her. From that there could no fall, at least, and now she had risen from ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... these two Black-Artists have driven Friedrich Wilhelm nearly mad; and he, in turn, is driving everybody so. He more than suspects Friedrich of an intention to fly; which is horrible to Friedrich Wilhelm: and yet he bullies him occasionally, as a spiritless wretch, for bearing such treatment. "Cannot you renounce the Heir-Apparentship, then; your little Brother is a fine youth. Give it up; and go, unmolested, to the—in fact to the Devil: Cannot you?"—"If your Majesty, against the honor of my Mother, declare that I am not your eldest ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... dejected, thro' the evening dusk, She now went slowly to that small kiosk, Where, pondering alone his impious schemes, MOKANNA waited her—too wrapt in dreams Of the fair-ripening future's rich success, To heed the sorrow, pale and spiritless, That sat upon his victim's downcast brow, Or mark how slow her step, how altered now From the quick, ardent Priestess, whose light bound Came like a spirit's o'er the unechoing ground,— From that wild ZELICA whose every glance Was thrilling fire, whose ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... are the lines which they call flat and spiritless, I wish mine could be flat and spiritless too! And, therefore, to make short work, I shall only beg Mr. Dryden's leave to congratulate him upon his admirable flatness, and dulness, in a rapture of ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... but it was a spiritless affair. Every ear was turned to hear the muffled roar of the voices outside, which every moment increased in power as the mighty ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... and went to the doorway, looking out over Bud's shoulder at the spiritless donkeys trailing in to water. Beyond them the desert baked in its rim of hot, treeless hills. Above them the sky glared a brassy blue with never a could. Over a low ridge came Monte and Pete, walking ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... by the exuberance of his fancy, and the rapidity of his elocution. But take any one of his sentences to pieces, analyze it, strip it of its gaudy clothing and fanciful decorations, and you will be astonished what skeletons of bare, shallow, and spiritless ideas ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... courtship, which he since often reproached himself with having gathered much too green, when, yielding to the inability to resist him, and overborne by desires, he had wreaked his passion on a mere lifeless, spiritless body, dead to all purpose of joy, since taking none, it ought to be supposed incapable of giving any. This is, however, certain; my heart never thoroughly forgave him the manner in which I had fallen to him, although, in point of ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... kindly, for the devotion she had the night before shown for her sister had partially counterbalanced the spitefulness he had observed in her manner when speaking of Ada at the party. Notwithstanding Bridget's precautions, he saw, too, that she was pale and spiritless, but he attributed it to her anxiety for her sister, and this raised her in his estimation. Lucy divined his thoughts, and in her efforts to appear amiable and agreeable, a half-hour passed quickly away. At the end of that time she unfortunately asked, in a very sneering tone, ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... ahead of him, darkness behind, one thick pall hanging in the air on every side. Still for a while he toiled along. Every step was an effort. The ground seemed to sink under him. It was like walking on mattresses. He began to feel tired and nervous and spiritless. A cold sweat broke out on his brow, and at length, when the sound of a river came from somewhere near, though on which side of him he could not tell, he had no choice but to stop. "After all, it is better," he thought. "Strange, how things happen for the best! I must sleep to-night, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... is shadowed by an unequal yoke! Hapless am I, to whose pedigree is bound the lowliness of a peasant! Luckless issue of a king, to whom a common man is equal by law of marriage! Pitiable daughter of a prince, whose comeliness her spiritless father hath made over to base and contemptible embraces! Unhappy child of thy mother, with thy happiness marred by consorting with this bed! thy purity is handled by the impurity of a peasant, thy nobility is bowed down by ignoble commonness, thy high birth is impaired ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... from his long day of service in the Senate Chamber, sought the private apartments of the Doge, where Marina with her maidens was waiting for him, he found her lying back, wan and spiritless, in one of the great gold and crimson arm-chairs of the state salon; her eyes were closed, her lips were moving in prayer, but her rosary had dropped from her weak clasp. Some of her maidens, as thus doing their lady truest service, ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... eleven, one by one they appeared with their followers. The excitement had died down. Ranger Steele was out of the way and Linrock was once more wide open, free and easy. Blome alone seemed sullen and spiritless, unresponsive to his comrades and their admirers. And now, at the time of my arrival, the whole gang, with the exception of old Snecker, were assembled in ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... like comrades after a desperate battle. Not one was there who did not claim a grasp of the boy's hand, and who did not pour out welcomes and greetings, while in the midst, the released captive looked, to say the truth, very spiritless, faded, dusty, nay dirty. The court seemed spinning round with him, and the loud welcomes roared in his ears. He was glad that Dennet took one hand, and Giles the other, declaring that he must be led ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... disgust, was written on every face. The singing was spiritless, and as the people filed out of church and gathered in knots about the door, the old-time head-shaking was resumed, and the comments were ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... reached by the empty and frivolous than by others, is yet inwardly vain; so in Art the quickly attained harmony of the exterior, without inward fulness. And if it is the part of theory and instruction to oppose the spiritless copying of beautiful forms, especially must they oppose the tendency toward an effeminate characterless Art, which gives itself, indeed, higher names, but therewith only seeks to hide its incapacity to ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... speech was the spiritless drawl of the mountains, and it had now become so languid that it seemed doubtful if after the enunciation of each word whether vitality enough remained to evolve a successor. "Yes," he repeated with a yawn, as he stuck the ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... less frequent. When the Kindergarten was first opened, many of the children were quite listless, they did not know how to play, did not care to play. Now they play with pleasure and with vigour, and one can hardly believe they are the listless, spiritless children ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... prodigious stir. Dead France woke suddenly to life, wherever the great news traveled. Whereas before, the spiritless and cowed people hung their heads and slunk away if one mentioned war to them, now they came clamoring to be enlisted under the banner of the Maid of Vaucouleurs, and the roaring of war-songs and the thundering of the ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... camp for the reception of the militia of the neighborhood, as well as those which had been summoned from the interior. It was to Marion that Lincoln chiefly looked for the proper drilling of the militia. In his hands they lost the rude and inefficient character, the inexpert and spiritless manner, which, under ordinary commanders, always distinguish them. Feeling sure of their Captain, he, in turn, rendered them confident of themselves. Speaking of Marion's "PATIENCE with the militia"—a phrase of great importance in this connection—Horry, in his own memoirs, which now lie before ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... my son and brother? Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand. Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dread in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, And would have told him half his Troy was burnt; But Priam found the fire ere he his tongue, And I my Percy's death ere thou report'st it. This thou wouldst say: "Your son did thus and thus; ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... lost all its pride and dignity, and seemed a poor, reeling, spiritless thing. The deck was deserted save for the little group about the hatch who strove with might and main to launch this last poor medium of rescue. The abrupt pitch of the deck made their frantic efforts seem all but hopeless, ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... at Fort Mulgrave on its blind side might have retrieved the day; but a panic seized part of the supports, whom Sidney Smith describes as rushing like swine towards the sea though the enemy was only in a condition to attack "faintly." Hood was furious at this spiritless acceptance of defeat; and in his despatch to Whitehall censured the troops for not making a timely effort;[270] but as David Dundas had all along opined that the place was untenable, he decided to hold a council of war. It registered ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... within their tents, and conducted themselves with most remarkable cowardice. This occasioned general dissatisfaction among the Florentines; for they found themselves involved in an expensive war, from which no advantage could be derived. The magistrates complained of these spiritless proceedings to those who had been appointed commissaries to the expedition; but they replied, that the entire evil was chargeable upon the Duke Galeazzo, who possessing great authority and little experience, was unable to suggest useful measures, and unwilling to take the advice of those who ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... so changed since the day of the picnic that I should scarcely have known her for the same person; it seemed incredible that three days could make such a difference in a bright, healthy, vigorous girl. All her youthful vivacity was gone; she was pale and spiritless with deep rings beneath her eyes and the lids red with crying. After the services were over, I approached her a moment as she stood in her black dress aloof from the others at the edge of the little family burying-ground. ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... anything great. But he had good spirits, and he concealed about his person a heart of gold; and after he left Thetford Grammar School, boys found that somehow the games in the old playground seemed flat and spiritless. They said that things weren't as they used to be ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... monsieur." This voice was, however, broken by fatigue, trembling with emotion. An instant after Fouquet called Gourville, who crossed the gallery amid the universal expectation. At length, he himself reappeared among his guests; but it was no longer the same pale, spiritless countenance they had beheld when he left them; from pale he had become livid; and from spiritless, annihilated. A living specter, he advanced with his arms stretched out, his mouth parched, like a shade that ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... came out into the open air, she found the servant seeking his comfort in the brandy-bottle, and the horses sunk in a spiritless stupor. She admonished him to take care of these, and charged him earnestly both with threats and promises of reward, to think about his employers and watch over their safety. She herself gave to her horse fodder and water, patting him the while, ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... fewer judgments correct *objectively; but they would be so, SUBJECTIVELY, at least; that is, they would contain in themselves the exact relation between the person giving the judgment and the object. We can perceive this by observing how modestly subdued, even spiritless and desponding, is the opinion passed upon the results of untoward events by those who have been eye-witnesses, but especially if they have been parties concerned. This is, according to our view, a criterion ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... was substituted for the handicraft system and workers with common interests were thrown together in the towns, they had every impulsion towards organization. They not only felt the need of sociability after long hours spent in spiritless toil but they were impelled by a new consciousness—the realization that an inevitable and profound change had come over their condition. They had ceased to be journeymen controlling in some measure their activities; they were ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... tribe, with heavy eyes Glazed, lifeless, dull, downward they drop their tails Inverted; high on their bent backs erect Their pointed bristles stare, or 'mong the tufts Of ranker weeds, each stomach-healing plant Curious they crop, sick, spiritless, forlorn. These inauspicious days, on other cares 380 Employ thy precious hours; the improving friend With open arms embrace, and from his lips Glean science, seasoned with good-natured wit. But if the inclement skies and angry Jove Forbid the pleasing ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... in a hesitating, spiritless manner, and the young woman, huddled up on her low chair, continued gazing dreamily at the flame without listening. Laurent ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... is all your work: it is useless for you to defend yourself," said she, tossing away her husband's hat from the arm-chair, and then throwing herself in a spiritless ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... troubles between the followers of Joe Smith and their neighbors. On one occasion, Joe Smith was himself on trial, and the Christian populace of the neighborhood, long incensed against him and his people, broke into the court-room clamoring for his life. The sheriff, a feeble-bodied and spiritless official, showed signs of yielding, and the judge, promptly assuming a power not vested in his office, appointed a stalwart Kentuckian sheriff, and ordered him to summon a posse and clear the room. By these means the defendant's life was saved, ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... this fatalistic conception of life that caste is rooted; but for this belief that all things are predestined, no people would ever have been so spiritless as to submit to the tyranny of the caste system. Perhaps it should also be added that the belief in the transmigration of the soul has also had a not inconsiderable influence. Though you have fared ill in this life, a million rebirths may be yours ere you finally win absorption into Brahma, and ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... boudoir-bred degenerate, If ne'er he knew the nobler state, The birk-clad brae, the roaring spate, The tod's dark lair, Too spiritless to grin ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... society did its best to place the peccant husband above the suffering wife. Some called her a poor spiritless thing, and declared, that, with a little of her sister's spirit, she might have brought to reason any Sir Philip whatsoever, were it the termagant Falconbridge himself. But the greater part of their acquaintance affected candour, and saw faults on both sides; though, in fact, there only existed the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... utterly nerveless and servile and altogether devoid of so much as the desire for efficient action. It was no time to stay with the party of weakness; it was right to strengthen rather than to hamper a man so pacific and spiritless as Mr. Jefferson; to show a readiness to forward even his imperfect expedients; to display a united and indignant, if not quite a hostile front to Great Britain, rather (p. 055) than to exhibit a tame and friendly feeling towards her. It was for these reasons, which had already controlled ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... saw that mischievous boys had been mounting him on his horse, which needed only one slap to make it go a mile; but she was a spiritless woman, and replied ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... spiritless, feeble protest, trying his best to put some convincing quality into it. But she did not even listen. The ungoverned tiger-cat part of her nature was in the ascendant, the fierce pride of the woman ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... 'Thou makest my feet like hinds' feet,' what he is thinking about is that light and easy, springing, elastic gait, that swiftness of advance. What a contrast that is to the way in which most of us get through our day's work! Plod, plod, plod, in a heavy-footed, spiritless grind, like that with which the ploughman toils down the sticky furrows of a field, with a pound of clay at each heel; or like that with which a man goes wearied home from his work at night. The monotony of trivial, constantly recurring doings, the fluctuations in the thermometer of our own ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... policy, tissue ballets, and intimidation at the South, while a gigantic, bold, and matchless system of fraudulent voting was pushed with vigor in the North, there was little show of success for the Republican ticket. The contest on the part of the Republicans was spiritless. It was difficult to raise funds or excite enthusiasm. The Republican candidate had only a local reputation. He had been to Congress, but even those who had known that had forgotten it. A modest, retiring man, Gov. Hayes was not widely ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... however, because a revealing flash of thought told her that it was not alone Lassiter who was thrillingly welcome, but also his fatal weapons. They meant so much. How she had fallen—how broken and spiritless must she be—to have still the same old horror of Lassiter's guns and his name, yet feel somehow a cold, shrinking protection in their law and might ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... the subject is nervous, dropsical, consumptive and derangement of the important functions follows almost invariably. Excessive intellectual activity often produces weak state of the system, and the person thus affected becomes languid, spiritless, and an easy prey to disease. This mental cause and its bodily results may be classified in the following order. Mental Cause: EXCESSIVE MENTAL EXERTION, which produces waste of the brain ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the tiresome monotony of life was most irksome at this period. Day after day the incessant rain poured down. The supplies were bad, scanty, and irregular; the hospitals crowded with sick; field-sports impracticable; books there were none; and a dulness and spiritless depression prevailed on every side. Those who were actively engaged around Ciudad Rodrigo had, of course, the excitement and interest which the enterprise involved: but even there the works made slow progress. The breaching artillery was defective in every way: the rain ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the zest of muscular exertion which had done so much to sweeten his labour in the fields. It was as if a clog fettered his simplest no less than his greatest emotion; and his enjoyment of nature had grown dull and spiritless, like his affection for his family. With his sisters he was aware that a curious constraint had become apparent, and it was no longer possible for him to meet his mother with the gay deference she still exacted. There were times, even, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... gave him notice, and told the cashier to pay me my salary to date. He had long before summed me up as a spiritless drudge. I don't believe he gave another thought to me after I left ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... of heavy cypress, lifted up on pillars, grim, solid, and spiritless, its massive build a strong reminder of days still earlier, when every man had been his own peace officer and the insurrection of the blacks a daily contingency. Its dark, weatherbeaten roof and sides were hoisted up above the jungly plain in a distracted way, like a gigantic ammunition-wagon ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... to it; but in a few moments, he told himself, the driver would get clear of the congestion and then the horse would begin to trot; and while the thought passed through his mind, the driver cracked his whip and the slow, spiritless horse began to move more rapidly ... and as it gathered speed, resolution suddenly came to John out of a sudden vision of a ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... cats themselves were so continually torn and scratched that the wounds never had a chance to heal and became infected until they were a mass of sores. On occasion they died, or, when they had become too abjectly spiritless to attack even a rat, were set to work on the tight- rope with the doped starved rats that were too near dead to run away from them. And, as Miss Merle Merryweather said: the bonehead audiences, tickled to death, applauded ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... plucked it. Some few rain-drops just then fell; the sky, from a bright day, became overcast; and I was a type of our first parents, after eating of that fatal fruit. I felt myself naked and ashamed, stripped of my virtue, spiritless. The downy fruit, whose sight rather than savor had tempted me, dropped from my hand, never to be tasted. All the commentators in the world cannot persuade me but that the Hebrew word, in the second chapter of Genesis, translated apple, should be rendered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... great poets; our leading personage abroad of late seems to be the Honorable "Buffalo Bill" [laughter], and we use our adjectives so recklessly that the polite badinage indulged in toward each other by your New York editors to us seems tame and spiritless. In mental achievement we may not have fully acquired the use of the fork, and are "but in the gristle and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." We stand toward the East somewhat as country to city ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... shake them thus; for if I strive to put the very spirit of beauty into form and give it motion, it is for thy sake alone. O throbbing heart, be quiet! If my labor be thus thwarted, there will come vague and unsatisfied dreams which will leave me spiritless to-morrow." ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... escape war by submission. The chance of revenge was offered as it had never been offered in forty years; yet she did not stir to grasp it. Her enemy gave every provocation, yet she stayed as still as if she were spiritless; and all the while she was the proudest nation on the earth, so proud that she did not need to threaten or boast. Then came the first failure, and she took it as if she had expected nothing better. She had to make war in a manner wholly ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... equinox have their varieties, —sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and casement, hurricane puffs and down-rushing rain-spouts. But this dull, dark autumn day of thaw and rain, when the very clouds seem too spiritless and languid to storm outright or take themselves out of the way of fair weather; wet beneath and above; reminding one of that rayless atmosphere of Dante's Third Circle, where the infernal Priessnitz administers ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... but I thought that in the look of mingled surprise and something like reproach which he gave me there was also a trace of grateful pleasure. But he said, in that tone of spiritless humility these ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... burst 255 Forth like a Polar summer: every word They uttered was a dart, by counter-winds Blown back upon themselves; their reason seemed Confusion-stricken by a higher power Than human understanding, their discourse 260 Maimed, spiritless; and, in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... face without the slightest provocation, and, though the victim of the outrage might be strong as an ox, no remonstrance whatever would be made. It is difficult for us to comprehend How human beings can possibly become so abjectly servile and spiritless as the lower-class Russians. But the terrors of the knout and Siberia are ever present before them. Cheap chromolithographs of Gregorian saints hang on the walls of the saloon, and with them are mingled fancy pictures of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... bedding to seventeen pounds. This had now become insufficient. As they advanced up the Sweetwater, the mountains on either side took on snow. Frequent wading of the streams chilled them. Morning would find them numb, haggard, spiritless, unfitted for ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... among the sands The gembok nations, snuffing up the wind, Drawn by the scent of water—and the bands Of tawny-bearded lions pacing, blind With the sun-dazzle in their midst, opprest With prey, and spiritless for ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... does get so very pale, Miss Isabel," said the housekeeper. "He wasn't white, not like that when he come first to Llanfeare." To this Isabel made no reply; but she, too, had remarked how wan, how pallid, and how spiritless he ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... enraged by it made answer as follows: "Artabanos, thou art my father's brother, and this shall save thee from receiving any recompense such as thy foolish words deserve. Yet I attach to thee this dishonour, seeing that thou art a coward and spiritless, namely that thou do not march with me against Hellas, but remain here together with the women; and I, even without thy help, will accomplish all the things which I said: for I would I might not be descended from Dareios, the son of Hystaspes, the son of Arsames, the son of ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... mistaken. On shipboard, he discovered that there were still depths of misery which he was called upon to plumb. Assigned to a miserable stateroom in an uncomfortable part of the ship, he suffered horribly from seasickness, and for the first half of the voyage lay foodless and spiritless in his bunk, indifferent to his environment or to his fate. His sole friend was his batman, Harry Hobbs, but, of course, he could not confide to Harry the misery of his body, or the deeper misery ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... all the delight of spring passed out of their lives. Already there were five gone out of the tribe, and four nights added three more to the number. Food-seeking became spiritless, none knew who might go next, and all day the women toiled, even the favourite women, gathering litter and sticks for the night fires. And the hunters hunted ill: in the warm spring-time hunger came again as though it was still winter. The tribe might have ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... laggingly into the ladies' saloon, as in spiritless quest of somebody; but, after some disappointed glances about him, seats himself upon a sofa with an air ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... a letter came from the manager: "Trust you are rested and will soon be back. The prompter read your lines, but everything has gone to pieces. Slack, slovenly, spiritless, stupid, nobody acting, and nobody awake, it seems to me. 'All right at night, governor,' and the usual nonsense. Shows how much we want you. But envious people are whispering that you are afraid of the part. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... in the high circles which her beauty and agreeable qualities so well fitted her to adorn. Ere long, however, it was surmised that Victorine found herself not quite so happy in her union with the object of her first affection as she had anticipated she should be; she was pale, spiritless, and absent; sometimes started when addressed, as if only accustomed to the accents of authority unmingled with kindness; her cheeks were hollow, her eyes sunken and ray-less, and her smile was the very mockery of mirth; evidently she was not happy, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... Ivan Petrovitch had at the same time become a patriot, at least he called himself a patriot, though he knew Russia little, had not retained a single Russian habit, and expressed himself in Russian rather queerly; in ordinary conversation, his language was spiritless and inanimate and constantly interspersed ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... will be equally hit. There is nothing sorrier, more spiritless or superficial than the large majority of our newspaper literature. If our stage in civilization and scientific attainments were to be gauged by the contents of that set of papers, it would be low indeed. The actions of men and the condition of things are judged ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... music, desultory, however, and spiritless, like everything else about the place that night, greeted us as Mrs. Ashley opened the door leading directly into the large ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... our music, are thy simple friends, Thy simple fare, and all thy plain delights, As dear to thee as once? And have thy joys Lost nothing by comparison with ours? Rude as thou art (for we return'd thee rude And ignorant, except of outward show) I cannot think thee yet so dull of heart And spiritless, as never to regret Sweets tasted here, and left as soon as known. Methinks I see thee straying on the beach, And asking of the surge that bathes thy foot, If ever it has wash'd our distant shore. I see thee weep, and thine are honest tears, A patriot's ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... were a contrast; Griffith looking very handsome and manly, all in a ruddy glow from the frosty air, and Clarence, though equally tall, well-made, and with more refined features, looked pale and effaced, now that his sailor tan was worn off. The one talked as eagerly as he ate, the other was shy, spiritless, and with little appetite; but as he always shrank into himself among strangers, it was the less wonder that he sat in his drooping way behind my sofa, while Griffith kept us all merry with his account ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... political education of the people. The aid of poetical song was called in to enliven and adorn the banquets of the great public assemblies, the Olympic and other games, and scarcely a social or public gathering can be mentioned that would not have appeared to the ardent Grecians cold and spiritless without this accompaniment. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the third; "the last day of the carnival is so dull and spiritless that one can plainly see it is nearing the end. For more than two hours we have been strolling about the boulevards, but have not met with one adventure. Everywhere the stereotyped faces and masks; the same jokes as last year; even the coffee and the cake look stale to me. Arthur, ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... arm-chair, his elbows leaned on the table before him, his hand passed through his ruffled hair, and his gray eyes straying abstractedly away from the neglected page before him. I see him before he sees me. I have time to take in all the dejection of his attitude, all its spiritless idleness. At the slight noise my skirts make, he looks up. I stop ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... and the one who directed the laborers at the abbey had but too faithfully obeyed the orders of the Abbot. Poor Beiffror was brought back, lean, spiritless, and chafed with the harness of the vile cart that he had had to draw so long. He carried his head down, and trod heavily before Charlemagne; but when he heard the voice of Ogier he raised his head, he neighed, his eyes flashed, his former ardor showed itself by the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... creature at the Prodigal's left hand is a wondrous piece of drawing. It is thrown back against him and from the spectator, in order that she may look up into his face—at the moment a dissipated, spiritless face, without even the flush of the wine which dyes her's so rosily—a face at once weak and weary, and yet revealing a possible intensity, indeed, the face of a French woman who "has lived," rather ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... her white wrists, gems of fire sparkled among her long, white fingers, a network of pearls was all her head-dress. Her eyes had strange depths of passion, perfumes breathed from her skin, lustreless like dead ivory. Not thus came the maidens of Israel to wedlock, demure, spotless, spiritless, with shorn hair, priestesses of the ritual of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Holy Sepulchre, and on her way home, having landed at Cyprus, met with brutal outrage at the hands of certain ruffians. Broken-hearted and disconsolate she determined to make her complaint to the king; but she was told that it would be all in vain, because so spiritless and faineant was he that he not only neglected to avenge affronts put upon others, but endured with a reprehensible tameness those which were offered to himself, insomuch that whoso had any ill-humour to vent, took occasion ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... General Miles headed them off near Bear Paw Mountain in Northern Montana, and captured nearly all their horses. Then they were compelled to fight or surrender. They made a four days' fight, but it was a spiritless one, and finally succumbed to the inevitable, ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... you please, and a mug of Meux's Best. How much more gentleman-like to come in the front of the battle, openly avowing one's sentiments, than to lag in on the last day, when the adversary is dejected, spiritless, laid low. Have the first cut at them. By Saturday you'll cut into the mutton. I'd go cheerfully myself, but I am no freeholder (Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium), but I sold it for L50. If they'd accept a copy-holder, we ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... believe in the theatre; he used to laugh at my dreams, so that little by little I became down-hearted and ceased to believe in it too. Then came all the cares of love, the continual anxiety about my little one, so that I soon grew trivial and spiritless, and played my parts without meaning. I never knew what to do with my hands, and I could not walk properly or control my voice. You cannot imagine the state of mind of one who knows as he goes through a play how terribly badly he is acting. I ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... under the spiritless premiership of the Duke of Portland, Canning was allowed free hand. The two years and a half during which he directed the foreign office were marked by a succession of moves which gave a new aspect ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... sitting vapidly about among mosquitoes and beetles, already looking bored to death, and I soon perceived that it was expected of me to provide amusement and entertainment for the crowd. I tried to rally, therefore, and proposed a few games, which went off in a spiritless manner enough, and apparently in consequence I began to be assailed with questions and remarks of ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... have supposed that this could be the same boy whose sobbing aroused Florella's compassion—the poor, trembling little creature, spiritless and unhappy, who had hardly dared to say his name was Florio. But so it was; and when he called so loudly in his cheery voice, Florella quickly came forth from the sweet-brier bush and ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... must, therefore, know the deficiencies. I have seen none of your acquaintance save the Biddles. To-morrow (if I should in the mean time receive a letter from you) I shall add something. You are the two most spiritless young persons I ever knew. Pray muster up energy enough to do something more than lounge on sofas. Go on Sunday to Ludlow's. Ask some of your friends often to dine with you. There is a little boy right opposite ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... one of those gray, heavy days of the early winter—one of the vacant, spiritless days of portent that wait hushed and numb before a coming storm. Not a crow, nor a jay, nor a chickadee had heart enough to cheep. But little Hyla, the tree-frog, was nothing daunted. Since the last week in February, throughout the spring and the noisy summer on till this dreary time, he had ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Wynfreda, but such a life is not for me. My nature is such that I do not like the gloomy songs you sing; nor do I care for green things, except to wear in my hair. And it seems to me that I should be spiritless and a coward if I should like such a life. I am no English girl, to tremble and hide under a mean kirtle. I am a Norse maiden, the kinswoman of warriors. I think I should not show much honor to my father and my brother were I to leave them unavenged and sit down here with you. No, I will ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... all except the pleasurable minutiae of life. Her violet eyes would remain for hours apparently insensate as, thoughtless and reckless, she basked like a cat in the sun. He wondered what the tired, spiritless mother thought of them, and whether in her moments of uttermost cynicism she ever guessed ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Graves could do nothing. He lingered near the mouth of the Chesapeake for a few days still and then sailed away to New York to refit. At the most critical hour of the whole war a British fleet, crippled and spiritless, was hurrying to a protecting port and the fleurs-de-lis waved unchallenged on the American coast. The action of Graves spelled the doom of Cornwallis. The most potent fleet ever gathered in those waters cut him ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... husband-hunting, flirting, dancing, theatres, and concerts. The last three, which Agatha liked, helped to make the contrast between Alton and London tolerable to her, but they had their drawbacks, for good partners at the dances, and good performances at the spiritless opera and concerts, were disappointingly scarce. Flirting she could not endure; she drove men away when they became tender, seeing in them the falsehood of Smilash without his wit. She was considered rude by the younger gentlemen of her circle. They discussed her bad ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... overwhelming, surpassing all imagining. I am sure that I myself would assuredly have gone mad had I not been able to lose myself a little in travel and change of scene. When the heart is tormented by some great pain, the spirit seems too utterly spiritless to do anything but despair. But life teaches us, among other things, some of the panaceas of pain. It teaches us that the mind finds it difficult to realise two great emotions at once, and that, where an emotion helps to take us out of ourselves, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... of the American workingman will cause him to patiently endure all this is to brand him a spiritless slave, deserving not only slavery, but the shackles and the knout. He will not endure it much longer, and when his patience reaches its utmost limit— when he tires of filling his belly with the East wind supplied him in such plentitude by ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... you to blot out, and once more apply to the anvil your ill-formed verses: if you choose rather to defend than correct a fault, he spent not a word more nor fruitless labor, but you alone might be fond of yourself and your own works, without a rival. A good and sensible man will censure spiritless verses, he will condemn the rugged, on the incorrect he will draw across a black stroke with his pen; he will lop off ambitious [and redundant] ornaments; he will make him throw light on the parts that are not perspicuous; he will arraign what is expressed ambiguously; he will mark what should ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace |
