"Tragedy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Breakes decided to retire from piracy, and returned to Amsterdam to claim Mrs. Snyde. But he found that she had but lately been hanged for poisoning her little son, of which the pirate was father. This tragedy so preyed upon the mind of Captain Breakes that he turned "melancholy mad" and drowned himself in one of the many dykes with which that ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... Representatives now assembled in Washington, humbly confessing their dependence upon Almighty God, who rules all that is done for human good, make haste at this informal meeting to express the emotions with which they have been filled by the appalling tragedy which has deprived the nation of its head and covered the land with mourning; and in further declaration of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... ship's log and clearance papers. The captain's and the mate's licenses hung in frames against the wall. Near these was tacked the picture of a sunny-haired little girl and underneath it was written the name "Minnie." So the schooner was the little smiling-faced girl's namesake, this tragedy-haunted abandoned vessel. A Mercator's projection lay thumb-tacked on a table, and the last position of the schooner was indicated by a ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... Why that brigade should have been allowed to march into that ambuscade, from which we had so narrowly escaped, I could not understand. It was one of the early faux pas of that unfortunate comedy, rather tragedy of errors,—battle. ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... during his long residence at Xauxa, the latter was in constant communication with Cuzco; and that had he, as Valverde repeatedly urged him,6 quickened his march to that capital, he might easily have prevented the consummation of the tragedy. As commander- in-chief, Almagro's fate was in his hands; and, whatever his own partisans may affirm of his innocence, the impartial judgment of history must hold him equally accountable with Hernando for the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... first. His Protestantising tendencies might, I think, have been more accurately described as non-Catholicising. But people are very apt to judge in this matter after the fashion of the would-be dramatist, who, on being assured that he had no genius for tragedy, concluded that he must therefore have one for comedy. The Duke's Protestantism, I suspect, limited itself to, and showed itself in, his dislike and resistance to being bothered by the rulers of neighbouring states into bothering anybody ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the hand of tragedy fell upon the German air service. Two Zeppelins and another large aircraft were wrecked within ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... leading men of the community—the most active, vigilant and sensible—and one can easily perceive that much ill-will might have accumulated in the hearts of those whom they saw fit to report. Such ill-will had its day of triumph when the Salem tragedy reached ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... the subordination of music to poetry, the union or close relation of song and recitative; whereas, the Italian opera represented by Piccini had no dramatic unity, no great ensembles, nothing but short airs, detached, without connection—no substance, but mere ornamentation. Gluck proved, also, that tragedy could be introduced in opera, while Piccini maintained that opera could embrace only the fable—the marvellous and fairylike. This musical quarrel became a veritable national issue, every salon, the Academy, and all clubs being ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... in fascinating combination. But, lest you should mistake me, good old bone-head, let me make it plain that there is absolutely no danger of my falling in love with her. My interest is not that kind of interest. I am far too hard headed to be susceptible. I can appreciate the tragedy of a charming girl placed in such unsavory environment, and feel impelled to seek some way of escape for her without being for one moment disturbed by that unreasoning madness called love. Every student of psychology understands ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... very curious the people that were watching the farce didn't see anything funny about it, or laugh. They were quiet—very quiet. I think they had a notion the tragedy would come later, and then they'd change the cast, and take a hand in themselves, just to see how ...
— The Honest American Voter's Little Catechism for 1880 • Blythe Harding
... tender she would be to him on whom such cruelty had been wreaked—how loving—to make amends for all the hatred of the past! How brave he was, her true knight—how forgiving—to have told her nothing of all this tragedy! It was not strange that his people loved him so—his people who had thronged upon his pathway with acclamation and greeting! Her heart beat high with adoring love and her eyes filled ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... expecting to find me dying, and saw a strange woman in the bed and his wife—in good health—standing before him. He let out an oath in his surprise and my patient, who had raised up in bed to stare at him, uttered a low moan and fell back on her pillow, dead. I saw the tragedy and involuntarily screamed, and Jason Jones saw she was dead and cried out in fear. I had just time to recover my wits and whisper to him to keep his mouth shut and I would make him rich when Doctor Anstruther hurried ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... alighted and offered an arm to his companion. She, however, disdaining his assistance, sprang lightly from the saddle and, turning her back on him, gazed, motionless, toward the bay. There was something arresting and curiously dramatic about the whole performance, something that hinted of impending tragedy. The slight figure with its listless droop and stony immobility caught and clutched the sympathies of Nathan Spear as he was passing by. The man was Alec McTurpin; the girl, no doubt, some light o' love from a neighboring ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... him, nor the jaguars neither. He was in fine condition—fat as a pig. The fruit of the murumuru had agreed with him. He was just in the condition in which an Indian thinks a horse "good for killing," and Guapo killed him! Yes, Guapo killed him! It is true it was a sort of a Virginius tragedy, and Guapo had great difficulty in nerving himself for the task. But the blow-gun was at length levelled, and the curare did its work. Then Guapo skinned him, and cut him into strips, and dried him into "charqui," and carried him on board the raft. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... arriving at the fair! How I was enchanted with the world of fun and pageantry around me! The humors of Punch; the feats of the equestrians; the magical tricks of the conjurors! But what principally caught my attention was—an itinerant theatre; where a tragedy, pantomime, and farce were all acted in the course of half an hour, and more of the dramatis personae murdered, than at either Drury Lane or Covent Garden in a whole evening. I have since seen many a play performed ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... old dead theatre of past activities, dotting the barren immensity with its softened lights like the little thing it was. How remote it seemed already, with its vices, woes, and joys, its comedy and tragedy, its fevers, strifes, and toil, disturbing nothing of the vast serenity of the planet, ever rolling on its way. How coldly the moon seemed looking on the scene. And yet it had cast a shadow of a girl to ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... you this much right now, Mae, either you got to cut this sob stuff and get down to brass tacks and tell me what you want, or, by gad! I'll get out of here so quick it'll make your head swim. I ain't going to be let in for no tragedy-queen stuff, and the sooner you know it the better. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... desiring by which every creature is goaded is in itself unblessedness,' and that 'each creature is in constant danger, constant agitation, and the whole, with its restless, meaningless motion, is a tragedy of the most piteous kind.' 'A creature like the carnivorous animal, who cannot exist at all without continually destroying and tearing others, may not feel its brutality, but man, who has to prey on other sentient beings like the carnivorous, ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... daughter was at that time seriously ill with a fever recently common on that coast, and the Squire, who was a kind-hearted gentleman, would normally have made allowances for low spirits and loss of temper. But he came near to losing his own again when the peasant persisted in connecting his tragedy with the traditional monomania about ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... widow's mite hath not escaped their hands; they have made her cow the forfeit of her conscience, not leaving her a bed to lie on, nor a blanket to cover her; and what is yet more barbarous, and helps to make up this tragedy, the poor helpless orphan's milk, boiling over the fire, was flung away, and the skillet made part of their prize; that, had not nature in neighbours been stronger than cruelty in informers and officers, to open her bowels for their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... longer any plan of operations to settle, we will look over the map of Europe, and fix upon a pleasant corner for our exile—for take notice, I do not design to fall upon my dagger, in hopes that some Mr. Addison a thousand years hence may write a dull tragedy about me. I will write my own story a little more cheerfully than he would; but I fear now I must not print it at my own press. Adieu! You was a philosopher before you had any occasion to be so: pray continue so; you have ample occasion! Yours ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... from companionship with the prophet himself, and who followed to the last the simplicity of his example.'' It is maintained, on the other hand, that his motives were throughout those of ambition rather than piety, and that, apart from the tragedy of his death, he would have been an insignificant figure in history. (See ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in my own defense except at the other man's expense—which would have been in questionable taste and would have been deemed the resort of a weakling. So I kept my counsel and brooded. The ignorance of the guards made the tragedy comic. It was very humiliating. I gritted my teeth and swore that I at any rate should go again in spite of their incredulous jeers. But it was all terribly discouraging and ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... Seymour's good looks had brought him, for he envied all love, desiring to be himself all that women desire. Then his thoughts wandered. The decoration of the Park absorbed him—the nobility of a group of horses, the attractiveness of some dresses; and amid all this elegance and parade he dreamed of tragedy—of some queen blowing her brains out for him—and he saw the fashionable dress and the blood oozing from the temple, trickling slowly through the sand. Then Lords Muchross and Snowdown passed, and they passed without ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... with its absorbing psychological and sociological problems; I have interrogated persons who knew the chief characters in the story; I have studied the locality, and know intimately the scene of the tragedy: and even though "The Tale of Timber Town" has in the writing taxed my energies for many a month, I have by no means exhausted the theme ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... of the divorce James had been either dupe or confederate. But throughout the same four months he had been either confederate or dupe in a more terrible tragedy. In his rise to greatness Rochester had been aided by the counsels of Sir Thomas Overbury. Overbury was a young man of singular wit and ability, but he had as few scruples as his master, and he was as ready to ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... picture before Helen's eyes; she did not think of the fearful tragedy of it—she had no feeling for tragedy, she knew no more about suffering than a child just born. But joy she knew, and joy she was; she was the multitude lifted up in its ecstasy, throbbing, burning and triumphant, and she sang the great choruses, one after another, and the piano beneath ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... him by a lucky shot the lion would strike him down; but he could not move; the muscles of his whole body refused to act, as if he was in a nightmare; all he could do was to move his eyes and watch the terrible tragedy about to be enacted. ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... down quicker than I went up. I might have gone on easily for fifteen years more, only for drinking champagne. I wish I had my life to live over again: you wouldnt catch me playing burlesque. If I had got the chance, I know I could have played tragedy or real Italian opera. I had to work hard at first; and they wont fill my place, very readily: thats one comfort. My cleverness was my ruin. Ned was not half so quick. It used to take him months to learn things that I picked up offhand, and yet you see how ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... clad in white and wearing a knot of lilies on her prettily- enamelled left shoulder, Lord Fulkeward, Denzil Murray and his sister. Helen also wore white, but though she was in the twenties and Lady Fulkeward was in the sixties, the girl had so much sadness in her face and so much tragedy in her soft eyes that she looked, if anything, older than the old woman. Gervase and Dr. Dean arrived together, and found themselves in a brilliant, crushing crowd of people, all of different nationalities and all manifesting a good deal of impatience ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... He was great, grand, passionate, overwhelming with a like emotion the apprentice and the critic. Everybody after listening to a play or reading a book uses it when he comes to himself again to fill his own pitcher, and the Cyprus tragedy lent itself to Zachariah as an illustration of his own Clerkenwell sorrows and as a gospel for them, although his were so different from those of the Moor. Why did he so easily suspect Desdemona? Is it not improbable that a man with any faith in woman, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... Unaware of the possible tragedy that was being developed within a few hundred yards of them, Tyke and Captain Hamilton had kept on digging in the excavation. For Tyke had refused to be kept out of the work of recovering the treasure, and when Drew had ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... to see blackguards; but these men were something worse. There is a comic side, more or less appreciable, in all blackguardism—here there was nothing but tragedy—mute, weird tragedy. The quiet in the room was horrible. The thin, haggard, long-haired young man, whose sunken eyes fiercely watched the turning up of the cards, never spoke; the flabby, fat-faced, pimply player, who pricked his piece of pasteboard perseveringly, to register how often black ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... Spanish presentment of the closing act of the Divine Tragedy the sensuous pagan element, which mars too many otherwise admirable works of religious art, was absent. Its appeal was to the intellect rather than to the emotions, inculcating effort rather than inviting any sentimental passion of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... health may yet be possible for the troubled soul. With a woman's instinct, Dorothy borrowed from the curate a volume of a certain more attractive edition of Shakespeare than she herself possessed, and left it in Juliet's way, so arranged that it should open at the tragedy of Othello. She thought that, if she could be drawn into sympathy with suffering like, but different and apart from her own, it would take her a little out of herself, and might lighten the pressure of her load. Now Juliet had never read a ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... No—not OTWAY'S tragedy, and not under Mr. BEERBOHM TREE'S management, but at the Gallery next door to the Theatre, and under the superintendence of Mr. MCLEAN, you will find not only Venice, but Florence, Prague, Heidelberg, Capri, Augsburg, Nuremburg, Innsbrueck, and a good many other ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... our share of the provisions? There has been no hint of violence thus far; but, mark my words, Bowen, unless we are rescued within the next forty-eight hours this boat will become the scene of a ghastly tragedy. Ah! mon Dieu! look ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... those of the latter, that their respective fates were plainly and evidently just? That whilst the two former died in their beds, after a life of the most extreme luxury, the others merited to stand forth through coming time, as examples of the most appalling and calamitous tragedy. (Mivart's "Genesis of ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... at the newspaper cuts of a great Tammany leader and a noted pugilist, which had been labeled as the principals in the family tragedy. ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... Indian Islands, the coasts of Venezuela, the Cordillera of New Granada, and the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio. For nearly two years the earthquakes had continued, when they culminated in one great tragedy, which should be read at length in the pages of Humboldt. On March 26th, 1812, when the people of Caracas were assembled in the churches, beneath a still and blazing sky, one minute of earthquake sufficed to bury, amid the ruins of the churches and houses, nearly ten thousand souls. ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... Veto For Conscience' Sake A Tragedy of Two Ambitions On the Western Circuit To Please his Wife The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four A Few ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... was my good luck to meet all sorts of men, from sober traveling missionaries and deserters flying from British Regiments, to drunken loafers who threw whisky bottles at all who passed; and my still greater good fortune just to escape a maternity case. Seeing that a fair proportion of the tragedy of our lives out here acted itself in dak- bungalows, I wondered that I had met no ghosts. A ghost that would voluntarily hang about a dak-bungalow would be mad of course; but so many men have died mad in dak-bungalows that there must be a fair ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... "'And the most noble, of course, are hymns and paeans. In the second place are songs and odes and scolia, which are concerned with the praises of brave men. In the third place the epic, in which there are heroes and other lesser personages. Tragedy together with comedy follows this order; nevertheless comedy will hold the fourth place apart by itself. After these, satires, then exodia, lusus, nuptial songs, elegies, monodia, songs, epigrams.'"[9] Similar rankings of ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... said on the subject of duels under the Empire, and the Emperor's conduct regarding them which came to my knowledge, somewhat resembles the little piece which is played on the theater after a tragedy. I will now relate how it happened that the Emperor himself played the role of peacemaker between two sub-officers who were enamored ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Exposition at Buffalo has just closed. Both from the industrial and the artistic standpoint this Exposition has been in a high degree creditable and useful, not merely to Buffalo but to the United States. The terrible tragedy of the President's assassination interfered materially with its being a financial success. The Exposition was peculiarly in harmony with the trend of our public policy, because it represented an effort to bring into closer touch ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Nay, look, sir, You grieve him now with staying in his sight: Good sir, the nobleman will come too, and take you, And that may breed a tragedy. ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... at a look from Suzette, Matt left them. As he walked along up toward the village in mechanical compliance with Adeline's crazy wish, he felt more and more the deepening tragedy of the case, and the inadequacy of all compromises and palliatives. There seemed indeed but one remedy for the trouble, and that was for Northwick to surrender himself, and for them all to meet the consequences together. He realized how desperately homesick the ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... life through death. In the Cabirie Mysteries on the island of Samothrace, Atys the Sun was killed by his brothers the Seasons, and at the vernal equinox was restored to life. So, also, the Druids, as far north as England, taught of one God the tragedy of winter and summer, and conducted the initiate through the valley ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... present instance, it is a candid historian of different faith who does not hesitate to ascribe to a special interposition of the Deity the excruciating sufferings and death which, not long after his acquittal, overtook Baron d'Oppede, the chief actor in the mournful tragedy we have been recounting.[508] ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... unto the daughter. Gracious lord, Stand for your own; unwind your bloody flag; Look back unto your mighty ancestors: Go, my dread lord, to your great grandsire's tomb, From whom you claim; invoke his warlike spirit, And your great uncle's, Edward the black prince, Who on the French ground play'd a tragedy, Making defeat on the full power of France, Whiles his most mighty father on a hill Stood smiling to behold his lion's whelp Forage ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... he was getting too old for birthdays. That would be a tragedy indeed, since it would mean that he never would have any more presents. Oh, it wasn't likely they thought that! No, the whole thing was just a mistake, and as long as it was Christopher shrank from correcting ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... utterance. The tragedy of the revelation was such that it could be expressed only ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... sod that soaked it up. With ten years more of youth and less of age I might have tried to hew my way to Falconnet's stirrup, and so to square accounts with him. But had I been a-mind to rush upon the stage without my cue, another climax in the ghastly tragedy forbade it. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... particulars of this strange tragedy were that, three days before, Mr. Evelyn, being then in perfect health, had been dissecting a limb in a high state of putrescence. During the operation, the instrument had slipped, and made what he considered only as a scratch of the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... enthusiastically "agin the government," and Monmouth was accorded here a royal ovation and was proclaimed king in the market-place. But this coup de theatre was only an introductory farce to the grim tragedy which followed. When Monmouth's hopes of sovereignty were rudely shattered by the melee at Sedgemoor the town was handed over for pacification to the tender mercies of Kirke and the brutal justice of Jeffreys. The rebels got short ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... those three weeks of tragedy. His personal misery became for the moment a shadowy thing. The sorrows of one man, what were they to the breaking hearts of millions? He thought of the children, ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... there could be no boy like her own; and when Dick told in as dramatic a manner as possible how he had chased across the point upon hearing those shrill screams, she waited in real suspense until he described what really met his view upon bursting forth, and the change from impending tragedy to a farce was so great that Mrs. Morrison sank back in her chair, smiling, but ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... There was a world of tragedy and pathos in Alf Pond's tone. Something like a groan burst ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... it Warren Rodney murmured broken, deprecatory excuses. His dull eyes nervously travelled about the table for some one to make excuses for him. The family broke into hearty peals of laughter; the tragedy of the first generation had grown to be the unfailing source of ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... very heathens had a notion of the unlawfulnesse of confederacies with wicked men. For as Victorinus Strigelius on 2 Chron. 25, noteth out of AEschylus his tragedy, intituled Seven to Thebe, Amphiaraus a wise vertuous man was therefore swallowed up in the earth, with seven men, and seven horses, because he had associat himself with Tydeus, Capaneus and other impious commanders marching to the siege of Thebe." ("Gillespie's Miscel. Quest.," p. 178.) ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the best of the group, a farmer's son of the place from which he takes his noble-sounding name, and a professional lover of the lady thereof. Of Jaufre (Geoffrey) Rudel of Blaye, whose love for the lady of Tripoli, never yet seen by him, and his death at first sight of her, supply, with the tragedy of Cabestanh and the cannibal banquet, the two most famous pieces of Troubadour anecdotic history, we have half-a-dozen pieces. In succession to these, Count Rambaut of Orange and Countess Beatrice ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... an instance of absolute uncontroul'd military tyranny must needs be alarming, to those who have before in some measure enjoy'd, and are still entitled to the blessings of a free government, having never forfeited the character of loyal subjects.—After the fatal tragedy of the fifth of March, the regiments under the command of Lieut. Colonel Dalrymple were removed from the Town of Boston to the Barracks on Castle Island, in consequence of a petition from the town to the Lieutenant ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... The horrid work failed not to bring the bitter woes and anguish of despair to the breast of the unhappy mother. It was then thrown into Red River, which was the stream nearest to the scene of the bloody tragedy. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... the problems of large-scale nuclear war from the standpoint of the countries not under direct attack, and the difficulties they might encounter in postwar recovery. It is true that most of the horror and tragedy of nuclear war would be visited on the populations subject to direct attack, who would doubtless have to cope with extreme and perhaps insuperable obstacles in seeking to reestablish their own societies. It is no less apparent, however, that other nations, ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
... situation, but the situation was an abyss. She felt this still more when she found, on her father's arrival, that nothing apparently was to happen as she had taken for granted it would. There was an inviolable hush over the whole affair, but no tragedy, no publicity, nothing ugly. The tragedy had been in town—the faces of the two men spoke of it in spite of their other perfunctory aspects; and at present there was only a family dinner, with Beatrice and Muriel and the governess—with almost a company tone too, the result of the desire to ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... sighs lifted her breast. She murmured, while Karen knelt enfolding her, "His dead face rises before me. The face that we saw, Karen. And I know to the full again my unutterable woe." It was rare with Madame von Marwitz to allude thus explicitly to the tragedy of her life, the ambiguous, the dreadful death of her husband. Karen knelt holding her, pale with the shared memory. They were so for a long time. Then, sighing softly, "Bon Dieu! bon Dieu!" Madame von Marwitz rose and, gently putting the girl aside, she went into ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... that burn in the people's breasts. Local topics, too, may call forth a general interest when they describe trials or triumphs which all may share. Says Carlyle: "In a peasant's death-bed there may be the fifth act of a tragedy. In the ballad which details the adventures and the fate of a partisan warrior or a love-lorn knight,—the foray of a border chieftain or the lawless bravery of a forrester; a Douglass, or a Robin ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point. The tragedy is enacted with as continual a repetition as that of a popular drama on a holiday, and, nevertheless, is felt as deeply, perhaps, as when an hereditary noble sinks below his order. More deeply; since, with us, rank is the grosser substance ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... parts—the notes on the comedies, those on the tragedies, and those on the history plays—is arbitrary and mostly a matter of convenience. Some division was necessary, and it seemed advantageous to present introductions which could use Johnson's reaction to comedy, tragedy, and history plays—and Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, and histories—as a point of departure. Were the notes reprinted in the order of appearance of the plays one would find Macbeth, coming after The Winter's ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... up to perform his part of the tragedy, and Lovel stood gazing on the evil of which he had been the active, though unwilling cause, with a dizzy and bewildered eye. He was roused from his trance by the grasp of the mendicant. "Why stand ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... over the emptiness of his great triumph. His son the Black Prince had died, cursing the falsity of Frenchmen. England also had gone through the great tragedy of the Black Death and her people, like those of France, had been driven to the point of rebellion—though with them this meant no more than that they ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... present engaged in surveying the level on which the public mind is poised. I no longer lie in wait for the tragedy and comedy of life; the rules of its prose engage my attention. I talk incessantly with common-place people, full of curiosity to ascertain the process by which materials, apparently so jarring and incapable of classification, get united into that strange whole, the American public. I ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... system of federated nations, was determined in its character, if not created, then. None the less, the history of this period (1530-1600) in Italy is a prolonged, a solemn, an inexpressibly heart-rending tragedy. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... attended a Japanese theatre. The play was a historical tragedy called "The Forty-seven Ronans." The stage was well arranged and the action very good; it was far more interesting than the ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... succeeds a woe as wave a wave. Horace, Ep. II. ii. 176: Velut unda supervenit unda. {Kymata kakon} and {kakon trikymia} are common phrases in Greek tragedy. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... tragedy, which did not concern her, and lived only in her white lilac. This lilac was all in all to her; she thought only of doing her "duty" ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... here one of the saddest stories in the gospels. It is a true soul's tragedy. The young man is in earnest, but his earnestness has not volume and force enough to float him over the bar. He wishes to have some great thing bidden him to do, but he recoils from the sharp test ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... fate that chained him. It was not a matter of option; for he knew that his battle must be fought through as he had begun it, and until 1836 no slightest loophole of escape into action presented itself. It lay before him to act out the tragedy of isolation which is the lot of every artist in America still, though greatly mitigated by the devotion of our first generation of national writers. If he had quitted his post sooner, and had tried by force to mould his genius according to theory, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... It was merely Mrs. Feratia Bivins who had been speaking, but the voice was the voice of Tragedy. Its eyes shone; its fangs glistened and gleamed; its hands clutched the air; its tone was husky with suppressed fury; its rage would have stormed the barriers of the grave. In another moment Mrs. Bivins was brushing the crumbs from her lap, and exchanging ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... he had taken it up, not expecting to read it through, and had not been able to put it down. Every word and line told of richness in the poetry, he said, and as far as he could judge the play had great dramatic opportunities. Early in the autumn "The Spagnoletto" appeared,—a tragedy in five acts, the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... Nannie was a dark, longfeatured, taciturn woman in a grey dress; she had a furtive inflexibility of manner that finally dismayed and crushed and overcame. She conveyed she was "under orders"—like a Greek tragedy. She was that strange product of the old time, a devoted, trusted servant; she had, as it were, banked all her pride and will with the greater, more powerful people who employed her, in return for a life-long ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... was able to search the horrible gloom more and more, he shuddered; and, suffering as he was from the effects of the deadly mephitic air, the whole scene preyed upon his mind until he could hardly believe that he was gazing at reality, the whole tragedy before him resembling the dream accompanying some fever, and it was only by an effort that he could master the intense desire to struggle up the ladder and escape into the light and the ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... the children of physical fancy, regarded with physical dread. Even if the superstition proved true; even if the demon did appear; even if he wrung the traveller's neck in sound earnest, there would be no more spiritual agency or phenomenon in the whole tragedy than there is in the parlour table, when spiritual somethings make spiritual raps upon spiritual wood; and human beings, who are really spirits—and would to heaven they would remember that fact, and what it means—believe ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... To Aristotle tragedy seemed to afford a cleansing or "katharsis of the soul" through the sympathetic experience of pity or fear. To Schopenhauer music was the greatest of the arts because it made us at one with the sorrows and the strivings of the world. All ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... enjoying, together with Fremont and other noted Rocky-Mountain explorers, the hospitalities of the old fort. Many times were its soft walls indented by the arrows of besieging Indians, but its bloodiest tragedy was enacted in 1854, when the Utes surprised the sleeping company and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... dagger in her own breast, and died at his feet. The Persians then burst open the gates, and plundered the city. Bahram, when he saw what had been done, reproached Tus with being the cause of this melancholy tragedy, and asked him what account he would give of his conduct to Kai-khosrau. Tus was extremely concerned, and remaining three days at that place, erected a lofty monument to the memory of the unfortunate youth, and scented it with musk and ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... This tragedy is the dramatic master-piece of it's valuable author, but at first was not so successful as Busiris and his other plays. Though similar, in some degree, to the story of Shakspeare's Othello, the motives for resentment in ...
— The Revenge - A Tragedy • Edward Young
... victory, now overshadowed by the gloom of defeat, and meanwhile President Lincoln was criticised by friends and foes, alike by those who did not understand, and by those who would not appreciate the vastness of the ideal underlying the pain and tragedy of the war. But the President struggled on, wearing out his heart and his strength, but his courage and his faith never failed, and through all the suspense and responsibility of those years, Abraham ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... It can never be carried to other countries. It never can be given under other circumstances. So long as its players are pure in heart and humble in spirit, so long can they keep their well-earned right to show to the world the Tragedy of the Cross. ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... tragedy was transacted upon the square in front of the Cathedral, where now stands the colossal statue of Andrew Jackson, in the midst of the most lovely and beautiful shrubs and flowers indigenous to the soil of Louisiana. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... her wits about her. She was very pale, but she was calm. Instinctively she felt that trouble—even tragedy—was confronting her; the thing she had feared all along without admitting ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... tug. The woman raised a wild, despairing cry. She blocked the passage, and a quarter-master drove her, expostulating in an agony of terror, forward among the rest. Nobody appeared concerned about this alien's tragedy, except one man, and Agatha was not surprised when Wyllard rose and quietly laid his hand upon ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... reader's attention to the conduct of Capt. Shortland, the commanding officer of this depot of prisoners, as well as to the conduct of the men under his charge, as the conduct and events of this period have led on to a tragedy that has filled our native land with mourning and indignation. I shall aim at truth and impartiality, and the reader may make such allowance as our situation may naturally afford, and ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... for them by the advent of some of Richard Beverley's brothers in arms. It was some time before they passed on. Then a little note almost of tragedy concluded the feast. A tall and elderly man, gaunt, with sunken cheeks, silver-white hair, complexion curiously waxen, and big, dark eyes, left the table where he had been sitting with a few Americans and came over towards ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more enthusiastic, and unselfish. Then Bonaparte's glory was less famous, but purer. When she saw Milan again, after many years' absence, Josephine recalled all the happiness and all the misery that had occurred meanwhile, all the grandeur and the tragedy that had filled this period so brief, but so crowded ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Italian story is that of the Cenci. The beautiful Beatrice Cenci—celebrated in the painting of Guido, the sixteenth century romance of Guerrazi, and the poetic tragedy of Shelley, not to mention numerous succeeding works inspired by her hapless fate—will always remain a shadowy figure ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... reader go forward hopefully, and not indulge his criticism till he knows more about them, than he will learn at the outset. "Since the evil," I say, "is in the nature of the case itself, we can do no more than have patience, and recommend patience to others, and, with the racer in the Tragedy, look forward steadily and hopefully to the event, [greek: to telei pistin pheron], when, as we trust, all that is inharmonious and anomalous in the details, will at ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... to England with their son's body, satisfied that he had gone to Roscarna for the grouse shooting on the invitation of people who, in spite of their questionable appearance, were actually connected with the Halbertons, and thankful that no element of intrigue or passion had any part in the tragedy. ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... turned and was looking out of the window, overcome by the far-reaching consequences of his promise made half thoughtlessly two years before, and he therefore did not see the mute tragedy being played behind him; but the Colonel missed none of it, although his faith in Jeb was too deeply rooted to be shaken. He merely believed that his young friend had been shocked—for the moment shocked—and nothing more; a ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... that ever peeps around the corner at the tragedy of life. Anne, whose nerves had been rather strained, laughed hysterically, and even Owen smiled. Certainly, sentiment and passion had a way of shrinking out of sight in Miss Cornelia's presence. And yet to Anne nothing ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "hundred volumes" of Voltaire are rarely read today. They are clever, to be sure, witty, graceful,—but admittedly superficial. He thought that he could understand at a glance the problems upon which more earnest men had spent their lives; he would hurriedly dash off a tragedy, or in spare moments write a pretentious history. He was not always accurate but he ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... assuming without proof that it isn't? No one has yet offered such proof; indeed, all the evidence is to the contrary. We should rise above bitterness and reproach, and if Americans could come together in a spirit of understanding and helping, then we could find positive solutions to the tragedy of abortion. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... persons reflect for the most part the daring and savagery of the viking age, though there are kindly features and an occasional touch of humor.[1760] Loki in some stories is a genuine villain, and the death of Balder is a real tragedy. The great cosmogonic and eschatological myths are conceived in grandiose style. The struggle between gods and giants is in its basis the widespread nature myth of the conflict of seasons. The overthrow of the old divine government (the Twilight ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... Lottie, looking shudderingly down the steep bank, at the bottom of which brawled a swift stream among ice-capped rocks. "It's just the place for a tragedy. We were talking about heaven and the other place when the horses started, were we not? Perhaps we were nearer one or the other of them ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... the Somme was to me the great tragedy of the war. A glorious noble tragedy, but still a tragedy. Both sides of course have claimed the victory, the British a tactical one, the Germans a strategic one. The net result to the Allies from a material point of view was the recapture ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... her mere walking would give more joy than others find in dancing. And then he raised his eyes to her face and was sad. For sufficient reasons he was very sensitive to the tragedies of women, and he knew it was a tragedy that such a face should surmount such a body. For her body would imprison her in soft places: she would be allowed no adventures other than love, no achievements other than births. But her face was haggard, in spite of its youth, with appetite for travel in the hard places ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... my question, he said: "Doctor, I suppose you have heard about the big wreck that happened out on the ocean." (This was when the terrible Titanic disaster was on everybody's lips and the papers were full of the tragedy.) The patient regularly read the papers. ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... America completely effaced the German-American conflict. It vanishes from history. At first it had seemed to promise quite sufficient tragedy in itself—beginning as it did in unforgettable massacre. After the destruction of central New York all America had risen like one man, resolved to die a thousand deaths rather than submit to Germany. The Germans grimly resolved upon beating the Americans into submission and, following out the plans ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... turned out to be tragedy, and the curtain fell upon the scene. The audience scattered ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... of Dinan may also be classed among the palaces of the past, for now, despite the fact that it was built by the Dukes of Brittany, it has become a prison. From the tourist as well as the romantic point of view this is somewhat of a tragedy. The Tower of Coetquen, one of the ancient towers of the city wall, is practically part of the castle, and the keep, or Queen Anne's Tower, is the most distinctive feature remaining. This keep is of four stories, and is over a hundred feet high, the last story being reached by a spiral staircase. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... satisfied. But he was not so, and as he rode he thought the morning scene of a twilight dreariness. He had no enthusiasm for war. In every aspect of life, save one, that he dealt with, he carried a cool and level head, and he thought war barbarous and its waste a great tragedy. Martial music and earth-shaking charges moved him for a moment, as they moved others for an hour or a day. The old, instinctive response passed with swiftness, and he settled to the base of a steadfast ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... muttered comments of the men, Bill leaning on his elbow at the edge of his bunk and staring toward the hatch as if some one long expected were just about to come. I do not pretend to understand the reason, but in my experience it is the trifling unimportant things that after a time of stress or tragedy are most clearly remembered. ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... of Yellow Creek was, a hundred and twenty years ago, the camp of Logan, the Mingo chief; opposite, on the West Virginia shore, Baker's Bottom, where occurred the treacherous massacre of Logan's family. The tragedy is interwoven with the history of the trans-Alleghany border; and schoolboys have in many lands and tongues recited the pathetic defense of the poor Mingo, who, more sinned against than sinning, was crushed in the inevitable struggle ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... he noted the last circumstance; "the dross which leads so many souls to damnation has been neglected while Christian blood has been shed! This seems an act of vengeance rather than of cupidity. Let us now examine if any proofs are to be found of the scene of this tragedy." ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... in her soul and she gave her strength and energy in caring for these exiles of her own blood. When she wrote now it was of her people. She read our long and wonderful history and immortalized the heroism of our martyrs in such poems as her tragedy, "The Dance to Death." She wrote shorter verses, too, and there are few Jewish boys and girls who have not recited or at least heard her stirring Chanukkah recitations, "The Feast of Lights," and "The Banner of the Jew." Her poems ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... Duchess, nobody takes anything 'au grand serieux' nowadays. We grin through every scene of life, and we don't know and don't care whether it's comedy or tragedy we're grinning at! It doesn't do to be serious. I never am. 'Life is real, life is earnest' was the line of conduct practised by my French ancestors; they cut up all their enemies with long swords, and then sat down to wild boar roasted whole ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... reeling to and fro the gallery floors, his face distorted by stormy passion, his lips white and murmuring, his beauty and his glory dimmed and humbled,—the spectator might have half believed that while Edward gazed upon those harmless sleepers, A VISION OF THE TRAGEDY TO COME had stricken down his thought of guilt, and filled up its place with horror,—a vision of a sleep as pure, of two forms wrapped in an embrace as fond, of intruders meditating a crime scarce fouler than his own; and the sins of the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been taken to the seaside to be helped by the bracing air of the Norfolk coast to recover her lost appetite and forget her small tragedy, she had observed that unaccustomed things were taking place in the house. Workmen came in and out through the mews at the back and brought ladders with them and tools in queer bags. She heard hammerings which began very early in the morning and went on all day. As Andrews had trained ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for Froude's peace of mind if he had handed the parcel back again, and refused to look at it. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil scarcely yielded more fatal fruit. He read the papers, however, and "for the first time realised what a tragedy the life in Cheyne Row had been." That he exaggerated the purport of what he read is likely enough. When there are quarrels between husband and wife, a man naturally inclines to take the woman's side. Froude, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... would say anything. He certainly would eat nothing: probably would only open his mouth to observe, "I'm off!" and then we should see him no more. Quite right. So would I—but for "my oath, my Lord, my oath!" (N.B.—This is a quotation. Sure of it. Where from? Don't know. Tragedy probably; sounds tragic. No matter. Can give it with effect in a speech, and Members turn to one another and ask, "What's that from?" When they ask me confidentially afterwards, I reply with an air of intense surprise, "What! don't you ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... 4. This tragedy of undeveloped potential could be avoided in many instances if married couples had a clearer concept of the task of marriage and did not have to struggle in almost total isolation from other couples going through the ...
— Marriage Enrichment Retreats - Story of a Quaker Project • David Mace
... held the paper in his hand, everything became startlingly clear. This was the last act of a tragedy which had been going on for months; and now that the curtain had abruptly fallen, he could not help, in the midst of this horror, owning to a sense of thankfulness, for the sake of others, that the troubled ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed |
