"Deplorably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this lyric to Thomson, "gravel me to death: I have not that command of the language that I have of my native tongue. I have been at 'Duncan Gray,' to dress it in English, but all I can do is deplorably stupid. For instance:"] ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... receiving instruction, whilst not more than one-eighth were attending schools which were subject to inspection. The vast majority were to be found in schools where the standard of education, if not altogether an unknown quantity, was deplorably low. He proposed that the number of inspectors should be increased, and that a rate should be levied by the local authorities for supplying adequate instruction in places where it was unsatisfactory. He contended that the country should be mapped out in school districts, and that the ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... weather conditions, as so often in the case of Spanish naval undertakings, ruined the enterprise. Making for Bahia they were detained for two months in the Bay of All Saints by strong northerly winds. Meanwhile Joan Maurice, whose naval force at first was deplorably weak, had managed by energetic efforts to gather together a respectable fleet of forty vessels under Admiral Loos, which resembled the English fleet of 1588 under Effingham and Drake, in that it made up for ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... keen and living. They have built up, in the long centuries of their civilisation, a delicate and noble complexity of behaviour and of personal relationships. A white man living with them soon feels his mind as deplorably dull as his skin is pale and unhealthy among those glorious golden-brown bodies. But even he soon learns to be his body (and so his true mind), instead of using it as a stupid convenience for his personality, a moment's umbrella against this ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... last, she was forced to the ignoble conclusion that she was suffering from homesickness pure and simple, homesickness in one of its acutest forms. Her appetite for her work declined in proportion to her appetite for her food. She was listless, dull, and, it must be confessed, most deplorably cross. The fact of the matter was that the girl was pining for the broad lawns of The Savins, for the shabby red house, for her father and Hubert, even for Cicely and Cicely's ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... on his feet was but a frail creature. He was still deplorably giddy, and his legs showed an unpleasing tendency to crumple. "I'm fair done," he moaned. "You see, I've been tied up all day to a tree and had two sore bashes on my head. Get you on that bicycle and hurry on, and I'll hirple after ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... worn and scratched, the cushions had been re-covered with cheap American cloth, the waterproof apron was threadbare, and one of the splash-boards was split. The harness also was of the most ancient description, and the rough pony badly needed clipping, so that the whole turn-out was deplorably shabby and second-rate. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the aristocratic profession has as few geniuses as any other profession; so that if you want a peerage of more than, say, half a dozen members, you must fill it up with many common persons, and even with some deplorably mean ones. For "service is no inheritance" either in the kitchen or the House of Lords; and the case presented by Mr. Barrie in his play of The Admirable Crichton, where the butler is the man of quality, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Brutality is not so deplorably diluted by humaneness as it used to be, yet a sentimental segment of the population may still be relieved to learn that he did none of these things. For active brutality is not popular with Forsytes; they are too circumspect, and, on the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... efficient, which will not be the case for a long time in Russia. Hence not only does it appear that the number of artists will grow less, but that the number of people undamaged in their artistic impulses and on that account able to create or appreciate as amateurs is likely to be deplorably small. It is in this damaging effect of industry on human instinct that the immediate danger to art ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... pushed on their war preparations: Austria with less ardour than the others, as she still failed to more than faintly realise her danger. The Italian army, which the opening of the year found in a deplorably unserviceable condition, was rapidly placed on a war-footing, and, considering the shortness of the time allowed for the work, and the secrecy with which, at the outset, it had to be conducted, it is generally agreed that La Marmora produced ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... of the procession to give way to the least emotion, which would, besides, have been foreign to his nature. Old Monpavon, stricken to the heart, would have considered the least bending of his linen cuirass and of his tall figure a piece of deplorably bad taste, totally unworthy of his illustrious friend. His eyes remained as dry and glittering as ever, since the undertakers provide the tears for great mournings, embroidered in silver on black cloth. Some one was weeping, however, away yonder among the members of the ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... exceptional and only occasional dealings with the orchestra here, can only draw your attention to the fact of how deplorably such occurrences run counter to a nice feeling of decorum, and still more ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... The people in these hills are called Gonds, a true hill tribe—that is to say, aborigines, somewhat of the negro type. The chiefs are of mixed blood, but the people are almost black. They are supposed to accept the religion of the Hindus, but are in reality deplorably ignorant and superstitious. Their priests are a sort of compound of a Brahmin priest and a negro fetish man, and among their principal duties is that of charming away tigers from the villages by means of incantations. There, as in other parts of India, ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... returned. Then he started, waved his hand, smiling his condescension; then he realised that he was going faster than he desired to; then his legs began to do disrespectful things to him. The treachery of his own private legs was most disheartening, for they wavered and wobbled deplorably, now threatening to cross each other, now veering alarmingly wide of his body. He made a feebly desperate attempt to use his trail-pole; and the next second all that Geraldine could see of the episode was mercifully enveloped in a spouting ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the whole of his precious, irreplaceable manuscript! And he had gone and lost it, and knew nothing about it. Only fancy, Hedda! So deplorably— ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... out that the fourteen ingredients named may be divided into two groups of seven each—the egoistic and the altruistic. The prevailing notion that love is a species of selfishness—a "double selfishness," some wiseacre has called it—is deplorably untrue and shows how little the psychology of ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... chanced to be at Selwoode were a task of magnitude. That gentleman travelled very quietly; and for the most part, he journeyed incognito under a variety of aliases suggested partly by a fertile imagination and in part by prudential motives. For his notions of proprietary rights were deplorably vague, and his acquaintance with the police, in consequence, extensive. And finally, that he was now at Selwoode was not in the least his fault, but all the doing of an N. & O. brakesman, who had in uncultured argument, reinforced by a coupling-pin, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... special study of last-wicket men; they are divided into two classes, the deplorably nervous, or the outrageously confident. The nervous largely outnumber the confident. The launching of a last-wicket man, when there are ten to make to win, or five minutes left to make a draw of a losing game, is fully as impressive a ceremony ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Her very looks denote her desires! how deplorably she appears! The paint on her sides, burnt up by the scorching sun, is puffed out and cracked. See the weeds she trails along with her, and what an unsightly bunch of those horrid barnacles has formed about her stern-piece; and every time she rises on a sea, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... again stared with what seemed to Fritzing so deplorably foolish a stare. "I never heard of such ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... less than to ourselves, then, to cultivate the powers of the voice—the common instrument that God has given us for the interchange of thought, sentiment, and feeling, and which, though so common, is the most perfect of all instruments for the transmission of sound. Yet how deplorably is it neglected! how shamefully is it misused! It can be fully developed and made what it is capable of being only through the influence of the ear. If this organ be neglected, the voice must needs be imperfect. And the voices of many persons are through life ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... Penelope somewhat ruefully, "he's so far from being Philistine that he has a dreadful faculty for making me feel deplorably commonplace." ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... vain and talkative; and when any thing puts them out of humour, they commonly vent their anger upon their female slaves, over whom they rule with severe and despotic authority; which leads me to observe, that the condition of these poor captives is deplorably wretched. At daybreak they are compelled to fetch water from the wells in large skins called girbas; and as soon as they have brought water enough to serve the family for the day, as well as the horses, (for the Moors seldom give their ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... down the plan of a new world for men who were reared in the old. Their institutions perished, but their influence has endured; and the problem of their history is to explain why so genuine a striving for the highest of earthly goods so deplorably failed. The errors that ruined their enterprise may be reduced to one. Having put the nation in the place of the Crown, they invested it with the same unlicensed power, raising no security and no remedy against oppression ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... of pious Christians toward an elfin child. But though mother and child gave them a sense of insuperable strangeness, it plainly never occurred to them that both would not be gradually subdued to the customs of Saint Desert. Dynasties had fallen, institutions changed, manners and morals, alas, deplorably declined; but as far back as memory went, the ladies of the line of Chelles had always sat at their needle-work on the terrace of Saint Desert, while the men of the house lamented the corruption of the government ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... about the heroic deeds which elsewhere gave a man foothold; here such things merely aroused scornful laughter. He tried it again and again, always with something new, but the answer was always the same—"Farmer!" His whole little person was overflowing with good-will, and he became deplorably dejected. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... head with a sudden laugh. 'And the joy of not having any more visits to make! I wonder if you've ever thought of that? Just at first, I mean; for society's getting so deplorably lax that, little by little, it will edge up to us—you'll see! I don't want to idealize the situation, dearest, and I won't conceal from you that in time we shall be called on. But, oh, the fun we shall ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... objects upon which men place their affections; but, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth is an imperious duty; and, of course, if a man fails in this duty, his good name as a member of society soon becomes most deplorably out at elbows. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... But I daresay the offence is in the things that I take, as I say, for granted; for if one tries to be pleased one passes perhaps inevitably for being pleased above all with one's self. That's really not my case—I find my capacity for pleasure deplorably below the mark I've set. This is why, as I've told you, I cultivate it, I try to bring it up. And I'm actuated by positive benevolence; I've that impudent pretension. That's what I mean by being the same to every one, by having only one ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... of his writing against the grand heresiarch of the age, he nevertheless became the chief instrument of the Reformation, the man and the sovereign without whose aid the reform movement of the sixteenth century would have failed as deplorably as the reform movements of the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries had failed. A legitimate king, though the heir of a successful usurpation, and holding the royal prerogative as high as any man ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... entered that shabby little Montmartre restaurant, Janiaud chanced to be seated, at a table in a corner, sipping his favourite stimulant. He was deplorably dirty and suggested a scarecrow, and the English editor looked nervous when I offered an introduction. Still, Janiaud was Janiaud. The offer was accepted, and Janiaud discoursed in his native tongue. At midnight the Editor ordered supper. Being ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... He was deplorably calm—too calm. His eyes were looking at books on shelves, at chairs, at pictures on the walls, as if everything ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... he didn't know what to call Tessibel. She was no longer a child, no longer a little girl, although she looked deplorably young and sick as she sat ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... deplorably few the facts, that have come down to us in regard to Washington's boyhood. For the former we are indebted to the illustrious Weems, and to that personage a few more words must be devoted. Weems has been ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... know that you are a fraud. But, remember, silence is golden. If you feel any inclination of getting fussy, remember that I am a lawyer, and that I can prove I took your claim in good faith. Also, the Southerners are notoriously hot-tempered, deplorably addicted to firearms, and I don't think you would look a pretty sight if you happened to ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... I did," he answered. "I was never many yards from you. I lay hidden in a doorway, close to. Cary, you make a deplorably good scold! I never guessed you would do that part of the business ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... low forehead, very diminutive and vindictive grey eyes, somewhat Tartar features, rather flat nose, rather high-cheek bones, yet the ensemble not positively ugly; tolerably good complexion. So much for person. As to mind, deplorably ignorant and ill-informed: incapable of writing or speaking correctly even German, her native tongue, a dunce in French, and her attempts at learning English a mere farce, yet she has been at school ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... and deplorably different was Colden's case. A most fascinating book [Footnote: Godwin's Political Justice.] fell at length into his hands, which changed, in a moment, the whole course of his ideas. What he had before regarded with reluctance and terror, this book taught him to admire and love. The writer ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... are deplorably right on one thing at least. I don't know whether I was fit to make such a decision when I made it, but I'm not fit now. As far as you personally are concerned...." He trails off looking tireder than ever, ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... the sessions drew near, the outlook for me was anything but bright. It is true that my witnesses were quite willing to depose that his actions were queer and out of the common, but these witnesses were for the most part venerable farmers and backwoodsmen: expert testimony was deplorably lacking. In this extremity it was Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke himself who came unwittingly to my rescue. He had bought a horse,—he could never be in a place long without one,—which was chiefly remarkable, he said, for picking up his hind feet as well as his front ones. However he may have differed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... heard her aunt and her aunt's friends remark that life was more dramatic than any book, and that their own lives on the stage would eclipse in sensational quality any play ever presented. But, for herself, life seemed deplorably, maddeningly undramatic. In any book, in any play, the situation between her and Peter must have been heightened to a definite crisis long before this. The mildest of little ingenues, as she came across a dimly lighted stage, in demure white and silver, could have ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... the sutler, which was a tasty way, strewn with bright-labelled, but aged, canned goods. And as for his embroidered shirt, it was much soiled and worn, and he had so gained in weight—through plentiful food and lack of exercise—that he pressed out upon it deplorably ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... the Herschels removed to Datchet. Their new home was "a large neglected place; the house in a deplorably ruinous condition, the garden and grounds overgrown with weeds." Nor were the domestic arrangements more favourable. For a fortnight the little family were without a female servant; and an old woman, the gardener's wife, showed Miss Herschel the shops, where the ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... say that the handling of a small part of this crowd by the railway people, and of the whole of it by the local management, was deplorably bad. The trains were inadequate and irregular; the great mistake was made of opening only three of the many entrances to the theatre; and the artistic error was committed (against the protest of ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... that from forty to fifty per cent, of births are in charge of midwives in the foreign-born population and that the condition of housing and of water, air and food supply are deplorably inadequate in manufacturing centres, and that in rural communities there are few doctors and nurses and little hospital service, it will be seen that the idea of having Federal aid for this large health requirement was not one of concentration ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... words—the startling words—which had just fallen from his lips. He would do it to-day. He had said, in a tone of terrible resolution, he would do it to-day. What, oh what, would he do? Something even more deplorably unworthy of him than what he had done already? Would he apostatise from the faith? Would he abandon us at the Mothers'-Small-Clothes? Had we seen the last of his angelic smile in the committee-room? Had we heard the last of his unrivalled eloquence at Exeter ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... awful row, of course—and du Tertre-Jouan had to make a public apology to M. Boulot, who disappeared from the school the very same day; and Tertre-Jouan would have been canonized by us all, but that he was so deplorably dull and narrow-minded, and suspected of being a royalist in disguise. He was an orphan and very rich, and didn't fash himself about examinations. He left school that year without taking any degree—and I don't know what ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... clasped forcibly under her chin, but she, dear soul, was looking sorrowfully at Willie. The model nephew! In this strange state! So very much flushed! The careful disposition of the thin hairs across Willie's bald spot was deplorably disarranged, and the spot itself was red and, ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... have the curiosity, Madam, to wish to know how I live: for no doubt you have heard all my sad, sad story!—Know, then, that I am as happy, as a poor creature can be, who has once so deplorably, so inexcusably fallen. I have a worthy gentleman for my husband, who married me as a widow, whose only child by my former was the care of her papa's friends, particularly of good Lacy Davers and her brother. Poor unhappy I! ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... continuation and not a new poem) in curious long laisses, rather than stanzas, of eights and sevens rhymed on one continuous pair of single and double rhymes, cit unde: ant ende, &c. The Buechlein proper is all couplets, and ends less deplorably ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... considered the decision deplorably headlong, and said so; but her remonstrances were of no avail. Muriel tossed aside her listlessness as resolutely as the ball-dress that had been laid out for the evening's festivity, and plunged ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... men's opinions. I submit to this, as I would submit to gout or gray hair, as a concomitant of growing age or else of failing animal heat; but I do not acknowledge that it is necessarily a change for the better - I daresay it is deplorably for the worse. I have no choice in the business, and can no more resist this tendency of my mind than I could prevent my body from beginning to totter and decay. If I am spared (as the phrase runs) I shall doubtless ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... religious camp-meetings had become associated with the most grotesque ideas and narrations. It is no wonder that their phraseology was a caricature of civilised language. For how could they be expected to manifest intelligence without any education? So deplorably destitute of instruction were they that very few even of their preachers could read the simplest words. Old men amongst them who had preached the Gospel to their black congregations for upwards of forty years, were ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... Constituent, met in the month of October 1791. Like its predecessor, the Legislative contained a host of excellent and patriotic men, and they at once applied themselves to the all-important task, which the Constituent had left so deplorably incomplete, of finally breaking down the old feudal rights. The most important group in the new chamber were the deputies from the Gironde. Events soon revealed violent dissents between the Girondins and the Jacobins, but, for some months after the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... Confucianism, Brahmanism, and Mohammedanism, and followed, some distance off, by Taoism. To make a table of percentages of mankind, and assign to each system its proportion, is to seem to be wise where we are deplorably ignorant; and, moreover, if our means of information were much better than they are, our figures would merely show the outward adherence. A fractional per-centage might tell more for one system than a very large integral one ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... said to him at least a score of times, and mind his own business, and shake off the dust—or the mud—of his feet at such strangers? But, alas! he had tried it, and could shake nothing, except his sad and sapient head. How deplorably was he altered from the Pet that used to be! Where were now his lofty joys, the pleasure he found in wholesome mischief and wholesale destruction, the high delight of frightening all the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... slaves as settled by God himself, I know not. Paul, in drawing the character of those who oppose slavery, in his letter to Timothy, says, (vi: 4,) they are "proud, knowing nothing;" he means, that they were puffed with a conceit of their superior sanctity, while they were deplorably ignorant of the will of Christ on this subject. Is it not great pride that leads a man to think he is better than the Saviour? Jesus held fellowship with, and enjoined subjection to governments, which sanctioned slavery in ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... as if Neptune had pronounced the famous Quos ego, and, after six or seven minutes, during which Eurus, Notus, Boreas and Aquilo seemed to beat a retreat, the host appeared with a lantern and enlightened the scene, which looked deplorably like a field of battle. The great chest of drawers was overturned on the broken table; the door was held only by one of its hinges, and the bolts were broken; three or four chairs were on the floor with their legs in the air, and, to crown all, the crockery, which had been on the ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... but plain—the cheekbones were high, the features rugged, the eyes small and light; but Philippa noted something very attractive in the expression. There was cleverness in the broad low brow under the wide-brimmed hat so deplorably innocent of all suggestion of prevailing fashion, and a whimsical twist about the corners of the mouth which showed its possessor to be rich in humour. And yet it was a sad face—in some indefinite way it suggested patience and expectancy. ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... the advocates of his indefinite perfectibility are in reality the greatest enemies to the practical possibility of their own system, by so strenuously labouring to impress on his attention that he is going on in a good way, while he is really in a deplorably bad one." ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... rooms were stark nonsense; bad for the health; useless for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and common sense. I told him, too, that he being in other things such an extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly pained me, to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan of his. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half-starved. This is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy notions about their hereafters. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... of the genius that was deplorably evident on the journey from Springfield to Washington. There was one detail of the journey that gave his enemies a more definite ground for sneering. By the irony of fate, the first clear instance of Lincoln's humility, his reluctance to set up ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... which once had been very thinly attended now had overflowing congregations.[1055] Unfortunately, this revival of church attendance was not long-lived. Year after year it continued to fall off, until it had become in many parts of the country deplorably small. In 1738 Secker deplored the 'greatly increased disregard to public worship.'[1056] It was never neglected in England so much as during the corresponding period in Germany. Even in the worst of times, as a modern writer ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... something. That was quite clear. And it was deplorably clear that whatever it was, R. Schmidt was sitting upon it. They saw that he was asleep, which made the search if not the actual recovery quite out of the question. The older woman was on the point of poking the sleeper ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... than three hours all the Spanish ships were destroyed, the two torpedo boats being sunk and the Maria Teresa, Almirante Oquendo, Vizcaya, and Cristobal Colon driven ashore. The Spanish admiral and over 1,300 men were taken prisoners. While the enemy's loss of life was deplorably large, some 600 perishing, on our side but one man was killed, on the Brooklyn, and one man seriously wounded. Although our ships were repeatedly struck, not one was seriously injured. Where all ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... vessel of this description had arrived at the port of London. The subject of the traffic having become invested with interest, a portion of the members of the House paid a visit to the ill-starred craft. The deplorably narrow quarters where hundreds of human beings were to be stowed away during the weeks that might be necessary to make their passage produced upon the minds of these gentlemen a most unfavorable impression. The various insignia of the trade did not tend to lessen this, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... confidence of youth, often venture on remarkable confessions. In your "Natural History of Young Ladies" I do not remember that you describe the Humorous Young Lady. {1} She is a very rare bird indeed, and humour generally is at a deplorably ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... without the co-existence, on both sides, of intrinsic worth, of those responsive virtues which elicit esteem and dominate sympathy. The great reason of the failure of a broad, glowing friendship between parents and children a failure o deplorably common in our homes is the lack, in heir characters, of that wealth, nobleness, sweetness, patience, aspiration, which would irresistibly draw them to each other in mutual honor, love, and joy. The only remedy for this unhappy failure is the cure of its unhappier cause. Whatever makes characters ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of Rosalie's progress through senior Latin might be marked by blistered pages. She was a pretty, cuddling, helpless little thing, deplorably babyish for a senior; but irresistibly appealing. Everyone teased her, and protected her, and loved her. She was irrevocably predestined to bowl over the first man who came along, with her ultra feminine irresponsibility. Rosalie very often dreamed—when she ought to ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... Most deplorably have we felt the need of intercessory services for Home and Foreign Missions; and, though there are beautiful metrical litanies which bear directly on these and other objects, yet these are not sufficient, and of course are limited to times when a good and strong choir ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... pailful of slops splashed down upon the doorstep. Villon had not been unprepared for something of the sort, and had put himself as much in shelter as the nature of the porch admitted; but for all that, he was deplorably drenched below the waist. His hose began to freeze almost at once. Death from cold and exposure stared him in the face; he remembered he was of phthisical tendency, and began coughing tentatively. But the gravity of the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... programme, Susan's story promised to be deplorably tame and uneventful, and Dreda curled her lip in scorn as she read ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... less sorrowfully echoed by his new acquaintance. "Still I am bound to tell you," observes Allan after repeating his former assurance, "that the boy is deplorably low and reduced and that he may be—I do not say that he is—too far ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... prepared into keeping forms; hence the pigs he breeds on his clearings are looked upon by the bush-farmer as the regular source whence to draw his household provision in the meat way. Now, if the wild boars out of the bush get among the brood sows upon the clearings, the result is deplorably manifest in the next generation, which will display more or less of the evil characteristics of the wild race. Thus, both the older farmer and the newest settler are nearly touched, and both unite in a ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... introduction there is a chorus of mujiks, which, Russian in idea as well as in harmonization and manner of performance, introduces at once the most interesting as it is the most effective element in the score. Without this element the opera would be deplorably dull, so far as its music is concerned. Giordano's original melody is for the greater part commonplace and unexpressive. The dramatic scenes between the lovers in each of the acts are passionate only to ears accustomed ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... with these vast changes in the fundamental Island habits she concentrated her unfailing energies on the reformation of the marriage laws, which at that time were in a deplorably decadent condition, and encouraged with all her might the trade of "fuahs" and "aeious" (nose rings and hair tidies) with the "Bauoacha" Islands a few miles off. Until the ripe age of eighty-seven she ruled her subjects trustingly ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... have a friend in deplorably low spirits, and you are afraid he will make away with himself—accordingly you rob him of his knife or other such instrument: to which side ought we to ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... to dinner—she could dine early, with the children; and that if her presence in the drawing-room should be required the children had their nurse—and what did they have their nurse for? Selina looked at her as if she was deplorably superficial and told her that they had their nurse to dress them and look after their clothes—did she wish the poor little ducks to go in rags? She had her own ideas of thoroughness and when Laura ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... lockjaw if dirt has not been entirely removed from the wound at the time of accident. Injuries to the hands caused by pistols, firecrackers, and kindred explosives, seem especially prone to produce lockjaw, and fatalities from this disorder are deplorably numerous after Fourth-of-July ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... peculiar disposition, I am already in the most deplorably false position that a reasonable mind and romantic heart could ever ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... were marked by her too-celebrated relations with Alfred de Musset, with whom she lived in Paris and at Venice, and with whom she quarrelled at last in circumstances deplorably infelicitous. Neither of these great creatures had the reticence to exclude the world from a narrative of their misfortunes and adventures; of the two it was fairly certainly the woman who came the less injured out of the furnace. In "Elle ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." All attempts to correct the depravity of man, to stay the headlong propensity to vice, to abate the madness of ambition, will be found deplorably inefficient, unless we apply the restrictions and the tremendous sanctions of religion. A profound regard and deference for religion, a constant recognition of our dependence upon God, and of our obligation and accountability to Him; an ever-present, ever-pressing sense of His ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... had been a mingled moment of laughter and emotion which had left Victoria very much astonished at herself, and given Hesketh a free hand. Victoria's solitary pursuits, the awkward or stately reserve of her ordinary manner, were deplorably interfered with, indeed, by the advent of this lovely, neglected child, who on her side had fallen passionately in love with Victoria at first sight and seemed to be now rarely happy ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... color, is not allowed to be received in the Courts of Slaveholding States. Many other instances have occured: and many instances of persons who were entitled to their freedom after serving a limited time, being sold into irredeemable Slavery in other states are deplorably numerous; the covert manner of doing which is generally such as to elude detection. It is suggested whether Legislative enactments requiring that persons so situated, should be required to be registered every ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... because publishers are so. I will confess that I have such inordinate expectations of the sale of my books which I hope I think modestly of, that the sales reported to me never seem great enough. The copyright due me, no matter how handsome it is, appears deplorably mean, and I feel impoverished for several days after I get it. But then, I ought to add that my balance in the bank is always much less than I have supposed it to be, and my own checks, when they come back to me, have the air of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... have his virtues. Oho! Here comes a journalist," said Giardini, as a man came in dressed in the absurd way which used to be attributed to a poet in a garret; his coat was threadbare, his boots split, his hat shiny, and his overcoat deplorably ancient. "Excellenza, that poor man is full of talent, and incorruptibly honest. He was born into the wrong times, for he tells the truth to everybody; no one can endure him. He writes theatrical articles for ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... Anne had finished her morsel, and her fingers played irritably with the hand-bell at her side. Poor Majendie's abstraction had combined with his appetite to make him deplorably slow over his dinner. She still sat watching him, pure from appetite, in resignation that veiled her contempt of the male hunger so incomprehensibly prolonged. He had come to dread more than anything ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... umbrellas and handkerchiefs. Immediately behind came the lady whom George had caught sight of, holding the other girl's hand in hers. She was bareheaded and in evening dress. Her opera-cloak, with its heavy sable collar, showed beneath it a dress of some light-coloured satin, which had already suffered deplorably from the puddles of the road, and, as she neared the lamp beneath which the cab had stopped, the diamonds on her wrists sparkled in the light. During her passage through the crowd, George perceived ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a sufficient equipment of fortitude and decision to enable us to encounter them. In reality we mostly do no better than a traveller who going to an unknown land and climate, guesses for himself beforehand what his outfit had better be, and then finds it deplorably inadequate when he gets there. Rendel, during those days of lonely agony in London that followed the revelations sprung on the public by the Arbiter, had endeavoured to school himself to face what the future might ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... and regrettably been evidenced that Nature is a sot at heart, by reason of her deplorably lax morals. Painful as it is to make the admission, there are many of her apparently innocent fruits and plants that are susceptible, by the unlawful processes of fermentation and effervescence, of transformation into alcoholic liquid. Science tells ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... from peril. Now she who was speaking had faith and belief in him, the more so as she loved him very much; but on his arrival in this country, the Sire de Bueil was seized with an illness, and died deplorably, without taking any remedies, this spite of the fervent requests which she who was speaking had addressed to him, but without success, because he hated physicians, master surgeons, and apothecaries; and that this ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... controversy there is little doubt that the Conservatives would have been in a far stronger position had they acted as a united party with a definite policy and a strong leader ready at a moment's notice to form an alternative Government. But they were deplorably led, they could agree on no policy, and their warmest supporters in the Press and in the country were the first to admit that the formation of an alternative Conservative Administration was unthinkable. Nevertheless, there could be no rival for the leadership. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... not only not be abolished, but entirely restored to the primitive and genuine rule of simplicity; and that all those enormities may be corrected into which the lives and profession of the monks for a long time had deplorably lapsed, have, as far as human frailty will permit, endeavoured to the utmost that for the future the pure word of God may be taught in that place, good ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... of arms, it is true, was deplorably deficient in 1861. But the South was only a little better off than the North in that regard. Besides, the National Government had command of all the markets of the world, and of the means of ocean transportation. ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... had made me see myself as I really was—a man, not of an irreproachable rectitude, an immaculate purity (had I ever, had anybody ever really supposed that I was such a man?) but quite deplorably human, and blind—yes, my dear Viola, blind as any bat—and vulnerable, so vulnerable that I think you might have spared me, you ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... and Sullivan went further. They were not only such good artists themselves that they could appreciate genius in others, they were young enough not to be afraid of their enthusiasms. They gave the effect of being with May, with whom they often arrived and stayed until the deplorably early hour of the morning at which he started for home, in order that they might watch over him, and, indeed, he needed watching. He was not readier in offering than in giving anything he was asked for, which was ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the Sahib-log, the master-people, were the troopers, splendid Sikhs, Rajputs, Pathans and Punjabis, men of honour, courage, physique, tradition. Grand fighters, loyal as steel while properly understood and properly treated—in other words, while properly officered. (Men, albeit, with deplorably little understanding of, or regard for, Pagett, M.P., and his kind, who yearn to do so much ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... establish intimacy, than many a more accomplished person, with an unexceptionable coat and accurate whisker might have effected in a fortnight. What were his gifts in this way, I am, alas, most deplorably ignorant of; it was not, heaven knows, that he possessed any conversational talent—of successful flattery he knew as much as a negro does of the national debt—and yet the "bon-hommie" of his character seemed to tell at once; and I ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... “The contemptible rage for novel-reading is a pernicious and deplorably prevalent taste, which vitiates and palls the appetite for literary food of a more nutritive and wholesome kind. . . . I am well assured, that novels and political tracts are the only things generally read.” ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... Dutch evaporated deplorably on closer perusal of the said writ, which contained the peremptory mandate that I was to enter my appearance within the incredibly short notice of eight days, or the judgment would be given ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... and good young couple took the affections of Tyre by storm. The Methodist Church there had at no time held its head very high among the denominations, and for some years back had been in a deplorably sinking state, owing first to the secession of the Free Methodists and then to the incumbency of a pastor who scandalized the community by marrying a black man to a white woman. But the Wares changed all this. Within a month the report of Theron's ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... years since so miserably reduc'd all the Noble, Brave and Honest, to the Obedience of the ill-gotten Power, and worse-acted Greatness of the Rabble; so that whil'st they most unjustly cry'd down the oppression of one of the best of Monarchs, and all Kingly Government: all England found itself deplorably inslav'd by the Arbitrary Tyranny of many Pageant Kings. Oh that we shou'd so far forget with what greatness of mind You then shar'd the common Fate, as now and again to force Your Royal Person to new Perils, and new Exiles; but such ingratitude we are punisht with, and You ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... rheumatism, he seemed to embody in his person all the ways in which a body may be contorted from its proper shape. Ugly as he was, there was a marked expression of vigour about his face; but in direct contrast to M. Gosselin, he was deplorably lacking in cleanliness. While he was lecturing he would use his old cloak and the sleeves of his cassock as if it were a duster to wipe up anything; and his skull-cap, lined with cotton wool to protect him from neuralgia, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, 143:6 nor provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and employed them in his heal- ing. The sick are more deplorably lost than 143:9 the sinning, if the sick cannot rely on God for help and the sinning can. The divine Mind never called matter medicine, and matter required a material and human be- 143:12 lief before it could ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... in the cities of New York and Brooklyn were deplorably bad during the first few years I went there to preach. There was an onslaught of bad literature and stage immorality. For instance, there was a lady who came forth as an authoress under the assumed name of George Sand. She smoked ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... of the room. The fire continued to roar up the stovepipe. The moaning of the wind outside deplorably emphasized the desolation of the home. For once it harmonized with the note of despair which flooded the hearts of ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... no more difficulty in idealizing Edward King as a shepherd than in personifying the ocean calm as "sleek Panope and all her sisters," which, to be sure, may have been a trouble to Johnson. If, however, Johnson is deplorably prosaic, neither can we agree with Pattison that "in 'Lycidas' we have reached the high-water mark of English Poesy and of Milton's own production." Its innumerable beauties are rather exquisite than magnificent. It is an elegy, and cannot, therefore, rank as high as an equally consummate ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... way through the yard. In front of them a flock of some forty sheep and lambs pushed along, guarded by two black short-haired collies. The boy, brandishing a long stick, opened a gate deplorably in want of mending, and the sheep crowded through, keenly looked after by the dogs, who waited meanwhile on their flanks with heads up, ears cocked, and that air of self-restrained energy which often makes a sheep-dog more human than his master. The field beyond ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Indians had now convinced Captain Bonneville of their amicable and inoffensive character; he began to take a strong interest in them, and conceived the idea of becoming a pacificator, and healing the deadly feud between them and the Blackfeet, in which they were so deplorably the sufferers. He proposed the matter to some of the leaders, and urged that they should meet the Blackfeet chiefs in a grand pacific conference, offering to send two of his men to the enemy's camp with pipe, tobacco and flag of truce, to negotiate ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... troubled, uncertain pucker to her brow, a pleading look in her eyes as she suffered herself to be led to a chair near the end of the table. It had not struck her as odd that the others were deplorably devoid of the fervor that should have manifested itself, in words, at least. There was an air of restraint almost oppressive, but she failed to see it, and it was not long until it was so cleverly succeeded by a genial warmth of manner ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... She was thinking how hopelessly American Mr. Pett was, how baggy his clothes looked, what absurdly shaped shoes he wore, how appalling his hat was, how little hair he had and how deplorably he lacked all those graces of repose, culture, physical beauty, refinement, dignity, and mental alertness which raise men above the level ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... something deplorably new in these more modern books, something which makes of humanitarianism a cloak for what is most lax and materialistic in the age. I mean their false emphasis, their neglect of the individual soul's responsibility ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... as his "phylogenetic baggage" a strong sexual appetite, very variable sentiments of love, generally somewhat mediocre, (we have seen that conjugal love is more strongly developed in most monkeys than in man), lastly altruistic or social sentiments which are still deplorably weak. The latter, no doubt, form no part of the sexual life, but they must be taken into consideration for they are its most important derivatives, and it is indispensable for our modern social life to develop them in harmony with family and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... enjoyment in the winter and spring of 1811, Irving is complaining to Brevoort in June of the enervation of his social life: "I do want most deplorably to apply my mind to something that will arouse and animate it; for at present it is very indolent and relaxed, and I find it very difficult to shake off the lethargy that enthralls it. This makes me restless and dissatisfied with ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... surrounds us, but the enormous exactions of these 'Unjust Stewards.' Landed Monopoly is indeed equally contrary to the benign Spirit of Christianity, and destructive of The Independence and Morality of all Mankind. 'The Profit of the Earth is for all;' Yet how deplorably destitute are the great Mass of the People? Nor is it possible for their situations to be radically amended, but by the establishment of a system, Founded on the immutable basis of Nature and Justice. Experience ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... vice in the coast cities are the most conspicuous exponents of Americanism in China and Japan, as the Chinese opium and gambling dens in our American cities are supposed to be typical of life in China. We hasten to assert that in our case the imputation is deplorably incorrect. We might with equal truth recognize the injustice of judging the average Chinaman by impressions formed in a Chinatown ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various |
