"Depressing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his will and hopes broken, and sank dejectedly into a slough of despondency. All his good intentions, all the inspiration of his endeavour, his very spiritual exaltation had terminated in a tragedy, as inexplicable as it was depressing. ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... closed in June, Helen and her teacher went south to Tuscumbia, where they remained until December. There is a hiatus of several months in the letters, caused by the depressing effect on Helen and Miss Sullivan of the "Frost King" episode. At the time this trouble seemed very grave and brought them much unhappiness. An analysis of the case has been made elsewhere, and Miss Keller has ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... such persistent neglect and disobedience?" He remarks that arrest and trial by court-martial would soon cure the evil, but feared a conflict of authority over the head of the army would be highly encouraging to the enemies and depressing to the friends of the Union, and concludes: "Hence my long forbearance; and continuing, though but nominally, on duty, I shall try to hold out till the arrival of Major-General Halleck, when, as his presence will give me increased confidence in the safety of the Union, ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... a counterpart to this habit in the Wa'al of the Yankee, except that the latter never is, nor could it well be, so depressing to hear as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... scandalising a sedate and stately dinner party. Henry Mayhew had a story of which a facetious police officer of his acquaintance was the hero. The latter was driving "Black Maria" along the street when he was hailed by a waggish omnibus-driver who affected to mistake the depressing character of the passing vehicle. "Any room?" he asked. "Yes," replied the officer, with a grin, "we've kept a place on purpose for you. Jump inside!" "What's the fare?" inquired the humorist, a little "non-plushed," as Jeames expressed it, at the unexpected ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... road was deserted; the country around seemed dead; not a hamlet, not even a house appeared in sight. Everything was gloomy and depressing; the very rays of the sun were cold and cheerless, and the bare trees added only another dreary feature ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... if taken medicinally, effects very similar to those brought about by taking mercurial salts, viz., an ulcerative-state of the mouth, with a profuse flow of saliva, and with excessive stimulation of the liver: peevishness also on the following day, with a depressing backache in men, suggesting paralysis, and with a profuse fluor albus in women. When given in moderation as food, or as physic, the fruit will remedy this ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... can again see, and smell, and hear, and feel, those gloomy wearisome conditions at Benton Barracks of over half a century ago. I have read, somewhere in Gen. Sherman's Memoirs, a statement in substance to the effect that rain in camp has a depressing effect upon soldiers, but is enlivening to them on a march. From personal experience I know that observation to be true. Many a time while on a march we would be caught in heavy rains. The dirt road would soon be worked into a loblolly of sticky yellow mud. Thereupon we would take off our shoes ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... Christian world at large lay when Darwin announced his solution of the problem. The religious world had been, up to that time, chained to the anthropomorphic conception of Deity, and it was even less due to the purely scientific faculty than to the philosophic that Darwin came as a liberator from a depressing superstition,—the belief in the terrible Hebrew God, ingrained in the conscience of every reverently educated boy, and become in his growth inseparable from the maturer beliefs. The evolution of the human mind itself had finally ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... of damp—was a long, low room leading straight into the garden, and the whole effect was rather depressing. At supper-time, Barbara was made acquainted with the rest of the household, which consisted of an adopted niece—a plump girl of about seventeen, with very red cheeks and a very small waist—and ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... sleep—at York. What a pity it is that Scotland is so far off! all the good one has gained there gets shaken off one in the terrific journey home again, and then the different atmosphere is so trying to one fresh from the pure air of Fife—so exhausting and depressing. If it hadn't been that I had a deal of housemaiding to execute during the week I was here before Mr. C. returned, I must have given occasion for newspaper paragraphs under the head of 'Melancholy Suicide.' But ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... restful stillness,—not to him. It was the hollow hush of huge spaces emptied of all life. Life was at his elbow almost but he could not make himself aware of that. The forested wilderness affected him much as a small child is affected by the dark. He was not afraid of this depressing sense of emptiness, but ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... for the open market, is in the production of articles for which there is a steadily growing demand within this country. Even in this case the utmost care should be exercised to prevent the products of assisted labour from so depressing prices as to injure the wages of outside labour engaged in ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... do?" he suggested, hopefully; but there was no response from the children, and the weight that had been settling down upon him, in the region of his chest, noticeably increased. He tried to shake it off, it was so depressing—like the accruing misfortune of ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... cant, they're "depressing," And if you can give them a dressing. With logic compact, Firmly founded on fact, Sober sense will bestow its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... Wyoming by the time we got there. After the buffalo stampede we rounded up our scattered herd and went into camp for a couple of days' rest before proceeding on our journey north. The tragic death of Cal Surcey had a very depressing effect on all of us as he was a boy well liked by us all, and it was hard to think that we could not even give him a Christian burial. We left his remains trampled into the dust of the prairie ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... ineffectual struggles of the sun shot a ray here and there to salute the peaks of the hills; yet these were unable to surmount the dulness of a March morning, and, at so early an hour, produced a variety of shades, rather than a gleam of brightness upon the eastern horizon. The view was monotonous and depressing, and apparently the good knight Aymer sought some amusement in occasional talk with Bertram, who, as was usual with his craft, possessed a fund of knowledge, and a power of conversation, well suited to pass away a dull morning. The minstrel, well pleased to pick up such information as ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... that Mrs. Lease is a most excellent and amiable lady; but the idea of a man, made in the image of his Maker, being reduced to the social state of a drone-bee is most depressing. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... that there had been storm mutterings within the awful cave of Old Grim Barnes had never before had a depressing effect upon her hero. He had always sallied forth with airy tread, humming a tune or laughing with his eyes. What could have happened at this fateful meeting? Perhaps he had been disinherited. Rapture of raptures, he had confessed his love for ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... take that long walk day after day, in summer heat and winter storms, for hope had long since died in Tony's heart. At least, so he told himself, but somehow the walk home always seemed twice as long as the walk down, after hearing those depressing words "No ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... bore against the trigger. There was no explosion. A depressing sense of unreality rolled ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... all night, without stirring, without dreaming, and awoke naturally and, for the first time in weeks, refreshed. She felt her old self, as if some depressing weight had been lifted, or a shadow had been swept away from between her and the sun. Her head was clear. The seeming iron band that had pressed it so hard was gone. She was cheerful. She even caught herself humming aloud as she divided the fish into messes for Mrs. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... search that a habitable apartment was found in Georgetown. On the whole, the necessity that drove her thither was not an unmitigated adversity, for Georgetown then was far more desirable for residence than Washington. Nothing could be more depressing than the city at that epoch. Every visible object in the vast circumference of its spreading limits was then naked unkempt. Even the trees, that ranged themselves irregularly in the straggling squares and wide street areas, stretched out a draggled and piebald plumage, as if uncertain whether ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Fall within Lydia's recollection. It seemed, after the drought was once broken, as if nature would never leave off trying to compensate for the burning summer. The dark weather had a very depressing effect on Amos and instead of growing more resigned to his friend's death, he seemed to Lydia to become daily more ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the Violin and its Votaries—Wendell Holmes on the Violin—Thomas Mace on early prices of instruments—Early makers, continental and English—Advent of the Stainer model, and its temporary preference over those of the Italian masters; its depressing influence on prices of Amatis and Stradivaris—Guarneri del Gesu brought to the front by Paganini, and Maggini by De Beriot—Recognition of the merits of Bergonzi, Guadagnini, and Montagnana—Luigi Tarisio, and his pilgrimages in search of hidden treasures; his progress as amateur, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... purposes of their leader. If therefore the Spaniards are not superior in some superior quality, their fall may be predicted with the certainty of a mathematical calculation. Nay, it is right to acknowledge, however depressing to false hope the thought may be, that from a people prone and disposed to war, as the French are, through the very absence of those excellencies which give a contra-distinguishing dignity to the Spanish character; that, from an army of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Marxian or Russian type, is for those who starvingly live by working, the most uplifting thing in the world, and for those who surfeitingly live by owning, it is the most depressing thing ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... incurable? Have not these women feelings like other women? Think you that there are not amongst them those who have 'known better times?' They think of sons and daughters dead and gone, perhaps, just as other old women in better circumstances do; but they must not indulge such depressing thoughts, they must reserve all the energy, the stamina, they have, to drag round the city—barefoot, it may be, and in the cold—to beg for food, and scratch up what they can find among the cinder-heaps. ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Only the fact that you are wholly occupied with the exigence of the moment prevents your understanding of what it is, but it hovers dark and depressing behind your possible failure. You must win. This is no fish; it is opportunity itself, and once gone it will never return. The mysticism of lower dusk in the forest, of upper afterglow on the hills, of the chill of evening waters and winds, of the glint ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... a comparatively early age, and he became a pauper, receiving from the parish an allowance of five shillings a week. His mother was of feeble constitution and was afflicted with dropsy. Clare inherited the low vitality of his parents, and until he reached middle age was subject to depressing ailments which more than once threatened his life, but after that time the failure of his mental powers caused him to be placed in circumstances favourable to bodily health, and in his old age he presented the outward ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... remarked that there would be ships lost at sea and men drowned this night. My daughter Felicia, the brightest-tempered creature of the female sex that I have ever met with, tried to give a cheerful turn to her aunt's depressing prognostication. "If the ships must be lost," she said, "we may surely hope that the men will be saved." "God willing," I put in—thereby giving to my daughter's humane expression of feeling the fit religious tone that was all it wanted—and ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... ivory toys of all kinds, with here and there an ebony elephant from Ceylon or Assam. The paint on doors and windows was black, yet in spite of the sombreness of the general scheme there was nothing depressing, nothing sinister ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... left, out of which came queer gurgling cries and a choked croaking. The whistling vagrant struck up a merry warble to offset these melancholy influences, and it is likely that never before, since Pan himself jigged it on his reeds, had such sounds been heard in those depressing solitudes. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... breast. Yet he had not allowed himself to run to waste in the long time since he was left alone to his trials and fears. He had resisted the seductions which always beset solitary men with restless brains overwrought by depressing agencies. He disguised no misery to himself with the lying delusion of wine. He sought no sleep from narcotics, though he lay with throbbing, wide-open eyeballs through all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Notwithstanding these depressing circumstances, the camp was by no means inactive during the winter. Those who were well were kept busy repairing wagons, and making, in a rude way, such household articles as were most needed—chairs, tubs, and baskets. Parties ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... day he confidently expected him, having made Roderick give him a solemn promise to spend the evening with him, in order to hear what it was that for several weeks had been depressing and agitating his pensive friend. Meanwhile Emilius wrote down the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... angriest-looking clouds that anybody ever saw, piling up on the horizon. And the waves were slopping up and down, and giving to the water that dark, forbidding appearance that is so inspiring in a marine painting, but so depressing when you are thrown into personal contact ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... depressing was the house now with the gloom of sickness upon it! The awful uncertainty of an accident, what the result might be, how serious or trifling—every possibility seemed weighted with ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... without greeting or acclamation, so here at Berlin they allowed me to enter without a sign of welcome or congratulation. I will now confess to you alone that I was much mortified by this, although I did not complain of it. I comforted myself by reflecting that the times were bad and depressing, and that in their afflictions the people could not even present a glad, cheerful countenance to the father of their country. But now it falls to my lot to hear that they can make merry and rejoice, and that they have only saved up the joy in their hearts to ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... bottomless ooze. The persecution of the jejenes became diabolical. At dawn and sunset the raucous bellow of the red-roarer monkeys made the air hideous. The flickering lights of the forest became dismally depressing. The men grew morose and sullen. Reed and Harris quarreled with each ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... other, the principal portion of the cheering-up work was borne by Dick; the very brightness and look of everything, even while he noticed them, seeming to have the effect of depressing Bob's spirits by some unknown association or connection with those ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... this have been his, his life is yet a grand example to those younger members of his race who are beginning their careers in the world of music when fairer skies light their pathway; when the American people, regretting the depressing, blighting cruelties of the dark past, now seek to atone for the same by offering encouragement to all who exhibit musical talents, and evince a conscientious desire to improve the same. Mr. Williams may remember with pride ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... the Prefects report unfavourably on the condition and prospects of agriculture, and on the depressing influence of American competition in corn, which began to make itself distinctly felt about the year 1875,[16] when also the forest industry, so intimately connected with agriculture, first encountered the effects of a greatly increased shipment of timber from ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... read found their way into the wards. Flowers—for Agnes Jones, who loved intensely all God's works in Nature, had great faith in the ministry of flowers—were there to give brightness in the midst of depressing surroundings. Visits from friends were rendered more easy. Christmas was made happy with special festivities. Indeed, she seemed always to be planning something to cheer the sick under her care. She very soon began Sunday evening Bible readings in the wards where there were only Protestant patients. ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... book in which I recorded, beginning with that day, the incidents of the return voyage, that two things happened that evening. One was my interview with Singleton; the other was my curious and depressing clash with Elsa Lee, on the deck ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... letter, and it had the effect of depressing Nancy to an alarming degree and, in consequence, of spurring ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... nothing beyond but the feeble effect of an earthly transmitted good. In this regard her books afford a most interesting contrast to those of the two other great women who have adorned English literature with their genius. The lot of Mrs. Browning and Charlotte Bronte was much sadder and more depressing than that of George Eliot; more of darkness and pain affected their lives. A subtle tone of sadness runs through their books, but it is not burdensome and depressing as is the case of George Eliot. There is hope with ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... passed in a motley blur of recollections, in a depressing state of exhaustion, which tightly clutched at the mother's body and soul. The faces of the young men flashed before her mental vision, the banner blazed, the songs clamored at her ear, the little officer skipped about, a gray stain before her eyes, and through the whirlwind of the procession ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... gold bonds at a price to net four and a half. He read it through once and then read it through again. It contained a great many figures—figures running into the millions, whose effect was to make twenty-five dollars a week shrink into insignificance. On the whole, it was decidedly depressing reading—the more so because he ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... wished that she had been given a lump sum and allowed to browse alone, for she felt her taste pruned and pinioned by the very presence of Miss Elton, who, though she never ventured to criticize, had yet a depressing influence on Lena's ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... need a Divine interposition in a different manner from that in which it had been constantly exerted. And it must be evident that an unremitting energy, displayed in such circumstances, greatly exalts our idea of God, instead of depressing it; and, therefore, by the way, is so much more likely to be true." Against constructive inferences it is urged, in ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... their own authority by fomenting the divisions of their powerful vassals. On the contrary, she endeavored to bind together the disjointed fragments of the state, to assign to each of its great divisions its constitutional limits, and, by depressing the aristocracy to its proper level and elevating the commons, to consolidate the whole under the lawful supremacy of the crown. At least, such was the tendency of her administration up to the present ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... it necessary that we should lift our eyes to the heavens where humility and meekness, where sacrifice and obdience, are, in the person of Blessed Mary, crowned as the most perfect expression of sanctity, as the qualities that raise man nearest God. And what consoles us in the present depressing circumstances of the Church is that we are permitted to look through S. John's eyes into the world of heaven, and there see "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... was one of the largest and handsomest in the Rue Babylone, in Paris. Nothing could be more severe, more imposing, or more depressing than the aspect of this old mansion. Several immense windows, filled with small squares of glass, painted a grayish white, increased the sombre effect of the massive layers of huge stones, blackened by time, of which the fabric ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... in wandering about Paris, looking for a fiat: they were worn out with going up stairs, and disheartened by the sight of the great barracks crammed full of people, and the dirty stairs, and the dark rooms, that seemed so depressing to them after their own big house in the country. They grew more and more depressed. And they were always shy and timid in the streets, and shops, and restaurants, so that they were cheated at every turn. Everything they asked for cost an exorbitant sum: ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... glorious, ah! glorious beyond any other, but it was a dismal and depressing ride. The dead past buried ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... closed the kitchen door and stood against it, looking around the room, she was afflicted with a depressing sense of loss, and she realized fully how Calumet had grown into her life, and what it would mean to her if she lost him. He had been mean, cruel, and vicious, but he had awakened at last to a sense of his shortcomings; ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... believe you to be unable to write the history of the lake and its castles. Your letters prove that you can, only your mind is unhinged by fears for my spiritual safety, and depressed by the Irish climate. It is very depressing, I know. I remember how you used to attribute the history of Ireland to the climate: a beautiful climate in a way, without extremes of heat and cold, as you said once, without an accent upon it. But you are not the ordinary Irishman; there is enough vitality in you to resist the languor ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... art classed amongst the depressing passions. And true it is that thou humblest to the dust, but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest as with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. Among the very foremost ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... lands. These names, which occupy such important positions on the maps, excite the imagination of the traveller, and when the reality comes into view, and he enters their narrow limits, the commonplace architecture and generally unattractive surroundings have a most depressing effect, and he sighs, "What's in a name?" We find upon the map the name and appearance of a city, but it proves to be the most uninteresting of villages, though known as Amsterdam. We also find many towns of the Hudson duplicated in name on the Ohio, and pass Troy, Albany, ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... growled and grumbled between his teeth in the intervals of smoking. Was it only the hot wind that wrung from him these demonstrations of discomfort? Or was there some secret anxiety in his mind which assisted the depressing influences of the day? There was a secret anxiety in his mind. And ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... for though it takes water voluntarily it will not take food. It is a very domestic bird, and fond of notice, its voice on such occasions is pleasing, on some others very harsh and hawk or eagle-like. Its manners are curious, depressing its tail, and arching its neck, and pecking at imaginary objects in a curious way. From the expressive manner in which it looks up at sunset on surrounding objects, especially trees, it is obviously accustomed ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... sincere worshippers. Yet we now see stronger and higher walls of partition than ever, between the children of the same God,—with a new law of the letter, more entangling to the conscience, and more depressing to the mental energies, than any outward service of the Levitical law. The cause of all this is to be found in the claim of Messiahship for Jesus. This gave a premium to crooked logic, in order to prove that the prophecies meant what they did not ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... the author thinks their story is typical of most American lives. The Turn of the Balance is a novel that grew out of his legal experiences: it deals with the underworld of crime, and often in a depressing way. It reflects the author's belief that the present organization of society, and our methods of administering justice, are the cause of much of the misery in the world. Following these novels came two volumes of short stories, The Gold Brick and The Fall Guy: both ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... that was almost depressing to poor Mary's spirit, but nevertheless she endeavoured to bear up against it and do her duty. "I shall do all I can to please him, Mrs. Thomas;—and indeed I do try about the French. And he says I was right to give ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... His heart was fluttering, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, dry and thick. Now he should know the truth, now he should be sure that they had lied about his little Guida, those slanderers of the Vier Marchi. Yet, too, he had a strange, depressing fear, at variance with his loving faith and belief that in Guida there was no wrong: such belief as has the strong swimmer that he can reach the shore through wave and tide; yet also with strange foreboding, prelude to the cramp ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... SON went off before dinner. Didn't miss much; grinding away at Irish Land Bill; most soul-depressing experience of modern life; no heart in it; no reality; SAGE of Queen Anne's Gate brings up amendment after amendment, and makes successive speeches; SEYMOUR KEAY does ditto; SHAW-LEFEVRE adds new terror to situation by taking voluminous notes which promise illimitable succession of orations; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... people engaged in the production of those articles. Now this matter is one of great national importance, because the sweated workers are numbered by hundreds of thousands, and because their poverty and the resulting evils affect many beside themselves, and exercise a depressing influence on large classes of the community. What do we mean by sweating? I will give you a definition laid down by a Parliamentary Committee, which made a most exhaustive inquiry into the subject: "Unduly low rates of wages, excessive hours of work, and insanitary condition of the workplaces." ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... by falling; hence the night is so much swifter. Happiness takes years to build; but misery swoops like an avalanche. Such, and even more depressing, are the thoughts young folk give way to when their first great trouble rushes and sweeps them into a desert, trackless ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... laughing in such a place filled me with horror, but still the desire—a purely nervous one, of course—to break out in a peal of laughter grew stronger and stronger. I bit my lips, and tried to think of the most solemn and depressing subjects, but that laugh could not be conjured in any such way; presently I knew that I was smiling—a broad, complacent, luxurious smile. Just then, a man sitting opposite to me saw my smile, and a look of cold horror spread over his ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... who have the misfortune of presenting to the friends whom they meet a cold, damp hand. There are states of mind in which a contact of this kind has a depressing effect on the vital powers that makes us insensible to all the virtues and graces of the proprietor of one of these life-absorbing organs. When they touch us, virtue passes out of us, and we feel as if our electricity had been drained by a powerful negative ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... have seen that it may produce very contrary effects; like any other powerful agent, it both excites and depresses. The first action of nearly all remedies is to excite; from fire to frost, from aqua fortis to aqua fontis, the influence is always more or less stimulating, and it is capable of depressing the vital powers in proportion to its power of exciting them. Thus the hydropathists have in their hands the power of producing all the stages of the most vehement fever, from the rigor of the severest cold fit to the fiercest excitement which the heart and brain will bear, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... watering-carts and shady streets for hot weather, and sheltered railway-stations and hansom cabs for wet weather, and roads and servants and civility and general convenience everywhere. This particular climate is both depressing and trying in spite of the sunny skies we are ever boasting about, because it has a strong tinge of the tropical element in it; and yet people live in much the same kind of houses (only that they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... exhibition: The urine was made in the quantity of four or five pints each day, during the whole time; the quantity then drank being seldom more than three pints. But now the sickness being exceedingly depressing, the strength failing, and the diuretic effects beginning to cease, the ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the circle of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind set the willows shivering about us, but apart from this not very welcome sound a deep and depressing silence reigned, broken only by the gurgling of the river and the humming in the ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... administration of the linear plan of construction, with wings on either side of the executive building of long corridors occupied as day rooms, with sleeping rooms opening out of them on both sides. But he wanted to avoid the depressing influence of this monotonous structure, as the better results of variety and increased opportunities of subdivision and classification are well recognized. He was not, however, prepared to accept wholly that abrupt departure from the linear plan known ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... "sticks" up which the climbing roses are trained are of slate; churches, schools, houses, stables, are all of one dark iron-blue shade; floors and roofs are alike; hearth-stones and threshold-stones and grave-stones, all of the same material. It is curious and depressing. This volcanic region of the Rhine, however, has so many unexpected beauties strewn pell-mell in the midst of stony barrenness that it also bears some likeness to Naples and Ischia, where beauty of color, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... be rather depressing in the rains," she said, with a careless laugh. "He positively gave me the shivers. I can hardly envy you boxed up there with him. I believe he sees ghosts, and I think they must be horrid ghosts or he ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... utilize the game of the northland, the arctic reindeer, musk ox, etc., which his explorations had proved comparatively abundant, thus with fresh meat keeping his men fit and good-tempered through the depressing winter night; and lastly to train the Eskimo to become his ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... who finds Magdalens and poor, ill-clad, homeless girls "so depressing," but begs Nixy Trent, the only one who ever entered her house, "to consider that there is hope for us all in the way of salvation which our Lord has marked out for sinners." After which crumb of ghostly consolation she proceeds ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... upon him with a breezy suggestion of Mrs. Partington, plumes and patchouli, and to disturb his rest with a soaring and beautiful song of future promise. But Raggles would awake to a sense of shivering cold and a haunting impression of ideals lost in a depressing aura of potato salad ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... under his strong deft fingers. The world-weary Landgraf forgot for the moment the regrettable trend of his subjects towards Parliamentary Socialism, the excellent Grafin von Tolb forgot all that the Canon had been saying to her for the last ten minutes, forgot the depressing certainty that he would have a great deal more that he wanted to say in the immediate future, over and above the thirty-five minutes or so of discourse that she would contract to listen to next Sunday. And Cicely ...
— When William Came • Saki
... moment when Drusus was feeling the exhilaration of a soldier in battle, and the missive was depressing and maddening. What did it profit if the crowd roared its plaudits, when he piled execration on the oligarchs from the Rostra, if all his eloquence could not save Cornelia one pang? Close on top of this letter came another disquieting piece of information, although ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... This was depressing. Dr. Wilkinson blushed until he was nearly as red as the other. "May I ask what I can do for you?" he asked, picking up his stethoscope and tapping it ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of disagreeable things to-day," she said. "God will spare you much longer than that, you depressing ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... that what the Corean said is perfectly true, and that the system of "squeezing" is carried on by the magistrates to such an extent as to entirely ruin the people; wherefore, it is only natural that its depressing effects should be impressed upon the people "squeezed." I also believe that there is a good deal of truth in what he said about their females being supplied with large funds by the magistrates. The money must come from some part, and since, personally, they are poor and only receive a small pay, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... in his Omnipotent power to maik up housses, to continew the samyn, to alter thame, to maik thame small or great, or to extinguish thame, according to his awin inscrutable wisedome; for in exalting, depressing, and changeing of houssis, the laude and praise most be gevin to that ane eternall God, in ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... Country to Chester. Yorkshire has not yet recovered; it is still a wind-swept moorland. This women's college in America hoped to repair in our lifetime a ruin a million times more terrible. Their courage was depressing, it so exceeded the possible. They might love one village back to life, but.... That is exactly ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... conception of the proper welcoming of the happy bridegroom. The performance was amusing enough in itself, but for some reason it moved neither of the two for whom it was rendered to more than perfunctory approval. The fact had no depressing effect on the performer, however, and it was only the coming of the maid that put her ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... Bjerk. A strange torpidity had come over him; every rising day gazed into his eyes with a fierce unmeaning glare. The noise of the street annoyed him and made him childishly fretful, and the solitude of his own room seemed still more dreary and depressing. He went mechanically through the daily routine of his duties as if the soul had been taken out of his work, and left his life all barrenness and desolation. He moved restlessly from place to place, roamed at all times of ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... amusing in these days? For my part, on the whole, it seems rather depressing, and I fear that my opinion is not altogether personal. As I observe the lives of my contemporaries, and listen to their talk, I find myself unhappily confirmed in the opinion that they do not get much pleasure out of things. ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... and struck out calmly, swimming in the direction in which the wind bore him, for there was nothing else to do. Not that his effort helped him much, but he knew the good rule that one should never be passive in a crisis, for inaction is as depressing to the spirit as frantic exertion is to the body. And he knew that by swimming he could keep his "morale"—a word which he had heard a good ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... "'Enjoyable intellectual evening'! Oh, how depressing! Poor Paul! but you must have ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... still, attentive, brilliant company, with all the questions of temperature, space, light and decoration solved to the gratification of every sense, and listening to the best artists doing their best—happily constituted as our young man was to enjoy such a privilege as this, the total effect was depressing: it made him feel as if the gods were ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... sniffed, partly from a depressing consciousness of being one of a degenerate generation, and of a limited experience in the matter of county balls; partly also to express her conviction that principle is ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... York: "The natural mode of quiet breathing is through the nose; mouth-breathing is an acquirement. A new-born infant would choke to death if you closed its nose; it does not immediately know how to get air into the lungs through the mouth until after, by depressing the tongue, you have once made ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... class are their tyrants and oppressors; and, with a feeling akin to revenge, they are often inclined to make their employers in Canada suffer in their turn. This feeling is the effect of certain depressing causes, often remote and beyond the reach of legislation, but no less real on that account; and just in proportion to the degree of poverty and servility which exists among the labouring class in the particular ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... with tobacco smoke mingling with the smoke of sandal-wood that floated back and forth in layers as the punkahs swung lazily. Outside, the rain swished and chilled the night air; but the hot air from inside hurried out to meet the cool, and none of the cool came in. The noise of rain became depressing until Yasmini made a signal to her maids and they started ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... inspecting his concessions, and I proposed to myself a journey of exploration inland. The Foreign Office liberally gave me leave to escape the winter of Trieste, where the ferocious Bora (nor'-nor'-easter) wages eternal war with the depressing and distressing Scirocco, or south-easter. Some One marvelled aloud and said, 'You are certainly the first that ever applied to seek health in the "genial and congenial climate" of the West African Coast.' But then Some One had ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... and refinements of the age, the great fortunes of the barons were gradually dissipated, and the property of the commons increased in England. It is probable that Henry foresaw and intended this consequence; because the constant scheme of his policy consisted in depressing the great, and exalting churchmen, lawyers, and men of new families, who were more ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... on the whole. He created at once a great deal of noise and raised the spirits of the company, which were beginning to be depressing. And every minute he cried out in a ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... so! But she is boring all the men horribly, and if she takes to distributing tracts, as I hear she does, it will be too depressing. The worst of it is that she would have been so useful at the right time. You know we have to have the Bishop once a year, and she would have given just the right tone to things. I always have horrid luck about the Bishop's ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... lower altitudes until the air grew intensely hot, physically depressing after the cold wine of the mountains; finally, ten minutes ahead of time, they drove into the doubly depressing village of Huntersville. It was no uglier than thousands of other villages and small towns that look as if built to demonstrate the American ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... DEAR COS,—This afternoon I expect to be at Blenheim, and so at the farthest limits of my battle-fields. I spoke of not going to the Alps, in consideration of the depressing of our neighbours the Pentlands; but being so close to them, I can't resist a step farther, and then the Pentlands are not so very ill used, for they are put much on a level with the Grampians. At the beginning of next week I expect to be moving homewards, and I still think, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... she would find a knight, Robert de Baudricourt, who would conduct her to Charles. Months passed before Baudricourt would do aught but scorn her message, and it was not till February 1429, when the news from Orleans was most depressing, that he consented to take her in his train. She found Charles at Chinon, and, as the story goes, convinced him of her Divine mission by recognising him in disguise in the midst of his courtiers. Soldiers and theologians ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... garrison of Fort Washington, 2,000 of whom were regular troops, was universally regarded as the most severe blow that the American cause had yet sustained, and it had a most depressing effect both in and out of the army, but more particularly in the army, as it tended to develop the growing antagonism between the commander-in-chief and General Lee, who had ineffectually advocated the evacuation of Fort ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... those who would rise to the heights of spiritual life. This pessimistic interpretation of the relation of sex and life has persisted even in some ecclesiastical teachings of the twentieth century, and probably has had not a little responsibility for the widely accepted and depressing view that sex is a necessary but regrettable fact of ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... sedimentary rocks which required a sea to form them. Their present elevation above the sea is due to one of those local changes in the shape of the earth which have been of frequent occurrence throughout geologic time, in some cases depressing the land, and in others causing the sea-bottom to protrude beyond its surface. Considering the inelastic character of its materials, the protuberance of the Alps could hardly have been pushed out without dislocation and fracture; and this conclusion ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... at Washington, gave to towns along the way these names: Troy, Rome, Ithaca, Syracuse, Ilion, Manlius, Homer, Corfu, Palmyra, Utica, Delhi, Memphis and Marathon. He really exhausted Grote's "History of Greece" and Gibbon's "Rome," revealing a most depressing lack of humor. This classic flavor of the map of New York is as surprising to English tourists as was the discovery to Hendrik Hudson when, on sailing up the North River, he found on nearing Albany that the river bore ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... man from the volunteer service was the consequent disappearance of the colored military officer, with the single exception of Lieutenant Charles Young of the Regular Cavalry, had a very depressing effect upon the colored people at large, and called forth from their press and their associations most earnest protests. With a few exceptions, these protests were encouched in respectful language toward the President ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... their seats. Even the few passengers on the monotonously droning cars but added to the impression of tacit conformity to the inevitable. Poorly dressed as a rule, tired looking, they gazed at their feet or glanced out upon the street with absent indifference. It was all depressing. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... rumors were rife; the Emperor himself was far distant; the Empress was not beloved; the little heir was scarcely a personage; the imperial administration was much criticized; the "system" was raising prices, depressing industry, and increasing the privations of every household. Pius VII was now living in comfort at Fontainebleau, but he was a prisoner, and earnest Catholics were troubled; perhaps Heaven was visiting France with retribution. Worst of all, ever since ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... motions of the lower jaw-bone on the skull, or by the larynx, in its own motions at the fore-part of the neck. It becomes as necessary, therefore, in the performance of surgical operations upon the subclavian artery, to fix the clavicle by depressing it, as in Plate 8, as it is to give fixity to the lower maxilla and larynx, in the position of Plate 7, when the carotid is ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... 'after these came all those others who have ruled this sort of warfare down to our own days. The consequence of their valor is that Italy has been harried by Charles, plundered by Louis, forced by Ferdinand, insulted by the Swiss. Their method has been to enhance the reputation of their cavalry by depressing the infantry. Being without dominion of their own, and making war their commerce, a few foot soldiers brought them no repute, while they were unable to support many. Therefore they confined themselves to cavalry, until in a force of 20,000 men you could not ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... unusual about it was that the funeral car was drawn by two stately WHITE horses; and Heliobas told me this had been ordered at Zara's special request, as she thought the solemn pacing through the streets of dismal black steeds had a depressing effect ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... embark on the conscious production of this new thing, amid want, pain, and distress. And wonder and admiration increase tenfold on the further discovery that this fresh creation in literature, fashioned in circumstances so depressing, is overflowing with an exuberance of healthy life and enjoyment. Having entered on his fair inheritance of this new world of human nature, Fielding pourtrays it from the standpoint of his own maxim, that life "everywhere furnishes an accurate observer with the ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... own. I pondered painfully on the subject till gradually I saw light through it. I perceived, that the word Necessity, as a name for the doctrine of Cause and Effect applied to human action, carried with it a misleading association; and that this association was the operative force in the depressing and paralysing influence which I had experienced: I saw that though our character is formed by circumstances, our own desires can do much to shape those circumstances; and that what is really inspiriting and ennobling ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... reflections the shepherdess endeavoured to solace her distress, and to fortify her courage. Now by revolving her dangers she sought to prepare for their encounter; and now she dismissed the recollection as too depressing and too melancholy. The confinedness of the prospect, though rich infinitely beyond any thing she had yet seen, and though not naturally calculated to fatigue and disgust, was destructive of all its beauty in the eyes ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... by the city to be perpetual; certain reservations were embodied giving the city powers of revocation. But as we shall see, Vanderbilt not only corrupted the Legislature in 1872 to pass an act saddling one-half of the expense of depressing the tracks upon the city, but caused the act to be so adroitly worded as to make the franchise perpetual. Along with the franchise to use Fourth avenue, the railroad company secured in 1832 a franchise, free of taxation, to run street cars for the convenience of its passengers from ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... amid such surrounding with a contented mind, she thought, the wilderness would have compensations of its own. She had an uneasy feeling that isolation from everything that had played an important part in her life might be the least depressing factor in this new existence. She could not view the rough and ready standards of the woods with much equanimity—not as she had that day seen them set forth. These things were bound to be a part of her daily life, and all the brief span of her years had ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... literature and art. But it does indicate that a nation has not lost its idealism when it reads such a beautiful work, a work of such imagination as The Sunken Bell, does it not? I wish I could admire other of Hauptmann's work, such as Michael Kramer, Der Biberpalz, or the depressing Fuhrmann Henschel. And I also wish that I could include among his big works his latest, The Flight of Gabriel Schilling (written ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... first appear strange, but I believe it is true, that I cannot by means of money raise a poor man and enable him to live much better than he did before, without proportionably depressing others in the same class. If I retrench the quantity of food consumed in my house, and give him what I have cut off, I then benefit him, without depressing any but myself and family, who, perhaps, may be well able to bear it. If ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... work at expanding and depressing the lungs of the huge animal as he might have worked to bring ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... "aiblins ma gran'-mither was an unco leear," and this quality may have been hereditary. On the other side, Hogg could hardly have held his tongue about the forgery, if forgery it was, when he wrote his "Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott" (1834). The whole investigation is a little depressing, and makes one ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... be lovely in summer," said Bluebell, shivering, and feeling a slightly depressing influence creeping over her. They wandered out by the banks of the river to a ruined abbey, which always attracted tourists during the season. It was especially sketchable, and "bits" of it were carried away in many an artist's portfolio. But it was desolate now, and flocks of jackdaws ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... sphere, fleeing from this danger, sank into the waters, enlarged by a spasm of terror, the depressing gray of twilight ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... or die in,—even more unsatisfactory than Shakspeare's house, which has a certain homely picturesqueness that contrasts favorably with the suburban sordidness of the abode before us. The narrow lane, the paving-stones, and the contiguity of wretched hovels are depressing to remember; and the steam of them (such is our human weakness) might almost make ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... additional has occurred at Charleston, the enemy not having renewed the attack. At Vicksburg all was quiet, and the enemy abandoning their canal. Such news must have a depressing effect upon the North. They will see that their monitors and iron-clads have lost their terrors. They have lost some twenty war steamers within the last few months; and how many of their merchantmen have been destroyed on the ocean, we ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... a big city. The cause is geometrical, not moral. The straight lines of its streets and architecture, the rectangularity of its laws and social customs, the undeviating pavements, the hard, severe, depressing, uncompromising rules of all its ways—even of its recreation and sports—coldly exhibit a sneering defiance of ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... the ship was plunging furiously, and rolling so wildly that it was impossible to maintain one's footing without clinging to something; the continuous raving of the wind among the maze of spars and rigging, especially when the ship rolled to windward, was most depressing to listen to; and the appalling proportions of the vast liquid mountain ranges that, with dreary, persistent, remorseless monotony, came sweeping down upon us from the northward and westward, piling their hissing crests high around us, completed a picture which, for dreary sublimity, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... that the natural charm and attraction of childhood have wholly disappeared; the sights and sounds that assail the senses; the dulled, hopeless faces, the apathy, the stunted intellectual growth—these are the depressing influences that continually beset the deaconesses, and nothing short of God-given strength and Christ-like enthusiasm can enable these women to devote six, eight, and ten years of service to this worst city district, and to come forth ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... promise of the child of twelve years and held her to it, and has given her strength "as her day" to redeem it, all through the dazzling brightness and the depressing shadows, through the glory and the sorrow of her life, as a Queen ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... sort of woman to form an intimacy with another man until she is really a widow. It's quite natural that she should feel lonely just now, for instance. The mere absence of the excitement she's been accustomed to for so long would have a depressing ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... is perhaps an example of Nietzsche in his most obscure vein. We must know how persistently he inveighed against the oppressing and depressing influence of man's sense of guilt and consciousness of sin in order fully to grasp the significance of this discourse. Slowly but surely, he thought the values of Christianity and Judaic traditions had done their work in the minds of men. What were once but expedients devised for the discipline ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... weeds and rank grass, in the shade of the dwelling-house. A rough walking-staff lay on the ground by his side, and his head rested on a small wallet. He met Mr. Traveller's eye without lifting up his head, merely depressing his chin a little (for he was lying on his back) to get a better ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... was old and defective; but he improved the signals by adjusting three sets of instruments, and utilising them for three different states of the line. During nearly two years of drudgery under these depressing circumstances, Edison's prospects of becoming an inventor seemed further off than ever. Perhaps he began to fear that stern necessity would grind him down, and keep him struggling for a livelihood. None of his improvements had brought him any advantage. His efforts to invent had been ridiculed ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... the rain had ceased, his train was brought up with a jerk between the stations. While the rattle and bang continued it seemed not unnatural to young Gourlay (though depressing) to be whirling through the darkening land; it went past like a panorama in a dream. But in the dead pause following the noise he thought it "queer" to be sitting here in the intense quietude and looking at a strange and unfamiliar scene—planted in its ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... within a few blocks of the church, a little to one side of Tower Street, the main east and west highway of the city, in the midst of that district in which Mr. Parr had made the remark that poverty was inevitable. Slovenly and depressing at noonday, it seemed now frankly to have flung off its mask. Dusk was gathering, and with it a smoke-stained fog that lent a sickly tinge to the lights. Women slunk by him: the saloons, apparently closed, and many houses with veiled windows betrayed secret and sinister gleams. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... help and encouragement; not that the things themselves change, but because we see them from a different angle. This is well illustrated by the effect of my long affliction. One of the worst things that I had to face in the first two or three years was the consciousness of the depressing and discouraging influence that it was having upon others, not only upon those about me, but upon many persons here and there, as evidenced by numerous letters showing that the effect was wide-spread. It seemed to be a hindrance to the faith of many people. ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... when one is in perfect bodily health one can more readily resist the infection of disease. Similarly if Scottish skies were not ready and longing to pour out rain, were not ignobly weak in holding it back, they would not be so susceptible to the depressing influences of visiting ministers. This is Francesca's theory as stated to the Reverend Ronald, who was holding an umbrella over her ungrateful head at the time; and she went on to boast of a convention she once attended ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was a handsome old-fashioned apartment, but with that depressing atmosphere which gathers into rooms, especially large ones, which have ceased to be much lived in. The curtains drooped sorrowfully, the carpet had a lonely, untrodden look; the chairs had an air of not expecting to be sat upon, ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... depressing and threatening as a deserted city. The windows in the walls of the buildings seemed like blank, darkened eyes that watched—and waited. Nothing moved, nothing made a ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... which impressed and mystified the sensitive Chinaman. 'The Englishman's face was first filled with a deep pleasure, and then he seemed to be thinking), of something depressing and sad; for the smile went from his mouth and there were tears in his eyes when he thanked me for what I had said. Can it be that he has, or has had, some great trouble in his life, and that he fights recklessly to forget it, or that Death has no terrors for ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... I don't trust you," she continued, "I'm open to conviction, but I must be convinced. Your explanation of this Galligan case seems a sensible one, although it's depressing. But life is hard and depressing sometimes I've come to realize that. I want to think over what you've said, I want to talk over it some more. Why won't you tell me more of what you are doing? If you only would confide in me—as you have now! I ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... this place, I am glad to confess my gratitude after all these many years. While we were deep in the history of Pendennis we were also being dragged through the Commentaries of Caius Julius Caesar, through the Latin and Greek grammars, through Xenophon, and the Eclogues of Virgil, and a depressing play of Euripides, the "Phoenissae." I can never say how much I detested these authors, who, taken in small doses, are far, indeed, from being attractive. Horace, to a lazy boy, appears in his Odes to have nothing to say, and to say it in the most frivolous and vexatious manner. Then ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... with three Companies in the line. News of the disaster to the 5th Army in the South had reached us, and what with Generals coming round to pay farewell visits, and conferences every few hours, everything was as depressing as possible. Curiously enough we were not depressed, and, though most of us regarded the attack as a certainty, the private soldiers were particularly more cheerful than usual. Late at night we were ordered to withdraw all except the tunnel ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... by us all, of plod, plod, plodding across the sand! That fatal monotony into which every man's life stiffens, as far as outward circumstances, outward joys and pleasures go! the depressing influence of custom which takes the edge off all gladness and adds a burden to every duty! the weariness of all that tugging up the hill, of all that collar-work which we have to do! Who is there that has not his mood, and that by no means the least worthy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... stucco, but the rest allowed to remain in the original yellow-brown brick, which time had mellowed to a pleasant warm tone. 'Malakoff Terrace,' as the place had been christened (and the title was a tolerable index of its date), was rather less depressing in appearance than many of its more modern neighbours, with their dismal monotony and pretentiousness. It faced a well-kept enclosure, with trim lawns and beds, and across the compact laurel hedges in ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey |
