"Distressful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their packs and set out wearily. Carroll, limping and stumbling along, was soon troubled by a distressful stitch in his side. He managed to keep pace with Vane, however, and some time after noon a twinkling gleam among the trees caught their eye. Then the shuffling pace grew faster, and they were breathless when at last they stopped and dropped their ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... shore of this world, No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony, Not all these, laid in bed majestical, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave; Who, with a body fili'd, and vacant mind, Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread, Never sees horrid night, the child of hell: But, like a lacquey, from the rise to set, Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn, Doth rise, and help Hyperion to his horse; And follows ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the futility of trying to obtain further admissions from a woman in her distressful state of mind. The fear that had seized her would prove a padlock on her lips. So he permitted her to lean heavily on his arm while she passed through the door and descended the steps to the street. Then, helping her into the machine, he waited until ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... finally, little Martha trotted back homeward Lawrence bethought himself it was high time to reconnoiter the immediate scene of action within his house. He found a group of servants huddled about the door. Chloe, Becky, Ann, Snowdrop, Pearl, Susan, Tilly—all, usually cheerful and smiling, wore distressful countenances now. Nor did they speak to him as had been their wont. They seemed to be afraid of him, yet what had he done—what had he ever done that these well-fed, well-treated slaves should shrink from him in his ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... moment the painter looked up from his work and shook his bush of hair back. Something in his sketch had displeased him; he looked up frowning, with a brush between his teeth. When he saw the tear- stained, distressful, beautiful face it had a strange effect upon him. He dropped nerveless, like a wounded man, to his knees, and covered his eyes with his hands. "Ah Madonna! for the pity of heaven forgive me! forgive me! I have ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... too long to tell about all that was said, or the questions, which the King asked about his Welsh subjects, and which either the owl or the fairy man answered. According to Puck's story, Wales was then a most distressful country, though the Welshery, to a man, wanted to be good and ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... continued his distressful watch-service; and already he was known all over Takern. Then it happened one morning, while he called as usual: "Have a care, birds! Don't come near me! I'm only a decoy-duck," that a grebe-nest came floating toward ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... on the opposite end. The rock, however, refused to move an inch, and, because a few crackers are not much for a hungry man to work on after an all-night march, Thurston became conscious that he had a headache and a distressful stitch in his side. Still, being obstinate and filled with an unreasoning desire to prove his trustworthiness to his fair employer, he continued doggedly, and after another hour's digging found the stone still immovable. Then it happened that while, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... general favourite with gentle and simple throughout the whole borough. Herbert was there, like a decorous gentleman, to represent the bridegroom's family, and so was Ronald, who had slipped away from London without telling Lady Le Breton, for fear of another distressful scone at the last moment. Arthur Berkeley read the service in his beautiful impressive manner, and looked his part well in his flowing white surplice. But as he uttered the solemn words, 'Whom God hath joined together, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... itself to changing conditions in the past. It will do so again. The mobility of our institutions, the richness of our resources, and the abilities of our people enable us to meet them unafraid. It is a distressful time for many of our people, but they have shown qualities as high in fortitude, courage, and resourcefulness as ever in our history. With that spirit, I have faith that out of it will come a sounder life, a truer standard of values, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Herbert Hoover • Herbert Hoover
... glance along the beds. It came from one in the corner—such a little bed!—and such a tearful little face looked up at us, as we stopped beside it! The twelve years old drummer boy was not singing now, but sobbing, with a manly effort all the while to stifle the distressful sounds that ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... ingratitude; and tortured herself by her own apparition, the merited victim of his harshness, his neglect, or his desertion. And when she had at the same time both shocked and alarmed her fancy by these distressful and degrading images, exhausted by these imaginary vexations, and eager for consolation in her dark despondency, she may have recurred to the yet innocent cause of her sorrow and apprehension, and perhaps accused herself ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... rival, one Afranius Silo, a centurion; the flood of rhetoric which follows is so copious and remarkable that it drew tears from me—ye Graces!—tears of laughter; most of all where the eloquent Afranius, drawing to a close, makes mention, with weeping and distressful moans, of all those costly dinners and toasts. But he is a very Ajax in his conclusion. He draws his sword, gallantly as an Afranius should, and in sight of all cuts his throat over the grave—and God knows it was high time for ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... great effort to recover her equanimity. Was Terence right? Had she done wrong to speak before her aunt and cousins as she had done? Of course her uncle was different; it was absolutely necessary that he at least should know the truth. A distressful sense of dismay at her own impetuosity came over her. Terence watched her narrowly. He was fond of Nora in his heart of hearts, and also proud of her; and now that he saw she was really sorry he went up to her, put his arm round her neck, and ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... there some pilgrim strays Through tangled forests, and through dangerous ways; Where beasts with man divided empire claim, 415 And the brown Indian marks with murd'rous aim; There, while above the giddy tempest flies, And all around distressful yells arise, The pensive exile, bending with his woe, To stop too fearful, and too faint to go, 420 Casts a long look where England's glories shine, And bids his bosom ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... strong enough now to stand it. Ah," continued he, "they did not know they were almost killing me; for I became restless; and being very weak every nerve and fiber in my body seemed to be excited into a state of distressful commotion, from which I did not fairly recover during the next three days. When you came again you gave very strict orders not to allow more than one attendant in the room at a time, aside from the nurse; and after that I began to mend again and ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... take us, or how much, or whether they take us at all. Oftenest I was inclined to think that we were imperceptible to them, or that, when we were perceptible, they were aware of us as Swedenborg says the most celestial angels are aware of evil spirits, merely as something angular. Americans were distressful to their consciousness, they did not know why; and then they tried to ignore us. But perhaps this is putting it a little fantastically. What I know is that one comes increasingly to reserve the fact of one's nationality, when it is not essential to the occasion, and to become as ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... business and bosoms" as a statesman; yet failed so much in the conduct of domestick affairs, that, in the most lucrative post to which a great and wealthy kingdom could advance him, he felt all the miseries of distressful poverty, and committed all the crimes to which poverty incites. Such were at once his negligence and rapacity, that, as it is said, he would gain by unworthy practices that money, which, when so acquired, his servants might steal from one end ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Grasmere. I was not at all unwell when I arrived there, though wet of course to the skin. My right eye had nothing the matter with it, either to the sight of others or to my own feelings, but I had a bad night with distressful dreams, chiefly about my eye; and waking often in the dark, I thought it was the effect of mere recollection, but it appeared in the morning that my right eye was bloodshot and the lid swollen. That morning, however, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... front gate stood the brother-in-law's widow, full of gestures and distressful smiles as she leaned out with nervously folded arms and looked up and down the street. "Manouvrier? he is ad the fire since a whole hour. He will break his heart if dat fire ketch to dat 'ouse here. He cannot know ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... disappoint him? Sailors on the waters that surround this globe, though there be no great mountain that overlooks the little lake on which you float, not the less does he behold you, and care for you, and watch over you. Will you do that which is unpleasing, distressful to him? Will you be irreverent, cruel, coarse? Will you say evil things, lie, and delight in vile stories and reports, with his eye on you, watching your ship on its watery ways, ever ready to come over the waves to help you? It is a fine thing, sailors, to fear nothing; but it ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... of hearing that that scoundrel, Billy Chase, is no longer in the land of the living. And I must compliment you upon your good-nature and sound judgment in carrying back his natives to Bouka. I wish there were more trading captains like you in the distressful South Seas." ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... indescribably STRONGER than the ordinary certainty of companionship when we are in the close presence of ordinary living people. The something seemed close to me, and intensely more real than any ordinary perception. Although I felt it to be like unto myself so to speak, or finite, small, and distressful, as it were, I didn't recognize it as ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... do!"—she cried with a distressful laugh. "I accidentally learned to write round hand instead of ladies'-hand. And, of course, you want some ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... afterwards an ascites. Now his urine was small in quantity and much saturated, the dysuria was more dreadful than ever; his breath would not allow him to lie in bed, nor would the dysuria permit him to sleep; in this distressful situation, after having used other medicines to little purpose, I directed an infusion of Digitalis to be given. When the quantity of urine became more plentiful, the pain from his stone grew easier; in a few days the dropsy ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... is a continual pursuit of adjustment, and the "ills of life," of the individual life that is, are due to its "disharmonies." Man, acutely aware of himself as an individual adventure and unawakened to himself as a species, finds life jangling and distressful, finds death frustration. He fails and falls as a person in what may be the success and triumph of his kind. He does not apprehend the struggle or the nature of victory, but only his own gravitation ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... second fox screamed on my left, and from that time I was accompanied, or shadowed, by the two foxes, always keeping abreast of me, always at the same distance, one screaming and the other replying about every half-minute. The distressful bird-sound ceased, and I turned and went off in another direction, to get out of the wood on the side nearest the place where I was staying, the foxes keeping with ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... to improve; but I have been troubled for many weeks with a vexatious catarrh, which is sometimes sufficiently distressful. I have not found any great effects from bleeding and physick; and am afraid, that I must expect help from brighter ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the ornament of Italy and of literature, languished, in his old age, in the most distressful poverty; and having sold his palace to satisfy his creditors, left nothing behind him but his reputation. The learned Pomponius Laetus lived in such a state of poverty, that his friend Platina, who wrote the lives of the popes, and also a book of cookery, introduces him into the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... was of the military sort that rises with supreme difficulty. She exhorted Wilhelmina to faith, to unswerving belief, and then again she mingled her petitions with the sobs of the mother and the distressful breathing of the daughter. This morning Wilhelmina grew no better after the prayer, and she ate hardly two spoonfuls of the broth that was given her. She would not take it from Phillida this time. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... had entered; then, setting her on horseback, he took to the road with all his men, as softliest he might, and returned to his own dominions. However (for that he had a wife) he carried the lady, who was the most distressful of women, not to Athens, but to a very goodly place he had by the sea, a little without the city, and there entertained her in secret, causing honourably furnish her with all ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... about hats? Her distressful appearance was not feigned; she was truly upset, though not about the death of the Commissioner's lady. With an effort whose violence nobody but herself could appreciate she had managed to extricate herself from the lion—like embraces of Peter the Great—to what purpose? ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... but by what he is. And, secondly, that as Sir Walter Scott pointed out, when dealing with this very matter, "the vices into which Jones suffers himself to fall are made the direct cause of placing him in the distressful situation which he occupies during the greater part of the narrative; while his generosity, his charity, and his amiable qualities become the means of saving him from the consequences of his folly." Fielding was not wholly concerned with the acts ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... of our narrative the neighborhood of Ballymacan was in an unsettled and distressful state. The small farmers, and such as held from six to sixteen acres, at a rent which they could at any period with difficulty pay, were barely able to support themselves and their families upon the produce of their holdings, so that the claims of the landlord were out of the question. Such ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... door was the door of his sitting-room; he flung it open, and stood in a coaxing attitude. Try how she would, Grace could not resist the supplicatory mandate written in the face and manner of this man, and distressful resignation sat on her as she glided past him into the room—brushing his coat with her elbow by reason ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... to drag out one of the seines and unroll it on the floor of the loft, when the cow below them broke into distressful bawling. Peering down a square aperture, through which hay was lifted by machine forks in the season of storing, they saw that the calf had got in between the wheels of two buggies which were housed on one side of ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... pusillanimously submitted to by civilized humanity and its physicians,—chicken-pox, measles, whooping-cough, mumps. I complain, indeed, of no diseases, but of their treatment. But let me not delay longer than is needful amid such distressful recollections. Three hateful decoctions were known to me by the phonetics, Lixipro, Lixaslutis, and Lixusmatic. I don't know what they were, and I don't want to know. Devil's elixirs were they all. Rubbub and magnesia,—endless imprecations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... as he, who, with distressful breath, Forth issued from the sea upon the shore, Turns to the water perilous ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Baudin obstinately refused, in the teeth of the urgent recommendation of his officers, to sail through Bass Strait, and thus save several days; though, as he had already negotiated the strait from the east, he knew the navigation, and the distressful condition of his people should have impelled him to choose a route which would take them to succour in the briefest period of time. He insisted on the longer course, and in consequence brought his ship to the very verge of disaster, besides intensifying the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... shiny boots. On his head he bore a huge dome of fluffy bearskin, just the thing for a fashionable muff; oppressive in the heat, no doubt, but imparting additional grandeur to his mien. There he stood, emblematic of splendour, and on each side of him were encamped distressful little families, grasping spades and buckets and seated on their corded luggage, unable to move because of the railway strike, while behind him flared a huge advertisement that said, "The Sea is Calling you." ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... been slain, their wives, uttering cries of distress, like unto Kurari birds, with hair dishevelled came out of the city. And bewailing for their sons and brothers and fathers, they fell on the ground and cried with distressful accents. And on being deprived for their lords, they beat their breasts, their garlands and ornaments fallen off. And that city of Danavas, in appearance like unto the city of the Gandharvas filled with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... with a distressful blush. Rossitur coloured with anger. Mr. Carleton's smile had ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... massacre of a number of children by his first marriage; Ziska destroyed 550 churches and monasteries in Germany alone; and, for attempting reforms in religion, Huss and Jerome of Prague were cruelly burnt alive at the stake. These and similar horrors of those distressful times, which find fit counterparts in revolting incidents in the Annals, could not but deeply affect the soul of a man ardently loving liberty and devoted to humanity as, unquestionably, was the forger of that work: hence throughout his book the sting which misfortune gives, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... me in my agony. A most distressful accident occasion'd You from a stranger to become at once ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... killed by the butcher of Ballajora as Philip went by the shambles. The helpless creature, with its inverted head swung downwards from the block, looked at him with its piteous eyes, and gave forth that distressful cry which is the last wild appeal of the stricken animal when it sees death near, and has ceased to ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... it was a most ill-judged and mistaken indulgence, that led you to suppress the story of my disaster. Give me to know it. It may be distressful, it may be tremendous. But be it as it will, there is not a misfortune in the whole catalogue of human woes, the knowledge of which would not be elysium to what I suffer. To be told the whole is to know the worst. Time is the medicine of every anguish. There is no malady incident to a conscious ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... might perhaps be more interesting to wait and see what would naturally happen without my interference. While I stood there looking and listening, I heard a great disturbance going on in the burrow, a mixed lot of keen squeaking, shrieking, distressful cries, telling that down in the dark something terrible was being done. Then suddenly out popped a half-grown gopher, four and a half or five inches long, and, without stopping a single moment to choose a way of escape, ran screaming through the stubble straight ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... reason to believe that what the novelist terms her "distressful narrative" succeeded in its appeal to the Martha Buskbodys of the generation, for even Goethe's Charlotte took a heartfelt interest in the fortunes of Miss Jenny.[18] It was indeed so far calculated to stir the sensibilities ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... ranks flying before the host Of Ilium, and the rampart overthrown. As when the wide sea, darken'd over all Its silent flood, forebodes shrill winds to blow, 20 The doubtful waves roll yet to neither side, Till swept at length by a decisive gale;[1] So stood the senior, with distressful doubts Conflicting anxious, whether first to seek The Grecian host, or Agamemnon's self 25 The sovereign, and at length that course preferr'd. Meantime with mutual carnage they the field Spread far and wide, and by spears double-edged Smitten, and by the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... happiness are unreal figments, due to error! This is excellent comfort indeed!—To avoid these difficulties let us then assume that both aspects of Brahman—viz. on the one hand its entering into the distressful condition of individual souls other than non-differenced intelligence, and on the other its being the cause of the world, endowed with all perfections, &c.—are alike unreal!—Well, we reply, we do not exactly admire the depth of your insight into the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... if that which is here begun should not proceed, how thou wouldst have distressful want of knowing more; and by thyself thou wilt see how desirous I was to hear from these of their conditions, as they became manifest to mine eyes. "O well-born,[1] to whom Grace concedes to see the thrones of the eternal triumph ere the warfare is abandoned,[2] with the light ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... over to our joint satisfaction, she had to return to the distressful main theme of our talk. She harked back to Sir Anthony, touched on his splendid behaviour, recalled, with a little dismay, the hitherto unnoted fact that, after the ceremony he had held himself aloof from those that thronged round Boyce. Then, without hint ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... tenderly as women, and so parted; for poor Ned could not stay to see his comrade die. For a little while, there was no sound in the room but the drip of water from a stump or two, and John's distressful gasps, as he slowly breathed his life away. I thought him nearly gone, and had just laid down the fan, believing its help to be no longer needed, when suddenly he rose up in his bed, and cried out with a bitter cry that broke the silence, sharply ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... seemed to wake suddenly from the distressful dream in which he had been plunged. "Yes, I will drive you over to the stage, Vesta," he said. "God help me! it is all I can do. I have an operation to perform at noon. It is a case of life and death, and I have no right to leave it. The man's whole life ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... by the frequent thought of death," the Rhetor said, "to bring yourself to regard it not as a dreaded foe, but as a friend that frees the soul grown weary in the labors of virtue from this distressful life, and leads it to its ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... threshold of the window into the very arms of John Crewys, and his feelings were divided between passionate sympathy with his divinity, and anger with the returned hero, who had no doubt reduced his mother to this distressful state. The doctor was blinded by love and misery, and ready to suspect the whole world of doing injustice to this lady; though he believed himself to be destitute of jealousy, and capable of ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... load your words have lifted from my mind," said Mrs. Noah, settling back in her chair, a satisfied expression upon her gentle countenance. "I hope you will understand why I spoke, and withal why modern literature generally has been so distressful to me. When you reflect that the world is satisfied that most of man's criminal instincts are the result of heredity, and that Mr. Noah and I are unable to shift the responsibility for posterity to other shoulders ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... looked upon the moonlit garden, which filled the fanciful quadrangle. The light of the fountain seemed to fascinate his eye, and the music of its fall soothed him into reverie. The distressful images that had gathered round his heart gradually vanished, and all that remained to him was the reality of his happiness. Her beauty and her grace, the sweet stillness of her searching intellect, and the refined pathos ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... beheld the person of him in whom she had been wont to find all integrity, and place all confidence, and this might have induced her to apprehend no danger. And yet with how much tender passion, with how distressful an indignation, with what tumultuous sorrow did she witness his supposed crime? What then must I do? What yet remains? I love her with a more frantic and irresistible passion than ever. I cannot abstain from her.—I cannot dismiss her.—I cannot forget her. Oh Imogen, too lovely, all-attractive ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... circumstances. He hid the painful mystery of his past beneath a philosophic gayety, but when he thought himself alone his motions, stiffened by a slowness which was more a matter of choice than the result of old age, betrayed the constant presence of distressful thoughts. The Abbe Chaperon called him a Christian ignorant of his Christianity. Dressed always in blue cloth, his rather rigid demeanor and his clothes bespoke the old habits of military discipline. His sweet and harmonious voice ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... afternoon in May, Kristian Koppig had been witness of the distressful scene over the way. It occurred to 'Tite Poulette that such might be the case, and she stepped to the casement to shut it. As she did so, the marvellous delicacy of Kristian Koppig moved him to draw in one of his ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... according to our programme, for Interlachen to-day,—with great regret, for the peace and sweetness of this place are wonderful and the people are good; and though there is much drinking and quarrelling among the younger men, there appears to be neither distressful poverty, nor deliberate crime: so that there is more of the sense I need, and long for, of fellowship with human creatures, than in any place I have been at for years. I believe they don't so much as lock the house-doors at night; and the faces ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... proceedings are most suggestive of an ideal naked savage leading a "natural" life, are supposed to be not only more advantageous to the child but in some mystical way more moral. The spectacle of an undersized porter-fed mother, for example, nursing a spotted and distressful baby, is exalted at the expense of the clean and simple artificial feeding that is often advisable to-day. Yet the mortality of first-born children should indicate that a modern woman carries no instinctive system of baby management about with her in her brain, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... The distressful alternation between nights of lucid doubt and days of dull acquiescence was resumed with an intensification of its contrasts. The brief phase of hope that followed the turn of the fighting upon the Maine, the hope that after all the war would end swiftly, dramatically, and ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... he had lunched at the 'Dog of Montargis,' Gomard's tavern, where he had known a Limousin, a big, strapping, merry fellow, whose brawny arms he envied. Then, on coming back to the Rue Tourlaque, with his legs faint and his head empty, he gave his picture much the same distressful, frightened glance as one casts at a corpse in a mortuary, until fresh hope of resuscitating it, of endowing it with life, brought a flush to ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... position's this." He sat down in his rocking chair, crossed his legs, and looked at me as if he expected me to show signs of astonishment at his knowing so much. "You're in a hole. You must leave this island of Jamaica—surely it's as distressful as my own dear land—and you can't go home, because the runners would be after you. You're 'wanted' here as well as there, and you've ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... came to Hinges, the inhabitants were exalted. The small boys came out in puttees and the women put ribbons in their hair. Now, if you pronounce Hinges in the French fashion, you give forth an exclamation of distressful pain. The name cannot be shouted from a motor-cycle. It has its difficulties even for the student of French. So we all called it, plainly and bluntly, Hinges, as though it were connected to a door. The inhabitants noticed this. Thinking that they and their ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... Oriental habit of Secundra's. No sooner was the grave filled than the lamentations of the Indian once more struck concern to every heart; and it appears this gang of murderers, so far from resenting his outcries, although both distressful and (in such a country) perilous to their own safety, roughly but kindly endeavoured to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not only the loss of her own position but her good name as well, whereas if she makes the daughter of her employer admit her fault, it means that, driven from home, the girl whose weakness has brought about this distressful situation stands little or no chance of redeeming her error if thrust upon ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... and, I hope, if the following Poems be attentively perused, similar instances will be found in them. This opinion may be further illustrated by appealing to the Reader's own experience of the reluctance with which he comes to the re-perusal of the distressful parts of Clarissa Harlowe, or The Gamester; while Shakespeare's writings, in the most pathetic scenes, never act upon us, as pathetic, beyond the bounds of pleasure—an effect which, in a much greater degree than might at first ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... more embarrassed than Jennie. He was indeed enraged, for it hurt his pride to be counted a suitor of this ungainly and ignorant girl. Right there he resolved to flee at the first opportunity. Distressful ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... resisting arrest and assaulting the minions of the law; hounded by a vengeful and determined posse; unacquainted with his whereabouts, ignorant of any way of escape from that hollow square, round whose sides window after excitable window was lighting up in his honour; all in all, as distressful a figure of a fugitive from justice as ever was on ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Clarissa. Nor do I doubt them now: for you know how much I love you—if it be possible, more than myself I love you! Believe me, my dear: and, in consequence of that belief, you will be able to judge how much I am affected by your present distressful and critical situation; which will not suffer me to pass by without a censure even that philosophy of temper in your own cause, which you have not in another's, and which all that know you ever admired ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... what each thought will lead to. His ideas go around in a circle like the horse tied to the wheel. He is on a treadmill ever ascending, tramping, up, up, up and up, and still up, but the wheel falls down each time as far as he steps up, and after hours and hours of unceasing, wracking, distressful mental labor, he has done absolutely nothing, has not progressed one inch, is still in the clutch of the same vicious treadmill. Brain weary, nerve weary, is there any wonder that he rolls and tosses, throws over his pillow, kicks ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... must have lain there for some years, having been lost there in the days when he occupied the bedroom afterwards rented by Mr. Constant. For it was his own sofa, removed from that room, and the suction of sofas was well known. Afraid to miss his train, he did not undress on that distressful night. Meantime the thought occurred to him that Jessie was too clever a girl to leave so easy a trail, and he jumped to the conclusion that she would be going to her married brother in America, and had gone to Devonport merely to bid her aunt farewell. He determined therefore ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... herself wearily down on a pile of cushions that lay beside the basin, and beckoning Christie to sit near, said, as she pressed her hands to her hot forehead and looked up with a distressful brightness in the haggard eyes that seemed to have ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... now advancing in reputation, and though frequently involved in very distressful perplexities, appeared, however, to be gaining upon mankind, when both his fame and his life were endangered by an event, of which it is not yet determined, whether it ought to be mentioned as a crime ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... stepped into the room and sat down with a distressful sigh. "I am more than that," he said, dejectedly. "I am in hot water, trying to swim with ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... feelings and opinions, and, somehow, feeling as if he were a trusted and confidential friend though he was an absolute stranger—such is the wonderful influence of Power in self-possessed repose, over Weakness in distressful uncertainty! ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... with mixed emotions. And I had to forget the distressful eye-strain. Few eyes submit without destruction to three hours of film. But the mistakes of Cabiria are those of the pioneer work of genius. It has in it twenty great productions. It abounds in suggestions. Once the classic rules of this art-unit are established, men with equal genius ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... his way over the gutters to the shop of his Chinaman opposite. From there he watched the little company issue forth and turn into Crooked lane, where the entrance was. It gave him a sense that she had her part in this squalor, which was not altogether distressful in that it also localised her in the warm, living, habitable world, and helped to make her thinkable and attainable. Then he went to his room at the club and found there a note from Miss Howe, written apparently ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the trail. Large red stains at intervals showed that the animal had stopped frequently to grovel on the snow. About half a mile from the knoll, Mr. Edwards came upon the beast, in a fir thicket, making distressful sounds, and quite helpless to defend itself. A blow on the head from the poll of the axe finished the creature; and, taking it by the tail, Mr. Edwards dragged it to the house. The carcass was lying in the dooryard ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Excessive, if you like. Without women I am a wasting fever of distressful toil. Without them there is no kindness in existence, no rest, no sort of satisfaction. The world is a battlefield, trenches, barbed wire, rain, mud, logical necessity and utter desolation—with nothing whatever worth fighting for. Whatever justifies effort, ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... country that ever yet was seen. I acquired several pounds of your country coming up from Karachi. The air is heavy with it, and for miles and miles along that distressful eternity of rail there's no horizon to show where air ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... Great-Britain wages no War with the Industrious Peasant, the sacred Orders of Religion, or the defenceless Women and Children: To these in their distressful Circumstances His Royal Clemency offers Protection. The People may remain unmolested on their Lands, inhabit their Houses, and enjoy their Religion in Security. For these inestimable Blessings, I expect the Canadians will take no Part in the Great Contest between ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... honourable and respectable between man and man. I have no choice; my immediate return is as much a duty and obligation upon me as can in human society be laid upon one who would not renounce the character of a gentleman. Judge, then, of the distressful situation I must have been in at the time of decyphering your last lines, and judge how sacred and indispensable those circumstances must be, that do not give me even room to hesitate in a difficulty of so much delicacy. I love you, my dearest ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... various aspects to satisfy the tastes and cravings of each soul. At La Salette, where She descended in a distressful spot, all in tears, She revealed Herself no doubt to certain persons, more especially to the souls in love with sorrow, the mystical souls that delight in reviving the anguish of the Passion and ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... a vile country,—it so fell out that the poor gentleman was scarce a whole week together without some piteous application for his beast; and as he was not an unkind-hearted man, and every case was more pressing and more distressful than the last;—as much as he loved his beast, he had never a heart to refuse him; the upshot of which was generally this; that his horse was either clapp'd, or spavin'd, or greaz'd;—or he was twitter-bon'd, or broken-winded, or something, in short, or other had befallen him, which would let ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... with events. A young fellow's feelings are apt to be extreme, and even despotic, so that they rule the hour with such strength of sway as may be out of proportion to the cause. I might have seen that I had no just cause to blame myself, but that did not help me. The mood of distressful self-accusation was on me. I had no repeated impulse to smile at what, in my father's conduct, had appeared to me a little while ago odd, and even amusing. I could never please him. I had grinned as I always did when risks were upon me. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Effingham took out her handkerchief, and cried in good earnest. I believe her to be warmly and gratefully attached both to the king and queen and she has received from the queen very uncommon assistance, I am informed, in some very distressful Situations. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Caroline, flushing with distressful impatience. "But you have to think of yourself in these days, or get left. It's the rule all over the world now. And if everybody did the same, we should be all all ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... which she was defending herself struck her from a most unexpected angle. That Stephen should misunderstand her motives was preposterous; yet there was no other inference to be drawn from the tone of his conversation during the few distressful minutes of his last visit. In all probability, he had gone away laboring under the hateful impression that she was untrue, that she had permitted her heart to be taken captive by the first knight errant who had entered the lists. And what was more, the subject ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... Florus;" Florus Delphini was the phrase. "And my mother," said he, "thought it had something to do with Delphos; but of that I know nothing." "Who founded Rome, then ?" inquired Mr. Thrale. The lad replied, "Romulus." "And who succeeded Romulus?" said I. A long pause, and apparently distressful hesitation, followed the difficult question. "Why will you ask him in terms that he does not comprehend?" said Mr. Johnson, enraged. "You might as well bid him tell you who phlebotomised Romulus. This fellow's dulness is elastic," continued he, "and all ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of the word "funds," Roland, who had become thoroughly bored with the lecture on Paranoyan history, sat up and took notice. He had an instinctive feeling that he was about to be called upon for a subscription to the cause of the distressful country's ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... development but disorder. Given sufficient suspicion on one side and sufficient obstinacy and trickery on the other, it may be impossible to restore social peace in any form, and industrialism may degenerate into a wasteful and incurable conflict. But that distressful possibility is the worst and perhaps the least probable of many. It is much more acceptable to suppose that our social order will be able to adjust itself to the new outlook and temper and quality of the labour ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... on, bearing with them the melancholy evidence of the truth of what they had just heard. It came on still—it stopt—it was at their own door it stopt. The old man could not speak, but his wife rushed forward with a distressful shriek. The truth was soon all known. They had no child. They had only a dead body to weep over—to lay in the grave. Is it necessary to say more? A few days passed. They were the bitterest days the bereaved parents had ever known; but they passed, and their minds became comparatively calm. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... our lunches and played at being smugglers; then we built fires of drift-wood to warn the passing ships that we were castaways on a desert island; but when they took no heed of our signals of distress we were not too sorry nor in the least distressful. ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... circumstance distressing a young person who three times a week exhibits herself on the stage to several hundred people, but there I do not distinguish the individual eyes that are fixed on me, and my mind is diverted from the annoyances of my real situation by the distressful circumstances of my feigned one. Moreover, to add to my sorrows, at the beginning of the evening a lady spilled some coffee over a beautiful dress which I was wearing for the first time. Now I will tell ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... a great deal, the last few years in Cuba." And his quick eyes flashed across her face. She was not interested in Cuba, at all events, and evidently knew nothing of that distressful island. When she left him, he stood looking at the ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... opposite effect to that which Skinner expected. Chayne, instead of turning his back upon so distasteful a company, frequented it in the resolve to take Sylvia out of its grasp. It did not need a lover to see that she slept little of nights and passed distressful days. She had fled from her mother's friends at Chamonix, only to find herself helpless amongst a worse gang in her father's house. Very well. She must be released. He had proposed to take her away then and there. She had ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... the mother and daughters choked down their wrath and mortification, bathed their swollen eyes, put on fresh lily white and carmine, and joined their guests. What should they have for an excuse? O, a sick headache—sudden and distressful—he was subject ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... happily to the principal persons, however serious or distressful through its intermediate incidents, in their opinion constituted a comedy. This idea of a comedy continued long amongst us, and plays were written, which, by changing the catastrophe, were tragedies to-day, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the letter from his pocket and hand it her to read; to tell her the whole distressful story: but he dared not. He longed for her, and yet he dared not tell her so. He half drew the letter from his pocket, but thrust it back again. Tell this innocent girl the whole ugly story? It could not be done. There was but one thing to do—to go away, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... themselves obliged in 1838 to offer $18 per month together with the customary weekly rations of three and a half pounds of bacon and ten quarts of corn and also the services of a staff physician as a sort of substitute for life and health insurance.[25] The beginning of the distressful 'forties eased the market so that the town of Milledgeville could get its street gang on a scale of $125;[26] at the middle of the decade slaveowners were willing to take almost any wages offered; and in its final year the Georgia Railroad paid only $70 to $75 ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... it was evident that the big man was perplexed and abashed; his hat was in his way and so were his hands, and when he spoke his voice was so husky as to be distressful. On Mary, who had withdrawn to the very end of the room, this discomfort of speech had a peculiar effect: the unsteady voice touched her breast to a kindred fluttering, and her throat grew parched and so irritated that a violent fit of coughing could not be restrained, and this, ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... startled by a quick, fierce shout, followed immediately by a long, piercing, and distressful cry, proceeding from the same quarter from which the reports of fire-arms had been heard; and before we had time to conjecture the cause or meaning of these frightful sounds, Morton bounded like a deer from the grove, about a hundred yards from the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... live contentedly on so little, was the most open-handed of men, the most liberal and cheerful of givers; and whether to Samoans in distressful times, or to others who sought his aid, his purse was never closed; while his hospitality was like Sir Walter's. Probably, in his hour of greatest success, he never was among "the best sellers." But any financial anxieties which may have beset him were assuaged, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... death Ann Veronica met Gwen suddenly on the staircase coming from her father's study, shockingly dingy in dusty mourning and tearful and resentful, and after that Gwen receded from the Morningside Park world, and not even the begging letters and distressful communications that her father and aunt received, but only a vague intimation of dreadfulness, a leakage of incidental comment, flashes of paternal anger at "that blackguard," came to Ann ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... was elusive, flashing here and there in the uncertain moonlight and vanishing again. Once or twice he thought he had left it behind, and was astonished when shortly afterward he stumbled into it to the knees. He had a distressful stitch in his side, which, though he had been conscious of it for several hours, was growing almost insupportable. Sometimes he called to Grenfell, who seldom answered him, just to break the oppressive silence. It seemed ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... passed, and in my situation, you will not wonder I shun a conversation which could not be bounded by a letter-a letter that would grow into a panegyric, or a piece of moral; improper for me to write upon, and too distressful for us both!-a death is only to be felt, never to be talked over ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... me than Mrs Higden's been. And she must be turned for, must Mrs Higden. Where would Mrs Higden be if she warn't turned for!' At the mere thought of Mrs Higden in this inconceivable affliction, Mr Sloppy's countenance became pale, and manifested the most distressful emotions. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... not, "We start; for soul is wanting there;" or, if not soul, then the last halo of the soul's serene triumph. From this side, too, there is another cause for the undramatic character, in the stricter sense of Stevenson's work generally: it is, after all, distressful, unsatisfying, egotistic, for fancy is led at the beck of some pre-established disharmony which throws back an abiding and irremovable gloom on all that went before; and the free spontaneous grace of natural creation which ensures natural simplicity ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... conditions here being bad for good plays; that is a joke. The distressful business is for the bad plays that I ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand! How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth! how little imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks, and feeding the bitter grass among their ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... like a sperm-whale and overflowing his reservation like a crock of salt-rising dough in a warm kitchen, and wondering how he can turn over without bulging the side of the car and maybe causing a wreck. Ah me, those dark green curtains with the overcoat buttons on them hide many a distressful spectacle from ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... number of spokes attached to that nave is twelve as represented by the twelve signs of the Zodiac. This wheel of Time manifests the fruits of the acts of all things. The presiding deities of Time abide in that wheel. Subject as I am to its distressful influence, ye Aswins, liberate me from that wheel of Time. Ye Aswins, ye are this universe of five elements! Ye are the objects that are enjoyed in this and in the other world! Make me independent ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a long night to me, and perhaps the most distressful one I ever spent. I endured agonies of remorse for sins which I knew I had committed, and for others which I was not certain about, yet was sure that they had been set down against me in a book by an angel who was wiser than I and did not trust such important matters to memory. It struck me, by ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his arms together, like a laborer in the winter when his hands are frozen, and exclaimed with distressful emotion: "Yes, I have spoken, and I cannot regret having done so; but what I foresaw has come to pass: The greatest happiness that ever sweetened my daily life is gone out of it! To love Plato is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... still for a minute or two, while his senses came slowly back to him. The first thing of which he was definitely conscious was a physical discomfort that rendered the least movement painful. He felt sore all over, and there was a distressful ache in one hip and shoulder, which he fancied was the result of falling on the log, or perhaps of having been hurled against the boulders by the rapids through which he had reached the bank. His physical condition ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... she cried, desperation in face and voice; but even in that distressful moment she remembered a former occasion when Aunt Pike's arrival had thrown her into just such a frantic state, "what about supper? Aunt Pike has asked about it, and I hadn't even thought about it; and—oh, what can I do? I suppose there is nothing ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the Rhine at Strassburg with one hundred and fifty thousand men on the march to interpose between Southern and Northern Germany. The house had not heard from Paris and could not expect to hear. Acting on their advice I sent a distressful telegram roundabout through Switzerland to Paris. There was a possibility that such a message might go through; otherwise there was no hope. I then spent at Munich one of the most anxious weeks of my life. I was nearer ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... see you are moved, and therefore will not dwell on such distressful circumstances. The excellent Antonia exchanged this life for a more happy state; and so exquisite was the sorrow of the tender-hearted Serafina, as to torture me with the apprehension that she would not long ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... melancholy two months that I have passed, and in my situation, you will not wonder I shun a conversation which could not be bounded by a letter—a letter that would grow into a panegyric, or a piece of moral; improper for me to write upon, and too distressful for us both!—a death is only to be felt, never to be talked over ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... be of no assistance to the distressful Henry we continued our own search, and, by hailing all within call, eventually reached our trench, where we found the colonel, always in good mood when something practical wanted doing, superintending Headquarters' occupation ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... Francis, and then with his second son, the Duke of Orleans, he was endeavouring to draw England and France into a closer alliance. For similar reasons he was extending his patronage to the Holy League, formed by Clement VII. between the princes of Italy to liberate that distressful country from the grip ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... the head, an effort to show reproving dignity, while in fact taken by surprise, her nerves in distressful panic, she had scarce the power to control herself, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... this distressful situation, to the house of Mr. Flail, and walked into the farm yard just at the time the cows were being milked. She, who for a long time had tasted nothing but bits of broken bread, and had no drink ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... him sometimes, for he was a bright, promising youth, she says, when one distressful circumstance crushed his hopes and ruined his usefulness; but I do not think she desires his return, for he left his native shores cursing her as the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton |
