"Loneliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Byron's life, in Greece, seems to have been one of peculiar desolation. There is something really tragic in the utter loneliness of such a death-bed. Years before, he had written concerning ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... courtesy arose from a belief that he was addressing a woman of higher station than was hers, she added, 'I am Miss Aldclyffe's companion. I don't mind the loneliness.' ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... care of the lame girl, and heavily laden with the fish. The purple shades of twilight soon clouded the scene, deepened by the heavy masses of foliage, which cast a greater degree of obscurity upon their narrow path; for they had now left the oak-flat and entered the gorge of the valley. The utter loneliness of the path, the grotesque shadows of the trees, that stretched in long array across the steep banks on either side, taking, now this, now that wild and fanciful shape, awakened strange feelings of dread in the mind of these poor ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... we have sworn, both of us, in the name of the Lord, saying, 'The Lord be between me and thee, and between my seed and thy seed for ever;' and then, with a lingering good-bye, Jonathan went back to his home, with a heart aching, not only with loneliness for David, but full of fear of what he would have to suffer and bear in the coming days, and of regret for that weakness of character which he knew his father had allowed to go beyond his own control. And David went to Nob, a city north of Jerusalem, where there was at that time the chief place ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... enduring the storm in loneliness, for he was unwilling to explain the cause of his trouble to his companions. The only occasion of the suspicions, which he could think of, was his request for the sum of money; and this he could not mention to Mr. Wellwood, nor was he inclined to make confidants of his other companions, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all the days he had lived it had not worked so hard as on this one day. Furthermore, he was sleepy. So he started out to look for the cave and his mother, feeling at the same time an overwhelming rush of loneliness and helplessness. ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... be at Finsbury Circus to-morrow, for certainly no Columbine in a harem skirt will be there. Simpson in his loneliness will be delighted to see me, and then we can throw away his button-hole and have ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... those old Bush roads. A man named Brighten lived there. He was a selector; did a little farming, and as much sly-grog selling as he could. He was married—but it wasn't that: I'd thought of them, but she was a childish, worn-out, spiritless woman, and both were pretty 'ratty' from hardship and loneliness—they weren't likely to be of any use to me. But it was this: I'd heard talk, among some women in Gulgong, of a sister of Brighten's wife who'd gone out to live with them lately: she'd been a hospital matron in the city, they said; and there were yarns ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... one who had preceded her being Dr. You Me King, the adopted daughter of Dr. and Mrs. McCartee, of Ningpo, who had gone to America with them a few years before. King Eng's parents did not oppose her going, but neither did they encourage it. They told her fully of the loneliness she would experience in a foreign country; the dangers and unpleasantness of the long ocean voyage she would have to take; and the unparalleled situation in which she would find herself on her return ten years later, unmarried at twenty-eight. But with ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... his hand with that of a girl some years younger than herself, with whom she had struck up a firm friendship. They respected the wishes of the dead, married, and lived together happily, thinking themselves the most fortunate of mortals when a son was born to them. But August Vogt was doomed to loneliness, for his wife died when the boy was just old enough to go ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... everything—understood that all was finished and finished forever. With the intuition of a woman, she felt that Jean's love for my sister was real and deep, she bowed her head to circumstances and she departed, accepting, without a murmur, the loneliness that Jean's action brought upon her. She carried her fidelity to the end, for she would have slain herself sooner than become [hesitating out of respect for Mme. de Ronchard] a courtesan. And this ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... as well as could be expected; sick one half hour, and stuffing the next; little F—— pervading the ship from stem to stern, like Ariel, and generally presiding at the officers' mess in undismayed she-loneliness. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... all the wise ones have diagnosed Jim's case. But I think he sized up his case in that letter I sent you. He died of that great loneliness of soul which made of his wasted body a battered barricade against the stupidity which finally engulphed him. The soul of social and individual honour and commercial integrity, he had the misfortune to find few ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... saddened us and our hearts dreaded the ordeal. Still, come it did, and as I watched the train pull out of the station, carrying with it all that I loved best in the world, I felt a wrench at my heartstrings and a loneliness that ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... which he had taken the girl was situated in a quiet residential street, and at this hour of the night the street was deserted, and the fog added something to its normal loneliness. ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... depicting Byron Descent; birth; lameness Schooling; early reading habits College life Temperament and character First publication of poems Savage criticism by Edinburgh Review "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" Byron becomes a peer Loneliness and melancholy; determines to travel Portugal; Spain Malta; Greece; Turkey Profanity of language in Byron's time "Childe Harold" Instant fame and popularity Consideration of the poem Marries Miss Milbanke; separation ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... display of emotion, thanked him, and, leaning against the side, drew his attention to the beauty of the stars and sea. Impelled by the occasion and the charm of the night he waxed sentimental, and with a strange mixture of bluffness and shyness spoke of his aged mother, of the loneliness of a seafarer's life, and the inestimable boon of real friendship. He bared his inmost soul to his sympathetic listener, and then, affecting to think from a remark of Mr. Chalk's that he was going to relate the secret of the voyage, declined to hear it on the ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... with, you will have noticed the way in which Christiana was prepared for the entrance of Secret into her house. She was a widow. She sat alone in that loneliness which only widows know and understand. More than lonely, she was very miserable. "Mark this," says the author on the margin, "you that are churls to your godly relations." For this widow felt sure that her husband had been taken ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... more perhaps because she was ill and weak and nervous and very dependent on her niece's care; but down in the depths of her soul, Leslie had to confess to herself that she was lonely, horribly lonely for the companionship of her parents and sisters and school chums. The loneliness did not always bother her, but it came over her at times like an overwhelming wave, usually when Miss Marcia failed to respond to some whim or project or bubbling enthusiasm. Between them gaped the abyss of forty years difference in age, ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... of the last few days, Dick found the loneliness of the empty carriage decidedly unpleasant, and for a short time after leaving town, was nearer moping than he ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... the ship sail without us? How if she wake and know me for her gaoler? How might I endure loneliness? How part with her that was become my life? Belike she might not ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... incredulity that it can be real are added to the pain. But it is real. The sunshine has vanished; the stars have hidden their light; the air is leaden where once it was all gold and rose and pearl; one is alone in the desert, in a loneliness that no voice sounds through, in an anguish that no human sympathy can reach or sustain. All that made life worth the living has been inexplicably withdrawn; and how, then, shall he live? And why ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... the sheep is an object of terror, destroying grass, bush and forest by omnipresent nibbling; on the great plains, sheep-keeping frequently results in insanity, owing to the loneliness of the shepherd, and the monotonous appearance and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... of his family, far from the home of his parents, to which his thoughts had so constantly recurred! I do not think any one ever witnessed the interment in that solitary place of one whom perhaps he knew but slightly when living, without feeling in himself a sensation of loneliness, as though a cold gust from the open grave had blown over him. It is then we think most of England and home — and of those who though living are ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... we were on deck, the spell, which the electric waves of enjoyment had played on me in the lounge, was removed. Rather, an emptiness and a loneliness began to oppress me, only increased ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... heavily for Plutina, after the departure of her lover. She endured the period of tense waiting as best she might, since endure she must, but this passive loneliness, without a word from the man of her heart, was well-nigh intolerable. She did not weep—after that single passionate outburst while yet her lips were warm from his kiss. She was not of the weak fiber to find assuagement in many tears, nor had she nerves ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... the strange feeling of loneliness that had oppressed him on his arrival, when, just as the sun was setting over the river, he had dropped down from the old stage coach in front of Academy Hall, a queer-looking, shabbily dressed country boy with a dilapidated leather valise and a brown paper ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... man foe, but never love a stranger. Build up no plan, nor any star pursue. Go forth with crowds; in loneliness is danger. Thus nothing God can send, And nothing God can do Shall pierce ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... meeting on the steamer coming from Seattle. Any mention of his name on her part was so open, she spoke of him as just a good playfellow to help her to pass away the time, I could not believe her feelings involved. But, fearful tragedies can be fostered by loneliness and in Mr. Chalmers's easy familiarity with the lonely girl, there was something wanting; I could only name it chivalry. Yet, as their voices came to me, glad, happy, vibrant with the joys of youth and its interests, I thought ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... enough of the perils of the sea to comprehend the terrible possibilities of his situation, and at first his blood chilled and his courage sank. Resolute as he was by nature, there was a deadly difference between the loneliness of his present condition and the solitude of his ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... 'For your loneliness, poor orphan,' he said with effort, and he walked back to the baker's shop. On the threshold of Vassilissa's room ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... bushwoman is used to the loneliness of it. As a girl-wife she hated it, but now she would feel strange away ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... night," returned Lawrence. "And, thanks to the loneliness of the place and the stories of ghosts, no one has ever tried to pass through or even come in at night while I've ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... you," said the mother who was the happiest of all, "for that you have done for us, but here is a little dog, whose barking will keep loneliness from your house, and a ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay
... senna-tea in Martha's face, and rushing downstairs in her nightgown to denounce Miss Frederick in the midst of an astonished schoolroom, something generally interposed; not conscience, it is to be feared, or any wish "to be good," but only an aching, inmost sense of childish loneliness and helplessness; a perception that she had indeed tried everybody's patience to the limit, and that these days in bed represented crises which must be borne with even by such a rebel ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she reasoned with herself that she was hardly so badly off, as to justify her, quite, in doing that. It would rouse the village, it would bring Mr. Rushleigh down, perhaps—it would cause a terrible alarm. And all that she might be spared a few hours longer of loneliness and discomfort. She was safe. It would ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... other. It is a stone house, with deep-set windows and stout doors, that have withstood hard blows in their day. Save for Glen Doyle, Colonel Frenche's place, there is no house of equal size for miles around, and several visitors have remarked the loneliness of the situation; but to that the Blakes never give a thought. The solid old house, which faces all the winds that blow, is very dear to them. In its very isolation there is a charm that any other ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... greater ease than that. Also, Thedora tells me that your circumstances used to be much more affluent than they are at present. Do you wish, then, to persuade me that your whole existence has been passed in loneliness and want and gloom, with never a cheering word to help you, nor a seat in a friend's chimney-corner? Ah, kind comrade, how my heart aches for you! But do not overtask your health, Makar Alexievitch. For instance, you say that your eyes ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... life had fulfilled its mission. She had brought joy and beauty and faith into our hearts; she had comforted us in our hours of loneliness and despair; she had been the little cheerful builder of our ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest
... his garret writing music. But the creative act thus performed in solitude has a singular potency, after all, for arousing that communal feeling which in the moment of creation the artist seems to escape. What he produces in his loneliness the world does not willingly let die. His work, as far as it becomes known, really unites mankind. It fulfills a social purpose. "Its function ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Charlesworth was not allowed to have it all his own way with her. Bain and an Indian Army officer named Melville also claimed her attention. The knowledge that we are appreciated tends to make most of us appear at our best, and Noreen soon forgot her shyness and loneliness and became her usual natural, bright self. Ida looked on indulgently and smiled at her patronisingly, as though Noreen's little personal ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... A loneliness came over my young spirit. I was aweary, and I drooped like the tired bird, that alights on the ship, "far, far at sea." As that poor bird folds its wings, and sinks into peaceful oblivion, I could have folded my ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... and her brothers knew not loneliness, for in the sweet Gaelic speech they told of their joys and fears; and by night the mighty Dedannans knew no sorrowful memories, for by haunting songs were they lulled to sleep, and the music brought peace to ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... lover's voice wailing in the night, and I go to find him; for my loneliness is not to be borne. May God have mercy ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... and the twilight fell, and the lamps were lighted, and people hurried out at way-stations to safe and waiting homes, her loneliness and anxiety increased. Just before entering Rutland, a young man, dressed in a dandyish manner, and partially intoxicated, entered the car, and took the empty seat by Gypsy. She did not like his looks, and moved away slightly, turning to look out ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... time I asked this question she burst into tears and would not answer. But the wild loneliness, the continual presence of my beloved, yes, even the hardships of our wandering life, increased the force of my longing. A hundred times I was ready to fold Atala to my breast. A hundred times I proposed to build her a hut in the wide, uninhabited ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... against the window of Zulma's room. She felt the influence of the inhospitable weather. A feeling of weariness weighed upon her from the early hours of the morning. Nothing that she attempted to do could distract her mind or dispel her loneliness. The book which she had taken up over and over again lay with its face down upon the table. The harpsichord was open, but the music on its rack was tossed and tumbled. Zulma was a good musician and passionately fond of her instrument, but could not abide it when her ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... change, and of increasing confidence and comfort in her friend Cora Muller. Cora's Confirmation had brought the girls into contact with the New York clergy, and had procured them an introduction to the clergyman of Winiamac, the nearest church, so that there was much less sense of loneliness, moreover, the fuller and more systematic doctrine, and the development of the beauty and daily guidance of the Church, had softened the bright American girl, so as to render her infinitely dearer to her English friend, and they were as ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he could lay aside his Mackinaw coat. The mountains suggested nothing but that they held big game and were awkward places to get through on horseback, while the deserts brought no thoughts save of thirst and loneliness and choking alkali dust. Upon a time a stranger had mentioned the scenery, and Smith had replied ironically that there was plenty of it and for him to ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... conviction that gives them the impressiveness of prophecy, of a pledge, leaving a terror of its fulfilment. For a long time indeed I vaguely looked for the promised apparition. Even now there are days of depression, of doubt, alarm, and loneliness, when I am forced to repel the intrusion of that sad parting, though it was not ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward; and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... path towards the Meer, losing sight of it as they advanced into the low flat sands, scarcely above its level. When again it opened into view its wide waveless surface lay before them, reposing in all the sublimity of loneliness and silence. The rapture of the child was excessive. She surveyed with delight its broad unruffled bosom, giving back the brightness and glory of that heaven to which it looked; to her it seemed another sky and another world, pure and spotless ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... as John finished his story. He went on with the tale of his own black loneliness and grey home-sickness. The glory of Kent and the charm of High Wood seemed to be gone like the shadows of a dream already. What good had they done ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... awaiting him, and gave the order "Home," the word struck him with a peculiarly ironical significance. His home was a handsome one, and lacked nothing in appointment and comfort, but he had gone to the theatre to evade its hollow loneliness. Nor was it because his wife was not there, for he had a miserable consciousness that her temporary absence had nothing to do with his homelessness. The distraction of the theatre over, that dull, vague, but aching sense of loneliness ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... early settlers of Kentucky was a famous hunter named Daniel Boone. He was a gentle, kindly man who loved the forest and the loneliness of the wilderness. All the lore of the forest was his, he knew the haunts and habits of every living thing that moved within the woods. He could imitate the gobble of the turkey, or the chatter of a squirrel, and follow a trail better ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... it. At that moment, after all the agitation he had made her suffer, and before the sacrifice he thus demanded of her, she could scarcely believe that she too had loved him, that she had been happy in his love. It seemed to her that he had forced himself upon her, taken advantage of her loneliness, compelled her to put herself in his power. It had been all adoration, boundless devotion, help, and service. And now it was command. Oh, had he but said this before! Had he bidden her then choose between her child and him, before— And as she looked at him a wild ridicule ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... without art; and how can they then have any need to 'go in for' the Greeks and Romans?—for we need now no longer pretend, like our forefathers, to have any great regard for Greece and Rome, which, besides, sit enthroned in almost inaccessible loneliness and majestic alienation. The universities of the present time consequently give no heed to almost extinct educational predilections like these, and found their philological chairs for the training of new and exclusive generations of philologists, who on their ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Marlow my host and skipper. We helped the boy we had with us to haul the boat up on the landing-stage before we went up to the riverside inn, where we found our new acquaintance eating his dinner in dignified loneliness at the head of a long table, white and ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... practically believed herself to be dying. But she was a high-spirited woman, full of that silent and quite unfathomable kind of courage which is only found in women, and she took a much more cheerful view of death than her father did of life. Silent rooms, low voices, lowered blinds, long days of loneliness, and of the sickliest kind of sympathy, had not tamed a spirit which was swift and headlong to a fault. She could still own with truth the magnificent fact that her chief vice was impatience, "tearing open parcels instead of untying them;" looking at the ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... death as in the case of Socrates or of Jesus-at least of ridicule and ostracism, of excommunication and isolation as, in our own day, with Tolstoy. Many and many a saint who might have been a beacon-light to mankind has lived under the curses or sneers of his fellows and died in loneliness, to be soon forgotten. A few have, after years of opposition, obtained a following and accomplished great reforms, as did Buddha, Mohammed, St. Francis, and Luther. But none can count the potential reformers, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... warm, From the corrupting earth, that sought to hold Its beauty, to the essence of pure gold. Or haply art thou some far-towering pine, — Some rare and wondrous flower? What boots it, this sad hour? Here in thy loneliness the eglantine Weaves her sweet tapestries above thy head, While blow across thy bed, Moist with the dew of heaven, the breezes chill: Fire-fly, will-o'-the-wisp, and wandering star Glow in thy gloom, and naught is heard ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... meeting drew near, but no Salvationist called, and a feeling of strangeness and loneliness came upon the captain. Falling on her knees, she called upon God to help her. The realization of His Presence, the prospect of having a little corps of her very own, enabled her to smile at her fears, and to sally forth to seek The Army hall. At last it was discovered. ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... she was going along one of the lower paths, she perceived at the farther end of it two horses tied to a tree and recognized them at once; they belonged to Gilberte and Julien. The loneliness of the place was beginning to be irksome to her, and she was pleased at this chance meeting, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... company had contributed for his comfort, but the manager insisted that he keep it, and when he stepped upon the platform of a small station while the train continued on, it was with a very decided sense of loneliness. ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... my Breath! Return, my Comforter! Hear my bitter wail of woe, lead me back to my home. Have pity on my loneliness! Restore Thy love to me, bring me once again to the cleft of my rock, and let me hide myself in the shadow ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... without much sign of change. Esther was repeatedly called from his side to see persons whom she could not send away. Her aunt was with her till night. Strong came in and sat with her while she tried to dine. So long as day-light lasted she felt no sense of loneliness or desertion, and her courage remained fairly steady; but when she had sent home her aunt and cousin in order to begin her watch earlier than the previous night, her fears returned, her heart sank, and she begged Catherine to ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... centuries into the space of a generation. It was distinctly individualistic, and needed socializing. The large farm or cattle-range kept men apart, the freedom of the open country attracted an unruly population, and in consequence frontier life tended to rough manners and lawlessness. Isolation and loneliness produced despondency and inertia, and tended to ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... his existence to bring to a perfect flowering the new-born bud his southern wife had left him, and he had succeeded. Yet she seemed so slight a woman-thing to be bearing the burden of a great wealth and a great loneliness that the major's eyes grew ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... enchantment of business or listlessness, its social enjoyments, the vexations and health-giving bliss of domestic life, and all wandering tastes, must be forsaken. A power which pierces, and an ambition which enjoys the future, accepts the martyrdom of the present. They feel loneliness in their own age, while with universal survey viewing the beacon-lights of history across the peaks of generations. Their seat of life is the literary faculty, and they prune and torture themselves only to maintain in this the highest intensity and capacity. They are in some sort rebels battling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... solitude; but, when the Scud had actually disappeared, he was almost overcome with a sense of his loneliness. Never before had he been conscious of his isolated condition in the world; for his feelings had gradually been accustoming themselves to the blandishments and wants of social life; particularly as the last were connected ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... times that the old feeling of loneliness came back so overwhelmingly. Grandpa and Grandma, as they called them, were kind in their way, but even to their own children they had been undemonstrative and cold. Often in the evenings they seemed to draw so entirely within themselves, she with her knitting and he with his ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... to serve my people—be it hand in hand with the Stranger and his gods, be it alone. Teach me to act, and that right soon; for my childhood days are spent and my man's arm heavy with idleness. Send me forth—but not alone—not alone, Lord Brahma, for I am heart-sick of loneliness. Give me my comrade, my comrade who shall be ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... 'let us do our penance, each in loneliness. There was a time when our sorrows were mutual; it is past; we have only to ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... as ignorant of it as though he were thousands of miles away. Sometimes at such acute crises in our lives the limitations of our physical nature do strike us after this fashion. It is strange to be so near and yet so far, and it brings the absolute and utter loneliness of every created being home to the mind in a manner that is forcible and at times almost terrible. John Niel sinking composedly to sleep, his mind happy with the recollection of those two right and left shots, and Jess, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... that price was paid, he would be hers to love; he was no longer hers to live for. He should found his life on no illusions, as she had founded hers. She must set him free to turn away from her; but when he turned away it would not be to leave her in the loneliness and the terror of heart that she had known; it would be to leave her in the church where she could ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... great woods overhanging the rolling Jumna are tilting forward as if to join the girl in her agonized advances while around her rise the bleak and empty slopes, their eerie loneliness ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... Because his honor knows suddenly there is a defense. A monstrous defense. Since there are always two sides to everything. Yes, what is the other side? His honor would like to know. Tell it, Fanny. About the crowds, streets, buildings, lights, about the whirligig of loneliness, about the humpty-dumpty clutter of longings. And then explain about the summer parks and the white snow and the moon window in the sky. Throw in a poignantly ironical dissertation on life, on its uncharted aimlessness, and ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... It seemed as if all living creatures had deserted them. Indeed, if you have spent much time in our Northern forests, you must have often wondered at the sparseness of life, and felt a sense of pity for the apparent loneliness of the squirrel that chatters at you as you pass, or the little bird that hops noiselessly about in the thickets. The midsummer noontide is an especially silent time. The deer are asleep in some wild meadow. The partridge has gathered her brood for their midday ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... silences overawed him—periods of loneliness when he sat confronting his soul, his conscience on the bench as judge; his affections a special attorney:—silences of the night, in which he would listen for the strong, quick, manly footstep and the closing of the door in the ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... black and bitter strong, as his cousin expressed it. The draught was unpalatable, but it did him good, and the thought came with great consolation that he had only been asleep and dreaming queer, nightmarish dreams. He shook off all his fancies with resolution, and thought the loneliness of the camp, and the burning sunlight, and possibly the nettle sting, which still tingled most abominably, must have been the only factors in his farrago of impossible recollections. He remembered that when he had felt the sting, he had seized a nettle with ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... letter with a feeling of relief and anticipation. Here at least would be a fresh, pure breath of sweetness. His soul was worn and troubled with the experience of the past two days. A great loneliness possessed him when he thought of Tennelly, or when he looked forward to his future, for he truly was convinced that he never should turn to the love of woman again; and so the dreams of home and love and little children that had had their ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... fireside engaged in knitting. The night was cold, and the huge sticks of wood were roaring and crackling in the broad fireplace, and throwing a cheerful glow and warmth through the room. The tallow candle on the mantel had not been lit, for there was no need of it, and, despite the loneliness and poverty of the sad-faced woman, there was an air of neatness and comfort about her home which would have tempted any one who could look through the narrow window into ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... indiscriminate opposition, and Edward dared not push his powerful cousin to extremities. In these circumstances, the king had no wise or strong advisers whose influence might counteract the Despensers. His loneliness and isolation made him increasingly ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... married life in France she learned the gentle arts of embroidery and lace-making, accomplishments which, as in many humbler women's lives, have served their owners in good stead in times of loneliness and trouble. The Duke of Devonshire possesses specimens of Queen Mary's skill, worked during the long, dreary days of her imprisonment at Fotheringay. It is said that Queen Elizabeth was not above helping herself to the wardrobe ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... money and property? Will not Angela sustain you and tend you? O father, don't humiliate yourself a moment longer before this despicable monster. It is not we, but he, who is poor and miserable in the midst of his contemptible riches; for see, he stands there deserted in his awful hopeless loneliness; there is not a heart in all the wide world to cling lovingly to his breast, to open out to him when he despairs of his own life, of himself. Come, father. Leave this house with me. Come, let us make haste and be gone, that ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... biscuit, salt meat, or beer, being rolled down for the same purpose, sailors in loose knee-breeches, and soldiers in tall peaked caps and cross- belts, and officers of each service moving in different directions. She sat there day-dreaming, feeling secure in her loneliness, and presently saw a slight figure, daintily clad in gray and black, who catching her eye made an eager gesture, doffing his plumed hat and bowing low to her. She returned his salute, and thought he passed on, but in another minute she was startled to find him at her ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... called to see us, including the only two ladies in the place, wives of the traders, who looked too delicate to bear the hardships of the wilderness. Perhaps the hardships are not great, but the loneliness must be terrible in the long, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... true; yet, spite of all this, I never could entirely digest some of his imperial reminiscences of high life. I was very sorry for this; as at times it made me feel ill at ease in his company; and made me hold back my whole soul from him; when, in its loneliness, it was yearning to throw itself into the unbounded bosom of ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... little window, looking out across the wilderness of house-tops, where a pall of smoke seemed to convert to luminous chaos the rising sun. There was a lump in her throat, and gathering tears in her eyes. It seemed to her that no one could ever realize a loneliness more absolute and complete than hers. She thought of the early summer mornings in that tiny farmhouse perched on the side of the lonely valley, where the air at least was clear and pure and bright, musical with the song of ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of a misspent life which might have been a blessing—of midnight revels and mad excesses and Circe's feasts, the ruin of soul and body. And this grave could talk to you about one who, far away from home and kindred, had pined and wasted away in his loneliness, and had died of homesickness. But while you are touched with the pathetic recital, that grave near by reads you a lesson of patience, of heroism, of faith, of purity of soul and body preserved in the midst of fiery temptations, even while strong men were yielding themselves ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... window and smiled pleasantly, and Deena wiped her eyes, and began the awful work of making an old house, bristling with the characteristic accumulations of several generations, impersonal enough to rent. She had plenty to do to keep her loneliness in abeyance, but in the back of her consciousness there was a feeling that she had no abiding place. Her family had urged her to marry Simeon, and he was now throwing her back upon her family, and her ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... How's that, Lilly? I'll send a limousine full of pillows for her. It will take Pauline's mind off her loneliness, having some one to mother. We'll put her up in a sun room with a view of pine woods and Hudson River that cannot ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... time one half of his ample quarterly allowance was given her; he visited her in her loneliness, and at last made his peace with God, and declared his punishment just—henceforth to be ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... happened before in his life, and often he felt as if he were choking. It seemed also at times that the great body which made him remarkable was shrinking. He knew that it was only the effect of imagination, but it preyed upon him, and he understood now how one could wither away from mere loneliness ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of twenty-five he had lost his wife and two sons—that furrowed the tendency. During the years immediately following he had tried to fill an immense void of the heart with immense labors of the intellect. The void remained; yet undoubtedly compensation for loneliness had been found in the fixing of his affections upon what can never ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... fades," said Sir Richmond with anger in his voice. "I wonder how many people there are nowadays who have passed through this last experience of ineffectual invocation, this appeal to the fading shadow of a vanished God. In the night. In utter loneliness. Answer me! Speak to me! Does he answer? In the silence you hear the little blood vessels whisper in your ears. You see a faint glow ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... glow a little, and as she gazed out of the open door without looking at anything, her eyes grew very bright. In her loneliness, she had been wishing that Dora Bannister would drive in at the gate, and here was a chance to have a very different sort of a girl drive in—a girl to whom she had taken a great fancy, although she had seen her for so short ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... that he saw his daughter growing to womanhood in that silent and almost deserted house, shouldered now by low tenements and wretched shops and vile drinking-places; that he may have pictured for her a brighter life in that world that had long ago left him behind it in his bereaved and disgraced loneliness; that he had had some vision of her young beauty fulfilling its destiny amid sweeter and fairer surroundings. And let us not forget that he knew no other means than these to win the money for which he cared little; ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... "I have heard that the God of the Hebrews is a merciful God, long-suffering and compassionate, not hard upon those that have sinned ignorantly, if they are sorry for what they have done. Why should I not turn to Him? Who knows if He will not have pity upon my loneliness and protect me? For they say He is the Father of the fatherless, and cares for those who are in trouble." So she rose and knelt upon her knees, with her face turned towards the east, and looked up into heaven and prayed. "Save me," she said, "from those who are pursuing me, before I am caught ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... live-oaks. Little, pale flowers bloomed everywhere, shadows only of our bright blossoms of the South; and the rare birds I saw were gray and small, and chary of song, as though the stillness that slept in this Northern forest was a danger not to be awakened. Loneliness fell on me; my shoulders bent and my head hung heavily. Isene, my mare, paced the soft forest-road without a sound, so quietly that the squatting rabbit leaped from between her forelegs, and the slim, striped, squirrel-like creatures crouched paralyzed as ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... predominant thought was the loneliness of my fate, the loneliness of my body after death. There was not a living thing to ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... loneliness came upon the helmsman, and he began to sing. And he sang the market songs of Durl and Duz, and the old ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... "A little loneliness hurts no man," said the King. He took out his tablets and began to write. When he was done, he gave me the message, adding, "Read it." I read, "Mr Simon Dale will remain under arrest in his own apartment for twenty-four hours, and will not leave it except by the express ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... were swinging back and forth in their ties. The spanker was brailed up, and the spanker boom thrashed idly over the poop as the bark rolled and rolled and rolled. The mainmast was working in its shoe, the rigging and backstays sagged. An air of abandonment, of unspeakable loneliness, of abomination hung about her. Never had Wilbur seen anything more utterly alone. Within three lengths the Captain rose in his ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... a cordial but sweetly playful smile; "but I have a privilege which is at the same time my burden and loneliness. I often pity the young men and maidens, for they cannot have a friendship or an intimacy without their relatives or themselves pronouncing it love, or what they call love. They lose much on this account. The maiden knows not what slumbers in her soul, and what might be ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... The loneliness of the house is awful, and at night I imagine that I hear him outside whining to come in. Many a cold night have I been up two and three times to straighten his bed and cover him up. His bed was the skin of a young buffalo, and he knew just when it was smooth and nice, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... breath sharply. In the growing darkness Harlan's smile seemed to hold an evil significance; it seemed to express a thought that took into consideration the loneliness of the surroundings, the fact that she was alone, and that she was helpless. More—it seemed to be a presumptuous smile, insinuating, ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... placed it in the window as she had done in her youth, as the beacon light for the absent love. As time passed she followed her father to the grave and in a short time stood by the bed of her dying mother. And now she was alone in her loneliness and desolation. Every year when the day came which was to have been her wedding day, the white dress, which had grown yellow with age, was taken out, folded and flowers scattered over it as carefully as we would sprinkle flowers ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... of a sick-bed. He knew that for him, if he were once happy again, there was little danger of a relapse; for his physical nature had not been greatly corrupted: there had not been time for that. He would rise from his sickness newborn. Hence it was the harder for Mr Cupples, in his loneliness, to do battle with his deep-rooted desires. He would never drink as he had done, but might he not have just one tumbler?—That one tumbler he did not take. And—rich reward!—after two months the well of song within him began to gurgle ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... spinning with plans! We are going to open the school right away and there are hundreds of things to be done. In spite of my home-sickness, and loneliness and longing for you loved ones, I wouldn't come home now if I could! It is the feeling that I am needed here, that a big work will go undone, if I don't do it, that simply puts my little wants and desires right out ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... long before, they felt like genuine explorers. So little was known of the mighty stream that they regarded every stretch and turn with keen interest. It was not beautiful now, a vast, brown flood flowing between low and changing shores, but in its size and loneliness it had a majesty ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the darkness, with no companionship save that of the multitudinous stars—which, to my mind, never betray their immeasurable distance so clearly as when one is in mid-ocean—with the sough and moan of the night wind and the soft, seething hiss of the sea whispering in one's ears, the feeling of loneliness becomes almost an obsession, the sense of all-pervading mystery persistently obtrudes itself, and one quickly falls into a condition of readiness to believe the most incredible of the countless weird stories that ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... came to California, and big Jerry's cold did not last very long in the dry heat of Beaver Creek Valley. He and Molly grew so strong and brown and happy that they never minded restrictions and inconveniences, loneliness and strangeness—and when a strong and brown and happy little Timothy joined the group, Molly renounced forever all serious thoughts of going home. California became home. Such friends as chance brought their ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... father's wishes. Nevertheless, he thought, what manner of hurt must not her pride receive when she learned that Florimond had brought him home a wife? Garnache was full of pity for her and for the loneliness that must be hers hereafter, mistress of a vast estate in Dauphiny, alone and friendless. And he was a little sorry for himself and the loneliness which, he felt, would be his hereafter; but that was ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini |
