"Melancholy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a melancholy lay! For Youth, for Life we both regret: How fair they seem; how far ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... profitable one, and knowing sorely enough what an error was here, China Aster tried to undeceive him. But he could not drive the truth into Orchis—Orchis being very obtuse here, and, at the same time, strange to say, very melancholy. Finally, Orchis glanced off from so unpleasing a subject into the most unexpected reflections, taken from a religious point of view, upon the unstableness and deceitfulness of the human heart. But having, as he thought, experienced something of that sort of thing, China ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... vast chamber, examining the iron-barred doors, looking through the grated windows, listening, sighing, waiting. This day, which was Sunday, a pale sun silvered the clouds, and the prisoner watched, with a feeling of inexpressible melancholy, the walkers on the Boulevards. It was easy to see that every passer-by looked at the Bastille with a feeling of terror, and of self-gratulation at not being within its walls. A noise of bolts and creaking hinges drew the prisoner from this sad occupation, and ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... of splendor in dress. We therefore accept the invitation, Woronzow. Announce that to the regent's messenger. But still it is sad and humiliating," continued Elizabeth after a pause, a cloud passing over her usually so cheerful countenance, "yes it is still a melancholy circumstance for the daughter of the great Peter to be so poor that she is not able to dress herself suitably to her rank. Ah, how humiliating is the elevation of my high position, when I cannot even properly reward you, my friends, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever might be the future fate of my History, the life of the historian must be short ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... the constitutional form of state. The young emperor of the Hsuean-t'ung period, after the Japanese conquest of Manchuria in 1931, was installed there. He was, however, entirely without power during the melancholy years of his nominal rule, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... observer as myself, it was plain her kindness was of a more moving nature than the sisterly. The tones of her voice appeared more numerous; she had a light and softness in her eye; she was more gentle with all of us, even with Mr. Henry, even with myself; methought she breathed of some quiet melancholy happiness. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of life so that nothing seems worth while,—some bottled "essence of sunshine" will give new, fresh value to existence. Are you a victim of strange, uncaused fluctuations of mood so that periodically you descend to a bottomless pit of melancholy, —well, then, why suffer, when over the bar a man will furnish you a release from agony? And so men of certain types of temperament, or with unhappy experiences, form the alcoholic habit because it gives them surcease from pain; it deals out ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... BROTHER,—I have seen in the papers the melancholy account of our poor father's decease, and the disastrous circumstances of his second marriage; and the more I have thought of it, the more it seems to me that there was a screw loose somewhere. I had the misfortune, as you know, to offend him by ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... dinner on board. I felt elated: all my pulses were beating merrily. I was keenly alive. Morley was right in what he said. An artist is Nature's pet, and she has mixed all his blood with joy. Natural, instinctive joy, swamped occasionally by melancholy, but always there surging up anew. Joy in himself—joy ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... melancholy sound of the minute guns from sea, making the brothers more impatient than ever; and, at that moment, the fog suddenly lifted, being rapidly wafted away to leeward over the island, enabling the two anxious watchers to see a bit of bright sky overhead, with a twinkling star or two looking ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... couldn't be promised; and in gazing without charge at the pair of weary and sleepy little mountebanks I found the histrionic character and the dramatic profession for the first time revealed to me. They filled me with fascination and yet with fear; they expressed a melancholy grace and a sort of peevish refinement, yet seemed awfully detached and indifferent, indifferent perhaps even to being pinched and slapped, for art's sake, at home; they honoured me with no notice whatever and regarded me doubtless as no better than one of the little louts peeping through ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... something in this criticism of the absent that jarred upon my feelings. I had no love indeed for Captain Trent or any of his vanished gang; but the desertion and decay of this once habitable cabin struck me hard. The death of man's handiwork is melancholy, like the death of man himself; and I was impressed with an involuntary and irrational sense of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... before you, on a subject to which I attach the utmost importance, if I did not undertake to give you the correct point of view with regard to it. I need not here repeat how many of the perverted endeavors and melancholy fortunes of humanity you charge upon religious associations; this is clear as light, in a thousand utterances of your predominant individuals; nor will I stop to refute these accusations, one by one, in order to fix the evil upon other causes. Let us rather submit the whole conception ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Miss Gibson's approaching departure had spread through the household before the one o'clock dinner-time came; and Mr. Coxe's dismal countenance was a source of much inward irritation to Mr. Gibson, who kept giving the youth sharp glances of savage reproof for his melancholy face, and the want of appetite; which he trotted out, with a good deal of sad ostentation; all of which was lost upon Molly, who was too full of her own personal concerns to have any thought or observation to spare from ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... incident in the story of Thomas is after the resurrection. The first evening the apostles met in the upper room to talk over the strange things which had occurred that day. For some reason Thomas was not at this meeting. We may infer that his melancholy temperament led him to absent himself. He had loved Jesus deeply, and his sorrow was very great. There had been rumors all day of Christ's resurrection, but Thomas put no confidence in these. Perhaps his despondent disposition made him unsocial, and ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... have a cat for your lively menage?" he said, pointing to the melancholy animal which Neeland recognised as the dignified ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... territory were for a time indefinitely multiplied. The end, as is well known, was the complete victory of Spain, which, as sword and shield of the counter-reformation, long held Papacy among its other subjects. The melancholy reflections of the philosophers could only show them how those who had called in the barbarians all came to ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... naked glass, at the hotel nearly opposite. There was not a sound, not a movement, in Cork Street. Cork Street, the flat, the hotel, the city, the universe, lay entranced and stupefied beneath the grey vapours of the Sabbath. The sensation to Christine was melancholy, but it was ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... wife and family, and their anxiety upon the account of my absence and exposed situation, made sensible impressions on my heart. A thousand dreadful apprehensions presented themselves to my view, and had undoubtedly disposed me to melancholy, if further indulged. ...
— The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone • John Filson
... the high street, between the lofty, many-storeyed and balconied houses, where every window, every balcony, every housetop was crammed with a dense mass of spectators, all dressed and masked in fantastic gorgeousness, the procession took its melancholy way. Over the scene flashed and played the shifting cross-lights and shadows from the moving torches: red and blue Bengal lights flared up and died out again; and above the trampling of the horses and the measured tread of the marching multitude rose the voices ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... dreadful hurricane. Of the whole crew, and of sixty passengers (chiefly English people returning from France), not one is saved. It is said that a very atrocious criminal was on board the Halcyon. We look with the utmost anxiety for the details of this melancholy event." ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... another of those melancholy little sighs, and this time the poor Gnat really seemed to have sighed itself away, for, when Alice looked up, there was nothing whatever to be seen on the twig, and, as she was getting quite chilly with sitting still so long, she ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... act in St. Denis was one to which perhaps the modern reader gives undue significance, but which certainly must have had a certain melancholy meaning. Before she left, dragged almost a captive in the train of the King, we are told that she laid on the altar of the cathedral the armour she had worn on that evil day before Paris. It was not an unusual act for a warrior to do this on his return from the ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... so melancholy and so pathetically human in the soft, liquid eyes of the animal, that John felt his heart ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... from his word departed, His virtues were so rare, His friends were many and true-hearted, His Poll was kind and fair; And then he'd sing so blithe and jolly, Ah, many's the time and oft! But mirth is turned to melancholy, For Tom ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... adhering to the back of the brougham. (Master Gerald had seen to that.) Then the guests began to make their adieux and melt away, and presently we found ourselves alone in the marquee, a prey to that swift and penetrating melancholy that descends upon those who begin to be festive too early in the day, and find themselves unable to ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... my dear lady, the relation I gave to my parents, at the time of my being first acquainted with this melancholy affair. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... rubrum) is one of the worst of foes to both the blackberry and raspberry—the Rubus occidentalis, or black-cap family, suffering the most, usually. I have seen fields of the Early Wilson and Kittatinny blackberries in New Jersey that presented a melancholy appearance. It is believed to be very contagious, and it can be spread by both trimmer and pickers. Mr. Chas. A. Green, of Monroe County, N. Y., writes: "The end plant of a row in my garden was affected, ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... melancholy seemed to hang about the few scraps of wreckage. How many times the little bridge must have tempted men and maidens to linger of a summer evening, dreaming the big dreams of youth—visions which the spreading wings of Time bear away into the Land ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... the War, when Jon had been at his private school. His romance with her had begun in Paris—his last and most enduring romance. But the French—no Englishman could like them who could not see them in some sort with the detached aesthetic eye! And with that melancholy ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... see them, I suppose," lamented Cecily. "He just worries my life out. And what I mind most of all is, he sits and looks at me in school with such melancholy, reproachful eyes when he ought to be working sums. I won't look at him, but I FEEL him staring at me, and ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... King of Woody Valley had a daughter named Zoza, who was never seen to laugh. The unhappy father, who had no other comfort in life but this only daughter, left nothing untried to drive away her melancholy. So he sent for folks who walk on stilts, fellows who jump through hoops, for boxers, for conjurers, for jugglers who perform sleight-of-hand tricks, for strong men, for dancing dogs, for leaping clowns, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... gratified the national feeling of the Scotch. Immediately on her arrival, she entered the apartments which were once occupied by the beautiful and unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots. Her majesty regarded the historical objects there presented to her, with melancholy interest. The following day the royal family ascended to the top of Arthur's Seat, where it was said her majesty was intensely excited by the magnificence of the scenery. The following day, Prince Albert laid the foundation-stone of the Scottish National Gallery. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... author but yourself so frequently break the thread (seldom a strong thread) of his plot to converse with his reader and moralise his tale, we also might be offended. But who that loves Montaigne and Pascal, who that likes the wise trifling of the one and can bear with the melancholy of the other, but prefers your preaching ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... melancholy?" replied Katherine, carelessly. "Ada, I am so tired I am sure you will excuse me if I go away ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... batch of papers before his eyes and walked up to the table with a rather mincing step, turning the papers over the while. Privy Councillor Wurmt, Chancelier d'Ambassade, was rather short-sighted. This meritorious official laying the papers on the table, disclosed a face of pasty complexion and of melancholy ugliness surrounded by a lot of fine, long dark grey hairs, barred heavily by thick and bushy eyebrows. He put on a black-framed pince-nez upon a blunt and shapeless nose, and seemed struck by Mr Verloc's appearance. Under the enormous ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... was a discreditable neglect of the first requirements of the public. So it is with Esmond. There is, I thought, a reference to it in the Brookfield letters; but in several searches I cannot find it. To his mother he speaks of the book as "grand and melancholy", and to Lady Stanley as of "cut-throat melancholy". It is said to have been sold for a thousand pounds—the same sum that Master Shallow lent Falstaff on probably inferior security. Those who knew thought well of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of our legal readers, we feel convinced, that this week's sketch of the late Henry Cooper, the friend companion and intended biographer of the late Lord Erskine, will prove highly acceptable. The unexpected and melancholy event which deprived the bar of one of its most promising ornaments, and cast a shade over the gay and talented circle in which he moved, must be fresh within the memory of our readers. As yet no memoir, no frail ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... disturbing fact. However grand this project, its political and mercenary features could not be beautiful to him. Why could not all men be right-minded about a noble cause and work unselfishly for the development of the West and the future generations? It was a melancholy thing to learn that men of sincere and generous purpose had spent their all trying to raise the money to build the Union Pacific; on the other hand, it was a satisfaction to hear that many capitalists with greedy claws had ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... and remembers that it was here, even amid the comparative ruins of a building once dedicated to the sacred cause of Religion and her twin sister, Charity, that the genius of Byron was first developed. Here that he paced with youthful melancholy the halls of his illustrious ancestors, and trode the walks of the long-banished monks. The housekeeper—a remarkably good looking and polite woman—showed us through the different apartments, and explained in the most minute manner ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... remarked, with a melancholy kindliness of tone, 'fate has a grudge against us two. It ruined our youth, and now it's embroiling us once more. Can't we both be philosophical? Can't we contrive to look at the thing ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... would seldom produce any music or attempt any recognized air. Leaning back in his arm-chair of an evening, he would close his eyes and scrape carelessly at the fiddle which was thrown across his knee. Sometimes the chords were sonorous and melancholy. Occasionally they were fantastic and cheerful. Clearly they reflected the thoughts which possessed him, but whether the music aided those thoughts, or whether the playing was simply the result of a whim or fancy was more than I could determine. I might have rebelled against ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... overcoat. Both his side pockets had been, apparently, strained to the utmost to accommodate what looked like a bunch of pasteboard-bound note-books, now far on the way to their original pulp, and lopped despondently outward. A melancholy pool had already begun forming ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... vanity, of which she had no little share, led her to accept his attentions to a certain point, but the keen man of the world soon saw that his "little game," as in his own vernacular he styled it, would not be successful, and he was the last one to sigh in vain or mope an hour in lovelorn melancholy. While ceasing to press his suit, he continued to be a frequent and familiar visitor at the house, and thus his attention was drawn to Zell, who, though young, had developed early in the stimulating atmosphere in which she lived. At first he petted ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... of this melancholy opinion,—an opinion which takes the life out of the gospel,—the author relies chiefly on that passage in which Jesus says to the Jews that they were of their father the devil. (John 8:44.) From this he argues that they had no right to regard God as Father, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... waltzes, and couples might be seen dancing under the bright lamps and chandeliers—what a sordid spectacle they presented in comparison with the sight the streets afforded! Thinking of Hongkong, he asked himself if the moonlit nights in that island were so poetical and sweetly melancholy as those of the Philippines, and a deep sadness settled down ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... a nature but infected; A poor unmanly melancholy sprung From change of fortune. Why this spade, this place? This slave-like habit? and these looks of care? Thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft, Hug their diseas'd perfumes, and have forgot That ever Timon was. Shame not these woods By putting on the cunning of a carper. Be thou ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... wife six months ago, and was quite cheerful just at first, but now he 's really too distressin'. I 've done all I can to rouse him; it's so melancholy to see him mopin'. And, my dear Dick, the way he mangles the new rose-trees! I'm afraid he's goin' mad; I shall have to send him away; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... their views, without a trace of their sister's force of intellect or her strenuous temper. E. resembled her in person, he was tall, fair, with auburn curls; he cultivated a certain tendency to the Byronic type, fatal and melancholy. A. was short, brown and jocose, with a pretension to common sense; bluff and chatty. As a little child, I adored my Uncle E., who sat silent by the fireside holding me against his knee, saying nothing, but looking ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... however, grow up into uglier ducks, and Mrs. Govers resigned herself to the melancholy prospect of the widowed mother of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... been founded by Warren Hastings. It was an unhealthy station, especially for youngsters fresh from England. A burning sun by day; hot stifling nights; and no breath of wind sweeping across the parched ghats. Within a few weeks the dreaded cholera made its appearance; the melancholy roll of muffled drums was heard every evening at sunset; and Ensign Gilbert was ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... has been abuse by taking too much. And therefore in the summer they feed on fruits, because they are moist and juicy and cool, and counteract the heat and dryness. In the winter they feed on dry articles, and in the autumn they eat grapes, since they are given by God to remove melancholy and sadness; and they also make use of scents to a great degree. In the morning, when they have all risen they comb their hair and wash their faces and hands with cold water. Then they chew thyme or rock parsley or fennel, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... skeleton bridge, as in the piles Of some dead lake-built city, full of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble, to a broken tune (Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!) So melancholy a soliloquy It sounds as it might tell The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, The terror of Time and Change and Death, That wastes this floating, transitory world." [Footnote: W. E. Henley, ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Wortley Montague, of modern times, are generally received as some of the best specimens extant of epistolary composition. The letters of Charles Lamb are a series of brilliances, though of kaleidoscope variety; they have wit without buffoonery, and seriousness without melancholy. He closes one of them by subscribing himself his friend's "afflicted, headachey, sorethroaty, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... manner of the minister himself, who, when I entered, sat upon a sofa, with his arms folded, and his eyes directed to the ground. When he spoke there was extreme depression in the tones of his voice, his dark features wore an air of melancholy, and he exhibited all the appearance of a person meditating to escape from the miseries of this life by the most desperate of all ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... before Christmas, for the house in St. John's Wood was still the rallying-point for the family, although his elder children were now married and dispersed. But he did not stay long.] "Wife wonderfully better," [he writes to Sir M. Foster on January 8,] "self as melancholy as a pelican in the wilderness." [He meant to have left London on the 16th, but his depressed condition proved to be the beginning of a second attack of pleurisy, and he was unable to start for Bournemouth ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... against which they reposed. Her cheek was perhaps paler than when first we made her acquaintance; anxiety for her lover, and, latterly, for her father, was the cause; but her beauty had lost nothing by the change, for the shade of melancholy upon her features seemed, by adding to the interest her expressive countenance inspired, rather to enhance than diminish its charm. She was now watching for her father, who had led her to expect his return at about this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... take the crown from Thomassin, and in the person of one Carlo Bertinazzi, commonly called Carlin. Our actor, Garrick, was an admirer of this famous Mime. Of Carlin, M. Sand speaks:—"Like most clever buffoons, he had a very melancholy disposition, and, as with Dominique, his gaiety was what the English term humour. It belonged to his mind, and not to his temperament." Carlin also wrote a book entitled, "Les Metamorphosis d'Arlequin." In 1783 Carlin died, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... leaving the apartment, and breaking with her for ever, it cost her but a change of look and tone, from that of real and haughty resentment to that of kind and playful despotism, again shaded off into melancholy and serious feeling, to lead me back to my seat, her willing subject, on ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a state of profound melancholy; but he soon burst from this gloomy mood into one of renewed fierceness and fatal desperation. Nine months after the battle of Morat he re-entered Lorraine, at the head of an army, not composed of his faithful militia ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... Lorenzo was at the Convent of St. Clare, furnished with the necessary mandate. The Nuns were at Matins. He waited impatiently for the conclusion of the service, and at length the Prioress appeared at the Parlour Grate. Agnes was demanded. The old Lady replied, with a melancholy air, that the dear Child's situation grew hourly more dangerous; That the Physicians despaired of her life; But that they had declared the only chance for her recovery to consist in keeping her quiet, and not ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... for him?" asked the melancholy mime, who had in his nature somewhat of the cynicism of Jaques, without his grand imaginings of soul. "There are many off the stage, my lord, in better practice." "True, most true," acquiesced Buckingham; ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... fast—beating with a new and strange happiness glowing through her. Only a few minutes ago she had felt so weary and wretched; the familiar scene, which she loved so dearly, had seemed flat and dreary and full of melancholy, and now—oh! how lovely it was! how good it was to ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds The bell's deep tones are swelling; 'tis the knell Of the departed year. No funeral train Is sweeping past; yet, on the stream and wood, With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred, As by a mourner's sigh; and, on yon cloud, That floats so still and placidly through heaven, The spirits of the Seasons seem to stand. Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form, And ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various
... a speculation concerning the nature and origin of those agreeable emotions which are so generally produced by the sight of objects that suggest the ideas of decay and desolation. It is happy for us, that, by the alchemy of poetry, we are able to turn some of our misfortunes into sources of melancholy pleasure, after the poignancy of grief has been assuaged by time. Nature has beneficently provided, also, that many an object, which is capable of communicating no direct pleasure to our senses, shall affect us agreeably through the medium of sentiment. The image of the Owl is calculated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... this part," said Cosmo. "I made acquaintance with it the last thing as I was growing ill. It looks to me so melancholy! If I were here, I should never rest till I had with my own hands got it into some ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... ministry. There are some, indeed, "whom my dim eyes in vain explore." In my mind, a greater calamity could not have fallen on the public than the exclusion of one of them. But I drive away that, with other melancholy thoughts. A great deal ought to be said upon that subject, or nothing. As to the distinguished persons to whom my friends who remain are joined, if benefits nobly and generously conferred ought to procure ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... why didn't you ever let folks know yer style, instead uv trottin' 'round like a melancholy clam with his shells shut up tight? That's what this crowd wants to know! Now yev opened down to bed-rock, we'll git English Sam from Sonora, an' git up the tallest kind ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... was the name over the shop—looked like a man with a past—a miserable past, for in his one melancholy eye and twitching, nervous mouth could be read sorrow and apprehension. His face was pale, and he had an odd habit of glancing over his left shoulder, as though he expected to be tapped thereon by a police officer. Sixty years had rounded his shoulders and weakened his back, ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... peacefulest periods it was pervaded by a baneful Spook called the "Party Spirit," and always by the dull booings of unwilling young gentlemen at their lessons, like the raucous murmurings of an assemblage of melancholy rooks, or of kites and crows cawing and screaming in the intervals of their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... born to him in quick succession, and he found it no easy task to provide food, shelter and clothing for his little family. The light heartedness for which he had formerly been noted entirely deserted him, and he became sad and melancholy. His health did not improve, and it was with difficulty that he could perform his daily task. His strength was so slight that he would frequently return from his day's work too exhausted to eat. He could only go to bed, and ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... Mr. CLARKE, has now reigned at BOOTH'S for nearly six weeks. During that time there has been a perceptible change in the metaphorical atmosphere of the house. The audience no longer wears the look of subdued melancholy which was once involuntarily assumed by each mourner for the memory of SHAKSPEARE, who passed the solemn threshold. The ushers no longer find it necessary to sustain their depressed spirits by the surreptitious chewing of the quid of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... intrude, convulsing their features, and working every line into an expression of the keenest agony. To these men the sun brought no return of joy. Day after day rolled on, but their state was immutable. Existence was to them a scene of invariable melancholy; every moment was a moment of anguish; yet did they wish to prolong that moment, fearful that the coming period would bring a severer fate. They thought of the past with insupportable repentance, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... set out for Zuitburg, in Zealand, where the fleet which was to convoy him had orders to assemble. In his way thither he passed through Ghent, and after stopping there a few days, to indulge that tender and pleasing melancholy which arises in the mind of every man in the decline of life on visiting the place of his nativity, and viewing the scenes and objects familiar to him in his early youth, he pursued his journey, accompanied by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... spell that had been laid upon him. During that time he had come to take a luxurious satisfaction in the interest his case was exciting in the neighborhood. Being in excellent physical condition, he could afford the melancholy joy of playing with the idea of death. He spent hours discussing the details of his funeral, which had assumed in his mind the proportions of ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... northern isle, with its dark fringe of pines; its wonderful moss, its fragrant and dewy ferns, its graceful sumacs, just putting on their scarlet-lipped leaves, the morning stillness broken only by the faint unearthly cry of the melancholy loon, the spar-dyked cliffs of limestone, and the fantastic couch, with its too lovely occupant, never faded from his memory and remained to the last as realities which indeed they have become likewise to me, through the intensity with ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... would find a Hamlet at the root of this melancholy you must ask our Ophelia. She met no one with me. My accident left me to enjoy my holiday as best I could at a ranch deep in the foothills, and Reenie stayed with me there. There ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... of a locomotive dispels the idea that all the world is wilderness. The firefly lamps glow along the margin of the rushes. The frogs are now in full chorus, the great bulls beating their tom-toms and the small fry filling in the chinks with shriller cries. How remote the scene and how melancholy the chorus! ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... time to see the last boat go out. Already the river was "throwing ice," and every day the jagged edges of it crept further towards midstream. An immense and melancholy mob stood on the wharf as the little steamer backed off into the channel. There were uproarious souls on board, and many women of the town screaming farewells to their friends. On the boat all was excited, extravagant joy; on the wharf, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... mourning for their kindred, the deepest privation in a property sense. Everything the loss of which would make them poor was sacrificed on the graves of their relatives or distinguished warriors, and as melancholy because of removal from their old homes caused frequent deaths, there was no lack of occasion for the sacrifices. The widows and orphans of the dead warriors were of course the chief mourners, and exhibited their grief in many peculiar ways. I ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... was very melancholy, and did not know what to do, or how to act at all. Cucullin was an ugly customer to meet with; and, the idea of the "cake" aforesaid flattened the very heart within him. What chance could he have, strong and brave ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... and got out, and there, sure enough, one of the rear tires presented itself to her view in a state of melancholy collapse. It had picked up a horseshoe together with the three jagged nails adhering to it, and was patently, hopelessly, irretrievably punctured. Grace had seen a hundred repairs made on the road, but up to now she had never put her hands to the task herself. She brimmed over with ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... to women, and he would not shield his own good name at the cost of that of the wife of his youth and the mother of his children. But since his death his only remaining child has, in devotion to her father's memory, stated the melancholy truth: that Mrs. Bradlaugh gave way to drink; that for long years he bore with her and did all that man could do to save her; that finally, hopeless of cure, he broke up his home, and placed his wife in the care of her parents in the country, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... tranquil scenes, and such placid beauty, the "melancholy Cowley," passed the later days of big anxious existence; here we may fancy him receiving Evelyn and Denham, the poets and men of letters of his troubled day, who found the disappointments of courtly life more than their philosophy could endure. Here his ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... her noble brother is a slave, with felons, laboring with the cursed chain-gang in the same city to which we are bound. Now, boys, do you wonder that when I found myself under orders to go again to the scene of all this misery I was affected, and that a melancholy has possessed me which has increased as the voyage has progressed? I did determine at first that I would leave the ship at Gibralter and go home, but I dreaded to part with my shipmates. I shall not go ashore while we ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... old Leonie again. She had a capable little head, and plenty of tact; she would know how to manage the fellow, to be sure. He was easy in his mind about her happiness but he felt ousted from the first place in her thoughts which had been his ever since the girl could speak. A melancholy regret of the days of his childhood settled upon Captain D'Hubert, third aide-de-camp to ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... glutton, he was almost always ill; and, as he did good to nobody, he had no friends; and even his servants spoke ill of him behind his back, and all his neighbours, whom he oppressed, hated him. For these reasons he was sullen, melancholy, and unhappy, and became displeased with all who appeared more cheerful than himself. When he was carried out in his palanquin (a kind of bed, borne upon the shoulders of men) he frequently passed by the cottage ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... than I found the other omnibus-tops by no means so depopulated as I had fancied. To be sure, the straw hats which six weeks before had formed the almost universal head-covering of the 'bus-top throngs were now in a melancholy minority, but they had not so wholly vanished as they vanish with us when September begins. They had never so much reason to be here as with us, and they might have had almost as much reason for lingering ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... woman so disposed to listen to reason as herself. She was ignorant of the power of habit over her temper. The rector had taught her pride, marriage had taught her misfortune, and pride and misfortune had made her fretful, melancholy and moody. She had suffered no opposition from her first husband; her will had been his law; and she knew not, till she had made the trial, how difficult it is to concede with a good grace. The least thing that offended her threw her into tears. The passions ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... taken her home and sheltered her, and had straightway fallen desperately in love with her, to discover, with unutterable horror, that her head had been severed from her fair shoulders by the cruel knife twelve hours before, and that her melancholy loveliness was altogether phantasmal ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Street, nor is it because the actors in the one are of the humble, in the others of the noble class; but simply because the enjoyment in the first is visible and hearty, because in the other it is a listless and melancholy pretence. Helen fancied it was the swings and the booths that gave her that innocent exhilaration,—it was not so; it was the unconscious sympathy with the crowd around her. When the poetical nature quits its own dreams for the actual world, it enters and transfuses itself into the hearts and humours ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his neck out, his enormous pin settled in his stock to his satisfaction, his eyes complacently directed towards the reflection of his left and favourite whisker. Eglantine was laid on a settee, in an easy, though melancholy posture; he was twiddling the tongs with which he had just operated on Walker with one hand, and his right-hand ringlet with the other, and he was thinking—thinking of Morgiana; and then of the bill which was to become due on the 16th; and then of ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is la belle Barberie!" repeated the young sailor, for such his dress denoted him to be, studying her features with an expression of face, in which pleasure vied with evident and touching melancholy. "Fame hath done no injustice, for here is all that might justify the folly or ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... wide experience, she was something of a fatalist. That is to say, she believed that her evil destiny might spring upon her unawares at any moment, and she felt something when she was with Harrington that warned her. For the first time in her life she knew what it was to have moods of melancholy; she caught herself asking what was really the end and object of her gay life, whether it amounted to anything worthy in comparison with the trouble one had to take to amuse one's self, whether it would not be far better in the end to live like Miss Schenectady, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... 27th, the Supply tender arrived from Norfolk Island, where she had been with a quantity of provisions and stores for that settlement; she brought the melancholy account of the loss of Mr. James Cunningham, and four others, who were drowned in the surf, by their boat being overset in landing the stores from the Supply; so exceedingly difficult of access is the shore of that island, ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... more kind and considerate than the conduct of my brother officers,—a hundred little plans and devices for making me forget the late unhappy event were suggested and practised,—and I look back to that melancholy period, marked as it was by the saddest circumstance of my life, as one in which I received more of truly friendly companionship than even my palmiest ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... at the long man and the short man. They in turn regarded him with something like respect. The long man wore a drooping, streaky-yellow horseshoe of a moustache dominated by a long and melancholy nose. Flanking the base of this sorrowful nose was a pair of eyes hard and bright ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... not been an idler in his prolonged absence. In the first place, he had striven with the whole force of a powerful will to subdue a useless passion, and had striven in vain. He had not, however, yielded for a day to a dreamy melancholy, but, in accordance with his promise "to do his best," had been tireless in mental and physical activity. The tendency to wander somewhat aimlessly had ceased, and he had adopted the plan of studying modern life at the old centres ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... youth danced in one of the ballets at St. Germain, it is said at the desire of Richelieu, who was an expert in spectacle. It appears that he was encouraged in these amusements to remedy fits of melancholy. ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... and the furious winds had sailed out over the deep, the rains descended and drenched her flimsy garment. The stormy winds sank down to a melancholy wail, and played their dirge amongst the branches of the cluster-pine, and the dawn came up from the east and struggled ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... magnanimous'—began Shubin. 'Who the devil was it in history was so particularly magnanimous? Well, never mind! And now,' he continued, with melancholy triumph, uncovering a third rather large mass of clay, 'you shall behold something which will show you the humility and discernment of your friend. You will realise that he, like a true artist again, feels the need and ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... their babies like balancing-poles, as they tottered along the gangway-plank. Men tried to secure themselves from being brushed into eternity by the powerful sweep of skirts. My own personal reminiscence of this transit from the wharf to the gallant bark of our choice is melancholy and vague, being marked chiefly to memory by the complicated curse bestowed upon me by a hideous old Irish-woman, whose oranges I accidentally upset in the crowd, and by whom I was subsequently derided with buffo song and scurrilous dance as long as the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Adela's favourite wood were already falling. At the Manor there was once more disorder; before Mutimer and his wife took their departure the removal of furniture had commenced. Over the whole scene brooded a spirit of melancholy. It needed faith in human energy to imagine the pollutions swept away, and the seasons peacefully gliding as of old between the hillsides and amid meadows ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... of dear ones, or some great cross well borne, you need not forget. But think of these things as sent to enrich your nature, and to make you more human and sympathetic. You are missing them if you permit yourself instead to grow melancholy ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... confederacy, and slavery would have been seen, at this time, shrunk up to the most contemptible dimensions, if it had not vanished entirely away. But we have furnished another instance to be added to the long and melancholy list already ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... on my fingers and jumping from foot to foot. Good people carried me to the hospital. When I began to get better and come to my senses, my drunken spell was over. Dread came over me! Horror seized me! How had I lived? What had I done? I began to feel melancholy; yes, such melancholy that it seemed better to die. And so I decided that when I got quite well, I would go on a pilgrimage, then go to my brother, and let him take me as a porter. This I did. I threw myself plump at his feet! "Be a father ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... and most surly take a tincture from their countrymen and acquaintance. A chearful countenance infuses a sensible complacency and serenity into my mind; as an angry or sorrowful one throws a sudden dump upon me. Hatred, resentment, esteem, love, courage, mirth and melancholy; all these passions I feel more from communication than from my own natural temper and disposition. So remarkable a phaenomenon merits our attention, and must be traced up to its ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... glimpses of his glorious mind. His deep passion for solitude grew to full power; the varied excitement of his travels invigorated his character and stored his imagination with impressions, and his inborn sadness rose from a querulous bitterness to the grandeur of his later melancholy. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... ago that we should sink or swim together." He paused, and then, with a melancholy smile upon his face, continued,—"I have no intention of breaking my oath, you see; but I repeat, that your road seems to be a most perilous one, and I will add that I consider you headstrong and self-opinionated; but ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... he again gives the reins to his melancholy. "Always alone, though in the midst of men," he faces the thought of suicide. With an innate power of summarizing and balancing thoughts and sensations, he draws up arguments for and against this act. He is in the dawn of his days and in four months' time ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... with singing, of which there was a plentiful repetition, the boys and girls in the foreground singing, the melancholy throng behind standing dumb. Hymn-books were supplied to them, and if they could read they might have found on the page from which the first hymn was taken a hymn so curiously infelicitous to the occasion that it is worth quoting a couple of verses. ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... silence interrupted only by the cry of the wild beast in his lair, and awed by the marvelous beauty of lakes and streams, framed in mountains and fringed with forests, where water-fowl of every variety of note and plumage floated buoyant upon the wave, and pierced the air with monotonous and melancholy song. Ten or twelve Indians—men, women, and children—followed them, annoying them not a little with their intrusiveness and their greedy grasp of food. The embassy traveled about fifteen miles to a small Indian village upon a branch of Taunton River. Here they arrived about ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... "poor Bess," she had to watch over the frenzied mania of the wife and to confront the almost equally insane fury of the husband. One of the letters which she wrote at this time to Everina describes forcibly enough her sister's sad condition and her own melancholy:— ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... ancient inhabitants of the mountains of Peru and Bolivia, are described as having an olive-brown complexion, with regular features, large heads, and a thoughtful and melancholy cast of countenance. They practised in early times the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... melancholy incident—the death of Mr. Thrale. He had been long ailing, and had had a paralytic stroke in 1779. He died on the 4th of April, 1781. Probably no one felt the loss more keenly than Thrale's old friend, 'Dr. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... shewn by their movements and the sounds uttered, we must admit that they possess some power of imagination. There must be something special, which causes dogs to howl in the night, and especially during moonlight, in that remarkable and melancholy manner called baying. All dogs do not do so; and, according to Houzeau (21. ibid. 1872, tom. ii. p. 181.), they do not then look at the moon, but at some fixed point near the horizon. Houzeau thinks that their imaginations are disturbed ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... visits to the court, by the queen's rival, the Lady Elizabeth Lucy. He passed into the closet; he lifted the arras; he stood in that chamber, which gratitude and chivalry and hospitable faith should have made sacred as a shrine. And suddenly, as he entered, the moon, before hid beneath a melancholy cloud, broke forth in awful splendour, and her light rushed through the casement opposite his eye, and bathed the room with the beams of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of him was that we had the full understanding of the treasure as much as my Lord Treasurer himself, and knew what he can do, and that whatever our case is, more money cannot be got till the Parliament. So talked of getting an account ready as soon as we could to give the Parliament, and so very melancholy parted. So I back again, calling my wife at her sister's, from whose husband we do now hear that he was safe this week, and going in a ship to the fleete from the buoy of the Nore, where he has been all this while, the fleete being ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... bales, plunged the third day into mountainous wild country echoing and ghastly with long-lasting war. Their servants and muleteers walked and rode, lamented or were gay, raised faction, swore, laughed, traveled grimly or in a dull melancholy or mirthfully; quarreled and made peace, turn by turn, day by day, much alike. One who was a bully fixed a quarrel upon me and another took my part. All leaped to sides. I was forgotten in the midst of them; they could hardly have ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... said things to one another—long pent-up things that bruised and crushed and cut. But over it all in my memory now is an effect of deliberate confrontation, and the figure of Marion stands up, pale, melancholy, tear-stained, injured, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... so sad a task. His lungs were pierced through by the deer's horns in two places, and he had died of sudden suffocation by internal haemorrhage. A large hollow tree grew close to the spot; in this I buried him. The stag's antlers now hang in the hall, a melancholy but glorious memento of ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... held back. She could see nothing else, think of nothing else. Not that it was so very handsome—though no other had ever approached it in its power over her imagination—but because of its expression of haunting melancholy,—a melancholy so settled and so evidently the result of long-continued sorrow that her interest had been reached and her heartstrings shaken as never before in ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... dated June, 1915, is in my desk. It tells incidentally about the visit of a friend to the Ambassador shortly after his interview with the President. 'It's coming out all right,' the Count said cheerfully, his melancholy eyes lighting up, and the anxious lines etched in his face during the months past lightening. 'No, they're not going to get rid of me yet for a while,' referring to the ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... Maer, which he valued much—but he rarely carried it, because it tempted him to take too many pinches. In one of his early letters he speaks of having given up snuff for a month, and describes himself as feeling "most lethargic, stupid, and melancholy." Our former neighbour and clergyman, Mr. Brodie Innes, tells me that at one time my father made a resolve not to take snuff except away from home, "a most satisfactory arrangement for me," he adds, "as I kept a box in my study to which there was access from the garden without ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... thing was repeated to him. He wonders why he does not go any more in his unfortunate father's room, and why there is no more "de cher Papa," as he says: else he makes no question or observation and is very quiet and cheerful. He cannot yet feel what he has lost and his melancholy fate: but Helene does what she can to keep alive in him the remembrance of his father.... Yours ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... the treatment which I had received at the Guest House still burned hotly within me, but the mystery of it all had taken the keen edge off my wrath, and I think a sort of melancholy was the keynote of my reflections as, descending the steps to the sunken garden, I saw Val Beverley, in a delicate blue gown, coming toward me. She was the spirit of my dreams, and the embodiment of my mood. When she lowered her eyes at my approach, ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... pressing against a spring, a sliding panel flew open. A screen was placed within, so as to hide from view the inmate of the secret chamber, and Nicholas, having coughed slightly, to announce his presence, and received an answer in a low, melancholy female voice, stepped through the aperture, and stood ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... his cold, fixed, grey, melancholy glance, first on the one of them and then on the other. "Some," he said gravely, "would, in my case, have avoided this meeting; but I have confidence in you both, although you are young, and beset with the snares incidental to your age. There are those within who should not know that ye have ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... approaching carriage is inelegant and also dangerous. To attempt to cross the street between the carriages of a funeral procession, is rude and disrespectful. The foreign custom of removing the hat and standing in a respectful attitude until the melancholy train has passed, is a commendable one to be followed in ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... now told of a melancholy accident which had befallen one of our marines. He had not been seen since eleven or twelve o'clock the preceding night. It was supposed that he had fallen overboard, out of the head, where he had been ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... such formidable ideas, that I find myself disposed to share in their afflictions, though I know them to be groundless and imaginary, or, which is worse, purely affected. To offer them comfort one by one, would be not only an endless, but a disobliging task. Some of them, I am convinced would be less melancholy, if there were more occasion. I shall therefore, instead of hearkening to further complaints, employ some part of this paper for the future, in letting such men see, that their natural or acquired fears are ill-grounded, and their artificial ones as ill-intended. That all our ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... appearance of Manchester. So I was not astonished at the number of tall chimneys, nor at the quantity of smoke that issued from them. And I could quite enter into the feelings of the friend who told me that nothing was more melancholy than to see a clear atmosphere over the town; the blacker it looked the more prosperity was indicated, and the more ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... fresh and lovely, and bore no signs of last night's storm. Whitefoot was in frisky spirits, but she found herself looking at everything with melancholy eyes, as though she were looking her last at the pleasant prospect. In vain she strove to shake off the uncanny feeling, and to answer Richard's remarks in her usual sprightly fashion. The very effort to speak brought the tears to her eyes, and she had the vexed feeling ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... were accordingly set out with fir, and the little feathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toy-shop to the moors. A great, rooty sweetness of bogs was in the air, and at all seasons an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds. Standing so high and with so little shelter, it was a cold, exposed house, splashed by showers, drenched by continuous rains that made the gutters to spout, beaten upon and buffeted by all the winds of heaven; and the prospect would be often black with tempest, and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her, great was the misery this most wretched father endured, and, not being able to bear the sight of that country where his last hope and only memory of his dear Thaisa was entombed, he took ship and hastily departed from Tarsus. From the day he entered the ship a dull and heavy melancholy seized him. He never spoke, and seemed totally insensible to everything ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... though with an expression somewhat too fierce to be pleasing. His frame was muscular and well-proportioned; his air commanding; and his deportment in the Spanish quarters had a degree of refinement, the more interesting that it was touched with melancholy. He is accused of having been cruel in his wars, and bloody in his revenge.33 It may be true, but the pencil of an enemy would be likely to overcharge the shadows of the portrait. He is allowed to have been bold, high-minded, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective chief magistrate. He believed that no nation that had ever known the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it and not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Mareschal the younger: his castles fell daily into the hands of the enemy; Dover was the only place which, from the valour and fidelity of Hubert de Burgh, the governor, made resistance to the progress of Lewis [b]: and the barons had the melancholy prospect of finally succeeding in their purpose, and of escaping the tyranny of their own king, by imposing on themselves and the nation a foreign yoke. But this union was of short duration between the French and English nobles: and the imprudence of Lewis, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... substance of Father Marquette's narrative; and the whole of it accords so remarkably with the descriptions of subsequent travellers, and with the actual features of the country through which he passed, as to remove every doubt of its genuineness. The melancholy fate of the author, which followed soon afterwards, was probably the reason why his expedition was not in a more conspicuous manner brought before ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... proper, however, to declare that in our opinion, as those objections were not founded in speculative theory, but deduced from principles which have been established by the melancholy example of other nations, in different ages, so they will never be removed until the cause itself shall cease to exist. The sooner, therefore, the public apprehensions are quieted, and the government is possessed of the confidence of the people, the ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... quickly at him, but could see nothing wrong about his mind. His eyes were clear and natural; his whole appearance showed him to be a plain, blunt seaman, little disposed to invent imaginary dangers. Still, there was in his manner, a deep melancholy which showed me that it was not any natural disease that he dreaded, and ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... It is a melancholy fact that as the vast majority of women and their husbands have, under existing circumstances, not enough nourishment, no capital, no credit, and no knowledge of science or business, they would, if the State would pay for birth as it now pays for death, be exploited by joint ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... of mass. It pleases me to know that the great Sir Walter himself had a hand in the building of this very house, planned the barbican and the water-gate. All round the house lies a broad moat of black water, full of innumerable carp. The place was breathlessly still; only the sharp melancholy cries of water-birds and the distant booming of guns broke the silence. The water was all sprinkled with golden leaves, that made a close carpet round the sluices; the high elms were powdered with gold; the chestnuts showed a rustier red. A silent gardener, raking leaves with ancient leisureliness, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the earthly matchmaker instead of the divine guidance, and you may some day be led to use the words of Solomon, whose experience in home life was as melancholy as it was multitudinous. One day his palace with its great wide rooms and great wide doors and great wide hall was too small for him and the loud tongue of a woman belaboring him about some of his neglects, and he retreated to the housetop to get relief from ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... century ago, in the days of old King Derby, was a bustling wharf,—but which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood,—at the head, I say, of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... contemplating the melancholy result, "had I but chosen a mate for myself with half the care that I did for my Dog I should now be a proud ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... innocently do so? Limit and distinguish the subject as you can, it will come at last to this question. For, shall we say that we are then at liberty to commit suicide, when we find our continuance in life becomes useless to mankind? Any one who pleases, may make himself useless; and melancholy minds are prone to think themselves useless when they really are not so.... In like manner, whatever other rule you assign, it will ultimately bring us to an indiscriminate toleration of suicide, in all cases in which there is danger of its being committed. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... melancholy death-bed scene To claim your tears, dear Brander. Doubtless days Of infinite scope lie yet before me, since No oracle has foretold that I shall die. But if I die, then go I singing down, Not praying or repentant, to my grave. I would smite again the altar! I would smite The hearts bowed ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... wondered, jeering the while at his own grotesque fancy, how his neighbors could sleep with those mournful yet sinister howlings burdening the air, but he became convinced at last that no one heard the melancholy ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... humbly beg your Majesty's consent to't, If you believe Alcippus worthy of it; The generous Youth I have bred up to Battles, Taught him to overcome, and use that Conquest As modestly as his submissive Captive, His Melancholy, (but his easy Fetters) To meet Death's Horrors with undaunted looks: How to despise the Hardships of a Siege; To suffer Cold and Hunger, want of Sleep. Nor knew he other rest than on his Horse-back, Where he would sit and take a hearty Nap; And ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... ashes; here the hearth had no doubt been, and the chimney in falling had covered it with rubbish. I stood for some time in silent admiration of the exuberance of Nature and the littleness of man: and when I was obliged to leave that enchanting solitude, I exclaimed with melancholy, "Are ruins, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... German, and other visitors. Prominent among those resting there are: Shelley, the English poet (died 1822), whose heart only was buried there; the tombstone of the English poet Keats (died 1821) bears the melancholy inscription: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." There is also the grave of August Goethe (died 1830), the only son of ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... jokes about mothers-in-law, stepmothers and stepfathers—we will none of this. My heart warms to the melancholy Jacques, who dedicated his book to his mother-in-law, "my best friend, who always came when she was needed and never left so long as there was work to do." Richard Wagner's stepfather was his patient, loving ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... up by a naked Brahman, perched on a donkey and holding over the head of the boy a huge red silk umbrella. After him a car loaded with a thousand cocoa-nuts and a hundred bamboo baskets, tied together by a red rope. The god who looks after marriages drove in melancholy isolation on the vast back of an elephant, whose mahout led him by a chain of flowers. Our humble party modestly advanced just behind the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... about a week's continuance of this unaccountable melancholy, a welcome change tool place, for the Rajah sent to call together all the chiefs, priests, and princes who were then in Mataram, his capital city; and when they were all assembled in anxious expectation, he ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... eight times, louder and louder with each repetition. No other bird equals this little Thrush in the emphasis with which he delivers his brief communication. His notes are associated with summer noon-days in the deep woods, and, when bursting upon the ear in the silence of noon, they disperse all melancholy thoughts, and inspire one with a vivid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... that the tide was flowing against him; instinct, premonitions, warned him that perhaps his end was not far off. In this speech—it was to be his last before the Convention—the melancholy note prevailed. {218} There was no effort to conciliate, no attempt at being politic, only a slightly disheartened tone backed by the iteration which France already knew so well:—the remedy for the evil must be sought in purification; the Convention, ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... squalid, like poor, stupid, top-heavy things that had felt the wrath of the summer tempest, stood the drenched structures on either side of the narrow and crooked way, ghastly and picturesque, under the giant canopy. Rain dripped wretchedly in slow drops of melancholy sound from their projecting eaves upon the broken flagging, lay there in pools or trickled into the swollen drains, where the fallen torrent sullenly gurgled on its way to the river. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... blood from the pavilion to the edge of the forest, and there was lifted to heaven, in a moment, among the angels. Michu, who had known he was not appreciated, and who mistook his wife's grieved and melancholy manner for lack of affection, and had left her to herself, living chiefly out of doors and reserving all his tenderness for his boy, instantly understood the meaning of her tears. She had cursed the part which her beauty and her father's will had forced her to take; but ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac |
