"Pathetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mrs. Holland. He himself had given up every vestige of hope, when it was known that the name of her husband was not among the list of those whom Tippoo had been forced to release. Margaret Holland, however, still clung to hope. Her face was paler, and there was a set, pathetic expression in it; so, when she spoke of her husband as being still alive, Ben would sooner have cut out his tongue than allow the slightest word, indicative of his own feeling of certainty as to the captain's fate, to escape him; and he always made a pretence ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... notion of the personal manner and habits of our friend. For the intellectual rest, we lift the veil of its noble modesty, and can even here discern them. Mark its humor, crammed into a few thinking words,—its pathetic sensibility in the midst of contrast,—its wit, truth, and feeling,—and, above all, its fanciful retreat at the close under a phantom cloud ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... prayers. The brokenhearted woman besought him on her knees, but his fear of losing an army made all pleadings vain. In fact, as I ascertained by the following cablegram which came into my hands, Napoleon's instructions for the French evacuation were in Mexico at the very time of this pathetic scene between him and Carlotta. The despatch was in cipher when I received it, but was translated by the telegraph operator at my headquarters, who long before had mastered the key ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... back from her forehead. After all, was he indeed a strong man, vowed to great things? There was a queer feeling in his throat, almost a mist before his eyes. She seemed so fragile, so utterly, sweetly pathetic. And all the time there was the strange light, or was it want of light, in those haunting eyes. His speech ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... problem confronted her. The child must be won back. He must be convinced of her worth. Therefore she must be beautiful. He thought her pretty. She would be pretty. But how impress him? By what appeal? The pathetic? the tenderly winsome? the gay? She would be gay. Marvellous lies occurred to her—a multitude of them: there was no end to her fertility in deception. And she would excite his jealousy. Upon that feeling she would play. She would blow hot; she would ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... some respects the most remarkable of American women, lived a pathetic life and died a tragic death. Without money and without beauty, she became the idol of an immense circle of friends; men and women were alike her devotees. It is the old story: that the woman of brain makes lasting conquests of hearts, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... flowers, the fair shapely figure flitting and swaying in the after glory of the sunset, I wondered about it all. How would she act when her other lover arrived? Would she turn her face, in which lived such pathetic truth, first on one, and then on the other? Would she for a time give a hand in the dark to each, lacking courage to fling love for ever over her shoulder, and declare at once for the world? Would she honestly dismiss John, confessing ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... moment approaching the Cowels's house where they lodged—they were room-mates now. They had seen the two men leaving the house, and having caught sight of the lonely woman and her child, stood looking beneath the window shade upon the pathetic scene. When they saw the official envelope, with the big, red seal, they readily guessed the errand of the men, for they knew the rules and ways of the Brotherhood, and that the dead engineer's family was entitled ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... snatches of conversation and smiled understandingly, for she too knew now the little daily trials, the family sorrows and dissensions, the occasional soul tempests, the laughable ways and tenderly pathetic ambitions of these ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... that touch of vivid red on the cheeks!)—his curly hair, and his boyish ways made him personally attractive; while in his moments of physical weakness, his evident resentment of Nature's treatment of him, and angry determination to get the best of her, had a touch of something that was pathetic—that appealed. ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... delirious dream of soul and sense,—when suddenly a friend at your elbow laughs aloud, and offers you a piece of Bologna sausage. As in real life, so in his writings,—the serious and the comic, the sublime and the grotesque, the pathetic and the ludicrous are mingled together. At times he is sententious, energetic, simple; then again, obscure and diffuse. His thoughts are like mummies embalmed in spices, and wrapped about with curious ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... there to fill his pocket with gold, and his cup with sparkling champagne? He was, in fact, an object of the greatest pity—for I know of no greater than a gentleman of his habits without the means of gratifying them. He must live well, and he has not the means. Is there a more pathetic case? As for a mere low beggar—some labourless labourer, or some weaver out of place—don't let us throw away our compassion upon THEM. Psha! they're accustomed to starve. They CAN sleep upon boards, or dine ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and well-a-day! My case would then be dour and sad, Likewise distressing, dismal, gray, Pathetic, mournful, dreary, bad. ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... Well, sir, next day, here was Hector demanding that I go and apologize to Link. I said I'd as soon apologize to a rattlesnake, and Hector upbraided me in his rhetoric, but with a whole lot of real feeling, too. He was even pathetic about it: put it on the ground that I owed it to morality, by which he meant Hector. I was known to be his most intimate friend; I had done him an irrecoverable injury with the Trimmers, who would extend their retaliation and let him have a share ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... viciously at some unseen foe. The hair of muzzle, head and paws was matted and plastered with some thick liquid, giving him a curious frowsy appearance. He was evidently in a towering rage but it was also apparent that he was suffering great pain, his ferocious growls being interspersed with long, low, pathetic whines. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... of evolution Condorcet's principles appear to find scientific expression and warrant, but it is pathetic to observe the speculative science of a modern systematizer advancing through volume after volume with the cumbrous but massive force of a traction-engine, only to find rest at last in a vision of Utopia some centuries ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... dignified dame stood a very dainty, delicate and pathetic-looking little girl of about twelve years of age, who leaned half fondly, half lazily against the ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... of giving sight to the eyes and ears to the mind of the unshaped clay which fate had put into her hands for making or marring. How patient she had to be! How ingenious, vigilant, and sympathetic! Through working upon the souls of Jimmy's father and mother by pathetic appeal she obtained permission to keep him an hour after school each day and drill him step by step, inch by inch. She brought her midday meal and shared it with him. In the evening she framed cunning devices to lure his budding intelligence. And from the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... the listener took on a pathetic droop, and her voice quivered as she spoke with an effective semblance ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... uneasy whining, and moved slowly along the brink, trying every inch of the way for some place rough enough to give her strong claws a chance to take hold. In the full, unclouded light of the white moon she was a pathetic figure, bending and crouching and straining, and reaching down longingly, then stopping to listen to the complaints of pain and terror that came up out ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and plough, succeed each other on the characterless plain in wearying repetition, and save by some gaunt grey tower, with its peal of pathetic bells, or some figure coming athwart the fields, made picturesque by a gleaner's bundle or a woodman's faggot, there is no change, no variety, no beauty anywhere; and he who has dwelt upon the mountains or amidst the forests feels oppressed as by imprisonment with ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... had entered the square, Ellerey could not determine, but in a few moments he saw her. She was standing on the steps of the statue, a pathetic, yet an heroic figure. She was still in her boy's dress, her bright curls falling loosely from under her cap. She said something which Ellerey could not hear, and then the shouting broke out again. Men ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... cannot identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, neutralise each other. We are by no means insensible to the merits of this celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the style, the graceful and pathetic solemnity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric melody which gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. But we think it, we confess, the least successful effort ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... blood in pursuit of it, are equal to anything in the original version. The later heroic poems of the Edda make a less successful attempt to create sympathy for Gudrun; some, such as the so-called First Gudrun Lay, which is entirely romantic in character, try to make her pathetic by the abundance of tears she sheds; others, to make her heroic, though the result ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... battleground. A great quantity of arrow-heads of flint, jasper and quartz have been found in the neighboring fields, and Emerson used sometimes to bring his visitors to search for them. The Ripley family had a fine collection of Indian relics, and it is almost pathetic to think of the pains and labor the aborigines must have expended in manufacturing those household and warlike implements,—the arrows especially being often ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... house once stood a railroad has drawn its erasing lines, and the house itself was long since taken down and built up brick by brick in quite another place; but the blooming peach-tree glows before his childish eyes untouched by time or change. The tender, pathetic pink of its flowers repeated itself many long years afterward in the paler tints of the almond blossoms in Italy, but always with a reminiscence of that dim past, and the little coal-smoky town on the banks ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... pity it was that I, so fair and young, should have found it out so soon—right on the bank, as it were, or where that brook and river meet. And I wondered, if I died if anybody would care; and I thought how beautiful and pathetic I would look in my coffin with my lily-white hands folded on my breast. And I hoped they 'd have the funeral in the daytime, because if it was at night-time Father'd be sure to have a star or something to keep him from coming. ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... and was sensible of it. He had the ordinary advantages of education; but he chose to pursue that oratory which is for the mob[86].' BOSWELL. 'He had great effect on the passions.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I don't think so. He could not represent a succession of pathetic images. He vociferated, and made an impression. There, again, was a mind like a hammer.' Dr. Johnson now said, a certain eminent political friend of our's[87] was wrong, in his maxim of sticking to a certain ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... old trees, where of an evening the sun throws bars of light across the levels of turf, where homing rooks fly in scattered lines against a gleaming sky, the air breathes coolness and peace, and the scene lays that ineffable spell upon the heart of which only the exile can ever know the full pathetic power. ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... a long look of mock-pathetic reproach from under drooped lids. "Oh, false and faithless ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... know the good it does a captive to take part, only in fancy, in a free harmless life," returned Mary, with the wistful look that made her eyes so pathetic. "There is no refreshment to me like ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blacks in chains, was not only pathetic but mortifying! It was part of the sentimental drapery of British reports and despatches, to which I became accustomed in Africa. I did not retort upon my dashing captain with a sneer at his ancestors who had taught the traffic to Spaniards, yet I resolved not to ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... courageous and beautiful woman, who is said to have had the courage of a man, and the heart of a lion, assembled the people of Brittany, where she then was; and, showing them her infant son, made many pathetic entreaties to them not to desert her and their young Lord. They took fire at this appeal, and rallied round her in the strong castle of Hennebon. Here she was not only besieged without by the French under Charles de Blois, but was endangered within by a dreary old bishop, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour, When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves; Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever; Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch That the ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... A pathetic expression flitted over his face, as he sadly replied, "I haven't, to my knowledge, a single relation in the world. When I was about ten years old my mother and sister were sold from me. It is more than twenty years since ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... on it. It's always there. Some legs that I've seen were treacherous—most always some of the springs bursting out, or the joints working backward, or the toes turning down and ketching in things. Regular frauds. But it's almost pathetic the way this leg goes on year in and year out like an old faithful friend, never knowing an ache or a pain, no rheumatism, nor any such foolishness as that, but always good-natured and ready to go out ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... cried, lifting her pathetic eyes to his. "It isn't that. Oh, please be good to me! Don't ask me to say anything more. Don't make it hard for me, Brandon. I love you—I love you. To be your wife would be the most glorious—No, no! I must not even think of it. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... remonstrance—which was sustained throughout without flagging and without effort. The language was less ambitious, less studied, but more natural and flowing than that of Mr. Disraeli; and though commencing in a tone of stern rebuke, it ended in words of almost pathetic expostulation.... That power of persuasion which seems entirely denied to his antagonist, Mr. Gladstone possesses to great perfection, and to judge by the countenances of his hearers, those powers were very successfully exerted. He had, besides, the immense advantage resulting from the tone ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... fixed idea stood on the stage and sang with Polly Peachum, mimed with Filch, danced with Jenny Diver, postured with Lucy Lockit, kissed, trolled, and cuddled with Macheath. Her lips might smile, her hands applaud, but the comic old masterpiece made no more impression on her than if it had been pathetic, like a modern "Revue." When they embarked in the car to return, she ached because Jon was not sitting next her instead of Michael Mont. When, at some jolt, the young man's arm touched hers as if by accident, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... left England only in October last, I find it a changed place; but no change, not even the iniquitous prices demanded by London's restaurateurs, or the increased darkness, or the queer division of hors d'oeuvres into half-courses and whole-courses (providing an answer at last to the pathetic query, "What is a sardine?" "A whole course, of course")—no change is so striking as the fact that when a paper now refers to the PRIME MINISTER or the PREMIER, it means no longer HERBERT HENRY but DAVID. In a world of flux and mutability ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... this sympathetic interpolation, and the colonel's sombre face lighted up a bit as he turned his pathetic eyes on the speaker, as if wishing to ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... Anne had tried to sneak out when Colin wasn't looking; but he had seen them and came running after them down the field, calling to them to let him come. Eliot shouted "We can't, Col-Col, it's too far," but Colin looked so pathetic, standing there in the big field, ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... spread itself over the glowing sky and earth. The nights grew vocal with the invisible chorus of insect life; there was a mellow splendour in the moonlight, which touched the distant hills and wide-spreading waters with a pathetic prophecy of change. And now, ripe, serene, and rich with the accumulated beauty of the summer, the autumn flowers appeared. Their movement was like the stately dances of olden times; youth and its overflow were gone forever; but in the hour of maturity there remained a noble beauty, which touched ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... pathetic monologue that Miss Morrison had chosen for Maudie, supposed to be given by an old woman in a poorhouse. Her husband had died a drunkard and then her only son, "as likely a lad as you ever saw," had also taken to "crooked ways and left her all alone." ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... They endured a bondage that would have crushed other races; their faith and hope never deserted them. Their bitter experience in those long and weary years drove them to God as their only source of help, and the "Slave Songs," with the sad history out of which they grew, are among the most pathetic utterances of patience, trust and triumphant hope that human literature presents. So it was during the war, which was long and sometimes of doubtful result, but they never lost their faith in their ultimate deliverance. The Jew in his journey ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... event of the evening came, when the English guest, in obedience to a call, if not a command, from his host, sang an English ballad. Lancey had a sweet and tuneful voice, and was prone to indulge in slow pathetic melodies. The black Pasha turned out to be intensely fond of music, and its effect on his emotional spirit was very powerful. At the first bar of his guest's flowing melody his boisterous humour vanished: his mouth and eyes partly opened with a look of pleased surprise; he ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... pathetic in the epitaph this much-loved and successful woman wrote for herself when she felt ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... boy whose memory lives in the tenderest and most pathetic of Emerson's poems, the "Threnody,"—a lament not unworthy of comparison with Lycidas for dignity, but full of the simple pathos of Cowper's well-remembered lines on the receipt of his mother's picture, in the place of Milton's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a few months older than Flossie, but he was not sensitive, and only the adventure, the beauty described appealed to him. He looked at Flossie in surprise when she had finished reading her little sketch, and wondered that she could see anything pathetic in the tale. ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... humble, so pathetic, so self-forgetful in the homage that the tears sprang to the girl's eyes and she longed to put her arms about his neck and draw his face close to hers and tell him how her heart ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... and tales where she is put upon the scene with all her poesy, she is nowhere really true but in her garret; elsewhere she is invariably calumniated or over-praised. Rich, she deteriorates; poor, she is misunderstood. She has too many vices, and too many good qualities; she is too near to pathetic asphyxiation or to a dissolute laugh; too beautiful and too hideous. She personifies Paris, to which, in the long run, she supplies the toothless portresses, washerwomen, street-sweepers, beggars, occasionally insolent countesses, admired actresses, applauded ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Loch Awe has a pathetic interest for me to this day. It was like one's first meeting with a friend who was destined to become very dear and to exercise a powerful influence on the whole current of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... meeting with the girl had saddened him oddly. There was something rather pathetic about Toni at this moment of her existence, though it would have been hard to say exactly wherein the pathos lay. In spite of himself Herrick was haunted by the little picture she had drawn of her life with Owen Rose. He ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... returning to the windfall. The fawn followed, so she increased her pace, hopelessly outdistancing the little creature and leaving it to the mercy of the next marauder that chanced to pass that way. Without the guidance of its mother it was a forlorn and pathetic little object left to drift aimlessly through the rain-soaked forest with its numerous watchful eyes and alert ears. Somehow, the other creatures sensed the fawn's helplessness and the news soon spread among them. Shadowy forms appeared where there should have been none. And the awe-inspiring ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... his poetry are touched by its pathetic beauty, but only they who have heard his verses in the tones of his deep, musical voice can know of the ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... himself up to tender feelings in a poetical mood. He played adagios softly on his flute. Like his worthy contemporaries, he did not easily find, in prose or poetry, the full expression of his feelings; pathetic oratory stirred him to tearful emotion. In spite of all his French aphorisms, the essence of his nature was very German in this ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... at Mrs. Gray's, he gave the flimsy but pathetic excuse that he wanted a place in which he might find occasional seasons of peace and quiet. When Mrs. Gray protested against this useless bit of extravagance, his grief was so obviously genuine that her heart was touched, and there was a deep, fervent joy in her soul. She loved this ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... destroyed any value it had formerly had. Yet now, as she looked almost in despite of herself, suddenly she saw through the engraving, through the symbol, to something beyond; to the prompting conception in the painter's mind which had led to the picture, to the great mystery of the pathetic attempt of human beings who love, or who think they love, to unite themselves to each other, to mingle body with body and soul with soul. She saw a woman in the dress of a "sister," the woman who was with her; she saw a man in an Eastern city; and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... hates and resentments. There is nothing else anything like so interesting to ourselves as ourselves. All thought that is not more or less laboriously controlled and directed will inevitably circle about the beloved Ego. It is amusing and pathetic to observe this tendency in ourselves and in others. We learn politely and generously to overlook this truth, but if we dare to think of it, it blazes forth like ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... Jefferson was at this time the Minister of the United States in Paris. As an old republican he knew well the conditions of free governments, and among the politicians of his own country he represented the democratic section. I know few words in history more pathetic than those in which he described the situation. 'I was much acquainted,' he writes, 'with the leading patriots of the Assembly. Being from a country which had successfully passed through a similar reformation, they were disposed to my acquaintance, and had some confidence in me. I urged ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... back at the trot, all telling the tale—how, before they could even unlimber, shells had come crashing into them. The column was a lingering tragedy. There were teams with only a limber and without a gun. And you must see it to know what a twistedly pathetic thing a gun team and limber without a gun is. There were bits of teams and teams with only a couple of drivers. The faces of the men were awful. I smiled at one or two, but they shook their heads and turned away. One ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... to his heart as well as his judgment. And the devotion of this one-armed and enfeebled veteran to the cause of his own country, his eagerness to serve her in the field and his confidence in his ability still to do so, were pathetic as well as inspiring. It was all so big, and patriotic, and splendid, even in its childish egotism and simplicity, that the pure absurdity of it found no place in the mind of ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... At this pathetic description of the decease of Mr. Bardell, who had been knocked on the head with a quart pot in a public-house cellar, the learned Serjeant's voice faltered, and ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... her guitar, commences a song, the first that occurs to her, which chances to be "Lucy Neal," a negro melody, at the time much in vogue on the plantations of the South. She has chosen the pathetic strain without thought of the effect it may produce upon her sister. Observing it to be painful she abruptly breaks off, and with a sweep of her fingers across the guitar strings, changes to the merrier refrain of "Old Dan Tucker." Helen, touched by the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... Martineau; the school where she found Caroline Helstone and Rose and Jessy Yorke; the Fieldhead, Lowood, and Thornfield of her tales; the Villette where she knew her hero; but it is the bleak Haworth hilltop where the Brontes wrote the wonderful books and lived the pathetic lives that most attracts and longest holds our steps. Our way is along Airedale, now a highway of toil and trade, desolated by the need of hungry poverty and greed of hungrier wealth; meads are replaced by blocks of grimy huts, groves are ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... the most pathetic sights in the public dance halls of Chicago is the number of young men, obviously honest young fellows from the country, who stand about vainly hoping to make the acquaintance of some "nice girl." They ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... assigning the reasons why they could not dissolve the assembly until such time as they had gone through that work depending upon them. This was given in to the clerk by Lord Rothes, and part of it read before his grace left the house, and instruments taken thereupon. Then, after several moving and pathetic speeches delivered on that occasion, for the encouragement of the brethren to abide by their duty, by the moderator, Mr. Alexander Henderson, and others, ministers and elders, exhorting them to show themselves as zealous for CHRIST their LORD and Master, in his interests, as he had shewed ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... stopped us, refusing to let us put typhoid fever below the deck, on account of the crew, he said, and threatening to push off, at once, from the shore. Mrs. Howland and I looked at him! I did the terrible, and she the pathetic,—and he abandoned the contest. The return passage was rather an anxious one. The river is much obstructed with sunken ships and trees; the night was dark, and we had to feel our way, slackening speed every ten minutes. If we had been alone it ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... Revolution of February and the commencement of those disputes which eventuated in the Russian War must blush for humanity. Writers of every class set themselves about the work of exterminating Agrarianism in France. Grave arguments, pathetic appeals, and lively ridicule were all made use of to drive off enemies of whose coming upon Europe there was no more danger than of a return of the Teutones and the Cimbri. Had the arguments and adjurations of the clever men who waged war on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... the Charleston siege, Captain George, no longer captain, now twice promoted for cool bravery, has borne a charmed life—a grave, calm man, remembering always a still face, 'pathetic ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... disease in Europe is almost unbelievable; so great has it been in continental armies that governments have become alarmed as to its effects upon the health and morale of the troops. College men have been reckless in sowing wild oats, and have suffered serious physical consequences. Most pathetic is the suffering that is caused to innocent wives and children in blindness, sterility, and frequent abdominal disease. This is a subject that demands the attention of every person interested in ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... carriage-house is a vehicle replete with historical and pathetic interest. This is none other than the post-chaise in which Her Majesty and the late Prince Consort travelled all through Germany about seven years after their marriage. It is fitted up with a writing-case, and all sorts of conveniences, and hung ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the striking situation which Thackeray used with so much skill in his novel had already been utilized in the stirring romance of Durras and in the pathetic libretto of Royer, Vaez, and Scribe. Did Thackeray borrow it from the romance or from the libretto? Or did he reinvent it for himself, forgetting that it had already served? He was in Paris when Donizetti's tuneful music was first heard; and he was going to the opera as often as he ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... most pathetic creature I ever saw!" And Waitstill sat up on the sofa, her long braids of hair hanging over her shoulders, her pale face showing the traces of her heavy weeping. "I never pitied any one so much in my whole life! To go up that long, long lane; to come upon that dreary house hidden away in ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... band played the Marseillaise, the women waved their pocket-handkerchiefs, and the men their hats, and leaning out of the carriage window, looking charming in her traveling costume, with a smile on her lips, and with moist eyes, as was fitting at such a pathetic leave-taking, actress as she was, with a sudden and childlike gesture, she blew kisses to them from the tips of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... movement, and one of far higher dignity and import, they had all had before their minds lately the long-devoted, laborious, influential, pure, pathetic life of Dr. Pusey, which had just ended. Many of them had also been reading in the lively volumes of that acute, but not always good-natured rattle, Mr. Mozley, an account of that great movement which took from Dr. Pusey its earlier name. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... that he is remodeling the world and is entirely capable of doing it right. Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle-headedness—and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all. That is what I was at 19 and 20; and that is what the average Southerner is at 60 today. Northerners, too, of a certain grade. It is of children like this that voters are made. And such is the primal source of our government! A man hardly knows ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... good sir; nevertheless I may venture to say that I know you well, for there's a termagant of an Irish woman down at the camp going about wringing her hands, shouting out your good qualities in the most pathetic tones, and giving nobody a moment's peace because she does not know what has become of you. Having a suspicion that my brother must have found you and brought you here, I came to see. But pray, may I ask your name, for the Irish woman only ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... performed thirty years ago by Main-Travelled Roads. Each book challenges the myth of the rural beauties and the rural virtues; but whereas Sinclair Lewis, in an intellectual and satiric age, charges that the villagers are dull, Mr. Garland, in a moral and pathetic age, charged that the farmers were oppressed. His men wrestle fearfully with sod and mud and drought and blizzard, goaded by mortgages which may at almost any moment snatch away all that labor and parsimony have stored up. His women, endowed with no matter what initial hopes or charms, are sacrificed ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... the piano, her arms hanging loose, she began a chant such as the peasants use working under the olives. Her voice was small and deep, with a peculiar thick sweetness that suited the song, half humourous, half pathetic. These were ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... express! Destitute childhood, destitute old age, are both sorrowful enough, Heaven knows! But they have power to make their sufferings known, and to ask for help! But destitute infancy! Oh! look here! look here! Can anything on earth be so pathetic ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... get along without it?" says Dempster, with such pathetic earnestness that I really felt sorry ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... and affecting, sustained as it was by the pathetic warble of a voice which had naturally been a fine one, and which weakness, if it diminished its power, had improved in softness. Archibald, though a follower of the court, and a pococurante by profession, was confused, if not affected; the dairy-maid blubbered; ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to this pathetic, this generous appeal? Name it not at Woburn-abbey—whisper it not at Panshanger—breathe it not in the epicurean retreat of Brocket-hall! Tears, big tears, roll down our sympathetic checks as we write it. It ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... our ears, with exchanges of experiences pathetic and humorous, we steamed into Queenstown harbour shortly after ten o'clock that night. We had been attacked at a point two hundred miles off the Irish coast and of our passengers and ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... capital picture of a Queensland sundowner.' The picture represented a solitary figure standing in pathetic isolation on a boundless plain. 'A sundowner?' I queried. 'Yes; the lowest class of nomad. For days they will tramp across the plains carrying, you see, their supply of water. They approach a station ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... celery and water-cresses. The other waiter changes his leg, and takes a new view of you, doubtfully, now, as if he had rejected the resemblance to his brother, and had begun to think you more like his aunt or his grandmother. Again you beseech your waiter with pathetic indignation, to 'see after that cutlet!' He steps out to see after it, and by-and-by, when you are going away without it, comes back with it. Even then, he will not take the sham silver cover off, without a pause for a flourish, and a look at the musty cutlet as if he were surprised ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... is not a little pathetic to observe that a year ago, and even two years ago, The Daily Mail was urging the Government then in power to introduce compulsory rations. Thus on November 13, 1916, we said: 'Ministers should at once prepare the organisation for a system of bread tickets. It took the diligent Germans ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... news of Abbe Poirel's nomination. She knew nothing, of course, of the fatal agreement made by the abbe with Mademoiselle Gamard, for the excellent reason that he did not know of it himself; and because it is in the nature of things that the comical is often mingled with the pathetic, the singular replies of the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the most tender care in getting them out of the boat and up the ship's lofty side, the pain they suffered in the process must have been excruciating, they made light of it, declaring, with a laugh that moved those who heard it to tears—so hollow and pathetic was it—that such pain was less than nothing compared with the awful long-drawn-out torments to which they had almost ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... the thought of being an outcast from his presence, that is, from the comforts of it, or of feeling it only in its terrors? how pathetic is that expostulation of Job, when for the real trial of his patience, he was made to look upon himself in this deplorable condition! Why hast thou set me as a mark against thee so that I am become a burden to myself? But thirdly, how happy is the condition of that ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... the priest at present; I return to his charge. To school we went: our parting with our uncle was quite pathetic; mine in especial. "Hark ye, Sir Count," whispered he (I bore my father's title), "hark ye, don't mind what the old priest tells you; your real man of wit never wants the musty lessons of schools in order to make a figure in the world. Don't cramp your genius, my boy; read over my ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Americans bent on such errands had suggested this wild story. The descriptions of scenery, &c., and of the Hospital, might be correct, but there should be a tinge of the grotesque given to all the characters and events. The tragic and the gentler pathetic need not be excluded by the tone and treatment. If I could but write one central scene in this vein, all the rest of the Romance would readily arrange itself around that nucleus. The begging-girl would be another American character; the actress too; the caravan ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Cornemuse refused to bear the expenses of what he thought was a fatal enterprise. Agaric was in turn pathetic and terrible. At last, yielding to his prayers and threats, Cornemuse, with banging head and swinging arms, went to the austere cell that concealed his evangelical poverty. In the whitewashed wall under a branch of blessed box, there was fixed ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... pieces of statuary are not in very good taste. They bear too much the traces of the pneumatic drill, and most of them are cold and devoid of the spirit of the original. Some of the very modern marbles in the various rooms are almost pathetic in their disregard for the standards established by the ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... to know Spawn, except for the few times which I have mentioned. Perhaps he was at heart a pathetic figure. I think, looking back on it now that Spawn is dead, that there was a pathos to him. Spawn had loved his wife, Jetta's mother. As a young man he had brought her to the Lowlands to seek his fortune. And when Jetta was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... was crowded out in the make-up. There was too much to write about, and I was always over-set! I saw and felt, with you, and regarded it as more poignantly pathetic, the tragedy of that little handful of San Luisanos, herded away in the heart of those barren hills to make way for the white man. And now the white man is almost gone and Father Dominic's Angelus, ringing from ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... business, Her 'Men'—as a charming literary lady she had, of course, an organised corps—were immensely excited, and were sympathetic; helpfully energetic, suggestive, alert, as their ideals of their various dispositions required them to be. "Any news of Jessie?" was the pathetic opening of a dozen melancholy but interesting conversations. To her Men she was not perhaps so damp as she was to her women friends, but in a quiet way she was even more touching. For three days, Wednesday that is, Thursday, and Friday, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... that his eye swept the littered field from which Jabez Rockwell rose, as one from the dead, to rally his comrades, alone, undaunted, pathetic beyond words. A little later two privates were carrying to the rear the wounded lad, who had been picked up alive and conscious. They halted to salute their Commander-in-chief, and laid their burden down as the general drew ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... kukejo. Pasture herbejo, pasxtejo. Pasturage pasxtajxo, pasxtejo. Pat frapeti. Patch fliki. Patchwork flikajxo. Patella genuosto. Patent patento. Patentee patentito. Paternal patra. Paternity patreco. Path vojo, vojeto. Pathetic kortusxanta. Pathology patologio. Pathos patoso. Patience pacienco. Patient pacienca. Patient, a malsanulo—ino. Patois provinca lingvajxo. Patriarch patriarko. Patrimony hereda proprajxo. Patriot patrioto. Patriotism patriotismo. Patrol patrolo. Patrol (night) nokta patrolo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... others have done, but cheerless sexton's work, this digging up of boyish recollections. One by one, they come to light—the brave hopes and dreams and aspirations of youth; the ruddy life has gone out of them; they have shriveled into an alien, pathetic dignity. They might have been one's great-grandfather's or Hannibal's or Adam's; the boy whose life was swayed by them is quite ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... smallness of this salary astonishes and suggests much to the modern reader; but when he is informed that the worthy teacher was obliged during his teaching there to petition the selectmen that his "yeerly salarie be paid to him, as the counstables were much behind w'th him," the whole matter becomes pathetic. Mr. Cheever also asked that the schoolhouse, which was much out of order, be repaired. And in 1669 he is again before them asking for a "peece of ground or house plott whereon to build an house for his familie," which petition he left for the townsmen ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... about the sale at Temple & Sweet's, feeling almost sure the lure of bargain shoes would prove strong. There she was to be sure and she had a big wad of money, which makes me think she is doing those little kids dirt, not to have them better dressed. They were not even clean and so ragged it was pathetic. They are more folksy than she is, too. Something about their accent made me feel it. She had a well-modulated voice, but that is because she is evidently an actress as well as dancer; but there is something in her mode of speech that made me feel she was not ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... Shepherds' Play of the Towneley cycle contains an episode of sheep stealing which is a complete and perfect little farce. Nor were the scenes of pathos less effective. The scene in the Brome play of Abraham and Isaac where the little lad pleads for his life has not lost its pathetic appeal with the passage of centuries. While many of the miracle plays seem to us stiff and perfunctory, the best of them possess literary merit of ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... secretly congratulated myself on having exercised a subtler intuition in this one particular, at least—I did not believe that Anne expected us to find Brenda at the Hall on our return. I remembered that anxious pucker of the brow and the pathetic insistence on the belief—or might it not better be described as a hope?—that Brenda ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... belonged to all the best clubs of his time. Percy Linwood and he constantly met in the billiard-room or at the dinner-table. The Major approved of the easy, handsome, pleasant-tempered young man. "I have lost the first freshness of youth," he used to say, with pathetic resignation, "and I see myself revived, as it were, in Percy. Naturally ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... concern lost—actually lost, sir—by his patronage. A queer old fellow is Nicholas, and as completely a part of the building as the house itself. We wonder he ever left the old place, and fully expected to see in the papers, the morning after the fire, a pathetic account of an old gentleman in black, of decent appearance, who was seen at one of the upper windows when the flames were at their height, and declared his resolute intention of falling with the floor. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... give a fig for the equilibrium of the figures or the ladders; but while it lasts the scene is all intensely solemn and graceful and sweet—too sweet for so bitter a subject. Sodoma's women are strangely sweet; an imaginative sense of morbid appealing attitude—as notably in the sentimental, the pathetic, but the none the less pleasant, "Swooning of St. Catherine," the great Sienese heroine, at San Domenico—seems to me the author's finest accomplishment. His frescoes have all the same almost appealing evasion of difficulty, and a kind of mild melancholy which I am inclined to think ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... part what the unknown author of "Shirley" must have suffered, when I read those pathetic words which occur at the end of this and the ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... on every side, the pathetic figures of men who could not let go after their greatest usefulness was past; of other men who dropped before they realized their arrival at the end of the road; and, most pathetic of all, of men who ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... depressing his voice to suit the attitude assumed and the sentiment expressed. Arms and legs were continually in motion. It seemed impossible for him to stand still. In the midst of the most impassioned or pathetic portions of his speech, he would extend his long arms toward the judge or jury, and shake his bony fingers with an effect that is indescribable. He held his audience to the last; and when he sat down there was a murmur of applause which the judge with difficulty prevented from swelling ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... a saloon lined with chairs covered with yellow rep, and begged to take a seat. In two minutes Mademoiselle Verbena appeared, drying her eyes with a tiny pocket-handkerchief, and forcing a little pathetic smile of welcome. Mr. Greyne clasped her hand in silence. She sat down in a rep chair at his right, and they looked at ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... midwifery duty in London slums, I had occasion to observe that among the women of the poor, and more especially in those who had lost the first bloom of youth, modesty consisted chiefly in the fear of being disgusting. There was an almost pathetic anxiety, in the face of pain and discomfort, not to be disgusting in the doctor's eyes. This anxiety expressed itself in the ordinary symptoms of modesty. But, as soon as the woman realized that I found nothing disgusting in whatever was proper and necessary ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... inspiration of right living was to be hope of perfect peace—a hope generously bestowed by nature on every spirit which, being linked to the flux of things, is conscious of change and susceptible of weariness, but a hope which the irresponsible Oriental imagination had disturbed with bad dreams. A pathetic feminine quality was thereby imparted to moral feeling; we were to be good for pity's sake, for the sake of a great distant ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... before!" she said again. There was a note of half-hysterical, almost childish complaint in her voice. She moved her head a little, as if to look into the shadows where it lay, then checked herself violently, and looked up at her husband with the pathetic simplicity of terror. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... eyes to Harley's face and gazed at him with that peculiarly searching look which belongs to members of his profession; but mingled with it was an expression of almost pathetic appeal, of appeal for understanding, ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... figure and face, an expression full of fire and intelligence, to which she united tact, amiability, and prudence. As singers the rivals were nearly equal; for Faustina, while surpassing the Cuzzoni in power of execution, had not the command of expression which made the latter's art so pathetic and touching. Dr. Barney, the musical historian, and father of Madame d'Arblay, describes Cuzzoni in these words: "A native warble enabled her to execute divisions with such facility as to conceal every appearance ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... their court at London, and cited the king and queen to appear before it. They both presented themselves; and the king answered to his name, when called: but the queen, instead of answering to hers rose from her seat, and throwing herself at the king's feet, made a very pathetic harangue, which her virtue, her dignity, and her misfortunes rendered the more affecting. She told him, that she was a stranger in his dominions, without protection, without council, without assistance; exposed to all the injustice which her enemies were pleased to impose upon her: ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... should need to be told, and that with all emphasis, the evil case in which they are; and stranger still that they should resent the discovery and reject it. This pathetic pleading is the voice of a divine Father trying to convince His son of misery and danger; and the obscurity of the text is as if that voice was choked with sobs, and could only speak in broken syllables the tragical word in which all the evil ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... usual life. Denas tried to accept it cheerfully; she felt that it would soon be a past life, and this conviction helped her to invest it with some of that tender charm which clings to whatever enters the pathetic realm of "Nevermore." ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... than anywhere else in Catullus' home, the flourishing and comparatively vigorous Cisalpine Gaul. The most beautiful of his poems reflect the sweet pictures of the Lago di Garda, and hardly at this time could any man of the capital have written a poem like the deeply pathetic one on his brother's death, or the excellent genuinely homely festal hymn for the marriage of Manlius and Aurunculeia. Catullus, although dependent on the Alexandrian masters and standing in the midst of the fashionable and clique poetry of that age, was yet ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... time I got to the office, I was jittery as a new bride. The day started out all wrong. I woke up weak and washed out. I was pathetic when I worked out with the weights—they felt as heavy as the Pyramids. And when I walked from the subway to the building where Mike Renner and I have our offices, an obvious telepath tailed ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Of course it is all a humbug,—a darker vein cropping up through the gray flagstone; but, it is probably a fact, and, for aught I know, may be found in Fox's Book of Martyrs, that George Marsh underwent an examination in this house [There is a full and pathetic account of the examination and martyrdom of George Marsh in the eleventh section of Fox's Book of Martyrs, as I have just found (June 9, 1867). He went to Smithell's hall, among other places, to be questioned by Mr. Barton.—ED.]; and the tradition may have connected itself with the stone ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... would, should, and always have trusted my person freely with my friend—if he will allow me to call him so,"—here the robin grew quite pathetic, and said that often and often he had been indebted to his friend for a sumptuous repast, or for a draught of water when all around was ice; he assured them they might put the greatest trust in ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... A pathetic-looking man beyond her is trying to take in the message in a wondering way, and a long-bearded man behind him is so aroused that he leans eagerly forward to catch every word. There are others, as is always the case, who listen very stolidly as ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... ashore with the men of their party, all three wearing their Red Cross uniforms and caps, and it was almost pathetic to note the deference with which all those warriors—both bronzed and fair—removed their caps until the "angels of mercy" had passed ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... range of subjects. We allow the subjects: it is the Congrevean attitude towards them which we should condemn. But the stage would be all the merrier if we could only understand that that attitude is harmless; that to see the humorous aspect of a thing is not to ignore the pathetic or the sociological; and that we should return all the heartier to our serious and sentimental considerations of the problems of life for allowing them to be laughed at for an evening at a comedy. Meantime we ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... pair of them heaved deep sighs. Akka knew, to be sure, that sheep are always shy and peculiar; but these seemed to have no idea of how they should conduct themselves. Finally an old ewe, who had a long and pathetic face and a doleful voice, said: "There isn't one among us that refuses to let you stay; but this is a house of mourning, and we cannot receive guests as we did in former days." "You needn't worry about anything of that sort," said ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... alteration his sentiments had undergone since entering Copse Cottage. Every trace of prejudice had vanished. There was, in his mind, something pathetic in the skill, evidently born of long practice, with which this tall lean man made his preparations for ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... Dedicatory to Antony Hammond, Esq., of Somersham-Place, prefacing that pathetic tragedy, The Fatal Marriage; or, The Innocent Adultery[1] (4to, 1694), Southerne writes: 'I took the Hint of the Tragical part of this Play from a Novel of Mrs. Behn's, call'd The Fair Vow-Breaker; you will forgive me for calling it a Hint, when you find I have little more than borrow'd the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... what she had done to save him from annoyance, while his behaviour to his cousin Cecil increased her respect for him. She detected a pathetic meaning in his mention of the word home; she mused on his having called her beautiful: whither was she hurrying? Forgetful of her horror of his revolutionary ideas, forgetful of the elevation of her own, she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "I had sixty badly wounded with me, and begged the German army doctor to operate, but he said he had no time. I then asked his leave to operate myself, but his reply was, "You are in the German lines, and must conform to our rules." The doctor ends his pathetic evidence with the words, "Nearly all these unhappy ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... that a pathetic letter addressed to the refractory Bricheteau would induce him to receive me. Mingling with my entreaties the touch of a threat, I let him know that I was firmly resolved at all costs to get to the bottom of the mystery which ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... during which he let Miss Sally lock up the house. Then he walked silently home with her. Miss Sally was silent too. Perhaps she was repenting her confidence—or perhaps she was thinking of her false lover. There was a pathetic droop to her lips, and her black eyes were sad ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... tranquillity which pervaded Minor Canon Corner, and that serenely romantic state of the mind—productive for the most part of pity and forbearance— which is engendered by a sorrowful story that is all told, or a pathetic ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... purse,—plenty of it; but he was afraid to enter an eating-house, or to even approach the "snack-stand" on the edge of the circus lot. For a long time he stood afar off in the darkness, his legs trembling, his mouth twitching, his eyes bent with pathetic intentness upon the single pie and hot sandwich stand that remained near the sideshow tent, presided over by a kind-faced, sleepy ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... much more we learn from a book written by her father which bears the pathetic title of "Sorrows." For little Penelope died at the age of seven, and the stricken parent solaced himself in his loneliness by writing the memories ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... runs thus: "To the rare Few who early in life have rid themselves of the Friendship of the Many, these pathetic papers are inscribed." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... other profession as quickly as may be, they are only making a sure thing of disappointment, only crowding the narrow gates of fortune and fame. Yet there are others to whom success, though easily within their reach, does not seem a thing to be grasped at. Of two such, the pathetic story may be read, in the Memoir of A Scotch Probationer, Mr. Thomas Davidson, who died young, an unplaced Minister of the United Presbyterian Church, in 1869. He died young, unaccepted by the world, unheard of, uncomplaining, soon after writing his latest song on the first grey ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... be that my response at the time to this pathetic appeal was not altogether satisfactory to my darling; but she has forgotten her fears and her tears to-day in the happy consciousness that as surely as the bells begin to ring on Sunday morning I begin to brush ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... gleaming fangs, raised hackles, and straining limbs, the great Wolfhound had pitted himself, with roaring fury, against the leather-coated man who wielded the hot iron. To an observer who had known of this, there would have been something at once rather pathetic and a good deal grotesque about Finn's present kittenish play with Jess. To lend verisimilitude to the game Finn had to growl low down in his throat at intervals, while Jess snarled and barked; but when Finn laid one paw on the kangaroo-hound's ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... gloomily. "I am always saddest at dinner, for I know that I have been asked because there is a tradition in society that I am a wit. If I speak of the gloomiest subjects people snicker; if I am eloquent or pathetic, they roar. I am by nature rather a lyric poet than a wit—ah, you are laughing, Mrs. Carey, you are laughing. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... have been a strange home-coming for Placidia. Bought and sold twice over, twice a fugitive, the companion of the rude Goth, she is the most pathetic figure in all that terrible fifth century, and never does she appear more pitiful than on her return from the camps and the triumphs of the barbarians to the decadent splendour and the corruption of the imperial ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... gentleness and veracity of theirs, being in part communicable, are gradually learned, though in a somewhat servile manner, yet not without a sincere sympathy, by many inferior painters, so that our exhibitions and currently popular books are full of very lovely and pathetic ideas, expressed with a care, and appealing to an interest, quite unknown in past times. I will take two instances of merely average power, as more illustrative of what I mean than any more singular and distinguished work could be. Last year, in the British Institution, there were ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... is certainly one of the most impressive statements of the darker side of the national pursuit of military glory that have ever been made. The first part of the book is taken up with a vivid and pathetic account of the passage of the grande armee through Alsace on its way to Moscow and the Beresina, of the anxious waiting for news of the battles that succeeded, of the first suspicions of disaster ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann |
