"Piteous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... speech of sorrow, murmuring, piteous complaint, and the like, concrete intervals of less extent than those used in ordinary discourse are often heard. Thus, if the sentence "Pity me, kind lady, I have no mother," be uttered with a plaintive expression, concretes with small intervals will be distinctly noticeable; ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... will not go back. I am sorry I was so uncontrolled, but I am nervous—and I do not know exactly what I am—Sasha, please take care of me," and she held out her hands with a piteous gesture of asking for his protection, and moved beyond all power of further control he folded her ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... prairie in the direction of Sioux Falls or Yankton, contentedly feeding as they went, and with the three big brothers riding slowly behind them. It had always been the same with the sheep. But now there rang continually in her ears the piteous bleating of the little flock she had learned to love through the summer months, and that, lured by a treacherous bell-wether, had passed through the pen, some days before, and crossed the long, ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... in marble, cherubim'd and seraphim'd, crusted with bas-reliefs and titles, for the first Duke of Bedford and his Duchess.(80) All these are in a chapel of the church at Cheneys, the seat of the first Earls. There are but piteous fragments of the house remaining, now a farm, built round three sides of a court. It is dropping down, in several places without a roof, but in half the windows are beautiful arms in painted glass. As these are so totally neglected, I propose making a push, and begging ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... illness, and are thus best competent to speak upon the subject, there seems no doubt that General Lee's condition was the result of mental depression produced by the sufferings of the Southern people. Every mail, it is said, had brought him the most piteous appeals for assistance, from old soldiers whose families were in want of bread; and the woes of these poor people had a prostrating effect upon him. A year or two before, his health had been seriously impaired by this brooding depression, and he had visited North Carolina, the White Sulphur ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... of her drapery. Rowland thought with horror of the sinister compulsion to which the young girl was to be subjected. In this ethereal flight of hers there was a certain painful effort and tension of wing; but it was none the less piteous to imagine her being rudely jerked down to the base earth she was doing her adventurous utmost to spurn. She would need all her magnanimity for her own trial, and it seemed gross to make further demands ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... the row broke out, I had a little moist red paint in the palm of my hand. I rushed forward, fell down, clapped my hand to my face, and became a piteous spectacle. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... relieved from the coercion of his eyes, she was roundly amazed at her own complicity in so stupendous a fiction. What had he made her do? Why had he taken this sin of another's on his own shoulders? Eve's piteous cry of "Philip!" at his entry recurred to her—the intimate nature of her appeal. The scent was promising; but it opened out vistas of a loyalty too fantastic and generous to be true. Her mature cynicism of a girl of ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... broke down altogether. She sobbed, she wept, she gabbled piteously, all manner of incomprehensible roulades of lamentation and entreaty; coyly, penitently, in a most interesting agitation, she produced the very key from her breast, with a string tied to it. My father was little moved by this piteous tempest. He coolly took the key and tried it in the desk, which it locked and unlocked quite freely, though the wards were complicated. He shook his head and looked ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... Mirrha among these poems, however, makes specific acknowledgment of a debt to Shakespeare (see p. 177). Finally, Dom Diego's plangent laments at Ginevra's cruelty recall Glaucus' unrestrained weeping at Scylla's cruelty in Lodge's Scillaes Metamorphosis. But whereas the "piteous Nimphes" surrounding Glaucus weep till a "pretie brooke" forms,[29] "the fayre Oreades pitty-moved gerles" that comfort Dom Diego are loath to lose the "liquid pearles" he weeps. Consequently they gather (and presumably preserve) them with "Spunge-like Mosse" (p. 95). Lynche extends ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... express'd delight, That from his swoon awoke the wondering knight: His name, his country, straight the dames demand, And what strange craft had steer'd his bark to land? He, on his elbow rais'd, with utterance weak, Such as his feeble strength avail'd to speak, Recounts his piteous chance, his name, his home, How up the vessel's side ere while he clomb, And then sunk down in sleep; but who impell'd Its ebon keel, or tissued canvas swell'd, He wist not: faint, and lacking vital heat, He sought some needful aid from looks so sweet. "So ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... Bang! again for every ball Wounded or dead the young Crows fall; The old Crows wheeling in the skies Helpless behold their agonies, And, piteous cawing up on high, Answer their young ones dying cry— Who fall, poor little suffering things, With broken legs and ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... sleep!—a piteous case, Jack! If I should die like a fool now, people would say Miss Harlowe had broken my heart.—That she vexes me to the ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... matter very lucidly in his short but comprehensive introduction to the poem: "As long as Job, solicitous for his understanding, demanded an explanation of his unutterable suffering, whereby the mysterious, piteous condition of mankind is shadowed forth, his seeking was vain, and he ran the risk of loosing himself in the problems of eternal justice, the worth of upright living, and even the existence of God; for an unjust, ruthless, almighty being is no God. ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... tearing up carpets, lifting furniture and loading trucks. Ruffians were pushing in at the open doors, snatching valuables and insulting the owners. There was a hasty seizing of goods, and a wild dash into the street from imperiled houses, a shouting for trucks and carriages, piteous inquiries for absent friends, distressed cries for absent protectors, screams of little children, swift, wild faces pushing eagerly in this direction and that; oaths and prayers and shoutings; women bowed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... waning of his affection and his many conjugal sins. And now the chasm, which she thought to have spanned by the religious ceremony on the eve of the coronation, yawned at her feet. The woman and the Empress in her shrank back from the black void of the future; and with piteous reproaches she flung back the orders of the Emperor and the soothings of the husband. Napoleon, it would seem, had nerved himself against such an outbreak. In vain did Josephine sink down at his feet with heart-rending cries that she would never survive the disgrace: failing to calm her ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... immense sensation in the passage presently, where Mrs. and Miss Clapp, coming perhaps to listen at the parlour door, found Loll Jewab shaking upon the hall-bench under the coats, moaning in a strange piteous way, and showing his yellow eyeballs ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sitting quite still and his heart sank when he saw her. The lines under her eyes were unmistakable now; her cheeks, too, seemed to have grown hollow. Her first look at him almost made him forget all their differences. There was something piteous in the tremble of her lips. He drew a chair to ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... be thinking of? She did not run. Robbie looked at her in piteous distress; Duncan was beside himself. He cast a beseeching glance at Elsie, a momentary one of resentful anger at his mother, an impatient one at Robbie, the unfortunate messenger of their ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... When this piteous package was carried out of the house at night, the princess and her waiting-maids bade each other their last farewells, with sobs and cries ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... "Want of habit. We'll get it all back soon. Voyons"—he took her fat chin in his hand and turned up her face, on which make-up, perspiration and tears melted into one piteous paste. "This is not the way that ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... solidly built, but a spectacle of more tragic desolation, with its wide streets winding between scorched and contorted fragments of masonry, bits of shop-fronts, handsome doorways, the colonnaded court of a public building. A few miles farther lies the most piteous of the group: the village of Heiltz-le-Maurupt, once pleasantly set in gardens and orchards, now an ugly waste like the others, and with a little church so stripped and wounded and dishonoured that it lies there by the ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... at her son's feet and bowed her head to the ground, and he swept her up into his arms, raining kisses upon the piteous face. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... began to grow furious, growling fiercely. When the chain had been made fast with a staple driven into a strong kennel-post, and his mistress proceeded to take her leave of him, his growling changed to the most piteous whining; but when she actually left him there, he flew into a rage of indignant affection. After trying the strength of his chain, however, by three or four bounds, each so furious as to lay him sprawling on his back, he yielded to the inevitable, and sullenly crept ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... not enumerated in the Book of Common Prayer writ by grim males, so entranced her, that time flew by unheeded, and Christopher Staines came back from her father. His step was heavy; he looked pale, and deeply distressed; then stood like a statue, and did not come close to her, but cast a piteous look, and gasped out one word, that ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... piteous glance after Mamie, who was now, as he saw, through the open door, out upon the lawn and beyond easy hailing distance. When he turned again to look at Ariel he discovered that she had shifted the position of ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... rudely forced out the quivering sinews. They flayed off the skin from the top of his head, [65] and poured upon the bleeding wound a stream of boiling melted gum. Champlain remonstrated in vain. The piteous cries of the poor, tormented victim excited his unavailing compassion, and he turned away in anger and disgust. At length, when these inhuman tortures had been carried as far as they desired, Champlain was permitted, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... long I wept with weak and piteous cry O'er my sweet infant, in its rosy bloom, As memory brought my hours of agony Again before my mind:—I mourned his doom; I mourned my own: the sunny little room In which, opress'd by sickness, now ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... his glance of piteous entreaty, and Mr. Chadwick Champneys's bland, blind ignoring of its silent reproach and appeal. And then the long-legged young fellow pulled himself together. His head went up, his mouth hardened, and his voice didn't shake ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... language to a mulatto waiter, who has put his trunk on one side of the boat and carpet bag on the other. A third, a fussy old lady with two rosy-faced daughters she is, against her southern principles, taking to the north to be educated, is making a piteous lamentation over the remains of two bonnets-just from the hands of the milliner-hopelessly smashed in her bandbox. The careless porter set it on a pile of baggage, from where it tottled over under ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... my bosom torn, And sold before my eyes; With outstretched arms, and looks forlorn, It uttered piteous cries. ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... last day, would not have seemed to me more awful. I went into an ecstasy of anguish. At intervals, for days and weeks, I cried and prayed. There was scarcely a retired place in the garden, in the woodhouse, in the carriage-house, or in the barn that was not a scene of my crying and praying. It was piteous that I should be in such a state of mind, and that there should be nobody to help me and lead me out into the light. I do not recollect that to that day one word had been said to me, or one syllable had been uttered in the pulpit, that lead me to think there was ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... at all! He would not let me! And if he would, I should not have done it! He did it all himself! And it is cruel to make a poor, small, little woman suffer for what a big man does!" she cried, amid piteous tears and sobs. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes, God saue the marke, here on his manly brest, A pitteous Coarse, a bloody piteous Coarse: Pale, pale as ashes, all bedawb'd in blood, All in gore blood ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... hands at last!' they said. 'Huitzilopochtli has long cried for his victims. The stone of sacrifice is ready—the knives are sharpened. The wild beasts in the palace are roaring for their feast.' These taunts, which sounded dismally in the ears of the besieged, were mingled with piteous lamentations for Montezuma, whom they entreated the Spaniards to deliver up to them. Cortes was suffering much from a severe wound and from his many anxieties, and he determined to induce Montezuma to exert his authority to allay the ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... myself the question: "Did you, Fibble, emulate the example of that despondent Indian youth and leap headlong from this peak, who in all this careless world other than your Great-Aunt Paulina would bemoan your piteous end? Who would come to place with reverent, sorrowing hands the tribute of a floral design such as a Broken Column or a Gate Ajar upon your ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... done. In autumn, they come timidly from the North, and, pausing on their anxious retreat, lurk within the fading copses and twitter snatches of song as fading. Others fly as openly as ever, but gather in flocks, as the Robins, most piteous of all birds at this season,—thin, faded, ragged, their bold note sunk to a feeble quaver, and their manner a mere caricature of that inexpressible military smartness with which they held ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... kraal to use the wood for burning, and all her goats had wandered off and she had no one to send to look for them. These few logs of wood were all she had to bake bread with; would I ask the General to see that the soldiers did not take them? And then the Kaffirs! It was a piteous tale launched on a flood of tears. Possibly it was exaggerated; people have different ways of asking for help; but the terror in the woman's eye when she spoke of the Kaffirs was genuine. And I remembered the cripple's phrase—"The Kaffirs ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Half- devoured carcasses of these "ships of the desert" lie every where, with jackals and vultures gnawing at them. Even living camels are sometimes seen staggering about, which have been left to starve by their masters as unfit for further service. I shall never forget the piteous look of one of these poor creatures which I saw dragging itself to and fro in the desert, anxiously seeking for food and drink. What a cruel being is man! Why could he not put an end to the poor ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... possessed me to kill my faithful Bruno, in order to drink his blood. My poor Bruno! As I write these humble lines, so lacking in literary grace, I fancy I can see him lying by my side in that glaring, illimitable wilderness, his poor, dry tongue lolling out, and his piteous brown eyes fixed upon me with an expression of mute appeal that added to my agony. The only thing that kept him from collapsing altogether was the blood of some animal which Yamba ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... three, in that long-distant summer-time— The castle, and the dewy woods, and hunt And hound, and morn on those delightful hills 630 In Ader-baijan. And he saw that Youth, Of age and looks deg. to be his own dear son, deg.632 Piteous and lovely, lying on the sand; Like some rich hyacinth which by the scythe Of an unskilful gardener has been cut, 635 Mowing the garden grass-plots near its bed, And lies, a fragrant tower of purple bloom, On the mown, dying grass—so ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... took the part of a charwoman whose life moves in piteous tragedy. It registered what, up to that time, was the most poignant note that this gifted young woman had uttered. Yet the very next season she turned to a typical Clyde Fitch play, "Her Sister," and disported herself in charming frocks and smart ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... assassins meant indescribable torture and suffering, and we will devote a few moments to a consideration of these awful scenes; the sudden attacks, the vain attempts at flight, the desperate hand-to-hand struggles for life, mingled with the brutal yells, interspersed with the piteous cries for mercy, followed by the horrible silence which finally settles over the slippery decks, and the gruesome spectacle of the dreadful vandalism as the murderers ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... pain. For the same reason the patient can swallow neither solid nor liquid food, and sits bent forward, with saliva running out of the mouth. The secretion of saliva is increased, but is not swallowed on account of the pain produced by the act. Sleep is also impossible, and altogether a more piteous spectacle of pain and distress is rarely seen. Having reached this stage the inflammation usually goes on to abscess (formation behind or above or below the tonsil), and, after five to ten days from the beginning of the attack, the pus ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... for a moment in his occupation, and before him stood a woman who was wringing her hands in the agonies of despair. Fanny could hear the profane and abusive language the man used, and she could hear the piteous pleadings of the woman, at whose side stood a little boy, half clothed in tattered garments, weeping as though his ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... This unexpected and piteous exclamation, almost a sob, was almost more than one could bear. It was probably the first moment since the previous day that he had full, vivid consciousness of all that had happened—and it was followed by complete, humiliating ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... My heart bounded as for an instant it occurred to me it would be in my dungeon! No such good fortune! They passed my door. At any rate, my chum should know where I was, so I proceeded to make a demonstration against my door and beseech, in the most piteous way, to be released. Of course, it was no use, but that did not matter; I never ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... mounted on small fiery steeds, covered only with the skin of a goat or leopard, and with necklaces made of the teeth of their enemies. They threw themselves at the feet of the sultan, casting sand on their heads, and uttering the most piteous cries. The monarch apparently moved by these gifts and entreaties, began to intimate to Boo Khaloom his hopes, that these savages might by gentle means be reclaimed, and led to the true faith. These hopes were held by ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... vested almost absolutely in the father. In case of any difference between them he will say, "I am the father—my will must be obeyed." And what he will say in private the law will say in public. Mrs. Stone records a piteous case in which an unborn child was willed by its dying father to relatives in a foreign country in which the widowed mother suffered the pains of childbirth, that other hearts than hers might be gladdened by her dearly-bought treasure. This young woman was described as in a maze of bewilderment ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral; Francis in the year before the judgment of the Most High began to fall upon the guilty king and his accursed progeny. Since then everything seemed to have gone wrong. The last six years of Henry the Second's reign were years of piteous misery, shame, and bitterness. His two elder sons died in arms against their father, the one childless, the other, Geoffrey, with a baby boy never destined to arrive at manhood. The two younger ones ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... the whip hissed through the air. He winced slightly under the blow. Then she let blow after blow rain upon him, with her mouth half-opened and her teeth flashing between her red lips, until he finally seemed to ask for mercy with his piteous, blue ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... of waiting, the passion he evidently cherished for numismatics had reasserted itself, and he now stood with his eyes bent as eagerly upon the display of coins over which he hung, as if no shaft of death had crossed the space without and no young body lay in piteous quiet ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... coals began to burn him, the King came to himself and stood up. 'Ho! my captain of the guards!' His Majesty exclaimed, stamping his royal feet with rage. O piteous spectacle! the King's nose was bent quite crooked by the blow of Prince Giglio! His Majesty ground his teeth with rage. 'Hedzoff,' he said, taking a death-warrant out of his dressing-gown pocket, ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... until he reached manhood. Sir Everard married, in 1596, Mary, daughter and heir of William Mulsho of Goathurst, county Buckingham, who survived him, and by whom he left a son, the famous Sir Kenelm Digby, who was little more than two years old at his father's death. If her piteous letter to Lord Salisbury may be believed, Lady Digby was treated with unnecessary harshness. She complains that the Sheriff has not left her "the worth of one peni belonging to the grounds, house, or within the walls; nor so much as great ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... unpleasant, gradually became delightful. Coffee and pipes were now brought in; and sitting down on a low marble bench, we consigned ourselves to the influence of the melting atmosphere, thinking of the unhappy condition of the mutton-chop, when it exclaimed in a piteous voice to the gridiron, "I am all of a perspiration." There were several other bathers undergoing this process of fermentation; and when the coffee was finished, and the pipe laid aside, two fellows placed me gently on my back, and commenced rubbing, squeezing, and twisting my arms, ribs, and ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... joist, so that his feet would just escape the ground. In that situation he was to wait till the doctor had taken his tea. I shall never forget that night. Never before, in my life, had I heard hundreds of blows fall; in succession, on a human being. His piteous groans, and his "O, pray don't, massa," rang in my ear for months afterwards. There were many conjectures as to the cause of this terrible punishment. Some said master accused him of stealing corn; others said the slave had quarrelled with his wife, in presence of the overseer, and had accused ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... in a low murmur, and my heart sank, for it seemed so piteous to see the bright glare rising over the forest, as the poor house over which so much pains had been taken seemed, in spite of the distance, to be sending up wreath after wreath of golden smoke, while for ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... in inverse ratio with age. A little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left alone for only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by itself is a great punishment. Young people soon get on very friendly terms with one another; it is only the few among them of any nobility ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... robin and the bluebird, piping loud, Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee; The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be; And hungry crows, assembled in a crowd, Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly, Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said, "Give us, O Lord, this day our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... poor injured one was quite well,—but she was still held to be subject to piteous concern. The two aunts shook their heads when she said that she would walk down to the stepping-stones that morning, before starting for Yoxham; but she was quite sure that the sprain was gone, and the distance was not above half a mile. They were not ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... something to soak the earth and turn the roads into water-courses and clog the enemy transport, something above all to blind the enemy's eyes ... For I remembered what a preposterous bluff it all had been, and what a piteous broken handful stood between the Germans and their goal. If they knew, if they only knew, they would brush us aside ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... small brig slowly going to pieces by the wharves, and indeed all Deephaven looked more or less out of repair. All along shore one might see dories and wherries and whale-boats, which had been left to die a lingering death. There is something piteous to me in the sight of an old boat. If one I had used much and cared for were past its usefulness, I should say good by to it, and have it towed out to sea and sunk; it never should be left to fall to pieces above ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... which flanked her Chippendale bureau. He brought out another collection—notebooks, papers, bundles of letters dating much further back than his occupation of Moongarr—salvage from the wreck of his old home. His mother's workbox; his father's SHAKESPEARE; the family Bible—a piteous catalogue. He looked long at the book and the photographs. These last were portraits of his father, his mother and his sisters, who had all been massacred by the Blacks, when he was a boy. He separated all such relics from the general lot, placing them, and also two or ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... A strange, piteous-looking creature was the seal, that I saw stretched on a rock at the edge of a little pond. Its eyes were large and dark and sad—so like human eyes, that I shuddered as I looked at them; for it almost seemed that the poor, ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... and soon returned with Henry, who came into the room looking like a trapped fox, bewildered yet alert. He was rumpled and dirty, like one called from sleep in a corral, but his face appealed to the heart of his mother, who flung herself toward him with a piteous word of appeal, eager to let him know that she ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... when rest I took, For sorrow neer I did not look, I waken'd was with thundring nois And Piteous shreiks of dreadfull voice; That fearfull sound of fire and fire, Let no man know is ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... That's piteous—so much being done, (He'll think some day, your lover) so little to do! Such infinite days to wear out, once begun! Since the hand its glove holds, and the footsole its shoe— Overhead too there's always ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... soon recovered the land; but Florismart was carried downward by the current, and landed at last on a bank of mud where his horse could hardly find footing. Flordelis, who watched the battle from the bridge, seeing her lover in this piteous case, exclaimed aloud, "Ah! Rodomont, for love of her whom dead you honor, have pity on me, who love this knight, and slay him not. Let it suffice he yields his armor to the pile, and none more glorious will it bear than ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... everybody, should carry off his daughter, and so he made new conditions. He was to produce a man who could eat up a mountain of bread. The Simpleton did not hesitate long, but ran quickly off to the forest, and there in the same place sat a man who had fastened a strap round his body, making a very piteous face, and saying, ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... belonged to him, and that the family were only occasional visitors; and he treated them accordingly. The lively and impetuous Lady St. Jerome had a thousand bright fancies, but her morose attendant never indulged them. She used to deplore his tyranny with piteous playfulness. "I suppose," she would say, "it is useless to resist, for I observe 'tis the same everywhere. Lady Roehampton says she never has her way with her gardens. It is no use speaking to Lord St. Jerome, for, though he is afraid of nothing ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... down to a minimum; but now, at night time, or rather in the early-morning hours, the darkness, in very mercy, it seemed, covered it with a veil, as it were, and in the quiet that hung over it now hid the bald, the hideous, aye, and the piteous, too, from view. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... to the very door, and leaned against it. His jaw dropped. He looked ten years older. Then, with a piteous attempt at cheerfulness, he came nearer, and said: "A messenger, then. I'm young and very active, and never ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... and shadows across the opening of Miriam's wigwam. When the light flooded the tent a solitary, white-faced form appeared in dark, sharp outline. The bare arms were tied at the wrists, and beat aimlessly through the darkness. And there was a sound of piteous weeping. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... unmoved, though his flashing eye betrayed, in some degree, his secret emotion. Not so his partner. Flinging himself on his knees before the Prince, he cried in piteous tones—"I confess my manifold offences, and own that my sentence is lenient in comparison with them. But I beseech your Highness to spare me the mutilation and branding. All else I ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... seemed certain that their sufferings must end in death—and what a death! The pack-horses, tethered at a little distance from the barricade, offered an easy target, against which the Indians soon directed their fire, and the piteous cries of the wounded animals added to the tumult of the battle. Some of the horses, maddened by wounds, broke their fastenings and galloped into the forest. But the kilted Highlanders and the red-coated Royal Americans gallantly fought on. Their ranks were being thinned; the fatiguing ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... representations were made to his college, and steps were taken to compel him to resign his Fellowship. Before these came to an issue, he was arrested for debt, and thrown into the Fleet. There he lingered for a time, sinking into a lower and lower state of degradation, and making ever more and more piteous appeals to the noble pupils who owed so much of their knowledge of the world to his guidance. Beyond this point his career is not to be traced, but it is improbable that it was either creditable to him or ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... a piteous thing to hear Her lamentations wild; She tore her golden curls and cried: "My child! ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... can possibly swallow, and are not satisfied with one victim at a time. One which was killed in my fowl-house had three half grown chickens compressed in its folds and held one in its jaws. A short time since I was roused in the middle of the night by the piteous cries of a young kangaroo dog, and on running out found it rolling on the ground in the coils of a large carpet snake. The dog was severely bitten in the loin, but in the morning was quite well, proving that the bite of this reptile is innocuous. This snake measured nearly twelve ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... that piteous learn from far Circassia's ruin, and the waste of war; 60 Some weightier arms than crooks and staves prepare, To shield your harvests, and defend your fair: The Turk and Tartar like designs pursue, Fix'd to destroy, and steadfast to undo. Wild ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... laughter that followed this sally, and Hilda said thoughtfully, "If you boys are intent on this meeting, I'll hurry dinner, for they probably begin early." As she rose to go, Frank caught her hand with the piteous entreaty, "Oh, please make my big brother take his marbles and go home. He wasn't asked to this party. Miss Holland didn't say a thing to him. I don't see why he has to have first show with all the pretty ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... long pursuit Comes on at hand the bruit; That Voice is round me like a bursting sea: 'And is thy earth so marred, Shattered in shard on shard? Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me! Strange, piteous, futile, thing! ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... down at the child once or twice in a state of puzzle. A third time she looked up with her great eyes, and said, "Oh, please carry me a bit!" and her piteous, tired face turned the scale. "If she were Lady Mary or Lady Blanche," thought he, "I should pick her up at once, and be proud of the burden. Here goes!" And he took her up in his arms, and walked ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... chair. "I wouldn't take this from any one else, Jarvis," he said, almost in a piteous whine. "You have got me down. I'm in no shape for ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... in my brain. In the morning, I rose and dressed, dreaming. As I was turning the handle of my door to go down to breakfast, suddenly I swung round in a fit of tears. It was so piteous to think that he should have waited by her twenty years in a slow anguish, his heart burning out, without a reproach or a complaint. I saw him, I still see him, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... impassioned affection that throbbed through her with every heart-beat. As she gazed upon the features, faintly suggestive of its father's, she felt that she could never part from this familiar and intimate link with the spontaneous and powerful passion of her girlhood. When she peered into those piteous, blighted eyes, mighty sobs of pity shook her, but she felt that she must be silent, and she forced back the tears. Outside, a spring bunting ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... a globe larger than the whole world, and that all our actions are seen in that all-embracing globe. It was something like that I saw. For I saw all my most filthy actions gathered up and reflected back upon me from that World of light. I tell you it was a piteous and a dreadful thing to see. I knew not where to hide myself, for that shining light, in which was no darkness at all, held the whole world within it, and all worlds. You will see that I could not flee from its presence. Oh that they could ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... young(e) folk entend(en)[18] aye For to be gay and amorous, The time is then so favorous.[19] Hard is the heart that loveth nought, In May when all this mirth is wrought: When he may on these branches hear The small(e) bird(e)s sing(en) clear (T)heir blissful' sweet song piteous, And in this season delightous[20] When ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... in mute caress over his naked flesh; she covered his forehead, his eyes, his lips with hot kisses; she covered him with her body as though to protect him from the hideous fate she had ordained for him, and in trembling, piteous tones she begged him for his love. For hours the frenzy of her passion possessed the burning hand-maiden of the Flaming God, until at last sleep overpowered her and she lapsed into unconsciousness beside the man she had sworn to torture and to slay. And Tarzan, untroubled by thoughts of the future, ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... quoth Brother Timothy, "that where you left an ass you should find a poor, half-starved Franciscan friar. Set me free and you shall hear my piteous story." ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... obnoxious; unacceptable, unpopular, thankless. unsatisfactory, untoward, unlucky, uncomfortable. distressing; afflicting, afflictive; joyless, cheerless, comfortless; dismal, disheartening; depressing, depressive; dreary, melancholy, grievous, piteous; woeful, rueful, mournful, deplorable, pitiable, lamentable; sad, affecting, touching, pathetic. irritating, provoking, stinging, annoying, aggravating, mortifying, galling; unaccommodating, invidious, vexatious; troublesome, tiresome, irksome, wearisome; plaguing, plaguy[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... small green paths, and when he tried vainly to go to the rescue he lost himself again and again in the wilderness of trails. Back and forth he turned in the twilight, crushing down the underbrush and striking in a frenzy at the forked boughs the trees wrapped about him, while suddenly the piteous voice became that of a woman in distress. Then, with a great effort, he fought his way through the wood, to see the mangled hare change slowly into Maria Fletcher, who opened her eyes to ask him why he ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... bestowed upon me that baby raccoon, I called the little innocent 'Zip,' and kept him in-doors, letting him roam at will. But after he grew to manhood, I was obliged to banish him to our yard and chain him up; and there his piteous, sky-piercing calls, which seemed to come from the roof of a house near him, first showed me what a ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... The poor man, as he made the suggestion, looked very piteous. "If there were, I think you should promise me I shall be that somebody else. That would be no more ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... minutes later, to see another ship not three miles away, reduced to a piteous mass of unrecognizability, wreathed in black fumes from which flared out angry gusts of fire like Vesuvius in eruption, as an unending stream of hundred-pound shells burst on board it, just pointed the moral and showed us what might ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... not given to loose adventure, and had not won the heart of my Lady Castlemaine, since he had made no love to her, which was not a thing to be lightly forgiven to any handsome and stalwart gentleman. Besides this, he had been so moved by the piteous case of the poor Queen, during her one hopeless battle for her rights when this termagant beauty was first thrust upon her as lady of her bedchamber, that on those cruel days during the struggle when the poor Catherine had found herself sitting alone, deserted, while her husband and her courtiers ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... birds and beasts and creeping things—'tis writ— Had sense of Buddha's vast embracing love, And took the promise of his piteous speech. ...
— The Essence of Buddhism • Various
... supplicatingly, and all her fat body was trembling. "You mustn't kill me ... I'm like that—you can't alter me. I'm like that. I know I'm silly. But it's no use!" She made a piteous figure. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... acts unrighteously, occupying the seat of justice, and those officers who having accepted the charge of affairs, act unjustly, moved by self-interest, all sink in hell along with the king himself. Those helpless men who are oppressed by the powerful and who indulge on that account in piteous and copious lamentations, have their protector in the king. In cases of dispute between two parties the decision should be based upon the evidence of witnesses. If one of the disputants has no witnesses and is helpless, the king should give the case his best consideration. The king should cause ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... whole with admirable diligence. In it were the two Emperors on the seat of judgment, condemning to the cross all the prisoners, who were turned towards the tribunal, some kneeling, some standing, and others bowed, but all naked and bound in different ways, and writhing with piteous gestures in various attitudes, revealing the trembling of the limbs at the prospect of the severing of the soul from the body in the agony and torment of crucifixion; besides which, there were depicted in those heads the constancy of faith in ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... are batooning my husband!" Another shrieked from a window, 'Help, help, they are killing my father!' Children ran about the streets, crying, "Oh, my father!—oh, my mother!" It seemed a heartless task to be going from one to another begging something to eat under such piteous circumstances; and yet how knew I that as bad or worse a tragedy might be acted at my uncle's if I failed to supply ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... himself sufficiently, a complaint was duly entered against Mrs. Sims for 'assault with intent to kill;' and Mrs. Sims, despite her piteous entreaties, was arrested and brought before the magistrate. Her ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... puzzled and distressed. Hester, however, was awakened by the piteous cry, and sat ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... in a piteous manner, one of those smiles with which one veils the most horrible suffering, but he replied in a coaxing but ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... windows, and beyond, the tall, dark oak trees, with their great, widespread tossing branches; and she fell upon her knees and kissed the very stones at her feet and the green blades of waving grass that she never once thought she would see again, and she raised her white arms to heaven with such piteous cries of thankfulness that the angels must have heard ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... the tale Elisabeth unfolded, and the hushed listeners, keyed up by its tragic drama, could visualize for themselves the scene of that last piteous interview between Elisabeth and the man who had loved her to ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Their voices and laughter awake Odysseus who rises and shows himself through the foliage. Seeing a nearly naked man the girls run away screaming; only Nausikaa stands still and asks the stranger fearlessly who he is. Odysseus tells her his piteous story and his cruel fate. Nausikaa calls to her maidens to bring raiment for the hero whose name however she has not yet heard. A sudden and tender love fills her heart for the outcast wanderer. Odysseus too feels drawn towards the noble maiden, for a moment he forgets his wife and ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... my dear Sir, in the middle of our pilgrimage; and lest we should never return from this holy land of abbeys and Gothic castles, I begin a letter to you. that I hope some charitable monk, when he has buried our bones, will deliver to you. We have had piteous distresses, but then we have seen glorious sights! You shall hear of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the hill to meet it. His comrades dismounted, and the three young men, with heads uncovered, carried the coffin over the hill and set it down in the shed-room. Then Tommy, in a burst of childish grief, made them know that this piteous ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... relative of the deceased approaches the stranger and, throwing herself upon her knees before him, she embraces his knees with her left arm whilst with the nails of her right hand she scratches her cheek and nose until the blood drops from them, at the same time raising the most piteous cries and lamentations. After a few minutes she rises and approaches his wife and seats herself on the ground in front of her; the two now encircle one another with their left arms, resting their ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... any who are troubled by the piteous end of Horwendil be worried by the sight of this disaster before you; be not ye, I say, distressed, who have remained loyal to your king and duteous to your father. Behold the corpse, not of a prince, but of a fratricide. Indeed, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Christmas of unalloyed gladness. To one only, to the little one whose happiness was his continual thought, the day would be dark with the shattering of cherished hopes. The more he thought of it, the more he felt that it was not to be borne. Faint but piteous memories from his own childhood stirred in his brain, and he realized how irremediable, how final and desperate, seem a child's small sorrows. A sudden resolve took hold upon him. This bitterness, at least, his little one should not know. He ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... softened her, that compelled her to judge him from the most merciful point of view. There was something piteous about him, something that silenced reproaches, that disarmed severity. She had come up-stairs staggered, incredulous—incredulous and yet convinced—outraged, terrified; but now the appeal of that fagged face and those quivering ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... join thou my suit For the blest dust beneath, and read through tears Here sleeps thy mother. Wandering forth to seek her, Unknown her fate and thine, chance led me hither. I marked yon tablet, read yon piteous lines, Threw those now useless arms forever from me, Sank on Victoria's grave, nor left it more; Yet, yet I died not! Amelrosa's kindness, Which gave me freedom, traced me to this spot, And saved my life, my wretched life, which still I only use to mourn thy loss, Victoria. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... discovered more ambition than became him. He had defeated the queen's innovations, and secured her accomplices. To draw off our attention from such regular steps, Sir Thomas More has exhausted all his eloquence and imagination to work up a piteous scene, in which the queen is made to excite our compassion in the highest degree, and is furnished by that able pen with strains of pathetic oratory, which no part of her conduct affords us reason to believe she possessed. This scene is occasioned by the demand of delivering ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... from her ten days ago—the most piteous letter. As you know, I had always a great regard for her. The news of last year was a sharp sorrow to me—as though she had been a daughter. I felt I must see her. So I put myself into the train ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... face bent over his account-books and coffers. There was pretty Genevieve, his sister, with her husband, Crispin Eyre. And there were the comrades of his boyhood, and the prating monk, and the unhappy lady with her white face framed in rich velvets and furs, and her piteous beseeching hands that were never still. Those faces, in the glow of the fire and the shine of tall candles in their silver sconces, were to be with him often in the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... the presence of his stern and learned mentor sufficed to restore his composure; he did not even see his mother's face so near him, piteous in its appeal for a single glance to ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... fearful day—a day that no one who was there will ever forget. The heat, too, was unbearable. The sun shot down his piteous rays upon us, and the higher he rose the hotter it became. It was terrible to see the dead lying uncovered in the scorching rays; and our poor wounded suffered indescribable tortures from thirst. And there was nothing to give them—only a little whisky ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... to his request than his words would seem to indicate. Consequently, he deemed it prudent to ask Luther to write first and urge his suit. The latter did not refuse his aid. "I am moved to make this prayer," said Luther in his letter to the elector, "by the piteous entreaty of worthy and pious persons who, having themselves scarcely escaped the flames, have by great efforts prevailed upon the king to suspend the carnage and extinguish the fires until Melanchthon's arrival. Should the hopes of these good people be disappointed, the bloodhounds ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... only people whom the ants had attacked, and complaints, piteous and loud, came from all parts of the camp, of the attacks made by the fiery little pests. Many of the men, however, appeared bite proof, and only growled and swore at having their ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... ungracious as this I never yet saw; no, never! All the day long he idleth away his time with the sons of the quarter, vagabonds like himself, and his father (O regret of me!) died not save of dolour for him. And I also am now in piteous plight: I spin cotton and toil at my distaff, night and day, that I may earn a couple of scones of bread which we eat together. This is his condition, O my brother-in-law; and, by the life of thee, he cometh not near me save at meal-times and none other. Indeed, I am thinking ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... wounded by bullets and axes. The last agonies and the moans and lamentations were dreadful to hear.... The houses were converted into heaps of stones, so that I might say with Micah, "We are made desolate;" and with Jeremiah, "A piteous wail may go forth in his distress." With Paul I say, "Brothers, pray for us." I have every evening, during a whole month, offered up prayers with the congregation, on the four points of our fort, under the blue sky.... Many heathen have been slain, and full twenty-two ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the superb cupolas and temples which gem the banks of the deified Ganges, longing to exchange his fevered abode for salubrious England.—Pringle transforming the repulsive features of a South African desert into matter for piteous song; and illumining, by the brightness of his genius, the terrible picture of Caffre barbarity and degradation.—Roscoe, revelling in the sweets of Italian lore, his own lips "touched with a live coal" from the altar of poesy.—Washington ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 396, Saturday, October 31, 1829. • Various
... of some striking kind. They are also, as a rule, unexpected, and contrasted with previous happiness or glory. A tale, for example, of a man slowly worn to death by disease, poverty, little cares, sordid vices, petty persecutions, however piteous or dreadful it might be, would not be tragic in ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... Leannan-sighes, or native Muses, to be found in every place of note to inspire the local bard, and the Beansighes (Banshees, fairy women) attached to each of the old Irish families and giving warning of the death of one of its members with piteous lamentations. ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... well shrink from laying them bare. Such a soul-secret was this of Shakespeare's. Think of it! The gentlest spirit that ever breathed, raging and fuming endlessly in impotent-bitter spleen against the prettiest of festivals! Here is a spectacle so tragic-piteous that, try as we will, we shall not put it from us. And it is well that we should not, for in our plenary compassion we shall but learn to love the ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... the water and disported themselves for a time, then came ashore and putting on the little white garments, they became beautiful maidens, and disappeared. But there was one little duck, that remained on the lake and swam about in the most distracted manner, uttering piteous cries. The Prince came from behind the bush and the little duck begged him to give back her garment. He had no sooner done so than before him stood the loveliest maiden he had ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... shrinks, defiled, Shuddering like arctic light, from lips that sear Its nakedness ... the flesh in secret fear! Contagiously through my linked pair it flies Where innocence in either, struggling, dies, Wet with fond tears or some less piteous dew. Gay in the conquest of these fears, I grew So rash that I must needs the sheaf divide Of ruffled kisses heaven itself had tied. For as I leaned to stifle in the hair Of one my passionate laughter (taking care With a stretched finger, that her innocence Might ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... within a few miles of London. The archbishop had ample means of ascertaining the truth; and, we may be sure, had taken care to examine his ground before he left on record so tremendous an accusation. This story is true—as true as it is piteous. We will pause a moment over it before we pass from this, once more to ask our passionate Church friends whether still they will persist that the abbeys were no worse under the Tudors than they had been in their origin, under ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... and her boy stood by the window while the doctor and his assistant, bending over the bedside, conversed together in a low tone. There was no danger of disturbing the patient. He appeared like one blind and deaf. Only his faint, piteous moans showed him to be a living man. Hans was talking earnestly, and in a low voice, for he did not wish ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... genius. Johnson wrote his immortal Rasselas to raise money to buy his mother's coffin. Hunger and pain drove Lee to the invention of his loom. Left a widow with a family to support, in mid-life Mrs. Trollope took to authorship and wrote a score of volumes. The most piteous tragedy in English literature is that of Coleridge. Wordsworth called him the most myriad-minded man since Shakespeare, and Lamb thought him "an archangel slightly damaged." The generosity of his friends gave the poet a home and all ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... in my ears; but the consciousness of danger, the sense of triumph, the selfishness of happiness, out-clamored it! Destined as it was to return in after-years in tones that always seemed more piteous and more laden with pain and bitterness as that miserable night receded further and further back into the darkness of the past, it came upon me the next morning with something of a feeling of asperity and antagonism. There was yet the risk that the dwarf might ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... in the air. The poor orator who had called down destruction upon himself jumped out of the caftan, by which they had seized him, and in his scant parti-coloured under waistcoat clasped Bulba's legs, and cried, in piteous tones, "Great lord! gracious noble! I knew your brother, the late Doroscha. He was a warrior who was an ornament to all knighthood. I gave him eight hundred sequins when he was obliged to ransom himself ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... The piteous, stricken girl moistened her lips; and essayed more than once to speak, before any words came. "'Erbe't, who is this woman?" she said quite simply ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... said, "I don't want to talk to you about your mother; I don't want to defend her to you; I'm past that. I'll say nothing of your summing up of her character,—it's grotesque, it's piteous, such assurance! But I do tell you straight what I've come to feel of you—that you are a cold-blooded, self-righteous, self-centered girl. And I'll say more: I think that your bringing-up, the artificiality, the complacent theory of it, is your best excuse; and I think that you'll never ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... cloak and hood, and had my hand on the bar of the back door, when a piteous mew from the bedroom reminded me of the existence of poor Pussy. I ran in, and huddled the creature up in my apron. Before I was out in the passage again, the first shock from the ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... in answer to Johnson's astonishment, that he had long been a suspected man: "By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen, Sir, (was his lofty reply); I hope I see things from a greater distance."' In the Garrick Corres (i. 473) is a piteous letter in bad French, written from St. Malo, by Bickerstaff to Garrick, endorsed by Garrick, 'From that poor wretch Bickerstaff: I could ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... or other, Immelan accepted these measured words of prophecy as a total reprieve. The relief in his face was almost piteous. He seized his visitor's hand and would have fawned upon it. Prince Shan withdrew himself a ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... very piteous case of a poor woman in the last stage of consumption. The poor creature was worn to a skeleton lying on a most miserable looking bed with nothing to cover her but a ragged strip of black funereal-looking cloth. Although so very ill, she was able to answer the questions that Wagimah ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... the somewhat scattered village. Suddenly the trumpet's call rang out through the sharp, frosty air, and then we again moved on, passing down another village street where several gaunt starving cats attempted to follow us, with desperate strides and piteous mews. Before long, we perceived, standing in the middle of the road before us, a couple of German soldiers in long great-coats and boots reaching to the shins. One of them was carrying a white flag. A brief conversation ensued with them, for ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... with a piteous little expression of appeal. 'I'm so uncomfortable, and my foot's going to sleep. And you needn't be horrid ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... cord," said the foreman. "He had four pair last year," said Mr. Neefit, in a tone so piteous that it might almost have been thought that he was going ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... a hand through his arm. "Oh, La-Larry, why did you ever take such a risk!" she breathed. Her whisper was piteous, aquiver with fright. "Come this way!" and she quickly pulled him into the room where he had met Miss Grierson and to the door ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... thy boon is granted, provided it doth not contravene the laws of the land, and the constitution of chivalry." "Then I crave leave," answered Crabshaw, "to challenge and defy to mortal combat that caitiff barber who hath left me in this piteous condition; and I vow by the peacock, that I will not shave my beard, until I have shaved his head from his shoulders. So may I thrive in the occupation ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... against whose iron strength deadly fevers had stormed in vain, whose fortitude had been unbroken by the almost incredible perversities of fortune—this paladin of the wilderness was at last laid low by the hand of a traitor. The New World has no more piteous tale than that of the unabated sufferings of La Salle, who knew no fear and acknowledged no defeat, even at the hands of a relentless destiny. It has no nobler record than ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... titter, could he have been honoured (may it be no offence to suppose it) with such grave and right reverend auditors. In the ludicrous distresses, which by the laws of comedy, Folly is often involved in; he sunk into such a mixture of piteous pusillanimity, and a consternation so ruefully ridiculous and inconsolable, that when he had shook you, to a fatigue of laughter, it became a moot point, whether you ought not to have pitied him. When he debated any matter by himself, he would shut up his mouth with ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... stinking pools of mud. The starving inhabitants had been lured from their holes and corners by the outward passage of the troops, and hoped to snatch some food from the field of battle. Disappointed, they now approached the camps at night in twos and threes, making piteous entreaties for any kind of nourishment. Their appeals were perforce unregarded; not an ounce of ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Year cared to see no more; While, as he turned, he heard a moan— Frosty and keen was the wintry night— Prone on the marble paving-stone, Unwatched, unwept, a piteous sight, Starved and dying a poor wretch lay; Through the blast ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... nothing for the silly old Mrs. Erskine, but my heart bled for her daughter, who became a piteous white at the turn the talk had taken, and put her handkerchief to her face, affecting a cough. Nancy saw this ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... forward, as did Trevanion, when O'Leary, turning his eyes towards me, said, in the most piteous manner— ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... shading the light, near the stove in the middle ward, until the next were due. One night I heard a cat mewing. It seemed to be almost under my chair, I got up and looked everywhere. Yes, there it was again, but this time coming from under one of the men's beds. It was a piteous mew, and I was determined to find it. I spent a quarter of an hour on tiptoe looking everywhere. It was not till I heard a stifled chuckle from the bed next the Dutchman's that I suspected anything, and then, determined they should get no rise ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... condition was piteous; absolutely mad with terror and pain, she was rushing about on the path, Max, yelling with sympathy, tearing after her. Lynn, at the first frantic moment when she saw her sister's high white socks turned ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... moments of weakness, even the most irreproachable Philistine among us; and as Bertram said those words in rather a piteous voice, it occurred to Philip Christy that the loan of a portmanteau would be a Christian act which might perhaps simplify matters for the handsome and engaging stranger. Besides, he was sure, after all—mystery or no mystery—Bertram Ingledew was Somebody. That nameless charm of dignity and ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... the wreck of things that were. Rickman's genius, like Nature, destroyed in order that it might create; yet it seemed to him that nowadays the destruction was out of all proportion to the creation. He sighed as he gazed at the piteous fragments that represented six months' labour; fragments that wept blood; the torn and mutilated limbs of living thoughts; with here and there huge torsos of blank verse, lopped and hewn in the omnipotent fury of a god at war ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair |
