"Tragic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he got out of the room. He felt an older man. All his boyish yearnings and anxieties about his mother had vanished. He had gone through a tragic experience which must forever solemnize his life and deepen the significance of the acts by which he ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Vandyke-beard, made familiar to us by the great artist. This fashion, set by the king, was followed by nearly the whole of his Cavaliers. It has been thought by some students of this subject that with the tragic death of the king the beard disappeared, but if we are to put our faith in an old song, dated 1660, we must conclude that with the Restoration it once more came into fashion. ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... forth to the world we feel ourselves called upon positively to contradict. Harriet's death has sometimes been ascribed to Shelley. This is entirely false. There was no immediate connection whatever between her tragic end and any conduct on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Lydia—has come over—on that ship—alone,—with three young men,—and not the shadow—not the ghost—of another woman—on board!" Mrs. Erwin gesticulated with her hand-glass in delivering the words, in a manner at once intensely vivid and intensely solemn, yet somehow falling short of the due tragic effect. Her husband stood pulling his mustache straight down, while his wife turned again to the mirror, and put the final touches to her personal appearance with hands which she had the effect of having desperately washed of all responsibility. He stood so long in this meditative mood that she ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... a delicious tradition that Mrs. Siddons, when playing in Dublin, was once interrupted with cries for "Garry Owen! Garry Owen!" She did not heed for some time, but, bewildered at last and anxious to conciliate, she advanced to the footlights and with tragic solemnity asked, "What is Garry Owen? Is it anything I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... in his hand, and now he unfolded it. She was surprised to see that his hands trembled slightly as he did so, for she had seen him act in many a tragic ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... productions. The Mildenburg is a giantess, with a voice like an organ. She is also an uneven singer, being hugely temperamental. The night in question she was keyed up to the occasion, and for the first time I realised the impressiveness of the part of Klytemnestra, its horrid tragic force, its abnormal intensity, its absolute revelation of the abomination of desolation. Mildenburg played it as a mixture of Lady Macbeth and Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. And when she sang fortissimo ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... nature. The closing scenes of his rough and lawless life, in which his latent affection for his faithful wife throws a sunset gleam over his hard and selfish nature, and prevents it from being altogether hateful, are impressively told, and are touched with genuine tragic power. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... now presented to him of arraigning Servius before the fathers with greater violence, and of increasing his own influence in the senate, being himself a hot-tempered youth, while his wife Tullia roused his restless temper at home. For the royal house of the Roman kings also exhibited an example of tragic guilt, so that through their disgust of kings, liberty came more speedily, and the rule of this king, which was attained through crime, was the last. This Lucius Tarquinius (whether he was the son or grandson of Tarquinius Priscus is ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... Why recount the tragic comedy they play at home and which they repeat abroad? The piece abroad is the same as that played in Paris for the past eight years,[51120] an absurd, hasty translation in Flemish, Dutch, German, and Italian, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... seen dance in a studio and in a drawing-room and on a very small stage lit by an excellent stage-light. In the studio and in the drawing-room alone where the lighting was the light we are most accustomed to, did I see him as the tragic image that has stirred my imagination. There where no studied lighting, no stage-picture made an artificial world, he was able, as he rose from the floor, where he had been sitting crossed-legged or as he threw out an arm, to recede from us into some more ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... adjacent valleys to go to ruin, were gaping idly about the public works, caught up only too easily by the vicious current of the incoming tide. In a century the mountaineers must be swept away, and their ignorance of the tragic forces at work among them gave them an unconscious pathos that touched ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... had dared to express themselves openly; for many of these strong men were beginning to feel that their government weighed upon them like a Fate, crushing all liberty and individuality; and of secret trials without defense there were tragic memories haunting the annals ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... uncouth and heedless, still had his hand upon her arm, hurrying her along without slackening his pace. She seemed like a girl in a dream. Truly, she was very handsome, a strange tragic figure amid all the hubbub of Florence, the old-world city of noise and of narrow streets, where Counts and contadini rub shoulders, and the tradesmen are ever on the look out to profit—if only a few ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... often been inquired into; and it is somewhat curious, that, though all parties consent to reprobate it, each assigns for it a different allusion. In the history of political factions there is always a mixture of the ludicrous with the tragic; but, except their modern brothers, no faction like the present ever excited such a combination of extreme contempt and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... wanting? just a thrifle of money then to get a sup of milk for thim five childher as is starving and dying for the want of it." And she pointed to the wretched, naked brood around her with a gesture which in spite of her ugliness had in it something of tragic grandeur. ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... may catch some sound which recalls the thrum of a queen's virginal, the cry of a victim on the rack, the laughter of a bridal feast. For all these sights and sounds—the dance of love and the dance of death—are part of that gay and tragic memory ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... her pillow, and he saw that she was smiling faintly. Her face bore no trace of the tragic truth she had uttered. But the tragedy was plain enough to him, even without her passionless words of revolt. The situation of this young, educated girl, aglow with youth, bettered, body and mind, to the squalor of Clinch's dump, was perfectly ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... Thus tragic was the end of one of the most highly gifted women the world has ever produced. She flourished in the reign of the Emperor Theodosius II, in the early ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... upon men and things in Arabic and Hindostanee, for he scorns English and talks in his sleep. There is Bobby, the grossbeak, brought to the door in pin feathers and skin like oiled silk by an Indian. His history is tragic: this Indian brained the whole family and an assortment of relatives; Bobby alone remaining to brood over the massacre, was sold into bondage for two bits and a tin dipper without the bottom. The sun seems to lift his gloom, for he sings a little, sharpens ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... we are in league against her. What can she mean? Why, I was only repeating some nonsense she said in her sleep last night, and I thought she would be amused to hear an account of it. She came into my room and orated in the most tragic fashion. What does she mean by saying you ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... can understand how verse created from such material might be vigorous and impressive; it is difficult to imagine how it could also be passionate—until one has read Corneille. Then one realizes afresh the compelling power of genius. His tragic personages, standing forth without mystery, without 'atmosphere', without local colour, but simply in the clear white light of reason, rivet our attention, and seem at last to seize upon our very souls. Their sentences, balanced, weighty and voluble, reveal ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... the conventional sense, knaves, products, as the case might be, of conditions or circumstance, which after all is the thing to be criticised and not the man. But pity and tolerance are rare in satire, even in clash with it, producing in the result a deep sense of tragic humour. It is this that makes of Dead Souls a unique work, peculiarly Gogolian, peculiarly Russian, and distinct from its author's Spanish and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... course. There had been moments of indecision—moments in which she had been inclined to revert to her first impressions of the man, which, before she had heard Davenant's story, had been favourable enough. That was all over now. That pitifully tragic figure—the man who died with a tardy fortune in his hands, an outcast in a far off country—had stirred in her heart a passionate sympathy—reason even gave way before it. She declared ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... glance, that might sour the ripest grapes in Chios," rejoined Eudora. "The comic writers are over-jealous of Aspasia's preference to the tragic poets; and I suppose she permitted this visit to bribe his enmity; as ghosts are said to pacify Cerberus with a cake. But hark! I hear Geta unlocking the outer gate. Phidias has returned; and he ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... or this republic will steadily advance to the same destruction, the same ignoble and tragic catastrophe, which has engulfed the male republics of history. Let us establish a government in which both men and women shall be free indeed. Then shall the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the primmest pucker, rolled her eyes in a horrified way, clasped her hands before her, and said, in a tragic tone: "Young ladies! Such conduct is most unseemly," in such perfect mimicry of Miss Carter that ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... had a sequel at Athens, as significant and more tragic. The followers of M. Venizelos, like those of King Constantine, included a set of fanatics who preached that the salvation of the country demanded the extirpation of their adversaries. To these zealots the moment seemed propitious ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... meets with strange and tragic adventures. The Vrishnis and the Andhakas become irreligious and addicted to drinking, and fall a prey to internal dissensions. Valadeva and Krishna die shortly after, and the city of the Yadavas is swallowed ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... of admiration escaped him. And then, once more, he saw that tragic smile on her lips—sad, ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... known as one of the more moderate protectionists and his opponent, General Hancock, who was without any political record, declared the tariff to be a "local issue," to be determined in the Congressional districts. The tariff issue was thus not very sharply drawn. The tragic death of President Garfield left no clear leadership. The tariff question from 1876 to 1884 was politically ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... and most precious relationship is the only one that reconciles a woman to her wrinkles and makes her happy in her grey hairs. Without it she takes to peroxide, smooths out her wrinkles with cream, and what is even more tragic, developes a tendency to pursue the young men of her children's generation. People call it ridiculous, lunatic,—so it would be, if it were not so nobly, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... there's any of the Christmas-pudding bottle left, but I'll go and see,' she said, all in a flutter. How tragic a thing for her, who prided herself on her housewifery, to have no sherry when it ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... of men for a long time. But the tendency was downward. For three months I was chief of a of robbers that ravaged the backyards of the vicinity. Successively I became a spy for Washington, an Indian fighter, a tragic actor. ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... I was glad to make any escape on board that Bremen Diana. There apparently no whisper of the world's iniquities had ever penetrated. And yet she lived upon the wide sea: and the sea tragic and comic, the sea with its horrors and its peculiar scandals, the sea peopled by men and ruled by iron necessity is indubitably a part of the world. But that patriarchal old tub, like some saintly retreat, echoed nothing of it. She was world ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... backward nor forward now,—all her simple energies were concentrated in her work. How was it? Joan asked herself. Had she forgotten—could she forget the past and be ready for petty vanities and follies? To Joan. Liz's history had been a tragedy—a tragedy which must be tragic to its end, There was something startlingly out of keeping in the present mood of this pretty seventeen-year-old girl sitting eager and delighted over her lapful of ribbons. Not that Joan begrudged her the slight happiness—she ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "What a tragic look I have managed to put on," he thought. Then he locked the organ, and was about to blow out the candles, when he changed his mind and took out a scrap of printed paper from his pocket and read it by their light. It was a favourable review of a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... as we, thirsting for its blood, stealthily approached. Then as I raised the rifle "Paddy" tilted up his much-flattened nose, sniffed, and in tragic whisper said—"Dead!" ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... to see the pennant lost by a scant three inches, as Jack Merritt's forty-yard drop-kick for the goal that would have won the Championship struck the cross-bar and bounded back into the field. And the past season-old Bannister could still vision that tragic scene of the ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... same book, the whole passage in which Mr. Perrin sees double. There is also a scene from Fortitude, "After Defeat." After two episodes from The Green Mirror, this portion of the anthology is closed with the tragic passage from The Captives in ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... Faculty. We had to describe in detail the effect of the news upon six or seven girls, for all of whom Hogboom had a tender regard. He insisted upon arranging the funeral and vetoed our plans as fast as we made them. He was as domineering and ugly as if he was the only man who had ever met a tragic end. He acted as if he had a monopoly. We hated him cordially by Monday night, but we were helpless. Hoggy claimed that being dead was a nerve-wearing and exhausting business, and that if he didn't get ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... last twenty years that Lyme has found itself as a popular resort. It must have been a tragic business to the select few, that opening of the light railway from Axminster in 1903. Before that time enthusiasts, among them Whistler and several other famous artists, braved the six miles of rough road from the nearest station to reach the picturesque ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... which he only laughed, leaped lightly over the stone wall, and strode toward the farm, merely throwing over his shoulder the remark, "Thank you, I have generally been quite capable of hiding myself." In which proceeding he acted with a tragic ignorance of the nature of women; and there fell on his path in that sunshine a shadow ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... while the young Prince Charles was growing up to his tragic inheritance, it can hardly be maintained, even by the most devoted adherent of the Stuart line, that James showed himself in the slightest degree worthy of the crown towards which he reached. Indeed, his ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... left alone with the only capital that succeeding generations of my family ever inherited—a common school education and a big, sound physique. My father's tragic death was a heavy blow but the mere fact that I was thrown on my own resources did not dishearten me. In fact the prospect rather roused me. I had soaked in the humdrum atmosphere of the boarding house so long that the idea of having to earn my own living came rather ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... Vicomtesse de Renneville issued an announcement stating that in presence of the events which were occurring she was constrained to suspend the publication of her renowned journal of fashions, La Gazette Rose. This was a tragic blow both for the Parisians themselves and for all the world beyond them. There would be no more Paris fashions! To what despair would not millions of women be reduced? How would they dress, even supposing that they should contrive to dress at all? The thought was appalling; and as one ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... can easily guess that there was a change as sudden as a transformation in a pantomime, and that the short but magic sentence, "Come to Parma," proved a very fortunate catastrophe, thanks to which I rapidly changed, passing from the tragic to the gentle mood, from the serious to the tender tone. Sooth to say, I fell at her feet, and lovingly pressing her knees I kissed them repeatedly with raptures of gratitude. No more 'furore', no more bitter words; they do not suit the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... wilful men in the world, yet are even inculcating that man has no will of his own, but is the play thing of fate. Fatalism, indeed, is no modern invention, being as old as humanity itself, perhaps, older. We find it as strongly inculcated by the Greek tragic poet, as by the modern Calvinist. But the peculiar colors in which we see it dressed, are derived from the revolt of men's minds against the Romish doctrine as to good works. Among these, penance, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... drifted away from the face of the sky. A brightness was growing there. Stiffly, painfully, Sir Beverley struggled up from his chair, stood steadying himself—a figure tragic and forlorn—with his hands against the wood of the window-frame, then with a groaning effort ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... confiding soul deceived and tortured into despair. The Lincoln's Inn Fields became the abomination of desolation, her fine society was dust and ashes and mankind in general all mocking villainy. So it was natural that she should retire from the world and become a recluse of tragic dignity. What other part is there for the deserted wife ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... waiting-about upon things, a sort of despairing longing for something else to happen—and a sure sense that nothing more could happen till next year. Every event in the floral calendar had taken place with immemorial punctuality and tragic rapidity. All the full-blooded flowers of Summer had long since come and gone, with their magic faces and their souls of perfume. Gone were the banners of blossom from the great trees. The locust and the chestnut, those spendthrifts of the woods, that went the pace so gorgeously in June, are now ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... army, the regiments of it were also kingdoms. The sub-units were also sub-loyalties. Hence the loyalist to his lord might be a rebel to his king; or the king be a demagogue delivering him from the lord. This tangle is responsible for the tragic passions about betrayal, as in the case of William and Harold; the alleged traitor who is always found to be recurrent, yet always felt to be exceptional. To break the tie was at once easy and terrible. Treason in the sense of rebellion was then ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... all his life the delicate, fragile Petit Chose. Ten years before his death—which was tragic in its suddenness when it did come—a severe illness overtook him, and slowly but surely his iron will broke down under the physical and mental strain which its ravages had brought on him. One evening, sitting at supper with his family, he had scarcely begun to eat when he fell from his chair. ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... knows the gallery at Woburn, must remember the remarkable picture alluded to. There is in the same apartment a very fine whole-length of Charles Brandon; but in no way can I see is it connected with the work which has furnished this tragic anecdote. At some distance from Brandon's portrait appears the first Francis, Earl of Bedford, with a long white beard, and furred robe, and George, pendant,—an illustrious personage of this house, who discharged several great offices in the reigns ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... purposes, as if done by ourselves. We clear ourselves to you our brethren, to the present age, and to future generations, to our king and our country, and to Europe, which, as a spectator, beholds this tragic scene, of every part or share in adding this last and worst of evils to the inevitable mischiefs of a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of delight and forgetfulness of trouble, and the tragic condition of our days, was now opening to Harold Quaritch and Ida de la Molle. Every day, or almost every day, they met and went upon their painting expeditions and argued the point of the validity or otherwise of the impressionist doctrines ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... table—the only true table. A carpenter makes a particular table which is not the real, but only an appearance. A graphic artist making a picture of this appearance is only an imitator of appearances. "And the tragic poet is an imitator and therefore thrice removed from the king and from the truth."[272] The second objection which Plato raises against poetry is that poetry is addressed to the passional element in man. The man of noble spirit and ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... consumption; the disease spread like a fire about the valley, and in less than a year two survivors, a man and a woman, fled from that new-created solitude. A similar Adam and Eve may some day wither among new races, the tragic residue of Britain. When I first heard this story the date staggered me; but I am now inclined to think it possible. Early in the year of my visit, for example, or late the year before, a first case of phthisis appeared in a household of seventeen persons, and by the month of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bad, infantile habit, in itself grotesquely ridiculous. You may see it particularly in the theatre. Not the greatest dramatist, not the greatest composer, not the greatest actor can prevent an audience from laughing uproariously at a tragic moment if a cat walks across the stage. But why ruin the scene by laughter? Simply because the majority of any audience is artistically childish. This sense of the ridiculous can only be crushed by the exercise of moral force. It can only be cowed. If you are inclined to laugh when a poet expresses ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... cornfield was tossed into the haze and swept like a golden shadow across the earth, bending back again when the breeze had died. Behind Mellot Wood was Mellot Farm, an old eighteenth-century house about which there was a fine tragic story with a murder and a ghost in it, and this, of course, gave Mellot Wood an additional charm. When they arrived at the outskirts of Mellot Wood Mary looked about her. It was here, on the edge of the Rafiel Road that skirted the ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... as lightning, while her glance had that fulness of candor which can never be assumed. Looking at her now, with her elbows on the table, and the sandwich daintily poised between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, it was hard to connect her with tragic possibilities. There were pearls around her neck and diamonds in her hair; but to the wholesomeness of her personality jewels were no more than dew on the freshness ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... as yet, they've no others). And is it not strange That in vast Holy Russia, With masses and masses Of people unnumbered, No song has been born 10 Overflowing with joy Like a bright summer morning? Yes, is it not striking, And is it not tragic? O times that are coming, You, too, will be painted In songs of the people, But how? In what colours? And will there be ever A smile in their ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... undoubtedly the gainer by these tragic events. In addition to being Viceroy of the Deccan, he found himself all-powerful at Dehli, for Saadat 'Ali had died soon after the Khan Dauran. Death continuing to favour him, his only remaining rival, the Mahratta Peshwa, Baji ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... were sharpening their claws and wailing their battle-cries. Presently out of the noise came a kind of music—very slow, solemn, and melancholy. The notes ran up in great flights of ecstasy, and sunk anon to the tragic deeps. In spite of my sleepiness I was held spellbound and the musician had concluded with certain barbaric grunts before I had the curiosity to rise. It came from somewhere in the gallery of the inn, and as I stuck my head out of my door I had a glimpse of Oliphant, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... of this tragic story every one drew a long breath. Jim Sparrow, it was clear, had swallowed it from beginning to end, and one or two others of the juniors looked as if they would have been more pleased had the event not been made to happen on Christmas Eve, of all nights. But with these exceptions the ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... deed had been done by a very ugly little man, but of a blood so highly respected, that all forms were dispensed with, in the fear lest it should be brought home to him; and, after the first excitement, everybody ceased to speak of this tragic history. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... I at once set out to try to track the animal, and was accompanied by Captain Haslem, who happened to be staying at Tsavo at the time, and who, poor fellow, himself met with a tragic fate very shortly afterwards. We found it an easy matter to follow the route taken by the lion, as he appeared to have stopped several times before beginning his meal. Pools of blood marked these halting-places, where he doubtless ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... never having been so spoken to before, at least since her arrival in England, there was something comic in the surprise of her large eyes, as well as something tragic in the dignity of her offended mien. "It is very naughty of you, Miss," continued Leonard in a milder tone, for he was both softened by the eyes and awed by the mien, "and I trust you will not ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... asked sympathetically, for the doctor's voice broke over the last words. Vigil had been his favorite horse, and together, man and beast, they had passed through many a tragic night and day. Such ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... the result might well be doubted. The proprietors were summoned to meet on the fifteenth of August at Grocers' Hall. During the painful interval of suspense, Shrewsbury wrote to his master in language more tragic than is often found in official letters. "If this should not succeed, God knows what can be done. Any thing must be tried and ventured rather than lie down and die." [710] On the fifteenth of August, a great epoch in the history of the Bank, the General Court was held. In the chair sate Sir ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... artistic and literary attainments, having studied the romances of VICTOR HUGO for the sake of being inspired by that Grand Old Master's style, determined to essay a "thriller" of most tragic type. These two single authors, Messrs. WYATT and ROSS, being rolled into one, wanted, like the Pickwickian Fat Boy, "to make our flesh creep." In their one-volume Hugoesque romance, The Earth Girl, bound in pale grass-green, with blood-red title, they have most unequivocally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... sharp for comedy, and her figure not quite tall enough for tragedy. She herself preferred tragedy, which decided the point; and Mr Revel, who knows all the actors, persuaded Mr Y—— (you know who I mean, the great tragic actor) to come here, and give his opinion of her recitation. Mr Y—— was excessively polite; declared that she was a young lady of great talent, but that a slight lisp, which she has, unfitted her most decidedly for tragedy. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... in two Books, a tribute to the memory of a valued friend, the tragic poet Pomponius. Cf. N.H. xiv. 56, 'referentes vitam ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... that gesture was the turning-point of existence. By the time he was wandering in the mysterious garden again in the colours of the morning the tragic futility of his ordinary mien had fallen from him; he was a man with many reasons for happiness. Lord Galloway was a gentleman, and had offered him an apology. Lady Margaret was something better than a lady, a woman at least, and had perhaps given him something better than an apology, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... his genius as a director. To counteract the depression caused by all the recent melodramatic and tragic happenings, he had brought in an eight- piece orchestra, establishing the men in the set itself so as to get full photographic value from their jazz antics. Where Werner and Manton had dispensed with music, in a desperate effort at ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... than Kings or Princes, the Chancellor had gone to banishment and oblivion. "The lady" had looked for the last time, a laughing Jezebel, from a palace window, exultant at her enemy's fall; and along the river that had carried such tragic destinies eastward to be sealed in blood, Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, had drifted quietly out of the history he had helped to make. The ballast of that grave intellect was flung overboard so that the ship of fools might drift ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... that should slip up—" continued young Lewiston, wrapped in somber contemplation of his own affairs alone; he threw his arms outward with a gesture suddenly tragic in its intensity, paused an instant, then wrung Justin's ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... rather tragic, and I am sorry to believe that Bradlaugh rather enjoyed it. No one man physically was a match for him, and all men fall easy victims to their facility. The police did not succeed on this occasion in arresting him; and it seems that there was a sentiment abroad that made the Government ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Strathardle, conceived in Highland rain, in the blend of the smell of heather and bog-plants, and with a mind full of the Athole correspondence and the memories of the dumlicide Justice. So long ago, so far away it was, that I had first evoked the faces and the mutual tragic situation of the ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lie behind that roll! Then run over the persons of a single drama: that one bounded inclosure, how rich in variety and intensity, and truth of feeling! And when you shall have thus cursorily sent your mind through each and all, tragic, comic, historic, lyric, you will have traversed in thought, accompanied by hundreds of infinitely diversified characters, wide provinces of human sorrow and joy. Why are these pictures of passion so uniquely prized, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... Maro to his Propertius, greeting. I hope you will allow me to congratulate you on your recent volume of verse. Your management of the elegiac metre, which my friend Gallus, before his tragic death, taught me to understand, seems to me ennobling and enriching, and in both the fire and the pathos of many of your lines I recognise the true poet. Perhaps you will recognise the rustic in me when I add that I also welcomed a note of love for ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... Frankly,—as women rate vices I believe I have only one. What—what—I'm trying to tell you—now—is about that one." A little defiantly as to chin, a little appealingly as to eye, he emptied his heart of its last tragic secret. "Through all the male line of my family, Miss Malgregor, dipsomania runs rampant. Two of my brothers, my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather before him, have all gone down as the temperance people would say into 'drunkards' graves.' In my own ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... state and municipal control over slavery. Yet after public attention had become fixed upon conduct on the part of the abolitionists which was illegal, it was difficult to escape the implication that their whole course was illegal. This was the tragic significance of the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... attention,) that "the piece is crowded with characters of the greatest variety, all of considerable importance in the piece, engaged in the most striking situations, and contributing essentially to the main design. Instead of that simple unity of interest, from which modern tragic writers have rarely ventured to depart, it takes the wider range of that historic unity, which is the characteristic of our elder drama; moulds together, and connects by some common agent employed in both, incidents which have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... Thomasin soon appeared. When she was seated in the gig with her husband, and the horse was turning to go off, Wildeve lifted his eyes to the bedroom windows. Looking from one of them he could discern a pale, tragic face watching him drive ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... if to touch such chord be thine, Restore the ancient tragic line, And emulate the notes that wrung From the wild harp, which silent hung By silver Avon's holy shore, Till twice a hundred years roll'd o'er; When she, the bold Enchantress, came, With fearless hand and heart on flame! From the pale ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... reserve protected her from questions. It was felt that the place was sacred to some recollection of her youth, when her young children were about her, before the cruel desertion of two, the ceaseless quarrels of other two, and the tragic death of one of them, had ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... into marriage with the vaguest possible notions of what it meant; feeling and knowing that she needed something, and supposing it must be a husband. It was better fortune, perhaps, than she merited, and equally kind for both parties, that her husband died before either of them realized the tragic mistake. David Loring was too absorbed in his own emotions to note the absence of full response on the part of his wife; Robinette was too much a child and too inexperienced to be conscious of ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... forces are neither of them strong enough to annihilate the other, there is serious trouble: that is how we get those feuds between parent and child which recur to our memory so ironically when we hear people sentimentalizing about natural affection. We even get tragedies; for there is nothing so tragic to contemplate or so devastating to suffer as the oppression of will without conscience; and the whole tendency of our family and school system is to set the will of the parent and the school despot above conscience as something that ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... early these expressions may have been used, we learn from the account of Thespis. Suidas[154] is authority that Thespis first exhibited a play in 536 B.C.; and the Parian Marble records[155] that he was the first to exhibit a drama and to receive the tragic prize [Greek: en astei]. ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... impression of poverty and coldness. At the Church of St. John and St. Paul is the famous martyrdom, or rather assassination, of St. Peter Martyr, by Titian, one of the most magical pictures in the world. Its tragic horror is redeemed by its sublimity. Here too is a most admirable series of bas-reliefs in white marble, representing the history of our Saviour, the work of a modern sculptor. Here too the Doges are buried; and close to the Church is the equestrian ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... to the police court in the morning as a witness. The terror of that ordeal almost overshadowed the tragic fact that Parsons was not only summoned for assault, but "swapped," and packing his box. Polly knew himself well enough to know he would make a bad witness. He felt sure of one fact only, namely, that "'E then 'It 'Im on the 'Ed and—" ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... away without saying a word, and as for the assistant chief-of-staff, seeing that he was caught in the act and knowing the fate which awaited him, he went to his house and blew his brains out with a pistol shot. This tragic event was hushed up by the Austrian government and not many people knew about it; it was announced that the assistant chief-of-staff had died of apoplexy. The French ambassador was said to have paid ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... in search of food. I know not what thoughts came to her mind as we sat looking out on the pictures o; the mirage which the sun was painting on the desert landscape. But, finally, as we gazed, there seemed, among these weird images, one colossal tragic shape which moved, advanced, changed definitely. Now It stood in giant stature, and now dwindled, but always it came nearer. At last it darkened and denned and so disappeared beyond a blue ridge not half a mile away from us. We realized at last that it was a solitary buffalo bull, no doubt ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... synod of Christchurch might pass threatening resolutions—as it did in 1863 and 1864—but as long as Henry Harper occupied the bishop's seat they were bound to be blocked by the episcopal veto. And before the next General Synod the Church was to pass through such tragic occurrences that the question at issue could no longer command the same ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... catastrophe of their fortunes. Finer still the inspired mariner who has just discovered a new world; the sage who has revealed a new planet; and yet the "Before" and "After" of a first-rate English race, in the degree of its excitement, and sometimes in the tragic emotions of its close, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... fluttered tragic newspapers everywhere—in the parks, on the streets, on the scaffolds of the buildings, along the tented lanes, and in ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... straight towards the lovers, in whose dissension he believed himself to have a share. And, indeed, as soon as he had seen the Prince, Fritz had stood tragic, as if awaiting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is Paris,—laughing, tragic Paris, who once had need of a singer to proclaim her splendor and all her misery. Fate made the man; in necessity's mortar she pounded his soul into the shape Fate needed. To king's courts she lifted him; to thieves' hovels she ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... tell which will move amidst tragic circumstances of too engrossing a nature to be disturbed by archaeological interests, and shall not, therefore, minutely describe here what I observed in Nuremberg, although no adequate description of that wonderful ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... almost hated her. A woman who, in this pathetic, perhaps almost tragic, picture saw only a ludicrous image, and that image himself, was of another race than that he had ever mingled with. Profoundly indifferent as he had always been to the criticism of his equals in station, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... would be amusing, if it were not tragic!" retorted MacNair. And picking up the gun which the wounded Indian had dropped, held it before the eyes of the girl. "The hunters of the North, Miss Elliston, do not ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... after his defeat at Wake Island, the things that remained uppermost in the mind of Col. James P. S. Devereux, as he put together the story of the most tragic hours of his life, were the heroisms of the individuals who had been trained in a tradition to which he had fully committed his own purpose. One incident of that day, typical of many, is best related in Devereux's ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... code that there could not be love between husband and wife, and it was counted a mark of low breeding for a husband to challenge his wife's right to her young knight's services, though sometimes we are told the husband risked this reproach, occasionally with tragic results. This mode of love, after being eloquently sung and practised by the troubadours—usually, it appears, younger sons of noble houses—died out in the place of its origin, but it had been introduced into Spain, and the Spaniards reintroduced it into Italy when they acquired the kingdom of ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... leak. A member of the party searched for the leak with a lighted candle, and the explosion that resulted fired some woodwork. Fortunately the outbreak was extinguished quickly. The loss of the hut at this stage would have been a tragic incident. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Oh, fellows, the tragic day of a boy's life is when he decides to throw over a good father. No matter what prize is offered. It may be to get more liberty; it may be to escape restraint or rebuke, but it is a bad trade at best. Ordinarily a boy's best man friend is his father. If this does not seem to be the case, ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... of spirits; it had a cork in the barrel, and I suppose you fired it down your throat. Amid all these scenes the officers displayed an unvarying tact, coaxing the men on board and not unduly hastening their farewells; but for all that there were many violent and tragic scenes. ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... the startling and tragic events of that day it had been overlooked and forgotten, I did not wonder. But that it should have escaped my notice afterwards, or if mine, that of the landlady who took charge of the room in my absence, was what I could not understand. As far as I could remember, I left the letter ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... something of the poor girl's tragic story to his aunt. She was all interest. "Won't you tell us, please?" ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... further than to recall the fateful bisection of the culture of the European peninsula which resulted from the linguistic alienation of Constantinople from Rome; of the Mediterranean base which understood Latin, from that which thought in Greek. In this tragic respect, which the Turkish conquest, with its linguistic and religious sequel, has done little more than aggravate, Europe ends still at the Save; whereas Rome's greatest daughters have reconquered more than all that Carthage ever held in Africa. ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... see why you should be surprised; everybody knows the tales; and they are graceful and pleasant subjects, not too tragic for a place where people mostly eat and drink and amuse themselves, ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... course; The sun that sear'd the wings of my sweet boy, Thy brother Edward; and thyself, the sea Whose envious gulf did swallow up his life. Ah, kill me with thy weapon, not with words! My breast can better brook thy dagger's point Than can my ears that tragic history. But wherefore dost thou come? ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... and her the friendship ripened rapidly and unexpectedly. It was so unexpectedly that it took her off her guard. It was beyond all the possibilities her imagination could foresee that he should fall in love with her—a woman who had had her tragic experience, of no great beauty, the mother of two children. It was, in fact, through the children that he made his approaches, in as far as he made them intentionally. She judged that he didn't do that, ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... He is never, like many of his fellow-dramatists, confronted with unnatural Frankensteins of his own making, whom he must get off his hands as best he may. Given a human foible, he can incarnate it in the nothingness of Slender, or make it loom gigantic through the tragic twilight of Hamlet. We are tired of the vagueness which classes all the Elizabethan playwrights together as "great dramatists,"—as if Shakspeare did not differ from them in kind as well as in degree. Fine poets some of them were; but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... column hurled against column, battery bellowing to battery! Valor? Yes! Greater no man shall see in war; and self-sacrifice, and loss to the uttermost; the high recklessness of exalted devotion which does not count the cost. We are made by these tragic, epic things to know what it costs to make a nation—the blood and sacrifice of multitudes of unknown men lifted to a great stature in the view of all generations by knowing no limit to their manly willingness to serve. In armies thus marshaled from the ranks of free men you will see, as ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... in "the million" a natural taste for farce after tragedy, and they gladly relieve themselves by mitigating the solemn seriousness of the tragic drama; for they find, that it is but "a step from the sublime to the ridiculous." The taste for parody will, I fear, always prevail: for whatever tends to ridicule a work of genius, is usually very agreeable to a great number of contemporaries. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Sandford sat watching Alice at her work, it occurred to her that there was a look of tender sorrow, an unexplained melancholy, which her recent bereavement did not wholly account for. Not that the girl was given to romantic sighs or tragic starts, or that she carried a miniature for lachrymose exercises; but it was evident that she had what we term "a history." She was frank and cheerful, although there was palpably something kept back, and her cheerfulness was like the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... out of existence like that," he said, as we sat in Mr. Crawford's office, looking over some papers; "but it solved a big problem for Florence and me. However, we'll be married as soon as we decently can, and then we'll go abroad, and forget the tragic part of ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... the woman was robbed of its share of tragic emotion by having to hold so far aloof. Flashes of guns were but flashes of guns up there where she knelt. She thirsted to read the things written by them; thirsted for their mystic terrors, somewhat as souls of great prophets have craved for the full revelation of those fitful underlights ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "What a tragic face, Maggie," said her father, chucking her under the chin. "We must only trust that the picture is mislaid, not lost. Now, good-by, my dear, I am off ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... he, astonished, looking round the room, and not seeing the least trace of the tragic event which was supposed ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... fun is found to a greater or less degree in all of the sketches, but at times the fun borders on the tragic so closely that the dividing line between laughter and tears almost fades out of ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... his age His scenes alone had damn'd our singing stage; But Managers for once cried, "hold, enough!" Nor drugg'd their audience with the tragic stuff! ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... year, and there were a hundred conventional terms, to be ignorant of which was to be without one of the distinguishing marks of a gentleman. The reader may consult Dame Juliana Berners' book on the subject. The origin of this science was imputed to the celebrated Sir Tristrem, famous for his tragic intrigue with the beautiful Ysolte. As the Normans reserved the amusement of hunting strictly to themselves, the terms of this formal jargon were all ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... ceased, and, breathing heavily, he stood still, surrounded by all these white men. He held his head up in the glare of the lamp—a head vigorously modelled into deep shadows and shining lights—a head powerful and misshapen with a tormented and flattened face—a face pathetic and brutal: the tragic, the mysterious, the repulsive mask ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... had emptied all her vials, and that I was nerved, because there was nothing more to dread. But the worst is always behind, and this is the irony of fate. You think that merely a rhetorical metaphor, a tragic trope? How should you know? That Christmas card is the solitary dove I sent out to hunt a resting-place for mother and for me, when the flood engulfed us. It was my design sent to Boston, to compete ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... revealed, this secret so full of horror, as the tragic poet says. Now, my daughter, learn from my lips how you may alleviate this misfortune, so far as ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... persons who have been at my house in this State, and have asked me, as they looked at your Grandfather's miniature that hangs on my walls—Who is this? When I have told them, all remembered what they had heard, or seen in the papers, of his virtuous life and tragic death; but not one ever asked me the name of his assassin. So true to nature and the orderings of Providence is the proverb of Solomon: "The memory of the just is blessed: but the name ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... this poetry may be tragic or comic, I will not scruple to say it may be likewise either in verse or prose: for though it wants one particular, which the critic enumerates in the constituent parts of an epic poem, namely metre; yet, when any kind of writing contains all its other parts, such as ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... the presence of the light, and the absence of all noise, such as would be caused by the murderer in leaving the room and going down stairs, the impression of this tragic vision upon her mind was not to be ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... to Meet It," was recommended in a circular signed by a large number of the Republican Congressmen, and thus given a vogue and weight out of all proportion to the standing of the author, whose recent death under tragic circumstances at an advanced age has drawn the name of Hinton Rowan Helper for a brief hour from its ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... without the aid of magic, May ONCE be read—but never after; Yet their effect's by no means tragic, Although by ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... in Rudyard's appearance. His face was haggard and his warm colour had given place to a strange blackish tinge which seemed to underlie the pallor—the deathly look to be found in the faces of those stricken with a mortal disease. All strength and power seemed to have gone from the face, leaving it tragic with uncontrolled suffering. Panic emotion was uppermost, while desperate and reckless purpose was in his eyes. The balance was gone from the general character and his natural force was like some great gun loose from its fastenings on the deck of a sea-stricken ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... living by comic sketches, and all but lost it again by tragic poems. So he was just the man to be chosen king of the fairies, for in Fairyland ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... write no more verses, or, as I rather hope, encourage me, by his authority, to renounce for ever the dry employment of forensic causes (in which I have had my share of drudgery), that I may, for the future, be at leisure to cultivate the sublime and sacred eloquence of the tragic muse. ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... shoving them toward Feeney, and rose. He half-staggered into the large coat room behind him. He had scarcely more than disappeared when there was the startling roar of a shot, and the body of Scales, with a round hole in the temple, toppled, face downward, out of the door. It was Scales' tragic confession of guilt. They sprang instantly to him, but nothing could be done for him. He was dead ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... perfectly trite," said Susanna, "and it would be perfectly absurd, if it were n't rather tragic, or perfectly tragic, if it were n't ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... chose to be. She had elected to be light and girlish; and whatever she was, it was evident that in her husband's eyes she was perfect. He watched her admiringly, adoringly, as she welcomed her brother-in-law and the cure. The love in his eyes was pathetic, and would have been tragic if it had not been a happy love, fully returned, and culminating in a ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a vision was related, it but indicates, prophetically, the progress of a few years. California's history is replete with tragic, startling events. These events are the landmarks by which its advancement is traced. One of the most mournful of these is recorded in this work—a work intended as a contribution, not to the literature, but to the history of the State. ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... the American nation are pacifists, either through their education and sentimental prepossession in favor of the principle, or out of a sense of commercial expediency. People in the United States did not understand that the German people, owing to their tragic history, are compelled to cultivate and to uphold the martial spirit of their ancestors. The types of the German officer of the reserve and of the members of the student corps are particularly unsympathetic ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... will be urged that this is reckoning without the Balkans. I submit that the German thrust through the wooded wilderness of Serbia is really no part of the war that has ended in the deadlock of 1915. It is dramatic, tragic, spectacular, but it is quite inconclusive. Here there is no way round or through to any vital centre of Germany's antagonists. It turns nothing; it opens no path to Paris, London, or Petrograd. It is a long, long way from the Danube to either Egypt or Mesopotamia, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells |
