"Tragical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which has been written by M. Pierre Clement, in a volume crowned by the French Academy, is very wonderful and in- teresting, but I have no space to go into it here. There is no more curious example, and few more tragical, of a great fortune crumbling from one day to the other, or of the antique superstition that the gods grow jealous of human success. Merchant, million- naire, banker, ship-owner, royal favorite, and minister of finance, explorer ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... countenance of the soul. Perhaps the rays are to the stars what thorns are to the flowers; and so the poet, after wandering over heaven, returns with bleeding feet. Less tragic in its merely temporal aspect than the life of Keats or Coleridge, the life of Shelley in its moral aspect is, perhaps, more tragical than that of either; his dying seems a myth, a figure of his living; the material shipwreck a figure of ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... and judgment, and many passages might be pointed out which possess no mean share of picturesqueness, elegance, and dramatic propriety. Contrary to the usual practice, in old as well as modern pieces, "The Disobedient Child" concludes unhappily, though without any attempt at a highly wrought tragical catastrophe; the Rich man persists in his unrelenting conduct, and we are left to imagine that his son returns to live and die in misery with his ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... am much deceiv'd in those eyes of yours, if a treat, a song, and the fiddles, be not a more acceptable proof of love to you, than any of those tragical ones ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... ended his days in such a sort as this, but it was no fault of Barnaby True's, nor could he have done anything to prevent it, seeing that he was not even born into the world at the time that his grandfather turned pirate, and was only one year old when he so met his tragical end. Nevertheless, the boys with whom he went to school never tired of calling him "Pirate," and would sometimes sing for his benefit that famous catchpenny ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... his feet, very much astonished; his cheek tingling, his self-love stung to the quick. But he was too experienced in such affairs to indulge any tragical emotions on the occasion. He stared at her for a minute, with an expression of absurd bewilderment. There was no very graceful exit from the undignified predicament to which he had, like a simpleton, reduced himself. Recovering his self-possession, however, he broke into ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... sacrifice, and it was the greater that few knew the extent of it. His letters came down franked from town, and he showed the invitations to Helen with a sigh. It was beautiful and tragical to see him refuse one party after another—at least to those who could understand, as Helen didn't, the melancholy grandeur of his self-denial. Helen did not, or only smiled at the awful pathos with which the Major spoke of the Court Guide in general: but young Pen looked with ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... warnings, second sight, etcetera; some illustrate the prowess of Scottish heroes and worthies, from Bruce and Wallace, right down to Johnny Armstrong and Rob Roy Macgregor; others, again, are wild and tragical tales of covenanting times, or of the sufferings endured, and the dangers encountered by his countrymen, for their religious faith, from the time of the murder of "holy Patrick Hamilton, the first Scottish martyr," to the forays of ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... All burst into tears at the sight. We indulged a melancholy pleasure in reflecting what that great man had achieved for the deliverance of Abyssinia, from the yoke and tyranny of the Moors; the voyages he had undertaken; the battles he had fought; the victories he had won; and the cruel and tragical death he had suffered. Our first moments were so entirely taken up with these reflections that we were incapable of considering the danger we were in of being immediately surrounded by the Galles; but as soon as we awoke to that thought, we contrived to retreat as fast as we could. Our ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... was a mild one, for when they tried to tell the adventures which to them seemed so exciting, not to say tragical, the effect astonished them immensely, as their audience went into gales of laughter, especially at the wheelbarrow episode, which Bab insisted on telling, with grateful minuteness, to Ben's confusion. Thorny shouted, and even tender-hearted Betty forgot her tears over the lost dog to join in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... war against the holy knights, with a view of corrupting them, and ultimately, it may be, of acquiring for himself the "Sangrail," in which all power is believed to reside. Many knights have already succumbed to the "insidious arts" of Klingsor; but the tragical turning-point of the Parsifal is that Amfortas, himself the son of Titurel, the official guardian of the Grail, in making war upon the magician, took with him the sacred spear, ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... I think, Moses employs in this passage, when he uses the verb yakam, "Rose up against." What tragical pictures would the eloquence of a Cicero or a Livy have drawn in an attempt to portray, through the medium of their oratory, the wrath of the one brother, and the dread, the cries, the prayers, the tears, the uplifted hands, and all the horrors of the ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... severest laws against them, and employed the hand of executioners to ruin them. The seditious multitudes, by murders and massacres, have committed outrages against them, if possible, still more violent and tragical. Besides their common share in the sufferings of society, they have undergone a series of horrid and unutterable calamities, which no other description of men has ever experienced in any age, or in any country. Princes and people, Pagans, Mahometans, and Christians, ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... Silence answered only by sighing and moaning, For two whole days she had been kept in constant fear and worry, afraid every minute of some tragical message, perplexed by the conflicting advice of all manner of officious friends, sleepless of course through the two nights, and now ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... neighbourhood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragical story of the unfortunate Andre, who had been taken prisoner hard by, and was universally known by the name of Major Andre's tree. The common people regarded it with a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... romantic and tragical story of love and faith that the early annals of America have to show, and the fate of the faithful Miranda has become a classic in the love-lore of ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... neighbouring heights of Blackhouse, are shown as marking the spot where the seven brethren were slain; and the Douglas Burn is avowed to have been the stream at which the lovers stopped to drink; so minute is tradition in ascertaining, the scene of a tragical tale, which, considering, the rude state of former times, had probably foundation ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... plead for her frailties, perhaps even these pages would not have softened her bloody disposition, which she seems to have inherited from that insolent monster, her father. "Mary's sufferings (says this enchanting historian) exceed, both in degree and duration, those tragical distresses which fancy has feigned, to excite sorrow and commiseration; and while we survey them, we are apt altogether to forget her frailties; we think of her faults with less indignation, and approve of our tears ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... interesting reminiscences of Mark Twain, printed in Life, says that, of all the stories which interested the great American writer while travelling with him through Australasia, the tragical story which is the basis of "The Tale of Timber Town" fascinated the celebrated author more than any other. The version which Mark Twain read was the re-print of the verbatim report of the most remarkable trial ever held in New Zealand, and perhaps ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Googe and Ludovic Bryskett, reappear as despatch-writers or agents in the Irish State Papers. But one man came over to Ireland about the same time as Spenser, whose fortunes were a contrast to his. Geoffrey Fenton was one of the numerous translators of the time. He had dedicated Tragical Tales from the French and Italian to Lady Mary Sidney, Guevara's Epistles from the Spanish to Lady Oxford, and a translation of Guicciardini to the Queen. About this time, he was recommended by his brother ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... woman, and likewise to the knight, remembering well both his love and death, did shed tears as plentifully as if it had been to the very persons themselves in usual performance of the action indeed. Which tragical scene being passed over, and the woman and knight gone out of their sight, all that had seen this strange accident fell into diversity of confused opinions, yet not daring to disclose them, as doubting some further danger to ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... which is only practised now by country clowns, was a favorite sport even in the courts of princes, and before fair ladies and princesses. To this wrestling-match, therefore, Celia and Rosalind went. They found that it was likely to prove a very tragical sight; for a large and powerful man, who had been long practised in the art of wrestling and had slain many men in contests of this kind, was just going to wrestle with a very young man, who, from his extreme youth and inexperience ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... thought very highly of her son; her disappointment, therefore, over his failure at college had not been keen. Besides, tragical suffering is the sublime privilege of deep natures: she escaped by smallness. Nothing would have made her very miserable but hunger and bodily pains. Against hunger she exercised ceaseless precautions; bodily pains she had none. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... kicking up his heels. He then goes to the Sheikh, points to me, and draws his finger across his throat, intimating that he would like the privilege of cutting somebody's throat, and why not let him cut mine. The Sheikh and others laugh at this, but instead of chiding him for his tragical demonstration, they favor him with the same admiring glances that grown people bestow upon precocious youngsters the world over. Under these circumstances of abject fear on the one hand, and inbred propensity for violence ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... raised her head quickly, revealing a tear-stained face and trembling lips. "YOU would cry, too, if you were an orphan and had come to a place you thought was going to be home and found that they didn't want you because you weren't a boy. Oh, this is the most TRAGICAL thing that ever happened ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... often prove too much for our philosophy and forbearance, as matters of the highest moment. A lump of soot spoiling a man's dinner, a plate of toast falling in the ashes, the being disappointed of a ribbon to a cap or a ticket for a ball, have led to serious and almost tragical consequences. Friends not unfrequently fall out and never meet again for some idle misunderstanding, 'some trick not worth an egg,' who have stood the shock of serious differences of opinion and clashing interests in life; and there is an excellent ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Fanny's mother," sobbed the woman in the bitterness of her heart, throwing herself at Boltay's feet, and covering first his hands and then his knees, and then his very boots with her kisses, and shedding oceans of tears. Boltay, who was not used to such tragical scenes, could only stand there as if rooted to the spot, without asking her to get up or even tell him what was ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... tragical encounter, though, was with the monkey. Have you forgotten that? It was on one of your birthdays—you had a good many of them in Florence—I forget which it was. You must have been about ten. I had taken you to the Zoological Gardens, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... there it stands in his eye whispering him memento mori. I pondered, and owned these signors my masters, who will let no man, not even their sovereign, be above the common weal. Hard by, on a wall, the workmen were just finishing, by order of the seigniory, the stone effigy of a tragical and enormous act enacted last year, yet on the wall looks innocent. Here two gentle folks whisper together, and there other twain, their swords by their side. Four brethren were they, which did on either ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... to a truly remarkable panic, when we consider the relatively small number of assassins, the terrified citizens remained shut up in their houses. The National Assembly seemed powerless to arrest the horrors of these tragical hours; the Commune ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... prisoner by Maj. Talcott in 1679, begged to be delivered to the Mohicans that he might be put to death in their own way. The New Englanders complying with his request, preparations were made for the tragical event. "The Mohicans, formed a circle, and admitting within it as many of the whites as chose to witness their proceedings, placed the prisoner in the centre. One of the Mohicans, who had lost a son in the late engagement, with a knife cut off the PRISONER'S ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the ditches of fields, Bob going round by one fence and Anne by the other, till they met at the opposite side. Then they peeped under culverts, into outhouses, and down old wells and quarries, till the theory of a tragical end had nearly spent its force in Bob's mind, and he began to think that Matilda had simply run away. However, they still walked on, though by this time the sun was hot and Anne would gladly ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... there was in that age but one man big enough to be seen; so it's no use speaking of the rest. Therewithal the work affects us, throughout, as a dead-level of superlatives; everywhere we have nearly the same boisterous wind of tragical storm-and-stress: so that the effect is much like that of a picture all foreground, with no perspective, no proportionateness of light and shade, to give us ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... hundred years ago, a poor man, by the name of Crockett, embarked on board an emigrant-ship, in Ireland, for the New World. He was in the humblest station in life. But very little is known respecting his uneventful career excepting its tragical close. His family consisted of a wife and three or four children. Just before he sailed, or on the Atlantic passage, a son was born, to whom he gave the name of John. The family probably landed in Philadelphia, and dwelt somewhere in Pennsylvania, ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... appeared to him more enigmatical and gloomy than ever. From the lips of the Russian fell only words of almost tragical mystery. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and sweet the life they led With that great love that was their bosoms' all, Yet ever shadowed by some circling dread It gloomed at moments deep and tragical, And so for many a month they seemed to tread With fluttering hearts, whatever might befall, Half glad, half sad, their sweet and secret way To the soft tune ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... themselves. His first thought he had entertained while conjecturing the cause of their long absence from the estancia, was that some hostile tribe had attacked them, massacred the men, and carried captive the women and children. Such tragical occurrences are far from uncommon among the red aborigines of America, Southern or Northern. Soon, however, his fears on this score are set at rest. Moving around, he detects no traces of a struggle, neither dead bodies nor blood. If there had been a fight the corpses of the fallen ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... last. "Dick Steele should have had it; 'twould have looked vastly well over against his Inkle and Yarico. There the maid the savior, here the man; there perfidy, here plain honesty; there for the woman a fate most tragical, here"— ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... have passed over in my remembrance the different scenes of my short life: if the world is a stage and I merely an actor on it my part has been strange, and, alas! tragical. Almost from infancy I was deprived of all the testimonies of affection which children generally receive; I was thrown entirely upon my own resources, and I enjoyed what I may almost call unnatural ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... be the productions of other authors, but of whom, is uncertain. These several pieces are written in a neat style; the plots and characters are conducted with an attention to probability and nature: but none of them is so forcible, in point of tragical distress, as to excite in the reader ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... of you, and from what Diana has told me about you, I could wish her no better husband. Poor girl! After the tragical death of her father, and her wretched life with that American woman, she ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... more than a Rhapsody of tragical Adventures, which captivated the the Imagination and distracted the Heart[15]. 'Twas pleasant enough to read them, but nothing more was got by it than feeding the Mind with Chimaeras, which were often hurtful. The ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... gay a mood myself, however, the responsibility of his safety lying heavy upon me; while the possibility that the adventure might prove no less tragical in the sequel than it now appeared comical, did not fail to present itself to my eyes in the darkest colours. When we had watched, therefore, five minutes more—which seemed to me an hour—I began to lose faith; ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... emperor feared. Creeping stealthily into the room where the emperor lay asleep he stabbed him and then fled, taking refuge in the house of the Grandee Tsubura. The emperor was fifty-six years of age at the time of his death. This tragical event produced a great excitement. The younger brother of the emperor, Ohatsuse, amazed and angry because his two older brothers were not, as he thought, sufficiently enraged by the murder of the emperor, killed them both. Then he attacked the Grandee Tsubura and the boy Mayuwa ...
— Japan • David Murray
... fright and gratitude, poor devil. I told Adler a long fortune—purposely so long that I could not finish it; promised to come to him on guard, that night, and tell him the really important part of it—the tragical part of it, I said—so must be out of reach of eavesdroppers. They always kept a picket-watch outside the town—mere discipline and ceremony—no occasion ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... says he had been 'had in derision' by 'two gentlemen poets' because I could not make my verses get on the stage in tragical buskins, every word filling the mouth like the faburden of Bow-bell, daring God out of heaven with that atheist tamburlane, or blaspheming with the mad priest of the sun. Farther on he laughs at the 'prophetical spirits' of those 'who set the end of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... with an expression of stern gravity and melancholy, which impressed me greatly at this, my first interview with him, and which I could readily account for when I learned, later on, the tragical fate of his lovely young wife many ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... an interest and celebrity which otherwise they never could have attained. Mystery and romance took them under their especial protection; and Eastern imaginations joined themselves to those of the West, in inventing tales of horror, dark, deep, and tragical, connected with the dungeons and caverns beneath these dreaded walls. That gloomy aperture which yawns beneath your footsteps is called the Well of Blood; even the Turkish guide acknowledges that it has often overflowed with human gore! Within this low arched vault, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... better doing that, but they say the comical and the tragical are always chasing each other, which can get in first, and it was so with us, for just as I had got to an end with the solemn words, 'Out of the depths we cry unto thee, O Lord, Lord hear our cry,' in jumps old Treacle in his thickest cockney, 'And Gawd bless ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... descendants obtained permission, in 1475, to erect a mausoleum to his memory. But the king, at the same time that he acceded to their petition, added the express condition[32], that no allusion should be made to Marigni's tragical end. The monument was destroyed in the revolution; but the murder of the treasurer is one of those "damned spots," which will never be washed out of the history of France.—Charles de Valois soon felt the sting of remorse; and within ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... of us! Here we shall lie and mould forgotten by everybody," said Dora, who always took a tragical view of things. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... The tragical murder of Edward by Elfrida, at Corfe Castle, and its memorable defence by Lady Bankes, form two very interesting narratives in Hutchins's Dorset. Their details would occupy too much of our present sheet, although they are worth reprinting for the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... when I had to wait for five or six hours in front of a post-house, (as there was seldom an apartment into which I could enter) I thought with trembling of that army which might overtake me at the extremity of Europe, and render my situation at once tragical and ridiculous; for it is thus with the failure of an undertaking of this kind. The circumstances which compelled me to it not being generally known, I might have been asked why I quitted my own house, even although it ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... the house party at The Manor had broken up immediately after the inquest. It would have disintegrated before only that Inspector Darby insisted that every one should remain for examination in connection with the late tragical occurrence. But in spite of questioning and cross-questioning, nothing had been learned likely to show who had murdered the millionaire. There was a great deal of talk after the body had been placed in the Lambert vault, and there was more talk in the newspapers when an ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... turn away from seeing—that the inscrutable workings of a supreme power led our country in the fulness of time to internal peace and security after these storms, and in a great degree in consequence of them, can we refuse our belief that the tragical events of those days were ordered for our good? Acknowledging that the overthrow of a rotten throne was necessary for the building up of a throne that should have its sole stable foundation in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... are lodged is large enough for Queen Victoria; indeed, I am glad to say that her sleeping-room at St. Cloud was not half so spacious. One feels either like a count, or very lonesome, to sit down in a lofty chamber, say thirty-five feet square, with little furniture, and historical and tragical life-size figures staring at one from the wall-paper. One fears that they may come down in the deep night, and stand at the bedside,—those narrow, canopied beds there in the distance, like the marble couches in the cathedral. It ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... robust-looking old Frenchman with white hair and the mustaches of a Viking, displaying a leonine countenance out of which gazed a pair of eyes that seemed to have been made tragical by some profound chagrin. In his youth, a student in Paris, he had written some scores of songs, half a dozen sonatas, and a symphony. These efforts, though technically brilliant, had soon passed into oblivion. After a long while, during which nobody had heard a sound ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... one day exactly like another. Old Annette and Louis took it in turns to sit up with Mme. Willemsens, never taking their eyes from the invalid. It was the deeply tragical hour that comes in all our lives, the hour of listening in terror to every deep breath lest it should be the last, a dark hour protracted over many days. On the fifth day of that fatal week the doctor interdicted flowers in the ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... Winifred Jenkins, and praying my consent to their coming together for life. I would have wished that Mr Clinker had kept out of this scrape; but as the nymph's happiness is at stake, and she has already some fits in the way of despondence, I, in order to prevent any tragical catastrophe, have given him leave to play the fool, in imitation of his betters; and I suppose we shall in time have a whole litter of his progeny at Brambleton-hall. The fellow is stout and lusty, very sober and conscientious; and the wench seems to be as great an enthusiast ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Nor was she the passionate young lady, who performs so tragically on a summer's evening with the window open. Passion was there, but it could not be easily labelled; it slipped between love and hatred and jealousy, and all the furniture of the pictorial style. And she was tragical only in the sense that she was great, for she loved to play on the side of Victory. Victory of what and over what—that is more than the words of daily life can tell us. But that some sonatas of Beethoven are written tragic no one can gainsay; yet they can triumph or despair as the player decides, ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... at the risk of her life was appointed incumbent of a parish near Lannion. She took my mother, then quite a child, with her, and they walked the five miles under a scorching sun. The thought of meeting again one whom she had seen keeping the night watch at her house under such tragical circumstances made her heart beat fast. The priest, whether from sacerdotal pride or from a feeling of duty, behaved in a very strange manner. He scarcely seemed to recognise her, never asked her to be seated, and dismissed her with a ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... for holding the superior court for the county of Suffolk was the next week after the tragical action in King Street. Although bills were found by the grand jury, yet the court, considering the disordered state of the town, had thought fit to continue the trials over to the next term, when the minds of people ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... than he had supposed. Edith Leete was no other than the great-granddaughter of Edith Bartlett, his betrothed, who, after long mourning her lost lover, had at last allowed herself to be consoled. The story of the tragical bereavement which had shadowed her early life was a family tradition, and among the family heirlooms were letters from Julian West, together with a photograph which represented so handsome a youth that Edith was illogically inclined to quarrel with her great-grandmother for ever ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... art, this is obvious to ordinary apprehension, yet in poetry likewise, and in the tragical kind, which is our immediate subject, the same doctrine holds good. Whatever fascinates the senses alone is mere matter, and the rude element of a work of art:— if it takes the lead it will inevitably destroy the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... show evident signs of mental alienation; and Rodolphe laughed like the pit of a Parisian theatre at the first representation of a very tragical tragedy. Suddenly, and without any warning, he plunged both hands into his pockets, and the money rushed out in a supernatural steeple-chase. It was an inundation of Pactolus; it was ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... tragical scenes was now soon to be acted. The Counts Egmont and Horn, having submitted to some previous interrogatories by Vargas and others, were removed from Ghent to Brussels, on the 3d of June, under a strong escort. The following day they passed through the mockery of a ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... a calamitous year for the people of Ferrara, for there occurred a very tragical event in the court of their sovereign. Our annals, both printed and in manuscript, with the exception of the unpolished and negligent work of Sardi, and one other, have given the following relation of it,—from ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... fact (book iii. epist. 5), and says it was a tribute to friendship. Quintilian pronounces him the best of all the dramatic poets whom he had seen; though the critics whose judgement was matured by years, did not think him sufficiently tragical. They admitted, however, that his erudition was considerable, and the beauty of his composition surpassed all his contemporaries. Eorum, quos viderim, longe princeps Pomponius Secundus, quem senes parum tragicum putabant, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... several others, equally entertaining. The men, especially, exercise themselves in a variety of gesticulations and capers, some of which are extremely ludicrous. They have others of a martial kind, and others illustrative of the chase: these seem to be somewhat of a tragical nature, in which they exhibit astonishing feats of military prowess, masculine strength, and activity. Indeed, all their dances and musical entertainments seem to be theatrical exhibitions or plays, varied with comic, and sometimes ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... to put one's finger on the passage in which her fair fame suffered an imputation. Moreover was not any fame fair enough that was so sure of duration and was associated with works immortal through their beauty? It was a part of my idea that the young lady had had a foreign lover (and an unedifying tragical rupture) before her meeting with Jeffrey Aspern. She had lived with her father and sister in a queer old-fashioned, expatriated, artistic Bohemia, in the days when the aesthetic was only the academic and the painters who knew the best models for a contadina and pifferaro wore peaked hats ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... without aim or precision, would return to the safety afforded by the rocks and trees. It was between 6 and 7 o'clock before the order to resume the march was issued. And now began a scene which none who witnessed are likely to forget to their dying day: deeply tragical it might have been, but fortunately circumstances combined to render it merely ridiculous, as reflected in the mirror of memory. The rain still fell heavily, lying in places to the depth of nearly a foot, and converting all the ground that was not rocky into a slippery ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... and his successors. The recent legendaries record whole armies and cities, which were at once swept away by the undistinguishing rage of persecution. The more ancient writers content themselves with pouring out a liberal effusion of loose and tragical invectives, without condescending to ascertain the precise number of those persons who were permitted to seal with their blood their belief of the gospel. From the history of Eusebius, it may, however, be collected, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Miss Hernshaw demanded, whirling her face round, and fixing him with eyes of beautiful fierceness. "Tragedy is tragedy, whether you have lived it or not, isn't it? And sometimes it's all the more tragical if you have it still to live: you've got it before you! I don't see how any one can look at that girl's face and laugh at her. I should never forgive ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... Hill, a little above Holborn Conduit, that is somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present viaduct. They had also another shop in Cheapside. Their first book, so far as we know, was Sir David Lindsay's poem, 'The Tragical death, of David Beaton, Bishop of St. Andrews in Scotland; Wherunto is joyned the martyrdom of maister G. Wyseharte ... for whose sake the aforesayd bishoppe was not long after slayne' ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... indignant laughter from the duchess replied to this tragical exclamation, and she added, between two fits of hilarity, "I never could have thought that infamy could ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... time—such a tragical time—I have forgotten, Thaine, that I have a message for you, a little package that reached here late last May. It was sent to me because the sender thought you were coming to China soon, and I was asked ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... certain papers pertaining to previous proceedings, and passed an undivided approval upon them, he remained in all his dignity, listening with great legal seriousness to the very important case then being argued by General F——, whose eloquence was of the 'rip-roarer' style, and whose tragical flourishes were as terrific as dangerous to the limbs all persons in proximity. Smooth's seat was at the left of the Umpire, that functionary's right being flanked by a gentleman lean of figure and studious of countenance, said to be the American Commissioner, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... she cried. "Yet I never forbade him to write to me. Oh! he has forgotten me, and he is right. If his life had been spoiled, it would have been too tragical; one life is enough, is it not? Would you believe it, dear; I read English newspapers simply to see his name in print. But he has not yet taken his seat in ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... to say, "That the tragical fate of Tom also has too many times had its parallel, there are living witnesses all over our land to testify." Now it would take the smallest portion of common sense to know that there is no witness, dead or living, who could testify to such a fact, save a false witness. ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... played foul in some slight measure), the King was clear for hanging; his poor Wife galloped to Potsdam, shrieking mercy; upon which Friedrich Wilhelm had him whipt by the hangman, and stuck for life into Spandau. Still more tragical—was poor Hesse's case. Hesse, some domain Rath out at Konigsberg, concerned with moneys, was found with account-books in a state of confusion, and several thousands short, when the outcome was cleared up. What has become of these thousands, Sir? Poor old Hesse could not tell: "God ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... pork-butcher, angling for the favours of a moribund political party, I dare say—lavishes heaven knows how many pounds over an arrangement by which young men are to be taught how to kill each other with neatness and despatch at a distance of half a mile! It is more tragical than farcical. It is enough to make one despair of one's fellow countrymen, with their silly bombast about 'Empire,' and their childish waving of flags. 'Empire,' indeed; God save the mark! And our own little country groaning, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... the great departments of the government of the United States are assembled in the Hall of Representatives to do honor to the memory of a murdered president. Lincoln fell at the close of a mighty struggle in which the passions of men had been deeply stirred. The tragical termination of his great life added but another to the lengthened succession of horrors which had marked so many lintels with the blood of the first-born. Garfield was slain in a day of peace, when brother had been reconciled to brother, and when anger and hate had been banished from ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... sealed, Lombard said, with a countenance curiously divided between a tragical expression and a smile of fatuous complacency, "There was a clear case of poetical justice in your being left behind in the desert to-night. To see the lights of the train disappearing, leaving you alone in the midst of desolation, gave you a touch of my feeling on being rejected this afternoon. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... home of the wave,' and got aground, and their effects have been thrown overboard; what is that, after all? Thousands hare done the same; there is still hope for them. They are more than a match for these casualties; how is it she has given up so soon? Well, don't allude to it, but there is a sad tragical story connected with that lake. Do you recollect that beautiful curly-headed child, her eldest daughter, that she used to walk with at Halifax? Well, she grew up into a magnificent girl; she was full of health and spirits, and as fleet and as wild as a hare. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... dreams of happiness—a most honourable and happy event; prudent in a worldly point of view; and promising all the felicity which strong mutual affection, excellent principles on both sides, good temper, youth, health, and the general approbation of friends can afford. As for myself, it is a tragical denouement of an absurd plot. I remember quoting some nursery rhymes, years ago, when you left me in London to join Nancy at Rothley Temple or Leamington, I forget which. Those foolish lines contain ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... them separately. Taking to flight, he was followed by his three opponents at unequal distances. Suddenly turning round, he slew, first one, then the second, and finally the third. The Romans were declared the conquerors, and the Albans their subjects. But a tragical event followed. As Horatius was entering Rome, bearing his threefold spoils, his sister met him, and recognized on his shoulders the cloak of one of the Curiatii, her betrothed lover. She burst into such passionate grief that the anger of her brother was kindled, and, stabbing her ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... thankful that he had so much as Abbotsford to indemnify him for his labours and trials. As the time approached when he was no longer able to maintain that gallant struggle, and the power of labour failed and confidence was lost, the position of the man becomes more tragical than the spectator can well bear to look upon. Who can read unmoved the story of the time when his faithful friends (though it was their necessities that had pulled him down to the ground of this bitter failure) had to come ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... charity. We are concerned for the moment with what moved Speed. "I looked up at him," said he, long after, "and I thought then, as I think now, that I never saw so gloomy and melancholy a face in my life." The struggle of ambition and poverty may well have been telling on Lincoln; but besides that a tragical love story (shortly to be told) had left a deep and permanent mark; but these influences worked, we may suppose, upon a disposition quite as prone to sadness as to mirth. His exceedingly gregarious habit, drawing him to almost any assembly of his own sex, continued all his life; ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... 1879.—This Christmas has been marked beyond all others by the most tragical events. To me, Mrs. Grote and Lord Tweeddale are deplorable losses, and I could add a catalogue of names of less note, besides those of public interest. What irony to call it the season of ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... composition "Mlle. D'Arvers" deserves high commendation. It deals with the ungovernable passion of two brothers for one placid and beautiful girl, a passion which leads to fratricide and madness. That it is a very melancholy and tragical story is obvious from this brief sketch of its contents, but it is remarkable for coherence and self-restraint no less than for vigour of treatment. Toru Dutt never sinks to melodrama in the course of her extraordinary tale, and the wonder is ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... who was of military antecedents who would not have challenged any man who had said of him what Hamilton had said of Burr. Hamilton disdained explanation or recantation, and the result was accepted as tragical, but in a certain ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... could no longer withhold the truth, and acquainted her with the occurrence whose commencement the coachman Janos had described to him on the way, whose tragical close he himself had witnessed. Panna listened silently, never averting her eyes from the body during the entire story. In the midst of a sentence from the gardener, she suddenly uttered a shriek, and again threw herself ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... a common observation," says the author, in the chapter on sympathy and its effects, "that objects which in the reality would shock, are, in tragical and such like representations, the source of a very high species of pleasure. This taken as a fact, has been the cause of much reasoning. The satisfaction has been commonly attributed, first to the comfort we receive in considering that so melancholy a story is no more than a fiction; ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... been, but it was covered by a comfortable carpet, probably from Axminster. Comfort was indeed the note. The desk was neither pitch pine nor teak, but mahogany. Upon it were scattered papers—lightly scattered, although no doubt each was of the most momentous, even tragical import, some bearing the signatures of the most eminent publicists in the land. Yet, such is the domination of this man, they lay there like circulars or election addresses. In the ink-pot was ink. A date rack was proof that the Editor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... is obtainable of the movements of Margot and the man Merode, the two foremost figures in the Apache band with whom Cleek came to grips, for they chose to vanish suddenly from their Parisian haunts immediately after that tragical night at "The Inn of the Twisted Arm." It is certain, however, that they proceeded in due time to the East, for they were seen in both India and Ceylon several months after their disappearance from Paris. Indeed, they were obliged to fly from the latter place to escape arrest when the confession ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... remarkable instances of the kind, is that of Sarah Jacob, known as the "Welsh Fasting Girl," and whose history and tragical death excited a great deal of comment in the medical and lay press in Great Britain a few years ago. The following account of the case is mainly derived from ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... Burgoyne's Narrative and Collection of Documents, pp. 65, 66, second edition.) But in spite of all restraints, the cruel temper and lawless habits of these savages would sometimes burst forth—sometimes not more fatally to their enemies than to their friends. The tragical fate of Miss MacRea raised one loud cry of indignation on both sides of the Atlantic. This lady, in the bloom of youth and beauty, the daughter of an American Loyalist, was betrothed to an officer in the British provincial troops. Anxious for her security, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Electrician, "what would you call one?" The way his lips mouthed the question gave an almost tragical purport ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... solve the mystery of her death. The Detectives went to work with unusual caution, but persisted in the task they had assigned themselves, and were slowly gathering the shreds of her life, to weave from them a thread that would lead to the author of her tragical death, when they were suddenly 'floored,' to use their own energetic expression. Ada Ricard herself appeared at a down-town New York hotel, in perfect health ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... an horse, or in the growling of a mastiff, there is a meaning, there is as lively expression, and, may I say, more humanity than many times in the tragical flights of Shakespeare.' ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... returned Cottrell, in mock-tragical tones, "that we are thirteen to dinner? Do you not know that Lionel Beauchamp is the thirteenth? and do you not know what Fate has invariably in store for the thirteenth at ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... sentence sealed, Tragical man, who has but breath For few brief years as he goes to death, Tragical man by strange winds blown To live in crowds ere he die alone, Came in his jovial thousands massing, To see Life moving ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... verdigris-green milk-bush some forty miles north of Karachi the headquarters. The dirty heap of mud-and-mat hovels, which represented the adjacent native village, could not supply a single woman; yet only one case of pederasty came to light and that after a tragical fashion some years afterwards. A young Brahman had connection with a soldier comrade of low caste and this had continued till, in an unhappy hour, the Pariah patient ventured to become the agent. The latter, in Arab. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... was comical as well as tragical. Just as Jerry said, each of the late inmates of the overturned bullboat, after being buffeted about furiously for several minutes, had succeeded in wildly scrambling on ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... glory: out of the old building, two very beautiful churches are built, and serve the two parishes, into which the town is divided, and they stand both in one churchyard. Here it was, in the path-way between these two churches, that a tragical and almost unheard-of act of barbarity was committed, which made the place less pleasant for some time than it used to be, when Arundel Coke, Esq., a barrister-at-law, of a very ancient family, attempted, with the assistance of a barbarous assassin, to ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... in fond prattle, as the children played about the hall. All these plans were overthrown now. Thomas Tusher wrote to Esmond, as he lay in prison, announcing that his patroness had conferred upon him the living his reverend father had held for many years; that she never, after the tragical events which had occurred (whereof Tom spoke with a very edifying horror), could see in the revered Tusher's pulpit, or at her son's table, the man who was answerable for the father's life; that her ladyship bade him to say that she prayed for her ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his facts, his setting, and his atmosphere, and somewhat pedantically noting his authorities in the margin when he came to print. "Sejanus" is a tragedy of genuine dramatic power in which is told with discriminating taste the story of the haughty favourite of Tiberius with his tragical overthrow. Our drama presents no truer nor more painstaking representation of ancient Roman life than may be found in Jonson's "Sejanus" and "Catiline his Conspiracy," which followed in 1611. A passage in the address of the former play to the reader, in which Jonson refers to a collaboration in ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... those of her husband on the right. Both men and women were kneeling in prayer, and almost all of them were in tears. Tall candles stood about the bed. The cure of the parish and his assistants had taken their places in the middle of the room, beside the bier. There was something tragical about the scene, with the head of the family lying before the coffin, which was waiting to be closed down ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... an equal serenity and joy in his soul for being freed from past inconveniences, and at the same time to enter into the knowledge of the things to come? Cato shall pardon me, if he please; his death indeed is more tragical and more lingering; but yet this is, I know not how, methinks, finer. Aristippus, to one that was lamenting this death: "The gods grant me such an one," said he. A man discerns in the soul of these two great men and their imitators (for ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... watch-tower at early dawn, Dido discovers his vanishing sails, and is so overcome by grief that, after rending "her golden length of hair" and calling down vengeance upon Aeneas, she stabs herself and breathes her last in the midst of the burning pyre. The Carthaginians, little expecting so tragical a denouement, witness the agony of their beloved queen in speechless horror, while Anna wails aloud. Gazing down from heaven upon this sad scene, Juno directs Iris to hasten down and cut off a lock of Dido's hair, for it is only when this mystic ceremony ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... day she broke her fast with the Sisters, and went about the business of the day calmly, collectedly, capably as ever. Only her face was white and drawn, and great violet circles were about her great tragical grey eyes. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sorrow that defied any efforts I might have made at consolation. I made none; but in silence and with eager attention awaited to hear the denouement of a drama, whose prologue promised such a tragical ending. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... name was Jane M'Crea, is the daughter of an American loyalist and a gallant field officer, now deceased, and the niece and namesake of the unfortunate Jane M'Crea, whose tragical fate in the American revolutionary war excited so much commiseration, and gave rise to a correspondence between the American general. Gates, and General Burgoyne. The former wrote: "Miss M'Crea, a young lady, lovely to the sight, of virtuous character and amiable disposition, engaged to an ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... the quantity of hopeless, helpless misery these requirements indicate. The fact that under existing conditions the unemployed seem inevitable should afford the strongest motive for a change in these conditions. Modern life has no more tragical figure than the gaunt, hungry labourer wandering about the crowded centres of industry and wealth, begging in vain for permission to share in that industry, and to contribute to that wealth; asking in return not the comforts and luxuries of civilized ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... the Master of Ravenswood disposed of the rest of that unhappy day. Late at night, however, he arrived at Wolf's Crag, and aroused his old domestic, Caleb Balderstone, who had ceased to expect his return. Confused and flying rumours of the late tragical death of Miss Ashton, and of its mysterious cause, had already reached the old man, who was filled with the utmost anxiety, on account of the probable effect these events might produce upon the mind of ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... again, with sword half drawn; and only the third time (in 1743) does he get sword out, and brandish it in a surprising though useless manner. After which he feels better. But up to that crisis, his case is really tragical,—had idle readers any bowels for him; which they have not! One or two Fractions, snatched from the circumambient Paper Vortex, must suffice us for ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... inflativam debere esse occasionem ruinae." He foresaw the time not far off when puffed-up science would be the ruin of his "domina paupertas." His struggle with this form of human pride was desperate and tragical in its instant failure. He could not make even his novices understand what he meant. The most impossible task of the mind is to reject in practice the reflex action of itself, as Bacon pointed out, and only the highest training has sometimes partially ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... and tears, is full also of instruction for the people. Never, perhaps, were so many tragical events crowded into so short a space of time, never was the mysterious connexion which exists between deeds and their consequences developed with greater rapidity. Never did weaknesses more quickly engender faults,—faults crimes,—crimes punishment. That retributive justice ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... respect. Left a widow again, ten years after her second marriage, she concentrated her hopes and affections on her handsome and amiable son Maurice. Though fondly attached to her, he was yet to be the cause of her heaviest sorrows, by his more than hazardous marriage, and by his premature and tragical fate. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... triumphs, revels, sports, plays: then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of princes, new discoveries, expeditions, now comical, then tragical matters. Today we hear of new lords and officers created, tomorrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth, another breaketh: he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... boldest of the newspaper editors, were either arrested or compelled to quit the country. Siebenpfeiffer took refuge in Switzerland; Wirth might have effected his escape, but refused. Some provocations in Neustadt, on the anniversary of the Hambach festival in 1833, were brought by the military to a tragical close. Some newspaper editors, printers, etc., were also arrested at Munich, Wurzburg, Augsburg, etc. The most celebrated among the accused was Professor Behr, court-councillor of Wurzburg, the burgomaster and former deputy of that city, who at the ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... his knapsack; that Randall, white-lipped with horror, murmured to Betty Fairfax, his neighbour at the table: "My God! The Poet-Laureate's unhallowed grave! I must burn the knapsack and take to a hod!" It was too tragical a conversation ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... tragical anticlimax of so many a passion, and now the inanity of human nature was revealed to his successor, to whom infinite power ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... to laugh, but interrupted herself, half-way, with a sob. She was seized by a fantasy that if Sophie died an old maid her sister would have been the cause of it—would be a murderess! The sudden jarring of this idea—tragical enough, even without the ghastly spice of reality that there was about it—against the ludicrous element with which tradition flavors the name of old maid—caught the young woman at unawares, and threw her rudely out of her nervous control. It was a result which could scarcely have happened, had ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... atrocious deed follows in the city, originating in lust, attended with results not less tragical than that deed which drove the Tarquins from the city and the throne through the injured chastity and violent death of Lucretia: so that the decemvirs not only had the same end as the kings had, but the same cause also of losing their power. Appius ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... reduction from a civilized to a savage state, and the various steps by which that process has been effected, and that my life has been prolonged, and my health and reason spared, it seems a miracle that I am unable to account for, and is a tragical medley that I hope will ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... Thus ended that tragical scene of fanaticism, in which seven persons lost their lives, one was killed, two were murdered, and four executed for the murders. A signal and melancholy instance of the weakness and frailty of human nature, and to what giddy ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... a word or a gesture of this tragical scene. Either purposely or by accident, he pushed the door-curtain, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... they alternately rehearse. All gaping wait the event. This Critic opes His right ear to the strain. The other hopes To catch it better with his left. Long trade It were to tell, how the deluded Maid A victim fell. And now right greedily All hands are stretching forth the songs to buy, That are so tragical; which She, and She, Deals out, and sings the while; nor can there be A breast so obdurate here, that will hold back His contribution from the gentle rack Of Music's pleasing torture. Irus' self, The staff-propt Beggar, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... is the owner of the boarding-house. While we are there we will see the sights, for of course that must be part of our education. We will go to Westminster Abbey to be solemnized, and we will go to the Tower to perfect our knowledge of the tragical part of English history, and we must take Daisy to the Zoo, for she has always longed to see a lot of monkeys all together. I don't think we'll have any time for looking in at the shop windows, for we shall be very ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the horror of it all. He had such an instinctive reverence for women that this scene produced in him a profound, almost despairing sorrow. He sat there after Cargill left him, and gazed upon it all with stern eyes. There was no more tragical thing to him than the woman who could willingly allure men for pay. It made him shudder to see those bright, pretty girls go down among those men, whose hard, peculiar, savage stare he knew almost as well ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... the "El Dorado" is soon over. Occurrences of like kind, but often of more tragical termination, are too common in California to cause any long-sustained interest. Within the hour will arise some new event, equally stirring, leaving the old to live only in the recollection of those who have been ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... Junction, five miles away, tremble under it. I listen and wait, every nerve on edge. A mile and a half the other side of our station the engine will first snort, then begin a series of shrieks—shrieks suggestive of warning, imminent danger, supreme peril, the climax of a tragical catastrophe. For at least five minutes shall I be compelled to listen while the engineer—if it be a real living engine-man who impels this chorus of fiends—runs the full scale of his shrill tooting, perhaps deeming it essential to the safety ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... elevation of his sentiments, his noble solicitude for human wellbeing, his eager and resolute belief in its indefinite expansion, and the devotion which sealed his faith by a destiny that was as tragical as any in those bloody and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... ceased, and they had to grope their way in the dark, with their lightless lamps hanging useless in their slack hands, while far off the torches of the bridal procession, in which they might have had a part, flashed through the night. We have nothing to do with the tragical issue of the process of extinction; but solemn lessons of universal application gather round the picture of that process, as represented in our text, and to these ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the taste of the Germans turned to sombre, tragical and almost sinister plays. Only a death on the stage seemed to bring a ray of animation to the stolid bovine faces of the audience. In my last winter in Berlin the hit of the season was "Erdgeist," a play by Wedekind, ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... who brought together a tragical collection of precedents in the mirror of magistrates. This is what Lord ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... prophet, a prophet Who brings us unbounded returns: For he can prophesy With a wink OF his eye, Peep with security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humour proclivity For a nativity. With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he Makes a reduction on taking a quantity! Oh! If any one anything lacks, He'll find it all ready in stacks, If he'll only look in On the resident ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... journalists, the dandies, and some few fair Parisians among the audience wondered how that German with the tragical countenance had cropped up on a first night to occupy a side box all to himself when fashionable Paris filled the house,—if these could have seen the history played out upon the stage before the prompter's box, they would have found it far more interesting than the transformation scenes of ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... of England, and of most other countries, abound in relating the miserable, and sometimes the most tragical effects, from the abuses of coin; by debasing the metal, by lessening, or enhancing the value upon occasions, to the public loss; of which we have an example, within our own memory in England, and another very lately in France. It ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... recital of childish enormities, with its tragical ending, Guy burst into a loud laugh. The child raised herself from her father's shoulder, and, fixing her large eyes upon him, said slowly, and ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the tragical death of Wenona, the band went again down the Mississippi, and they camped at what they call the medicine wood. Here a child died, and the body was laid on a scaffold. The father in the middle of the night went out to ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... to deserve the name; and we may see, in the scenes which are there described, the highest representation of struggles which graduated variously according to character and temper, and, without the tragical result, may have been witnessed in very many of the monastic houses. The writer was a certain Maurice Channey, probably an Irishman. He went through the same sufferings with the rest of the brethren, and was one of the small fraction who finally gave way under the trial. He was set at ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... few things that are so momentarily tragical as awakening from a frightful dream. Even if you know with returning consciousness that it was a dream, it seems as if a part of it must have a basis in fact. The death that was recorded—is it true or not? And in your mind you grope among the familiar ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... melancholy situation? He sees such a desperate rapaciousness prevail; such a disregard to equity, such contempt of order, such stupid blindness to future consequences, as must immediately have the most tragical conclusion, and must terminate in destruction to the greater number, and in a total dissolution of society to the rest. He, meanwhile, can have no other expedient than to arm himself, to whomever the sword he seizes, or the buckler, may belong: To make provision ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... Much of the tragical lore of the infant mortality, the malnutrition, and the five-in-a-room morality of the city's poor is written in statistics, and the statistical path to the heart ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... Him. There is none upon earth, with all its flowers, and treasures, and loves, that will calm and still thy soul but only God. The words of my text spring from a necessity felt by every man, misdirected by a tragical majority of men, and therefore the source of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... these other university plays were not only for the most part crude and coarse in the same manner as earlier English plays, but in accordance also with the native English tradition and in violent defiance of the classical principle of Unity, they generally combined tragical classical stories with realistic scenes of English comedy (somewhat later with Italian stories). Nevertheless, and this is the main thing, the more thoughtful members of the Court and University circles, were now learning from the study of classical plays a sense ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... vessel, and, as the Revenant privateer, had formerly cruised long and very successfully. She was commissioned as the Victor, to replace a sloop of war of that name, which in the preceding year had been the scene of one of the most extraordinary and tragical events ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... to a tragical end in a different way. I found his body dangling among the bushes on a bank. Two small but tough grapevine twigs growing out horizontally and close together formed a very acute angle, and this was the trap in which the innocent bird was caught. In some way one of his legs had slipped ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... shifted uneasily on their seats; their master looked anxious, as though something personal was coming; and when the drama reached its height we timid ones in front were fain to pinch each other in a stress of nervous excitement. The tragical conclusion was marked by a simultaneous, low, long, agricultural whistle, which did duty as a sigh, and the audience first stared into each other's faces and then gave a roar of applause, amidst which the vicar announced that the penny readings were established from that ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... thing covetously desired. After ten years of lordship and dinners Argentine still declined to be jaded, still persisted in enjoying life, and by a kind of infection had become recognized as the cause of joy in others, in short, as the best of company. His sudden and tragical death therefore caused a wide and deep sensation. People could scarce believe it, even though the newspaper was before their eyes, and the cry of 'Mysterious Death of a Nobleman' came ringing up from the street. But there stood the brief paragraph: 'Lord ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... had already congratulated myself on the tragical stories I should be able to present to my readers; I beheld them shedding tears at the narration of the sufferings we had experienced, and I already appeared to myself half a martyr. Alas! I was sadly deceived. We ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... in life," said Lady Roehampton; "years of patience, the most doleful, the most dreary, the most dark and tragical. And I bore it all, and I bore it well, because I thought of you, and had confidence in you, and confidence in your star; and because, like an idiot, I had schooled myself to believe that, if I devoted my will to you, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... that he has a clever joke on the dead man, when with a grin he points to a label bearing these words from the 'Hydriotaphia':—"To be knaved out of our graves, to have our skulls made drinking-bowls, and our bones turned into pipes to delight and sport our enemies, are tragical ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... object that creates this feeling—there is still much of the romantic to be found in his domestic history. English travellers, who have acquired a competent knowledge of the language, may collect materials for poems as tragical and touching as those which Lord Byron loved to weave. I could relate several in this place, picked up by my fellow-travellers, but as they may at some period or other desire to give them to the public themselves, it ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... cathedrals of Saragossa, Seville, Toledo, and Valencia with masterly frescoes, while with the etching needle he produced many plates. Some of these, like the "Caprices," a series of eighty etchings, are filled with imagination alternately tragical and grotesque; while another series, representing bull-fights, throughout its thirty-three plates depicts the incidents of the game with intense realism. The "Disasters of War," another series of eighty, were inspired by the French invasion; and never, ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... hours after his arrival in the capital, the King paid a visit to the Marquise de Verneuil, to whom he related the escape of himself and his companions;[334] but even on so serious an occasion as this, and one which had threatened such tragical consequences to the Queen, the insolent favourite could not comment without indulging in the sarcastic and bitter pleasantry which she always affected in making any allusion to her royal mistress. After feeling or feigning great anxiety on the subject of Henry's own escape, she ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... something tragical in it. There are men who maintain that the love for peace and the inevitability of war form a hideous contradiction, and that such is the fate of man. These are mostly gifted and sensitive men, who see and realize all the horror and imbecility and cruelty of ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... self-imagined "Bride of Christ," when we picture to ourselves the bitter agonies which must have been endured ere a human soul could develop so fantastically diseased a growth. "She was only a hysterical nun." Well, and what more tragical object, to those who will look patiently and lovingly at human nature, than a hysterical nun? She may have been driven into a convent by some disappointment in love. And has not disappointed affection been confessed, in all climes and ages, to enshroud ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... cigarette. He took a vivid interest both in plot and characters, and would on no account know beforehand, how a story finished; he considered looking at the end of a novel as a feminine vice. He could not enjoy any story with a tragical end, for this reason he did not keenly appreciate George Eliot, though he often spoke warmly in praise of 'Silas Marner.' Walter Scott, Miss Austen, and Mrs. Gaskell, were read and re- read till they could ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Ellwood, we should never have known the softer side of Milton's character, never have known of what gentleness, patience, and courtesy he was capable. And, indeed, when we remember Milton's position at this time, as tragical as that of Demosthenes after Chaeronea, and of Dante at the Court of Verona, there is something inexpressibly touching in the picture here given with so much simplicity and with such evident unconsciousness on the part of the painter of the effect ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... to his son he gives a picture of a royal dinner party: "On my left sat the young Queen whom they tried to assassinate the other day, in gay spirits, talking a great deal, laughing very often and longing to laugh still more; and filling with her gaiety, which contrasted with the already tragical elements of her history, this ancient castle which has witnessed the ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... a Jerusalem artichoke, and that we, who stood lamenting over our regretted Phoebus, had actually eaten it, dished up with white sauce. John turned pale at the thought. The beautiful story of the Falcon, in Boccaccio, which the young knight killed to regale his mistress, or the still more tragical history of Couci, who minced his rival's heart, and served it up to his wife, could not have affected him more deeply. We grieved over our lost dahlia, as if it had been a thing ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... what ensued is affectingly tragical. Cook left the Resolution about seven o'clock, attended by the lieutenant of marines, a sergeant, a corporal, and seven private men. The pinnace's crew were likewise armed, and under the command of Mr. Roberts; the launch was also ordered to assist his own boat. ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... conferred by the nation, not assumed by a prince, was successful for the moment in restoring to the King some popularity among his own subjects. He could now without humiliation proceed with the concessions which had been interrupted by the tragical events of the 18th of March. In answer to a deputation from Breslau, which urged that the Chamber formed by the union of the Provincial Diets should be replaced by a Constituent Assembly, the King promised that a national Representative ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... am treated like the vilest of men. The little I have left is seized, I have been obliged to get execution stayed to prevent my being dragged to prison!" Dupleix died at last on the 11th of November, 1763, the most striking, without being the last or the most tragical, victim of the great ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot |
