"Woebegone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... o'clock when we finally arrived at Ilo. It may have been owing to my own tired state, but I thought I had never seen such a miserable and desolate spot in all my life. The houses were wretched mud-built hovels, and the few people in the place looked woebegone beyond belief. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... Chrissie took up a book and sat down, utterly ignoring the woebegone figure which stood the regulation three yards from her, twisting its ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... strength left to drag himself up. Of all the miserable scarecrows you ever saw in your life, we must have then looked the worst—with our bare pelts burnt and blistered, our tangled hair and beards, our woebegone faces, out of which our eyes were almost starting from their sockets, and our bleeding feet and limbs, the latter all scratched, and with pieces of flesh torn out of them by the briars and thorns through which we had to scramble in ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... time, had regained his senses, and was sitting up in the middle of the trail rubbing his shoulder and wearing a most woebegone and dazed look upon his expressive countenance. Observing this, Chip walked toward him, and imitating a ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... the wind—a gay procession, without beginning or end. Behind these joyful ones, in pale gray, and half-obscured by the mists that formed the background, appeared a second procession, hurrying in an opposite direction—men and women of all ages, but mostly old, with haggard, woebegone faces; some bowed down, their eyes fixed on the ground; others wringing their hands, or beating their breasts; and all apparently suffering the ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... undressing and taking off those smart new satin sacks in which they appeared at the Opera, looking so fresh and so pretty amongst all the tawdry rouged folks, Theo remarks how very sad and woebegone Mrs. Molly their maid appears. Theo is always anxious when other people seem in trouble; not so Hetty, now, who is suffering, poor thing, one of the most selfish maladies which ever visits mortals. Have you ever been amongst insane people, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... He gave me a pale, expressionless stare instead, such as an ancient Christian might have worn when the call-boy told him the lions were ready in the Colosseum. Resignation, obstinacy and defiance—all nicely blended under a turn-the-other-cheek exterior. He looked woebegone, and his thin, handsome face betrayed a sleepless night and a breakfastless morning. I could feel that my presence was the last straw to this unfortunate ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... bring a woebegone look into his face, while a good joke would make him laugh to tears. He was fond of referring to himself as my "rabbi," which is Hebrew for teacher, and that was the way I would address him, at first playfully, and then as a ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... a little circular arm-chair for her somewhat nearer the fire. She declined it in a manner that argued something like incoherence, which occasioned O'Rorke to, glance at her most earnestly. He started, on observing the wild lustre of her eye, and the woebegone ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... said Mr. Johnson dismally, and rose to open the filing case behind him. With his hand in the case he paused and turned a most woebegone countenance to the junior Burnit. "We shall be very regretful, Mr. Applerod and myself, to lose our positions, sir," he stated. "We have grown up ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... Mr. Clinton appeared on deck. He looked faded and played out, but he was no longer the woebegone creature of a day or two previous. Even he turned out to be of use, for he knew something about cooking, and volunteered to assist in preparing the meals, the ship's cook having left the ship with the captain. Accordingly, he rose in the estimation of the passengers—having proved ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... a hunt back in the woods he had walked up to her before being aware of her presence. In a single glance he saw the wildflowers scattered beside her, the little moccasin turned inside out, the woebegone, tearstained face, and he knew Betty ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... sent a pitiful entreaty to Doctor Toole, who came very good-naturedly—and indeed he was prowling about the doorway of his domicile in expectation of the summons. And he shook her very cordially by the hand, and quite 'filled-up,' at her woebegone appeal, and told her she must not ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... constant trouble, for he could never catch his mule, saddle her, or indeed do anything else without assistance. Every day he had some new ailment, real or imaginary, to complain of. At one moment he would be woebegone and disconsolate, and the next he would be visited with a violent flow of spirits, to which he could only give vent by incessant laughing, whistling, and telling stories. When other resources failed, we used to amuse ourselves by tormenting ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... He looked very woebegone. He showed me his Georgian cross given for bravery in the field, and then once more the ikon his mother had given him. "Seven years, and I haven't once ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... the hands growled, and even Horry looked sour, Tunis seemed strangely excited; indeed, he looked less woebegone than he had for many a day. Something seemed to have given him a new zest in life. He even spoke to the hands cheerfully, and they were a trio of as surly dogs as ever quarreled with their food and ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... in the air as to the future as I was in the russet days of Bethel. But one of these days, let us hope we may gather over a bottle of something sound and mellow, and laugh together over our adventure into the land of the woebegone. I do not take to it, tho' they say some people live in it by choice, for they find something to talk of there, and feel saintly because they suffer. Well, we will have more knowledge in that happy future and ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... the ground with one arm around the neck of the Great Dane; and when Thomas Jefferson stole a glance at her to see how she was taking it, she looked so tired and thin and woebegone that he almost let the better part of him get the upper hand. That made him surlier than ever when he finally recovered his string of fish from the stream and said: "Well, come on, if ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... the woebegone where the most contemptible Habsburger has abandoned his prey, so that, O my Croat brother, it weeps for the dear son ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... Nellie's miniature, he took the medicine-bottle from the table, and went quickly out. The heavens had grown steadily darker and darker, the air more sulphurous and baleful. And the High had a strangely woebegone look, being all forsaken by youth, in this hour of luncheon. Even so would its look be all to-morrow, thought the Duke, and for many morrows. Well he had done what he could. He was free now to brighten a little his own last hours. He hastened on, eager to see the landlady's daughter. He wondered ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... where she was, but so woebegone did her face become that Albert leapt ashore again, and before she knew what he was doing, picked her up, and was back on the slippery ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... delight. So much the more therefore did Salvator wonder to see him, some days later, appear with his face pale and distorted, utterly miserable and woebegone. "Ah! Salvator!" said Antonio, "what advantage has it been to me that you have helped me to rise to a level far beyond my expectations, that I am now overwhelmed with praise and honour, that the prospect of a most successful artistic career is opening ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... ain't he?" said the man ahead—a little, woebegone, helpless-looking sort of individual, who looked as though he had ever been the sport and care ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... and tried to look as though nothing had happened. The other girls looked neat and pretty. They had not the least idea through what a tragedy Verena and Pauline were now living. Verena showed marks of her storm of weeping, and her face was terribly woebegone. Miss Tredgold guessed that things were coming to a crisis, and she was prepared ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... called an alarm. Everybody sprang to his feet and grasped his rifle, expecting an attack from Indians. A strange wild looking company were seen approaching, but, as they came closer, they were discovered to be white men. They were a striking sight, numbering fourteen, in the most ragged and woebegone condition imaginable. They had been on a trapping expedition, but having met with nothing but disasters from the beginning, were now straggling back ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... Grass, "And whither track These creatures all in black, So woebegone and penitent and meek?" "They're mortals bound for church," Said the little Silver Birch; "They hope to get to heaven And have their sins forgiven, If they talk to God about ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... we do," said the intuitive Gus, who, looking like a woebegone swamp dweller, had just come in from the dunes. "And soon we'll know a whole lot more. I just saw two gunners in the woods above the point, and if they aren't ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... the aviary, where Methuselah, in effect, was sitting on his perch, most tremulous and woebegone. His feathers shuddered visibly; he could no longer preen himself. "Listen to what he says," the Frenchman exclaimed, in a very serious voice. "It is your last, last chance. If the secret is ever to be unravelled at all, by Methuselah's aid, now is, without doubt, the proper ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... still held her head down, her bonnet well on it now, her face with its riant cast of features incongruously woebegone, overshadowed by the tragedy she recounted even more definitely than by the brim of her headgear or the first gray advance of the dusk, he made a clumsy effort to divert ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... superintendent of the settlement, was overseeing the embarkation, and to him I was introduced, also to Dr. Georges, one of the Board of Health physicians whom I had already met at Kalihi. The lepers were a woebegone lot. The faces of the majority were hideous—too horrible for me to describe. But here and there I noticed fairly good-looking persons, with no apparent signs of the fell disease upon them. One, I noticed, a little ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... inquisition of nearly a year's duration. On giving his parole not to leave the country until the verdict had been given, he had been permitted to retire to Kosen, from which place he, one evening, paid us a secret visit in Leipzig. I can still call his woebegone appearance to mind. He seemed hopelessly resigned, though he spoke cheerfully with regard to all his earlier dreams of better things; and owing to my own worries at that time about the critical state of my affairs, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... baronet's, when joyously setting forth upon the morning's chase, to distinguish Thorncliff, who was a favourite, while he summoned the rest more generally; and the loud jolly tone in which he used to hollo, "Call Thornie—call all of them," contrasted sadly with the woebegone and self-abandoning note in which he uttered the disconsolate words which I have above quoted. He mentioned the contents of his will, and supplied me with an authenticated copy;—the original he had ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... this time the shadows came on heavy feet and weary, and the voices were forlorn. One feebly cried, "Hola!" And round the belt of trees straggled the rout that had left them an hour or so earlier. But now they were sodden and dejected, draggled and woebegone, as sorry a spectacle as so ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... did not at all like himself in the new country. Trying to pick and choose instead of manfully choosing a pick and shovel for a beginning, he got hard up. During one of Captain Gilroy's visits to the Bluff, he came across my ex-drayman, looking hungry and woebegone. Invited on board to have a feed, he begged to be allowed to remain; nor, although his assistance was not needed, was he refused. "An nar," he said, his face glowing with conscious pride, "y'ort ter see me in a bloomin' bowt. I ain't a-goain' ter ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... a solemn reading, to which all the shadows seemed to listen. The doomed men bowed their heads around him. The flaming of the torch intensified their pallor. What the doctor read was written in English. Now and then, when one of those woebegone looks seemed to ask an explanation, the doctor would stop, to repeat—whether in French, or Spanish, Basque, or Italian—the passage he had just read. Stifled sobs and hollow beatings of the breast were heard. The wreck was ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Cecil went to his lodge. On the way he found the young Willamette runner sitting on a log by the path, looking even more woebegone than he had the day before. Cecil stopped ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... Hans came forth from his stateroom, pale and so woebegone that Tom had to turn away ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... with an air of complete digression, but at the woebegone look that came into the young man's face, the old soldier burst into a laugh. John whisked around to the door and stood looking out, though seeing nothing, bitter in the thought that not for the Englishman's own sake, but for the sake ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... did. She looked very pale and woebegone when she came down to breakfast. But, for all that, there was ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the head of your bed. I was afeard then I was doin' what Timothy forbids, when he says not to be pertakers in other folks's sins, but, you see, how could I help doin' it, when you was lookin' so woebegone like, and Jonas, he axed me to do it. It's awful hard to say you won't to Jonas, you know. So I put the letter there, and I don't doubt your ma mistrusted it, and got a holt ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... train moved out of the station he stood bareheaded on the platform with such a woebegone face that looking back at him my throat began to hurt me as it used to do when ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Horn in a caïque. As soon as we had landed, some woebegone looking fellows were got together and laden with our baggage. Then on we went, dripping, and sloshing, and looking very like men that had been turned back by the Royal Humane Society as being incurably drowned. Supporting our sick, we climbed up ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... of the law? What to the rapacious landlord is the widow's last mite but a Fast-Fish? What is yonder undetected villain's marble mansion with a door-plate for a waif; what is that but a Fast-Fish? What is the ruinous discount which Mordecai, the broker, gets from poor Woebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegone's family from starvation; what is that ruinous discount but a Fast-Fish? What is the archbishop of Savesoul's income of 100,000 pounds seized from the scant bread and cheese of hundreds of ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... old friend, that has gallantly stood by me through thick and thin throughout the eventful journey across the inter-mountain country; but the white helmet gives such a delightfully imposing air to my otherwise forlorn and woebegone figure that I ride out of Sidney feeling quite vain. The first thing done is to fill a poor yellow-spotted snake - whose head is boring in the sand - with lively surprise, by riding over his mottled carcass; ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... wax angry with the quiet tyranny of it. She looked at the horror and shuddered, then with both hands pushed the calico to the floor, gathering up her own lawn skirt instead. It was rather a woebegone lawn skirt. She gazed ruefully at the garment, then down at the blue flowering heaped about her ankles. Berthe, kneeling over the dress, raised her eyes. The puckered brow of her mistress spelled fury, and the maid tried not to laugh, at which Jacqueline stamped ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... faint, so spiritless. So dull, so dead in look, so woebegone, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, And would have told him, half his Troy ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... been left to take up his night's lodging with the creatures, in the apology for a barn, had espied the light, and not being able to resist the temptation of getting one more glimpse at the "swate Biddy," he had ventured to look in, and catching a glimpse of her woebegone face from among ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... Hospital upon Blackwell's Island, near New York City, we have seen scores of these unfortunates of both sexes, exhibiting the horrid disease in all its phases. To describe them would be to place before our readers a picture too revolting for these pages. No pen can portray the woebegone faces, the hopeless air, of these degraded sufferers whose repentance has come, alas! too late. No words can convey an adequate idea of their sufferings. What remorse and useless regrets add to the misery of their ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... at a table, her head resting on her arms. On the floor sat the toddler, Mollie, still in her white dress. She had two broken dolls, pretending to play with them, but the woebegone look in her little face showed that her ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... but that she had fallen into the condition which she had thought past for ever. This was worst of all, and her disappointment and dejection lasted not only all that long day, but all the next, making her receive all kindnesses with a broken-down, woebegone manner, and reply to all cheerful encouragements with despair about anything ever making her good. Albinia tried to put her in mind of the Source of all goodness; but any visible acceptance of personal applications of religious teaching had not ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Thorpe, coming in from the barber. "Sir Tristram looketh as woebegone as may lightly be. I am afeard the Princess Isoude hath been ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the wagons were already embedded as far as the axles. The women of the party, lightly clad in cotton, had walked for miles, knee-deep in water, through the brake, exposed to the pitiless pelting of the storm, and were now crouching forlorn and woebegone under the shelter of a tree.... The men were making feeble attempts to light a fire.... 'Colonel,' said one of them as I rode past, 'this is the gate of hell, ain't it?' ... The hardships the negroes go ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... was cold and wet, and halfway over the Hangingshaw Height he heard a stifled sob behind him, and, looking over his shoulder, he saw his little woebegone bride trying in vain with her numbed fingers to guide her palfrey, which was floundering in a moss-hole, ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... a brisk exchange of pieces and incivilities and a fluctuation of fortunes, till the little banker lost his queen as the result of an incautious move, and, after several woebegone contortions of his shoulders and hands, declined further contest. A sleek-headed piccolo rushed forward to remove the board, and the erstwhile combatants resumed the courteous dignity that they discarded ...
— When William Came • Saki
... Assuming a woebegone air I told my uncle that 'Auld Reekie' suited me poorly, and that the climate was too 'snell' ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... deal with matters of urgency. Gaga was all the time ill. His mother's death had so broken down his strength and his self-control that Sally often found him weak with crying; a pathetic figure, in bed, woebegone and feeble. His delight at seeing her was so violent that he had covered her hands with kisses before he fell back exhausted upon his pillow. He constantly called for her. The servants noticed with clucked tongues how feverish was his devotion; but they also recognised Sally's ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... and forces that one admission from her, and makes the great praying woebegone eyes meet his. Then, almost, he pushes ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... I chased the beasts out of the yard, and threw everything I could find at them—but you can't hurt a pig. And Dad was horrid—advised me to have them killed, so that at least we could have eggs and bacon!" Norah laughed, in spite of her woebegone tone. ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... he was very grateful, and we were walking back to the Palace, where he had just promised to regale me with some of the choicest viands in his larder, when we met, coming towards us, a most doleful-looking individual, clothed in black and wearing a most woebegone visage. ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... on deck. At length the two boats could be seen under sail, running down towards the ship. She was immediately hove-to, and in another minute they were alongside. Instead of the woebegone, half-starved beings Jack expected to see, he was delighted to find them all in good condition and excellent spirits. Green and Tom gave a rapid account of their adventures; after leaving the island they had gone to Santa Cruz, where, not liking the manners of the natives, after obtaining a fresh ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... growth, had at length driven out every other feeling. And this animal sentiment, educating the human hand and heart in her, had become a moral one, when, King Theseus leaving her in anger, visibly unkind, the child had crept to her side, and tracing with small fingers the wrinkled lines of her woebegone brow, carved there as if by a thousand years of sorrow, had sown between himself and her the seed of an ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... more civilized. Ratia began to resume her senses, though weak and hungry. She was sorely discomfited at having to wait, and could not, like the seasoned voyagers, settle herself to repose on the long leathern couches of the waiting-room, but wandered, woebegone and impatient, scolding her cousin for choosing such an hour for their passage, for her desertion and general bad management. The merry, good-natured Rashe had disappeared in the sea-sick, cross, and weary wight, whose sole solace was grumbling, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... grudged it when I could be of none. He had made his bed and he must lie upon it. Ernest had felt all this and had seldom come near me till now, one evening late in 1860, he called on me, and with a very woebegone face ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler |
