"Comfortless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... comfortless my woe, Thou, Love, my lord, whom thus I supplicate With many a piteous moan, Telling thee how in anguish sore I groan, Yearning for death my pain to mitigate. Come death, and with one blow Cut short my span, and so With ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... page of her Historic Muse, Until her demon his last hold forsook, And smoothly, with no countenance of hate, Her conqueror she could scan to measure. Thence The strange new Winter stream of ruling sense, Cold, comfortless, but braced to disabuse, Ran through the mind of this most lowly laid; From the top billow of victorious War, Down in the flagless troughs at ebb and flow; A wreck; her past, her future, both in shade. She read the things that are; Reality ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to be the channel, in summer, of every scorching blast diverted by them; in winter, every icy draught. Pestilential place, goal of whirlwinds and dust-devils, ankle-deep in desert drift—prototype of Berber in a sandstorm—as comfortless by night as day. But as in nature, so in the handiwork of men, even in the most repulsive shapes it is possible to find some saving feature. De Aar has one—one only. Its saving feature is where a slatternly Jew boy plays host behind the bar of a fly-ridden buffet. Here at prices ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... but I doubt if anyone else in Carlisle church tasted it much or gained much good therefrom. Certainly we of the King household did not. We could not even remember the text when we reached home. Felicity was comfortless. ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to do that good which thou oughtest, with what thy God hath given thee; then consider, that though he love thy soul, yet he can chastise; First, Thy inward man with such troubles, that thy life shall be restless and comfortless. Secondly, And can also so blow upon thy outward man, that all thou gettest shall be put in a bag with holes (Psa 89:31-33; Hag 1:6). And set the case he should licence but one thief among thy substance, or one spark of fire among thy barns, how quickly might that be spent ill, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... felicity. How it is possible for those who have once tasted this, the sweetest of all human delights, how it is possible for any rational mind afterwards to submit to be whirled round in the vortex of dissipation, to tolerate, to endure, the empty, vain, comfortless, nothingness of fashionable amusements, now appears to me to be almost inexplicable. The real felicity imparted and received in a happy domestic circle, in one evening, far, very far surpasses all the pleasures ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... saved thee to a land Of strangers, stealing thee from death! For then Thou hadst been quiet on that far off day, And had thy portion in our father's tomb Now thou hast perished in the stranger land Far from thy sister, lorn and comfortless And I, O wretchedness! neither have bathed And laid thee forth, nor from the blazing fire Collected the sad burden, as was meet But thou, when foreign hands have tended thee Com'st a small handful in a narrow shell Woe for the constant care I ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... once more insistent and more urgent He felt homesick, and the populous street was like a desert. All the people who had seemed so warmly near to him were aloof and cold. He would have welcomed any companionship. The ebbing forces of the wine left him comfortless. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the abbey, and sheltered from the storm, shared the all-pervading despondency. The refectory looked dull and comfortless, and the logs on the hearth hissed and sputtered, and would not burn. Green wood had been brought instead of dry fuel by the drowsy henchman. The viands on the board provoked not the appetite, and the men emptied their cups of ale, yawned and stretched their arms, as if they would fain sleep ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a stranger. On no other subject was it possible that he should now speak to the daily visitor and the only visitor at Orley Farm. All this Mrs. Orme understood, and saw that the young man was alone and comfortless. He passed his hours below, in his own room, and twice a day his mother found him in the parlour, and then they sat through their silent, miserable meals. She would then leave him, always saying some soft words of motherly love, and putting ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... precautions to avoid him, and saw in that action further reason for his suspicion that her declaration of affection had been a mistake or perhaps a deliberate deception. 'I deceived them all. I lied to everybody,' she said. The young man stiffened himself with chill comfortless pride, and made no effort to seek her out. He loved her, he told himself, but was no whimpering fool to abase himself at the feet of a woman who was careless, or might ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... of ringing and of being repulsed. It was dismal standing still, however, and quite as comfortless sitting down. He was so cold! So, to keep his blood in motion, he keeps his limbs in motion,—till, lo! here he is again at the house where the happy children were! They have ceased their play. Two young girls are at ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... One is her father's daughter, and one hot To bear her mother's part. I blame thee not.... Yet think not I am happy, child; nor flown With pride now, in the deeds my hand hath done.... [Seeing ELECTRA unsympathetic, she checks herself. But thou art all untended, comfortless Of body and wild of raiment; and thy stress Of travail scarce yet ended!... Woe is me! 'Tis all as I have willed it. Bitterly I wrought against him, to the last blind deep ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... folded arms, looking down. "But that is what you won't see; how should you? You will only see dusty, upstart towns, with horrible corrugated-iron hotels, where you will swelter in heat and flies and eat abominable tinned stuffs. It is a barren, comfortless land at present, with a possibility of being useful some day. They want money, energy, brains to develop it thoroughly; and they won't accept them when they are offered, because a few stiff-necked Englishmen happen to be in power. It is absurd to go there at present. You will only get typhoid ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... ought to be done for him. He remained, therefore, till the Foreign Secretary returned from his royal service, and had by that time fixed the period of his marriage. It was to take place in the cold comfortless month of March. It would be a great thing, he had said, to have Hampstead present at it, and it was Hampstead's intention to start on his long travels early in April. "I don't see why people shouldn't be married in cold weather as well as in hot," said Vivian. "Brides ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... other lady, her sister, seemed her extreme antitype. If the one were descended from Pharaoh's fat kine, the other was as certainly derived from the lean. Her face was but a mouth between two ears; her breast was as inconsolably comfortless and dreary as the Lueneburger heath; while her absolutely dried-up figure reminded one of a charity table for poor theological students. Both ladies asked me, in a breath, if respectable people lodged in the Hotel de Bruebach. I assented to this question with a clear ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of Teutonic skill in her pronunciation. "Well, mamma, you have told me of that at least twenty times." Soon after that, the ladies took them to their own rooms, weary with the travelling of two days and a night, and Mr. Greene went fast asleep in the very comfortless chair in which he ...
— The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box • Anthony Trollope
... woollen shawl over her head and shoulders. She seemed quite pleased to see us—was not at all put out at being caught in such very simple attire—begged us to come in and ushered us through a long, narrow hall and several cold, comfortless rooms, the shutters not open and no fire anywhere, into her bedroom. All the furniture—chairs, tables and bed—was covered with linen. She explained that it was her "lessive" (general wash) she had just made, that all the linen was dry, but she had ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... the person of their comfortless mistress, the valet of Denbigh engaged in arranging a dry coat for his master—all suspended their employments to listen in breathless silence to the mournful melody ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... which reached the slave's ears in various ways, his utter helplessness upon the best farms and under the most humane masters and overseers, in Maryland and other Northern Slave States, together with the impression that the journey was of great extent, and comfortless even to a slave, all combined to make a voyage down the river or down South an era in the life of the poor slave to which he looked forward with the most intense and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... has, consequently she will feel her comfortless room and poverty all the more after it. Give her the ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... sat in the back seats behind the columns, and near the door where he could hardly hear, and where he had none of the comfort of the stove in winter. The bishop feared his position was cold and comfortless, that he did not feel himself to be a member of the Church, that he was outside the pale of its society. He exhorted the country clergy to bring the labourer forward and make him more comfortable, to put him in a better seat among the rest, where ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... in January of 1798 that I rose one morning before daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud to hear this celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. When I got there the organ was playing the 100th Psalm, and when it was done Mr Coleridge rose and gave out {119} his text, "And he went up into the mountain to pray, himself, alone." As he gave out this text his voice "rose like a stream ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... commissary wagon with its team, which had been swept away! A number of muskets were lost, and a drum or two; but excepting these casualties we all got across safely with no other ill fortune than to be wet again to the skin, which, as night was falling gave us a comfortless prospect. The drum corps of the Twenty-Third was at this point sent back to Carlisle with the remainder of the ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... candle was burning on a dusty and empty dressing-table. Dr. Cashmore moved it to the vicinity of the bed, which was like an oasis of decent arrangement in the desert of comfortless chamber; then he stooped to examine the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... being his true son and the proper heir to the peerage, let any one see him walk twice, and then have a shadow of a doubt about it! This logic pleased but convinced me not, and I had to go to bed in a very unhappy, restless, and comfortless ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... of wearisome and comfortless striving,—years of rigorous self-denial, of reproach and humiliation,—Wesley had steadfastly adhered to his one purpose of seeking God. Now he had found Him; and he found that the grace which he had toiled to win by prayers and fasts, by almsdeeds and self-abnegation, was a gift, "without money, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... there dribbles a soapy little puddle on to the uneven flags, just deep enough to float an unsavoury-looking mixture of cheese-rinds and potato-parings. Altogether, the appearance of the house is gaunt, filthy, and utterly comfortless. Such is the ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... senior and junior, threw cloaks round them, exchanged their wigs for caps; and, regardless of the absurd appearance of their faces, hurried out to one of the minor theatres, with heavy hearts because of the little fairy left so ill and comfortless at home. ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... comfortless and silent meal. The gloom of the castle seemed to have spread its contagion even over the gay countenance of Cavigni, and with this gloom was mingled a fierceness, such as she had seldom seen him indicate. Count Morano ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... tride, What hell it is in suing long to bide: To lose good days that might be better spent, To waste long nights in pensive discontent. To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow, To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow. To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares; To eat thy heart through comfortless despaires," &c. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... lifeless corpse of my beloved; and, while looking on her uncovered face, the features already contracted by the rigidity of death, I felt as if all the visible universe had grown as soulless, inane, and comfortless as the clay-cold image beneath me. I felt for a moment the intolerable sense of struggle with, and detestation for, the laws which govern the world; till the calm still visible on the face of my dead ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... a while with his father, then he had gone, just as aimlessly, with a party of men who were emigrating to America. He had taken some money, had drifted about, living in the most comfortless, wretched fashion, then he had found a place somewhere in Pennsylvania, in a dry goods store. This was when he was seventeen or ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... sprouts. Seated thus, he could feel an unsteady quivering of the trunk, a trembling, wrenching motion, that told, but too plainly, of the powerful force of the flood, and of the uncertain tenure which he possessed on even this comfortless refuge. ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... or what should be your exercise and employment in this old age of the world, here ye have it in a word, "be sober, and watch unto prayer." When Christ was to go away to his Father, and leave his disciples in this world, as he left them not orphans, or comfortless, without the Comforter, so neither left he them without counsel and direction. The word he left to them was, "Take heed, watch and pray," Mark xiii. 33. In this chapter, Peter is mindful of his Lord's directions, as Paul also was, 1 Thess. v. 6. The substance of this chapter ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... He had set the door of communication between the two rooms open, so as to gain a greater sense of space and that he might take a little exercise by walking the whole length of them. The cry of the wind and the moan of the sawing branches was very comfortless, yet he made no effort to shut it out. To begin with, he was so weak that it was too much trouble to move. To go on with, the melancholy sounds were not ill-suited to his present humour. For a great depression was upon him, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... mind, Disdainful, Anger, pallid Fear, And Shame that skulks behind; Or pining Love shall waste their youth, Or Jealousy with rankling tooth, That inly gnaws the secret heart, And Envy wan, and faded Care, Grim-visaged comfortless ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... 'twas an eye full of gentle salutations and soft responses, speaking, not like the trumpet-stop of some ill-made organ, in which many an eye I talk to holds coarse converse, but whispering soft, like that last low accent of an expiring saint, "How can you live comfortless, Captain Shandy, and alone, without a bosom to lean your head on—or ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... closest links of earthly affection? In Jesus thou hast filial and fraternal love combined; He is the Friend of friends, whose presence and fellowship compensates for all losses, and supplies all blanks; "He setteth the solitary in families." If thou art orphaned, friendless, comfortless here, remember there is in the Elder Brother on the Throne a love deep as the unfathomed ocean, ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... lingering heel be nipped! Listen to him try the foremost dog with names, to gull him to a belief that they have met before in happier circumstances! He appeals mutely to the farmhouse that a recall be sounded. The windows are tightly curtained. The heavens are comfortless. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... and they were as empty and as cheerless. Presently they came to that which had been Margaret's. In a bowl were dead flowers. Her brushes were still on the toilet table. But it was a gloomy chamber, with its dark oak, and, so comfortless that Susie shuddered. Arthur stood for a time and looked at it, but he said nothing. They found themselves again on the stairs and they went to the second storey. But here they seemed to be at the top ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... was comfortless,—for there had been no notice of their coming. The apartments had been occupied by the servants of the court, who, turning out in a hurry, left everything in confusion. Probably Louis did not mind this,—glad enough ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... solemn. The soul that we miss has gone so far beyond the reach of time! A cold, superstitious awe gradually stole over the young man. He shivered, and lifted his eyes with a start, half scornful, half defying. The moon was gone; the gray, comfortless dawn gleamed through the casement, and carried its raw, chilling light through the open doorway into the death-room. And there, near the extinguished fire, Leonard saw the solitary woman, weeping low; and watching still. He returned to say a word of comfort; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Fenwick, waiting patiently while the great preliminary affair of the dealer in meat was being settled. At that hour Sam had not made his appearance; but between twelve and one he sauntered into the comfortless room in which Carry was still sitting with her father. The sight of him was a joy to poor Carry, as he would speak to her, and tell her something of what was going on. "I'm about in time for the play, father," he said, coming up to them. The miller picked up his hat, and scratched ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... the two years and nine months during which Shelley lived with Harriet must seem insane to a rational mind. Life was one comfortless picnic. When Shelley wanted food, he would dart into a shop and buy a loaf or a handful of raisins. Always accompanied by Eliza, they changed their dwelling-place more than twelve times. Edinburgh, ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... the needy invalid sent thither in search of sunshine! Sunshine is indeed a far more expensive luxury on the Riviera than we imagine, seeing that only rooms with a north aspect are cheap, and a sunless room is much more comfortless and unwholesome than a well-warmed one, no matter its aspect, in England. The only cheap commodity, one unfortunately we cannot live upon, is the bouquet. In October, that is to say, before the arrival ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... postilion coming round the nearest bend in the river. On this hint, we took our leave of the island, not forgetting to apply a little of the universal salve to the bruised spirit of the old woman whose dread of thunder had caused her to pass so comfortless a night. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... valley during July, August and September, the heat at times is well-nigh intolerable both by day and night. You arise in the morning played out after a comfortless night under a punkah, which, hung over your bed in the limited space of a mosquito house, is pulled with a rope passing through the wall by a coolie stationed on the verandah outside. With the thermometer standing at ninety degrees in your bedroom you frame the ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... more comfortless than some of these shanties, reeking with smoke and dirt, the common receptacle for children, pigs, and fowls. But I have given you the dark side of the picture; I am happy to say all the shanties on the squatters' ground were not like these: on the ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... was glad enough of any proposal of a change from the cold and comfortless room where he had thought uneasy, remorseful thoughts. He fancied that a change of place would banish the train of reflection that was troubling him; but the change he anticipated was to a well-warmed, cheerful ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... sunk in equal barbarism. When we follow men home, who have been cooperating with other civilized men in continuous labour throughout the livelong day, we should not, without experience, expect to find their homes dreary, comfortless, deformed with filth, such homes as poverty alone could not make. Still less, when we gaze upon some pleasant looking village, fair enough in outward seeming for poets' songs to celebrate, should we expect to find scarcity of fuel, scantiness of food, prevalence of fever, the ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... he called the beggar to him. "My friend," said he, "I grieve sadly for the story you told me last night. But maybe, after all, your luck is not all gone. And now, if you will choose as you should choose, you shall not go away from here comfortless. In the pantry yonder are two great pies—one is for you and one for me. Go in and take whichever ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... morning, was rather a comfortless meal, for the cook, terrified lest he and his galley should be washed overboard together, had not furnished a very appetising spread; while the wild movements of the vessel, the harsh and dismal creaking of her timbers, the frequent heavy washing of water along the decks, and the roar of the ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... the town, stood the Poor House. It was a crazy old building of extreme antiquity, which, being no longer considered fit for an ordinary dwelling-house, had been selected as a suitable residence for the town's poor. It was bleak and comfortless to be sure, but on that very account had been purchased at a trifling expense, and that was, of course, a primary consideration. Connected with the house were some dozen acres of rough-looking land, plentifully overspread with stones, which ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... passed. Let us visit the home of Mr. Warren and look at him among his children. No; we will not enter this pleasant house—he moved away long ago. Can this be the home of Mr. Warren! Yes. Small, poor, and comfortless as it is! Ah! ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... and dreary time for Hester, alone in the room where she had spent so many happy hours. She sat in a window, looking out upon the leafless trees and the cold gloomy old statue in the midst of them. Frost was upon every twig. A thin sad fog filled the comfortless air. There might be warm happy homes many, but such no more belonged to her world! The fire was burning cheerfully behind her, but her eyes were fixed on the dreary square. She was hardly thinking—only letting thoughts and feelings ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... tenants of the skies, 260 But to the sons of earth; if ye have known A man afflicted with a weight of woe Peculiar, let me be with him compared; Woes even passing his could I relate, And all inflicted on me by the Gods. But let me eat, comfortless as I am, Uninterrupted; for no call is loud As that of hunger in the ears of man; Importunate, unreas'nable, it constrains His notice, more than all his woes beside. 270 So, I much sorrow feel, yet not the less Hear I the blatant appetite demand Due ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... seek Heaven comfortless and alone. God speed him! For my own part, I fear I should never so find the way; let me be wise and religious, but let me be MAN; wherever Thy Providence places me, or whatever be the road I take to Thee, give me some companion in my journey, be it only to remark to, 'How ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... To speed to day, to be put back to-morrow, To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers, To have thy asking, yet wait many years. To fret thy soul with crosses, and with care. To eat thy heart, thro' comfortless despair; To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run To spend, to give, to want, to ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... time of peace. The motion was made by James Brydges, eldest son of the Lord Chandos, the James Brydges who afterwards became Duke of Chandos, who raised a gigantic fortune out of war taxes, to squander it in comfortless and tasteless ostentation, and who is still remembered as the Timon of Pope's keen and brilliant satire. It was remarked as extraordinary that Brydges brought forward and defended his motion merely as the assertion ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that are near; and so wait, until the bright investiture and sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with which this solitude ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... most costly, the play the highest. It is not very long since that a young Russian noble lost in one evening a sum equal to a hundred thousand pounds. The Vienna Club is good in its own stiff German way; but, generally speaking, German Clubs are very ill arranged, dirty, and comfortless. The Italian are better. Turin, Naples, and Florence have reasonably good Clubs. Home has nothing but the thing called the English Club, a poorly-got-up establishment of small whist-players ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... with the white in the more palpable pursuits of a practical, enlightened, and energetic age, or co-activity with him on a theatre of enlarged and more vigorous action. It is in some respects more comfortless than even was his experience under his primitive style of living, and is usually composed of one room, answering all the purposes of life—eating-room, bed-room, reception-room, principally, however, for the snow and mud, which have been persuaded here to relax their hold, after antecedent ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... divide this room from some other attic beyond. Also, there was a hole in the wall immediately beneath the eaves of the house that served the purpose of a window, over which a sack was nailed. "We are poor folk," said the landlord as they glanced round this comfortless garret, "but many great people have slept well here, as doubtless you will also," and he turned to ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... will be shaved, and with pleasure; but, pray, don't raise your voice that way. Why, now, if you go through life gritting your teeth in that fashion, what a comfortless time you ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... lights low: this gave perspective, you see; and the imagination could play; always, the dim receding ranks of the dead inspired one with weird and fascinating fancies. Two years ago—I had been there a year then—I was sitting all alone in the watch-room, one gusty winter's night, chilled, numb, comfortless; drowsing gradually into unconsciousness; the sobbing of the wind and the slamming of distant shutters falling fainter and fainter upon my dulling ear each moment, when sharp and suddenly that dead-bell rang out a blood-curdling alarum ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Southern hospitality meant. If Mrs. Peyton had been accustomed to that, it must be a matter of pride not to let her feel that Northern homes were cold and comfortless places by comparison. By the time she had shown the visitors to Charlotte's guest-room, and had made up a bed for the boy on a wide couch there, Celia had worked off a little of her regret. Nevertheless, when Jeff and Just heard the news, their disgust ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... contrary, the termination less added to substantives, makes adjectives signifying want; as, worthless, witless, heartless, joyless, careless, helpless. Thus comfort, comfortless; sap, sapless. ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... reach Moussy, where the vineyards, spite of their long pedigree and southern aspect, also rank as a second cr. Still skirting the vine-clad slopes we come to Vinay, noted for an ancient grotto—the comfortless abode of some rheumatic anchorite—and a pretended miraculous spring to which fever-stricken pilgrims to-day credulously resort. The water may possibly merit its renown, but the wine here produced is very inferior, due no doubt to the class of vines, the ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... lofty, desolate plateau we turned our backs upon the last mountain peak that could remind us of habitable lands. Yet before us lay the unknown. What fascination lies in that word! Could anyone wonder that we determined to push on, be the outlook ever so comfortless?' ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... inconsistencies, fill us with pity and surprise us, yet encourage us too by proving how right and wise we were to try our own experiments. If we had listened to advice and done as we were told, the woman's-sphere-is-home would have been as ugly and comfortless a place for us to-day as it used to be when Beth was forced by the needs of her nature to poach for diversion, cook for kindness, and clean, and fight, and pray, and lie, and love, in her brave struggle against ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... guard-room than a parlour. Clearly no woman reigned here. All was wood, or stone, or steel, clean as a ship, and as comfortless. Arms on the wall; iron-barred windows; no carpets, no ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... providing a separate path for them; but, great as is the exposure to dirt in Paris, for want of a footpath, which their many porte-cochres seem likely for ever to prevent, in the more important article of danger, the City of London was, at this period, at least on a par. How comfortless must be the sensations of an unfortunate female, stopped in the street on a windy day under a large old sign loaded with lead and iron in full swing over, her head? and perhaps a torrent of rain ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... a day or two, his uncle missed the accustomed grace, and began to say it himself. He is now the person to say "Silence, boys;" and then to ask the blessing on the meal. It makes them gather round the table, instead of sitting down here and there in the comfortless, unsociable way they used to do. Tom and Dick go to school together now, and Dick is getting on famously, and will soon be able to help his next brother over his lessons, as ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... comfortless type to be found in small towns. Bare floors, stained with tobacco juice and the dust of the street. Bare desks and tables, some of them unpainted, homemade affairs, all of them cheap and old. A stove in the larger office, a few ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... would have said to himself, "What is the life I am to lead, now that I have this money? Having luncheon at the club, walking in the Park in the afternoon, dining with a friend in the evening, and playing whist or billiards, with the comfortless return to my bachelor's chambers at night? Is that all that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... before. Indian hotels are about the worst in the world. We have sampled rough dens in Spain, in Tetuan, and in Corsica—especially in Corsica, but then they are unpretentious inns in unfrequented villages, whereas in India you find in world-famous cities such as Agra or Delhi the most comfortless dens calling themselves hotels—hotels where you hardly dare eat half the food for fear of typhoid, and will not eat the rest because ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... which private individuals may greatly assist the Poor, is, by showing them how they may make themselves more comfortable in their dwellings. Nothing is more perfectly miserable and comfortless than the domestic arrangement of poor families in general; they seem to have no idea whatever of order or economy in any thing; and every thing about them is dreary, sad, and neglected, in the extreme. A little ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... a long, narrow house of wood, painted white, and more than half windows; and, when the observer stood at the western side of the building, the edifice offered but a small obstacle to a full view of the rising sun. It was, in truth, but a very comfortless open place, through which the daylight shone with natural facility. On its front were divers ornaments in wood, designed by Richard and executed by Hiram; but a window in the centre of the second story, immediately over the door or grand entrance, and the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... chamber, six feet by eight, with one small grated window, facing the door. On the right of the window was a narrow bed, filling up that side of the cell; on the left was a rusty stove; that was all; there was no chair, no table, no strip of carpet on the cold stone floor; all was comfortless, desolate. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... someone living in it—his good old nurse, perhaps. He was so worn out and miserable that the tears came into his eyes at the mere thought of seeing her kindly face. But the old building was quite deserted, and, when he forced open the rusty lock, and entered, he found nothing but a low, dark, comfortless room. The walls were bare and damp, and the little window was so overgrown with ivy that scarcely any light could get in. There was not even a chair or a table in it, nothing but a long rope with a noose at the end of it, which hung dangling ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... in an old building where more than one newspaper had failed. The interior of the place was so comfortless in arrangement, so subject to unaccountable drafts of cold air in winter and breaths of hot oppression in summer, that it must have been built especially for a newspaper office. Henry found that the working force consisted mainly of a few young reporters and a large ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... upon the poor. Yet through his shadow falling on the weak and sick as he passed by, he unconsciously wrought health and hope in men. In like manner it is said that while Jesus Christ was seeking to comfort the comfortless, involuntarily virtue went out of him to strengthen one who did but touch the hem of his garment. Character works with or without consent. The selfish man fills his office with a malign atmosphere; his very presence chills like a cold, clammy day. Suspicious people fill ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... was crushed through Cigarette's tight-pressed, bright-red lips, with an irony sadder than tears. She was sitting on the edge of a grabat, hard as wood, comfortless as a truss of straw, and looking down the long hospital room, with its endless rows of beds and its hot sun shining blindingly on its glaring, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... night he began to feel very cold. Instinctively he tried not to awake, as if even in sleep he knew how comfortless his surroundings were. He thrust his hands up his coat-sleeves and curled himself up on the bed; but at last the cold ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... arrived the hut was comfortless enough. Wilson and Meares and Gran had been there some days; they had found some old bricks and a grid, and there was an open blubber fire in the middle of the floor. There was no outlet for the smoke and smuts and it was impossible to see your neighbour, to speak without ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... doth ensue But moody and dull melancholy, Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair, And at her heel, a huge infectious troop Of pale distemperatures, and foes ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... all that is allowed them as so much taken from the family; and they seek in every way to get from them as much and to give them as little as possible. Their rooms are the neglected, ill-furnished, incommodious ones—and the kitchen is the most cheerless and comfortless ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... other French pleasure grounds, formal and comfortless, but there is one part you would all enjoy. When Buonaparte first carried Marie Louise to Compiegne she expressed much satisfaction, but remarked that it was deficient in a Berceau; it could not stand in competition with her favourite palace of Schoenbrunn. Now, a berceau is a wide ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... in strong remembrance set! Scenes never, never to return! Scenes, if in stupor I forget, Again I feel, again I burn! From ev'ry joy and pleasure torn, Life's weary vale I'll wander thro'; And hopeless, comfortless, I'll mourn A faithless ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... a terrible one to the older monks, who had become so used to the safe and regular life of the Abbey that they would have been as helpless as children in the outer world. From their pious oasis they looked dreamily out at the desert of life, a place full of stormings and strivings—comfortless, restless, and overshadowed by evil. The young novice, however, appeared to have other thoughts, for his eyes sparkled and his smile broadened. It needed but that to add fresh fuel to the fiery ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... behoof the consumption takes place. Therefore priestly vestments are notoriously expensive, ornate, and inconvenient; and in the cults where the priestly servitor of the divinity is not conceived to serve him in the capacity of consort, they are of an austere, comfortless fashion. And such it is felt that they ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... over the place, and explained all the processes of preparing coffee for the market. In one corner of a large, unpainted building was what he called the infirmary, and a comfortless looking place it was. He said there was no doctor employed, and that he dealt out medicine to the slaves himself. After being served with coffee we thanked him for our entertainment and returned to Rio by ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... recess of Tresco's cave, where he had made his comfortless bed, the dim light of a candle is burning. As its small flame lights up the cold walls, stained black with the smoke of the goldsmith's dead fire, a weeping woman is seen ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... culture apparatus from the sofa, or to bestow tender care upon a cannon ball, an antiquated eighteen or twenty-pounder, which reposed—most useful piece of furniture—in the middle of the hearth-rug, or to see to the comfortless electric radiator that took the place of a grate, I let these things be, and concentrated my attention on his papers which lay loose on desk and table. This was obviously the tidying up to which he had referred. I swept his correspondence into one drawer. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... few hours, and that His Majesty would do well to set out for Ham before ten in the morning. James made some difficulties. He did not like Ham. It was a pleasant place in the summer, but cold and comfortless at Christmas, and was moreover unfurnished. Halifax answered that furniture should be instantly sent in. The three messengers retired, but were speedily followed by Middleton, who told them that the King would ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to pieces before the dead-light could be got into its place, so that the water poured down in great quantities. In shutting out the water, the admission of light was prevented, and in the morning all continued in the most comfortless state of darkness. About ten o'clock a.m. the wind shifted to N.E., and blew, if possible, harder than before, and it was accompanied by a much heavier swell of sea. In the course of the gale, the part of the cable in the hause-hole ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my realm and home expelled,— A hermit, nursed on woodland fare,— She followed still and soothed my care. Of all my friends am I bereft, Nor is my faithful consort left. How slowly will the long nights creep While comfortless I wake and weep! O, if my wife may yet be found, With humble love I'll wander round This Janasthan, Prasravan's hill, Mandakini's delightful rill. See how the deer with gentle eyes Look on my face and sympathize. I mark their soft expression: each Would soothe me, if ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... leaky covering of an old, dilapidated log-house, standing by the road-side, in one of the thousand little dales, which, with their corresponding hills, so beautifully diversify the face of the town we have been describing. But as comfortless as this miserable hut was, and as poor and insufficient a protection from the elements as it afforded, even for the healthy and robust, it was now the only shelter of a sick and destitute woman, the widowed mother of Harry Woodburn. The hand of her son's persecutor, as it not unfrequently is seen ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... with our comfortless, unsatisfactory meal, at which I grumbled, but which Mr Frewen said was far better than ordinary prison fare; and just at dark, as he had suggested, we were startled by the sudden rattling at the fastening ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... eyelids, no peace reside within my bosom, until I shall have adored that earthly shrine where my Monimia lies! Yet would I know the circumstances of her fate. Did Heaven ordain no angel to minister to her distress? were her last moments comfortless? ha! was not she abandoned to indigence, to insults; left in the power of that inhuman villain who betrayed us both? Sacred Heaven! why did Providence wink at the triumph of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... through the light of day; its pastures and arable land are divided on the same scale; there are no fences; we can hardly place ourselves in any spot where we shall not see for leagues around; and there is a kind of comfortless sublimity in the size of every scene. The French cottage, therefore, is on the same scale, equally large and desolate looking; but we shall see, presently, that it can arouse feelings which, though they ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... saving Ark, Where love's true light at last I've found, Cheering within, when all grows dark And comfortless and stormy round." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... absorption. He had been gone from her for so long, she wanted to rediscover him, his position, what he was now. But there was not much in the room to help her. It only made her feel rather sad, it was so hard and comfortless. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... by nature in darkness, and like to the leaves' generations, That are little of might, that are moulded of mire, unenduring and shadowlike nations, Poor plumeless ephemerals, comfortless mortals, as visions of creatures fast fleeing, Lift up your mind unto us that are deathless, and dateless the date of our being: Us, children of heaven, us, ageless for aye, us, all of whose thoughts are eternal; That ye may from henceforth, having ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of novelty in the journey or the voyage. There were the usual incidents of winter travelling—the hot, stifling car—the snowy country stretching out mile after mile from morning till night—the hotels, which seemed strangely comfortless for an invalid—and then the great city with its noise and bustle, and the steamer where they had nothing to do ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill |
