"Deplorable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Polish Succession presently sank into a mere armistice, and until 1736 we dimly perceive Vauvenargues sharing the idle and boring life of the officer who, too poor to retire to Paris, vegetates in some deplorable frontier-garrison of Burgundy or Franche Comte. We know that he was dissipated and idle, for he tells us so, but his confession is marred by no sort of priggishness, and it is very important to insist that this greatest of moralists ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... the notices of some passing traveller. But its shame does not consist merely or chiefly in the occasional bowie-knife or revolver produced to clinch the argument of some ardent Western member, nor even in the unnoted interchange of compliments not usually current amongst gentlemen. Much more deplorable is the low tone of morality and taste which marks their proceedings from first to last, the ruffian-like denunciations, the puerile rants, the sanguinary sentiments poured forth day by day without check or censure. This is harsh language, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... way, the Doctor grew almost boisterously delighted over a deplorable representation of negro lepers. Young and old, male and female, halt and maimed, the poor sufferers had been photographed in a long row; and my brother secured the entire panorama of them and whined for more. These lamentable representations of lepers gave him keener pleasure than anything he had ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... said then to Madame de Maintenon, "your excessive grief for an unknown man is singular. He was, perhaps, actually a dishonest fellow. The accident which you come back to incessantly, and which distresses me also, is doubtless deplorable; but, after all, it is not a murder, an ambush, a premeditated assassination. I imagine that if such a catastrophe had happened elsewhere, and been reported to us in a gazette or a book, you would have read of it with interest and commiseration; but we should not have seen you clasp your ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... had been sweet beyond words to Virginia, though she was obliged to admit that his judgment was founded upon a deplorable lack of discrimination in the matter of hairdressing—since Lucy and Jenny both had magnificent hair, while her own had long since lost its gloss and grown thin from neglect. But if it had been really the truth, it could not have been half so sweet ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... of course, as she led the deplorable object towards the house that they encountered Eugenia under a green-lined white parasol, on the way back from the garden, carrying ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... honourable conduct, is too true; but he stood alone among his confederates in that crime, and that crime stands alone in his character. Brave to rashness and disinterested to excess, few rebel chiefs ever made a more heroic end out of a more deplorable beginning.' The same eulogy would equally apply to many of the English generals. Cruelty was their only crime. The Irish rulers of those times, if not taken by surprise, felt at the outbreak of open rebellion much as the army feels at the ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... sufferings which exercised the fortitude of Elizabeth and her faithful followers during her deplorable abode at Woodstock. Mary, meanwhile, was rapt in fond anticipations of the felicity of her married life with a prince for whom, on the sight of his picture, she is said to have conceived the most ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... which seemed to have been attained; witness the present state of chemistry. The demand of proof for what has been accepted by Humanity, is itself a mark of "distrust, if not hostility, to the sacerdotal order" (the naivete of this would be charming, if it were not deplorable), and is a revolt against the traditions of the human race. So early had the new High Priest adopted the feelings and taken up the inheritance of the old. One of his favourite aphorisms is the strange one, that the living are more and ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... bedding was spread on the ground in the tents, and all turned in—but not for long. Some one said, "water is running under my bed." Then another and another made the same complaint. Soon we learned the deplorable fact that the large tent had been pitched in a basin-like place, and that the water, as the rain increased, was coming in from all sides, the ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... He loved her foolishness just as her Uncle Amzi did—just as every one did except her aunts, for whom the affected stiltedness of her speech was merely a part of her general deplorable unconventionality. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... best but scantily supplied with schools, and on the Devil's Tooth range seven young Americans—three of them adopted from Sweden—were in danger of growing up in deplorable ignorance of what learning lies hidden in books. A twelve-mile stretch of country had neither schoolhouse, teacher nor school officers empowered to establish a school. Until the Swedish family moved into a shack on the AJ ranch there ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... to you by my Government and by myself, you were not able to prevent such an end to the negotiations? It is a thing that cannot be calmly contemplated. Even I, who have learnt perhaps more thoroughly than other men to govern my temper—even I feel strangely moved, for I know how deplorable will be the effect of this on our Allies and on the other neutral Powers. Our enemies, too, will be exalted by it and thus the War will be prolonged. No, Count, at such a moment one does not appear before one's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... to that which they who survive you shall enjoy.' And in fact it ought never to be forgotten, that the Spaniards have not wilfully blinded themselves, but have steadily fixed their eyes not only upon danger and upon death, but upon a deplorable issue of the contest. They have contemplated their subjugation as a thing possible. The next extract, from the paper entitled Precautions, (and the same language is holden by many others) will show in what manner alone they reconcile themselves ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... inseparable from a liberal education, and are doomed to live wretchedly in the constant pursuit of what reason condemns, to have all their pleasures embittered by remorse, and to be reduced to the deplorable condition of having renounced virtue, without being ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... Syria, the provinces of Asia Minor, Armenia, Georgia, and Persia, though Mohammedan countries, there are many thousands of Jews, and many thousands of Christians, at least in name. But the whole mingled population is in a state of deplorable ignorance and degradation,—destitute of the means of divine knowledge, and bewildered with vain imaginations and strong delusions." In that year Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons embarked ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... prosperity amount to? The new Census figures leave us in no doubt as to its existence. For the first time there is a real check in that deplorable wastage of population that has been going on for more than half a century. The diminution of population in Ireland revealed by the 1901 Census amounted to 245,000 persons. The diminution revealed by the 1911 Census ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... removed a spark of cigar-ash from the sleeve of his coat; he fixed his eyes for a while on the cornice of the room, and at last he inserted one of his white hands into the breast of his waistcoat. "I must apologize to you for the deplorable levity of my brother," he said, "and I must notify you that this is probably not the last time that his want of tact will cause you ...
— The American • Henry James
... places, especially in these three kingdoms, ever since the reformation of religion; and how much their rage, power, and presumption are of late, and at this time, increased and exercised, whereof the deplorable state of the church and kingdom of Ireland, the distressed estate of the church and kingdom of England, and the dangerous estate of the church and kingdom of Scotland, are present and public testimonies; we have now at last, (after other means of supplication, remonstrance, protestation, and sufferings,) ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... speech to the excited Assembly, it has for subject-matter "preserving our lives from the Indians, inspecting the public revenues, the exorbitant taxes, and redressing the grievances and calamities of that deplorable country." It has quite the ring of young men's speeches in British colonies a ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... 1598 to 1616 onwards covering so sorrowful and humiliating trials for so finely touched a spirit as was Dekker's"; but I think as well as hope that there is no sort of evidence to that surely rather improbable as well as deplorable effect. It may be "possible," but it is barely possible, that some "seven years' continuous imprisonment" is the explanation of an ambiguous phrase which is now incapable of any certain solution, and capable of many an interpretation far less deplorable than this. But in this professedly comic pamphlet ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... "It is moreover deplorable that, after having denounced this destruction of peoples to our sovereigns and their councils a thousand times during forty years, nobody has yet dreamed of proving the contrary and, after having done ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... on our thoughts. To be sure, some days before our departure from Fernbridge I had perused accounts in the public prints of the assassination of the Heir Apparent of Austria-Hungary and his lady somewhere in the Balkans, but I for one regarded this deplorable event as a thing liable to occur in any unsettled foreign community where the inhabitants speak in strange tongues and follow strange customs. Never for one moment did I dream that this crime might have an effect on the peace of the ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... this deplorable condition is, as I have noticed (and as Judge Methuen has, too), that the human eye is diminishing in size and fulness, and is losing its lustre. By as much as you take the God-given grace of fancy from man, by so much do you impoverish his eyes. The eye is so beautiful and serves ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... persons and clothing inmost instances, and especially of those suffering with gangrene and scorbutic ulcers, were filthy in the extreme and covered with vermin. It was too often the case that patients were received from the Stockade in a most deplorable condition. I have seen men brought in from the Stockade in a dying condition, begrimed from head to foot with their own excrements, and so black from smoke and filth that they, resembled negros rather than white men. That this description of the Stockade ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... rather more than a perfunctory enthusiasm. Her alien and lonely state should have moved Mr. Clement Shorter to a passionate chivalry. It has not even moved him to revise his proofs with perfect piety. Perfect piety would have saved him from the oversight, innocent but deplorable, of attributing to Emily Bronte four poems which Emily Bronte could not possibly have written, which were in fact written by Anne: "Despondency", "In Memory of a Happy Day in February", "A Prayer", and "Confidence."[A] No doubt Mr. Shorter found ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... in bogs, sometimes in tangled forests. There were streams to be waded or to be crossed upon such rude rafts as they could frame with their hatchets. Their clothes hung in tatters around them, and, most deplorable of ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... it, but she knew that it was true. Her younger niece was already engaged to be married to a man of some mark in the world, and she would be an intellectual companion to him. If Cicely had caught the fancy of such a man she would have had everything to learn. Even in this deplorable danger through which she had just passed, it was her ignorance that had laid her open to it. Perhaps her very ignorance had attracted the man to her, but he certainly would not have been able so to bend her to his will if she had lived more ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... Pere Longuemare, "these judges and jurors are men very deserving of pity; their state of mind is truly deplorable. They mix up everything and confound a ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... Dr. Lambert, who was desired to visit two children at Newburn, in Scotland, who the preceding day had swallowed some of the berries of the deadly nightshade. He found them in a deplorable situation. The eldest (ten years of age) was delirious in bed, and affected with convulsive spasms: the younger was not in a much better condition in his mother's arms. The eyes of both the children were particularly affected. The ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... just come through the most dangerous parts of Bosnia in perfect safety; a feat which a blind man can perform more easily than one who enjoys the most perfect vision; for all compassionate and assist a fellow-creature in this deplorable plight. ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... am pleased with you. You have a good memory, and you have given me the facts faithfully. Of the order in which you present them, I say nothing—truly, it is deplorable! But I make allowances—you are upset. To that I attribute the circumstance that you have omitted one fact of ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... fast, for this was Monday morning, and we have not yet accounted for all of Sunday. The only Shakespeare relic which they visited that day was the site of his house, New Place, close to the hotel. The house, of course, should be standing now, and would be, but for the behaviour of a deplorable clergyman, as you shall hear. Shakespeare, grown rich, and thinking of returning to Stratford from London, bought New Place for his home; he died there in 1616, and his wife and daughter, or his descendants, ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... doll does for the Chinese girl what the two, three or twenty dollar one does for her antipodal sister,—develops the instinct of motherhood, besides standing a greater amount of rough handling. Nevertheless it usually comes to the same deplorable end, departing this world, bereft of its arms and legs, without going through the tedious process of ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... in their short allowance. With respect to fresh water, their situation was still worse: None could be obtained upon Turn-again Island; and had not captain Bampton ingeniously contrived a still, their state would have been truly deplorable. He caused a cover, with a hole in the centre, to be fitted by the carpenter upon a large cooking pot; and over the hole he funded an inverted tea kettle, with the spout cut off. To the stump of ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... might be devised for the commercial evils from which they were all suffering. The port bill had manifestly proved a failure. It was only a few weeks before that Madison had complained, in a letter to a friend, that "the trade of the country is in a most deplorable condition;" that the most "shameful frauds" were committed by the English merchants upon those in Virginia, as well as upon the planters who shipped their own tobacco; that the difference in the price of tobacco at Philadelphia and in Virginia was from eleven shillings ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... overturned Dion, remained master of Syracuse for more than a year, but its condition was miserable and deplorable, convulsed by passions and hostile interests. In the midst of the anarchy which prevailed, Dionysius contrived to recover Ortygia, and establish himself as despot. The Syracusans endured more evil than ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Brantzenburg, President of the Assembly, has imparted to their High Mightinesses, that he was informed by Sir Joseph Yorke, of the deplorable condition of the sick and wounded who are on board the English vessels Serapis and Countess of Scarborough, taken by Paul Jones and brought into the Texel, and who, as humanity requires, not only has not refused ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... says the deplorable old sinner, "we was forty days out from Liverpool, with a cargo of salt and iron, and we got caught on the Banks in a calm. 'Cap'n,' says I,—I 'us sec'n' mate,—''s they any man aboard this ship knows how to pray?' 'No,' says the cap'n; 'blast yer prayers!' 'Well,' says I, 'cap'n, I'm no ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... by Bakounine against political liberty for a time had a very deplorable influence upon the ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... Paulovna could stir the heart of a man who has constant twinges in his leg. I wonder if one of our own Yankee girls of the best type, haughty and spirituelle, would be of any comfort to you in your present deplorable condition. If I thought so, I would hasten down to the Surf House and catch one for you; or, better still, I would find you one ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Altisidora, even the two students met on the road to the cave of Montesinos, all live and move and have their being; and it is characteristic of the broad humanity of Cervantes that there is not a hateful one among them all. Even poor Maritornes, with her deplorable morals, has a kind heart of her own and "some faint and distant resemblance to a Christian about her;" and as for Sancho, though on dissection we fail to find a lovable trait in him, unless it be a sort of dog-like affection for his master, who is ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... bough. In all cases the propitiation of the injured and angry, sprite would naturally comprise elaborate excuses and apologies, accompanied by loud lamentations at his decease whenever, through some deplorable accident or necessity, he happened to be murdered as well as robbed. Only we must bear in mind that the savage hunter and herdsman of those early days had probably not yet attained to the abstract idea ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Boekholt Libraire pres de la Bourse, 1685"? I suppose this is the oldest French version of the famed allegory. Do you know an older? Bunyan was still living and, indeed, had just published the second part of the book, about Christian's wife and children, and the deplorable young woman whose ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... to his, and the 20l from Whately. I shall order another to be sent at Christmas for the rent and other necessaries. I have not time at present to enter upon the subject of English authors, &c. but shall write to you upon that head when I get a little leisure. Nothing can be conceived in a more deplorable state than the stage of Dublin. I found two miserable companies opposing and starving each other. I chose the least bad of them; and, wretched as they are, it has had no effect on my nights, numbers having been turned away every ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... of folly and excess, seeking, in their despair, to seize some brief moments of joy before the hand of destiny should fall upon them. For three years did this calamity desolate Athens, and the loss of life was deplorable, both in the army and among private citizens. Pericles lost both his children and his sister; four thousand four hundred hoplites died, and a greater ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... floating over the heads of the congregation—indefinite in outline, because of the indistinct nature of the thoughts and feelings which cause it; flecked too often with brown and grey, because ignorant devotion absorbs with deplorable facility the dismal tincture of selfishness or fear; but none the less adumbrating a mighty potentiality of the future, manifesting to our eyes the first faint flutter of one at least of the twin wings of devotion and wisdom, by the use ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... anything further is said I wish to state that I have discovered what caused the deplorable accident to the schooner Norna, and I will make good the loss—though not bound to do so—to her skipper, who I ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... inconsecutive is just. Your words are very gentle. I should describe it much more harshly. My knowledge of the defects of these things I write is all but sufficient to hinder me from writing at all. I am only a sort of lieutenant here in the deplorable absence of captains, and write the laws ill as thinking it a better homage than universal silence. You Londoners know little of the dignities and duties of country lyceums. But of what you say now and heretofore respecting the remoteness ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... it, or have friends so troubled, not only the proper manner of treatment, but also the danger of delay, that this little treatise has been compiled. Many a man well built and apparently healthy, yet totally bereft of manhood—in a word Impotent—can trace his deplorable condition to a ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... alienated from the same Interests, and a Promoter of every thing which he himself disapproved. An Estate in Possession of such a Successor to a good Man, is worse than laid waste; and the Family of which he is the Head, is in a more deplorable Condition than ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to God, and to Mrs. Eddy, the interpreter of Jesus' beautiful teachings, I wish to tell of some of the benefits which I have received from Christian Science. It is a little over a year since Science found me in a deplorable condition, physically as well as mentally. I had ailments of many years' standing, - chronic stomach trouble, severe eye trouble, made almost unbearable from the constant fear of losing my sight (a fate which had befallen my mother), also a painful rupture of twenty-five years' standing. These ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... find in my writings the deplorable influence of an extreme Calvinism. The Puritans of the seventeenth century are my fellow-religionists. I am a sectarian and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... says of the wisdom of God: "Wisdom hath overcome the proud with her power." [Prov. 11:3] It is most deplorable that we should attempt with our reason to defend God's Word, whereas the Word of God is rather our defence against all our enemies, as St. Paul teaches us. [Eph. 6:17] Would he not be a great fool who in the thick of battle sought to protect his ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... so sensible a suggestion from you, Reginald," she said. "It is a very good plan. It shows that you really have a definite substratum of intelligence; and it is all the more deplorable that you should idle your way through the world as you do, when you might be ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... word, or anything like scolding inflicted on an Indian child, or ever witnessed a single case of spanking, so common in civilized communities. They consider the want of a son to bear their name and keep it alive the saddest and most deplorable ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... studied insufficiently," Aunt Caroline pursued. "She is nineteen, and her position at Vassar is deplorable." ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... all revenues and the general administration should be regulated. After the signing of this treaty piracy ceased in the Perak waters, and Larut was repeopled and became settled and prosperous. [*Abdullah informs "our friend" Sir W. Jervois, that his position and that of Perak are "in a most deplorable state," that there are two Sultans between whom no arrangement can be made, that the revenues are badly raised, and the laws are not executed with justice. "For these reasons," he says, "we see that Perak is in very great distress, and, in our opinion, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... brig, even with the consequent loss of the wine and turtle, would not, in fact, have rendered our situation more deplorable than before, except for the disappearance of the bedclothes by which we had been hitherto enabled to catch rainwater, and of the jug in which we had kept it when caught; for we found the whole bottom, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... life, it has been said, are not much known. The chief of them, besides the breaking out of his lifelong war with Blackwood and the Quarterly, was, perhaps, his unlucky participation in the duel which proved fatal to Scott, the editor of the London. It is impossible to imagine a more deplorable muddle than this affair. Scott, after refusing the challenge of Lockhart,[12] with whom he had, according to the customs of those days, a sufficient ground of quarrel, accepted that of Christie, Lockhart's second, with whom ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... write a word to-night in the salon, because I wished to listen to the conversation of two intelligent travellers, who, arriving after us, were obliged to occupy the same apartment. Our accommodations here are indeed deplorable altogether. After studying the geography of my bed, and finding no spot thereon, to which Sancho's couch of pack-saddles and pummels would not be a bed of down in comparison, I ordered a fresh faggot on my hearth: they brought me some ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... realm. This was a bribe, but it brought its own punishment. The eviction of the working farmers, the demolition of their dwellings, the depopulation of the country, were evils of most serious magnitude; and the supplement of the measures which produced such deplorable results was found in the permanent establishment of a taxation for the SUPPORT of the POOR. Yet the nation reeled under the depletion produced by previous mistaken legislation, and all classes have been injured by ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... his sister's sole charge, left to her, when much younger, by their dying mother. And the girl lavished on him all the wealth of a good woman's sympathy and love. She saw nothing of his faults. She saw only his deplorable physical condition, and his perfect angel-face. His skin and complexion were so transparent that one could almost have counted the veins beneath the surface; the sun had no power to burn that face to the russet which was the general complexion among prairie folk. His mouth ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... deplorable loss she will be to our limited circle!' said Mrs. Seccomb. I couldn't imagine what they meant. But don't you think, when I got home there was this letter from Sylvia, and she says, 'Your adored Mrs. Florence is going to be married. ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... which he found learning was most deplorable, presenting a marked contrast to conditions in England. Learning had been almost obliterated during the two centuries of wild disorder from 600 on. From 600 to 850 has often been called the darkest period ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... full property from the Crown, subject to certain annual charges of no very exorbitant amount; and that these advantages, improved by assiduous industry, supply abundantly their simple wants, whether in respect of food or clothing. In the streets of cities in China some deplorable objects are to be met with, as must always be the case where mendicity is a legalised institution; but I am inclined to think that the rigour with which the duties of relationship are enforced, operates as a powerful check on ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... feathers, the bluebird's sense of justice is not always so adorable. But sparrows unnerve them into cowardice. The comparatively infrequent nesting of the bluebirds about our homes at the present time is one of the most deplorable results of unrestricted sparrow immigration. Formerly they were the commonest of ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... to a matrimonial alliance with one, if not all, of you. Yes, I am aware of his ambition," said the baronet with a smile; "and whilst we are here to-day, at his request, to remove the obstacle which your most deplorable insanity interposes, I hope that the ultimate result will be your speedy deliverance, with our own, from his power. We are, like yourselves, prisoners, but we are by no means hopeless of escape, and I pledge you my word that we will not leave ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... elder sons had made deplorable marriages. It was, observed Clovis, a family habit. The youngest boy, Wratislav, who was the black sheep of a rather greyish family, had as yet made no marriage ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... millions of the greek and armenian churches, and perhaps seven millions of jews. It must undoubtedly strike every considerate mind, what a vast proportion of the sons of Adam there are, who yet remain in the most deplorable state of heathen darkness, without any means of knowing the true God, except what are afforded them by the works of nature; and utterly destitute of the knowledge of the gospel of Christ, or of any means of obtaining it. In many of these countries they have ...
— An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens • William Carey
... sad picture of oppression, injustice, crime, and wretchedness which I have now to present. Glory is succeeded by shame, strength by weakness, and virtue by vice. The condition of the mass is deplorable, and even the great and fortunate shine in a false and fictitious light. We see laws, theoretically good, practically perverted, and selfishness and egotism the mainsprings of life; we see energies misdirected, and art corrupted. All noble aspirations have fled, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... ample scope for moralizing on the vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave; and it was agreed that in proportion to her former greatness the fall of Rome was the more awful and deplorable: ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... priest's address was to root the conviction of Arthur's danger with tenfold tenacity in her mind. After what she had just heard, even the slightest delay in securing his safety might be productive of deplorable results. She astonished a barefooted boy, on the outskirts of the crowd, by a gift of sixpence, and asked her way to the farm. The little Irishman ran on before her, eager to show the generous lady how useful he could be. In less than half ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... Owing to the deplorable fact that at our German theatres scarcely anything but operas translated from a foreign language is given, our dramatic singers have been most thoroughly demoralized. The translations of French and Italian operas are generally made by blunderers, or at least ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... night the men came back from fighting the fire which they had now practically put out. Even in the moonlight they looked deplorable objects, grimed, covered with dust and ashes, their skins and clothes scorched ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... from Derville by the distrust natural to lawyers, and the deplorable experience which they derive early in life from the appalling and obscure tragedies at which ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... family, I had a few days of rest at the house of an old friend, when Generals Price, Buckner, and Brent came from Shreveport, the headquarters of the "Trans-Mississippi Department," under flag of truce, and sent for me. They reported a deplorable condition of affairs in that region. Many of the troops had taken up the idea that it was designed to inveigle them into Mexico, and were greatly incensed. Some generals of the highest rank had found it convenient to fold their tents and quietly leave for the Rio Grande; others, ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... be conjectured, from what I have stated in respect to myself, that mine was not the disposition to seek revenge, or find cause for exultation in these deplorable events. I had no hostility against my unhappy uncle; I should have scorned myself if I had. If such a feeling ever filled my bosom, it would have been most effectually disarmed by the sight of the wretched old man, a grinning, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... not continually take into account the unifying factor of the seas. Indeed, no history is entitled to the name of universal unless it includes a record of human movements and activities on the ocean, side by side with those on the land. Our school text-books in geography present a deplorable hiatus, because they fail to make a definite study of the oceans over which man explores and colonizes and trades, as well as the land on which he plants and ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... meadow; also repairs are necessary on the banks of the two ponds; on the church, which is the seignior's duty, the roof being in a sad state, the rain penetrating through the arch;" and the roads require mending, these being in a deplorable condition during the winter. "The restoration and repairs of these roads seem never to have been thought of." The soil of the Blet estate is excellent, but it requires draining and ditching to carry off the water, otherwise the low lands will continue to produce nothing but weeds. Signs of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... object of her toils and prayers. As soon as April 2, she writes, "Our school continues to prosper, and I love the children exceedingly. Do pray that God will bless this incipient step to enlighten the women of this country. You cannot conceive of their deplorable ignorance. I feel it more and more every day. Their energies are expended in outward adorning of plaiting the hair and gold and pearls and costly array, literally so. I close with one request, that you will pray for a revival of religion in Beirut." Again she writes, June 30, 1834, "I feel ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... that my situation was very deplorable, for I had no means of procuring food nor prospect of finding water. About ten o'clock, perceiving a herd of goats feeding close to the road, I took a circuitous route to avoid being seen, and continued travelling through ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... folly of harboring mere political resentments or senseless party prejudices against each other, but to the absolute necessity that existed for looking closely into the state of their property, and the deplorable condition to which, if they did not take judicious and decisive steps, it must eventually be reduced. They now began to discover a fact which they ought, long since, to have known—viz.:—that the condition of the people ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... going out at my door on the morning after that deplorable day of headache, sickness, and repentance, with an odd confusion in my mind relative to the date of my dinner-party, as if a body of Titans had taken an enormous lever and pushed the day before yesterday ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... only Country; wherein (if the Historian says right) Morality was more exemplary than in any other that we know of for near 400 Years that its Pagan Natives possess'd it; whose exterminators (calling themselves Christians) made it a most deplorable Scene of Injustice, Cruelty and Oppression, bringing thither Vices unknown to those former Inhabitants. But what only can follow from this example is, That a People, having a continu'd Succession of Princes, who study to advance the good of the Community, making that the sole ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... for the last two months been increased by the return of his son Antonin to Janville under very deplorable circumstances. This young fellow, who had set off one morning to conquer Paris, sent there by his parents, who had a blind confidence in his fine handwriting, had remained with Maitre Rousselet the attorney for four years as a petty clerk, dull-witted ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... instance many deplorable abuses that are obtained in almost all the orchestras of Europe—abuses which reduce composers to despair, and which it is the duty of conductors to abolish ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... attention, as a dernier resort, was directed to me. I was a perfect stranger to every one of them, but they had heard of my exertions in the cause of the people, and they prevailed upon their attorney, Mr. Wragg, of Belper, to write to me, and inform me of their deplorable and forlorn situation, and to request that I would endeavour to raise a public subscription, to enable them to fee counsel, and to pay for bringing their witnesses to the trial, which Mr. Wragg assured me they were totally incompetent to do, they being all poor men, without any money ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... wrongs. Thomas Mathews, who was present, says that "he pressed hard, nigh an hour's harangue on preserving our lives from the Indians, inspecting the revenues, the exorbitant taxes, and redressing the grievances and calamities of that deplorable country." It was only when he had finished that someone spoke up to tell him that "they had already redressed their grievances." To contend that Bacon was not interested in laws which he himself had so passionately urged and which had obviously been passed to conciliate him ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... is another instance of God's mercy: although they passed very near the river of Lobo, Dita, and other little villages belonging to our newly converted Christians, they neither visited nor attacked them; this seems miraculous, considering that they had, as your Reverence well knows, committed so deplorable ravages ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... ought so to act with reference to outward objects as to secure, so far as we can, our own safety and happiness, and the welfare of our fellow-men. But there can be no greater blunder than to confound the laws of natural objects with the law of human conduct; and into this deplorable blunder Mr. Combe has allowed himself to fall. Throughout the whole of his statements respecting the "natural laws," there are two things included under one name, which are perfectly distinct and separate from each other. In the first place, there are the laws which belong ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... it was suggested!" Rachel cried involuntarily. Rendel gave a little laugh. It was deplorable, truly, that such an opportunity should have come to a man who was not ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... reinforcements, known as the battle of Bridgewater, as more important than its precursor.... The victory of Chippewa was the resurrection or birth of American arms, after their prostration by so long disuse, and when at length taken up again, by such continual and deplorable failures, that the martial and moral influence of the first decided victory opened and characterized an epoch in the annals and intercourse of the two kindred and rival nations, whose language is to be spoken, as their institutions are rapidly spreading, throughout ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... inexplicable, but its reason is readily understood by those who know the sway of falsehood over a society perverted in its opinions as in its tastes; to those who know the deplorable facility with which error is spread and the tenacity with which it clings to our poor mind. Error, moreover, owes to our abasement which it flatters and crushes, the privilege of freedom from contradiction, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... rich has set a fatal example to the poor, and has brought about intervals of too long duration when men have faltered in their allegiance to God. Such ascendency as we have over our flocks to-day depends entirely on our personal influence with them; is it not deplorable that the existence of religious belief in a commune should be dependent on the esteem in which a single man is held? When the preservative force of Christianity permeating all classes of society shall have put life into the new order of things, there will be an end of sterile disputes ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... having that conversation with him, I saw the poor man's daughter-who was his only daughter, so far as I am aware, and who lived with him-going to church, dressed like a fine lady. That struck me as being a very deplorable state of matters. Here were a family who were on the verge of starvation, and unable to get medical comforts for their dying parent, and yet the daughter, who was a knitter, was I might ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... found our fellow-citizens emulously striving after these gratuitous offices and even proud of the disinterestedness which the law prescribed." (Report of the Directory, end of 1795.) After this date public spirit is extinguished, stifled by the Reign of Terror.—Ibid., 368, 369: "Deplorable indifference for public offices.... Out of seven town officials appointed in the commune of Laval, only one accepted, and that one the least capable. It is the same in the other communes."—Ibid., 380 (Report of the year VII): ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... truly deplorable that Liane should have proved so conventional-minded in this particular respect. It rendered one's pet project much too difficult of execution. Earnestly as one desired to have a look at the inside of that house without the knowledge of its inmates, its aspect was forbidding ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... has had the honour this day to receive your Majesty's telegram, en clair, relating to the deplorable intelligence received this day from Lord Wolseley, and stating that it is too fearful to consider that the fall of Khartoum might have been prevented and many precious lives saved by earlier action. Mr. Gladstone does not presume to estimate the means ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... cosmic origin may fortunately, at some distant epoch, check the blind process of destruction of natural things and the insane pullulation of humanity. But there are, it seems probable, many centuries of what would seem to the men of to-day deplorable ugliness and cramping pressure in store for posterity unless an unforeseen awakening of the human race to the inevitable results of its present recklessness should occur. Whatever may be the ultimate fate of the earth under man's operations, ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... that he lost his taste for speculative thinking, new annoyances in his profession put the finishing touch on his discouragement. If the Roman students were less noisy than those of Carthage, they had a deplorable habit of walking off and leaving their masters unpaid. Augustin was ere long victimized in this way: he lost his time and his words. As at Carthage, so at Rome, he had to face the fact that he could not live by his profession. What ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... author of the aspersion, he would vindicate his honour with his sword. In fine, he explained the whole business in such a manner, as, though I could not entirely approve, yet evinced it to be by no means subversive of the general amiableness of his character. How deplorable is the situation in which we are placed, when even the generous and candid temper of my St. Julian, can be induced to think of a young nobleman in a light he does not deserve, and to impute to him basenesses from which his heart ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... what he heard, so shocked that instead of going to visit the Representative on the morrow, he spent the morning inditing a letter to Robespierre, in which he set forth in detail the abuses of which Carrier was guilty, and the deplorable state of misery in which he found the ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... years of age, was reported never to leave her bed this winter, because they had no coal. She lay there, with her three birds flying about dirtying the room, for neither she nor her son would ever let a cage-door be shut—deplorable state of things! The one servant was supposed never to be paid. The tradesmen would no longer leave goods because they could not get their money. Most of the furniture had been sold; and the dust made you sneeze 'fit ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... manners, and satire is satire; introduce 'love'—an appeal, one supposes, to sympathy with strictly legitimate and common affection and a glorification of the happy home—and the rules of your art compel you to satirise affection and to make the happy home ridiculous: a truly deplorable work, which the incriminated dramatists were discreet enough for the most part to avoid. The remark brings us to the first of the half-truths, which cause the complexity of the subject. The dramatists whose withers the well-intentioned ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... authority to either side, there was a practical dead-lock in much of the business of the Court. Suitors were put to serious delay, inconvenience, and consequent expense. Counsel were profoundly disgusted, and of course took sides for and against. Judge Willis was so sensible of the deplorable consequences of such a state of things that, as soon as Term was over, he entered into a minute and searching investigation of the constitution and power of the Court of King's Bench as established in Upper Canada.[106] He was desirous of finding some way out of the ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... leaking through the deck and half filling the vessel, which was also letting in the water at every seam. They had thus not a moment for rest, for they soon found it necessary to keep the pumps going all the time. At length the gale ceased; but it left them in a deplorable condition, with the leaks much increased and their sails in tatters. All the canvas had been expended, and it seemed impossible to repair them, till they bethought them of the monkey-skins in the hold; and as soon as the wind fell they were lowered down, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... German machine guns. The defences unbroken by artillery were impenetrable by human bodies, and the defenders were also able to enfilade the troops which had got through farther south and were now attacking the second German line. The staff-work, too, was deplorable, and reserves were late or went astray, though it is doubtful whether anything could have retrieved the initial error which left the German defences intact, impeded the whole advance, and enabled the enemy to recover and bring up reserves before the attack was renewed on ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... plantations, cultivated by great numbers of negroes of every hue of the skin and brogue of the tongue, some of them direct from Liberia, some from New Guinea, and others from the swamps of Florida. It was amusing to see the soldiers act the place of master and overseer over these deplorable creatures. One soldier would crowd together thirty or forty of them, and march around them at right-shoulder-shift arms, keeping them at work pounding rice with mortar and pestle. Great ricks of this precious produce, in every way resembling oats, were stacked on each plantation, and from ten to ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... added Lord Marshmoreton hastily. "Very deplorable." He endeavoured to regain his sister's esteem by a show of righteous indignation. "What do you mean by it, damn it? You're my only son. I have watched you grow from child to boy, from boy to man, with tender solicitude. I have ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the two powerful creatures was guiding, Urging them now, now holding them back; with skill did she drive them. Soon as the maiden perceived me, she calmly drew near to the horses, And in these words she addressed me: 'Not thus deplorable always Has our condition been, as to-day on this journey thou seest. I am not yet grown used to asking gifts of a stranger, Which he will often unwillingly give, to be rid of the beggar. But necessity drives me to speak; for here, ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... on at an hotel as billiard-marker and decoy, and in six months he managed that pub. Smith, who'd been away on his own account, turned up in the town one day clean broke, and in a deplorable state. He heard of Steelman's luck, and thought he was "all right," so ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... address me with 'imperial highness'?" cried the archduke, almost indignantly. "Do you not see, then, that this is a miserable title by which Fate seems to mock me, and which it thunders constantly, and, as it were, sneeringly into my ears, in order to remind me again and again of my deplorable powerlessness? There is nothing 'imperial' about me but the yoke under which I am groaning; and my 'highness' is to be compared only with the crumbs of Lazarus which fell from the rich man's table. And yet there are persons, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... NORTHCLIFFE Press. The fact is that till quite recently I belonged to the true blue Tory school—was indeed probably the last survivor of the Old Guard—and I found myself out of touch with the progressive tendencies of modern Toryism, its deplorable way of moving with the times, its hopeless habit of discarding what it would call the old shibboleths when it wrongly imagined them to be outworn. My decision to leave a party that has long ceased to deserve its honoured name was immediately due to a Liberal Paper which editorially ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... then. Madge cooked the simple meals, and Little Stumps clung to her dress with his little pinched brown hand wherever she went, while Jim whooped it over the hills and chased jack-rabbits as if he were a greyhound. He would climb trees, too, like a squirrel. And, oh!—it was deplorable—but how ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... been turned out of the hospital, where she had hoped to end her days in peace, because she could not pay her expenses in advance. Balzac writes to Madame Hanska: "The papers will have told you about the Duchesse d'Abrantes' deplorable death. She ended as the Empire ended. Some day I will explain this woman to you; it will be a nice ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... unpleasant theme in a subsequent book of his noble history (iv. (liv. liii.) 644), Jacques Auguste de Thou remarks, with an integrity which cannot swerve even out of consideration for filial respect: "Ce qu'il y avoit de deplorable, etoit de voir des personnes respectables par leur piete, leur science, et leur integrite, revetues des premieres charges du Royaume, ennemies d'ailleurs de tout deguisement et de tout artifice, tels que Morvilliers, de Thou, Pibrac, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... other. 'Very great people are concerned in this deplorable business,' said the President. 'God grant for your sake, Monsieur Camusot, though you did no less than your duty, that Madame de Serizy may not go mad from the shock she has had. She was carried away almost dead. I have just ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... some green grass round about where we camped, or, more properly speaking, where we lay, for we did not erect our little tent,—but the poor starving animals did not eat a bite of it, but stood over us as if in sympathy with us in our deplorable condition. We rose before the sun, being somewhat rested and refreshed, for the night had been cool, and took up our line of march, I, as usual, in the lead, then came the old mule guided by its precious owner, and lastly, the faithful little horse with the pack on his still ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... constant occurrence, not only in the capital and its neighbourhood, but throughout the kingdom, and that unless the excited female populace be speedily checked and restrained in their lawless proceedings, most deplorable results must ensue therefrom; among which may be anticipated a most alarming increase in the population of the country, with which no efforts of the agricultural or manufacturing ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Reuben's curse upon him. He wrote to me quite frankly from his East African camps about the things that appealed to him, and the other things. His experience seemed to bear out my own, for the most part. He considered that some deplorable things had been done on both sides, and also some very fine things. But as to the efficacy of the machine guns he ministered to, in promoting the Kingdom of God, he was under no illusions. He was possibly disposed to exaggerate things, e.g., ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps |
