"Distraught" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... girl, with rather your own shade of hair. Peters is a man of volcanic passions, and, when, after she had given him to understand that his love was returned, she informed him one day that she was engaged to a fellow at Ealing West, he went right off his onion—I mean, he became completely distraught. I must say that he concealed it very effectively at first. We had no inkling of his condition till he came in with the pistol. And, after that ... well, as I say, we had to dismiss him. A great pity, for he was a good clerk. Still, it wouldn't do. It ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... that I knew all the depth of bliss." But never did Dante come to know her well, though she was ever in his thoughts, and though he must have watched for her presence in the street. Once she went upon a journey, and he was sore distraught until she came back into his existence; once he was taken to a company of young people, where he was so affected by sudden and unexpected sight of her that he grew pale and trembled, and showed such signs of mortal illness that his friend grew much alarmed ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... looks were distraught; he was trying to interpret a mysterious picture which everywhere he saw before his eyes—"Up there, from the sky, you don't see much, you know. Among the squares of the fields and the little heaps of the villages ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... are on our knees to you, so to speak. We do not know everything and, desperately, we need the aid of a man of your caliber. In behalf of the distraught people of Venus, I am asking you bluntly to make a great sacrifice. Will you face the dangers of a trip to Venus and use your knowledge to aid us in exterminating these creatures of hell?" There was positive pleading ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... perhaps woman, by reason of those very sexual conditions which in the past have crushed and trammelled her, who is bound to lead the way, and man to follow. So that it may be at last, that sexual love—that tired angel who through the ages has presided over the march of humanity, with distraught eyes, and feather-shafts broken, and wings drabbled in the mires of lust and greed, and golden locks caked over with the dust of injustice and oppression—till those looking at him have sometimes cried in terror, "He is ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... pocket which she had not been able to look at carefully enough to be sure if she knew the writing, crackled and rustled and set her heart beating excitedly, and her mind to wondering what it might be. She answered Dottie Wetherill's chatter with distraught monosyllables and absent smiles, hoping that Dottie would feel it necessary to go home soon ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... think, be very hard to make any stranger acquainted with the state of our city at this time, for it was more split and fissured with feuds and dissensions than a dried melon rind. It had pleased Heaven in its wisdom to decide that it was not enough for us to be distraught with the great flagrant brawls between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, between those that stood for Roman Emperor and those that stood for Roman Pope. No, we must needs be divided again into yet further factions and call ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... assuming the low, quick, nervous utterance that is often associated with intense repressed feeling; and his words were accompanied by his best possible counterfeit of the burning, piercing, distraught gaze of passion. Though he acted a part, it was not with the cold-blooded art of a mimic who simulates by rule; it was with the animation due to imagining himself actually swayed by the feeling he would feign. While he knew his emotion to be fictitious, he felt it as if it were ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... agonised and distraught eye that he had not come merely to exchange civilities. "What can I do for you?" ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... shoulders like a burden. The strength had oozed out of his legs. His whole body was broken with fatigue, as if at the end of a long journey. He sat down upon a hillock and began to trace lines upon the earth, with a distraught air. ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... love-distracted grandee, and die of laughing at the old Alcalde. The play is twice a success. The author, who writes it, it is said, in collaboration with one of the great poets of the day, was called before the curtain, and appeared with a love-distraught damsel on each arm, and fairly brought down the excited house. The two dancers seemed to have more wit in their legs than the author himself; but when once the fair rivals left the stage, the dialogue seemed witty at once, a triumphant proof of the excellence of the piece. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... vision came; mine ear confess'd Its solemn sounds. "Thou man distraught! Say, owns the wind thy hand's arrest, Or fills the world thy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the pauses of the nearer blast, The farther gusts howl from the distant waste. Now rushing furious by with loosen'd sweep, Now rolling grandly on, solemn and deep, Its bursting strength the full embodied sound In wide and shallow brawlings scatters round; Then wild in eddies shrill, with rage distraught, And force exhausted, whistles into naught. With growing might, arising in its room, From far, like waves of ocean onward come Succeeding gusts, and spend their wasteful ire, Then slow, in grumbled mutterings retire: And solemn stillness ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... Blind Hal's child, Sir Robert!" exclaimed a serving-brother in black, coming eagerly forward; "the villeins on the green told me the poor knave was distraught at having lost his ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reached this point in his meditations a voice in his ear made him start; and turning, he beheld a pale and distraught-looking young woman who might in happier circumstances have laid claim to a certain uninspired prettiness. At this moment, however, her eyes red-rimmed with lack of sleep, her ashy-coloured hair limp ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... answered: "Go, dear swan, and tell This same to Nala;" and the egg-born said, "I go"—and flew; and told the Prince of all. But Damayanti, having heard the bird, Lived fancy-free no more; by Nala's side Her soul dwelt, while she sat at home distraught, Mournful and wan, sighing the hours away, With eyes upcast, and passion-laden looks; So that, eftsoons, her limbs failed, and her mind— With love o'erweighted—found no rest in sleep, No grace in company, no joy at feasts. Nor night ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... understood, then, that these experiences are given as those of a person whose will, whose very soul and proprium had been temporarily subjugated by some other will or wills; and whose natural powers of discrimination were as much distraught as are those of the subjects of the itinerant biologist; who are made to believe, most firmly, that cayenne pepper is sugar, that water is fire, that a cane is a snake. As for the readers of this periodical who still insist that even animal and spiritual ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... at it and gazing over the rim of the glass at Mr Rattenbury—nervous and distraught, as a good husband should be—on each occasion wondered how much ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... blind body of man, The tongue of this dumb people; shalt thou not See, shalt thou speak not for them? Time is wan And hope is weak with waiting, and swift thought Hath lost the wings at heel wherewith he ran, And on the red pit's edge sits down distraught To talk with death of days republican And dreams and fights long since dreamt out and fought; Of the last hope that drew To that red edge anew The firewhite faith of Poland without spot; Of the blind Russian might, And fire that is not light; Of the green Rhineland ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... is the senseless use of certain words and phrases, which a good writer uses only when he must, Mr. Beckett always when he can. We give without comment a mere list of these:—maugre, 'sdeath, eke, erst, deft, romaunt, pleasaunce, certes, whilom, distraught, quotha, good lack, well-a-day, vermeil, perchance, hight, wight, lea, wist, list, sheen, anon, gliff, astrolt, what boots it? malfortunes, ween, God wot, I trow, emprise, duress, donjon, puissant, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... end of a great career and of a great romance of love. Leonie Leon was half distraught at the death of the lover who was so soon to be her husband. She wandered for hours in the forest until she reached a convent, where she was received. Afterward she came to Paris and hid herself away in a garret of the slums. All the light of her life had gone out. She wished that ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... unexpected company she retained hold of the door, and to the amazed minister she seemed for a moment to have stepped into the mud house from his garden. Her eyes danced, however, as they recognised him, and then he hardened. "This is no place for you," he was saying fiercely, when Nanny, too distraught to think, fell crying at the ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... Ratcliffe—My Good Friend,—This comes from one nearly distraught with grief of mind and sickness of body. My boy, my boy! They have stolen him from me. Can you find him for me? He is in the hands of Jesuits—it may be at Douay—I dare say no more. I cannot say more. Good Ned, Heaven bless him, will find you out, and give you this. Pray to God for me. ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... know why you never visit them any more," said Jordan, weak and distraught as he now always was. "I told him you were busy at present with great plans of your own. Well, what does the Frenchman think ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... door, and in his last position it would have required the most delicate of scientific instruments to measure the distance between his ear and the keyhole. He heard nothing save the wail of a Bones distraught, and the firm "No's" of ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... while thus amid the desert dark We passed on with steps and pace unmeet, A rumbling roar, confused with howl and bark Of dogs, shook all the ground beneath our feet, And struck the din within our ears so deep, As half distraught unto the ground I fell; Besought return, and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... all around her fades, Her listless ear no sound pervades. Her senses, wearied and distraught, Perceive not how the stream of thought, Rising from her distressful song, In hurrying tide has swept along, With startling and resistless swell, The panic-stricken Isabel! Who—falling at her father's feet, Like the most lowly suppliant, kneels; And, with imploring ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... Queen should find I live She would abuse me as before. Give me One maid-companion here to be with me," She asked. "My child, trust not," he said, "in slaves, Nor servants, for they only follow pay." Then Bidasari silence kept, and they, The father all distraught and mother fond, Wept bitterly at thought of leaving her. Fair Bidasari bade them eat, before They started. But because of heavy hearts They but a morsel tasted. At the dawn Young Bidasari swooned again. They made All ready to return to town. With tears The father said: "O apple of my eye, Pearl ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... paused to answer. Foes distraught Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness, Philosophies that sages long had taught, And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought, And "Hell!" and ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... occurred in a city, in a crowded street. Hundreds would have been stricken blind, then hundreds would have been suffocated. Vehicles would have run amok, and the result would have been an indescribable chaos of the maimed, mangled and distraught. A flash like this green ray (which blinded Miss McLeod and her dog, deluded the General, and nearly suffocated us) at the mouth of a harbour, say, the entrance to a great port—Liverpool, London, or Glasgow—would ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... slipped in by the lower door. He has been sitting in the library ever since. If you decide not to see him, I can go down and tell him so; he can go out as he came in, and none of your household will know he has been here. Dear Myra, don't look so distraught. Do sit down again, and let us finish our talk.... That is right. You must not be hurried. A decision which affects one's whole life, cannot be made in a minute, nor even in an hour. Lord Airth does not wish to force an interview, nor ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... Distraught, faltering, reeling, Charles wandered about the room. He knocked against the furniture, tore his hair, and the chemist had never believed that there could ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... mind—incoherent in your speech—abrupt in your manner. You have forsaken your old friends completely, and apparently lost all interest in their doings, all desire for their company. In short, you have behaved like a man beside himself, distraught. We could not make it out, and we had many anxious consultations about the matter. I wondered whether you had had a sunstroke. Carmichael suggested that the stimulating air of Venus had affected your brain. Miss Carmichael alone ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... she herself was occupied out of doors, and the poor mite was so badly burned that there seemed but little hope of its ever reviving from its state of almost complete coma. We were all busying ourselves eagerly about the child and its distraught mother, when raising my eyes from the palpitating form of the child, I caught sight of "Prince William," as the kaiser was then called, standing near the door, apparently quite undisturbed and unmoved by this tragedy ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... fearful stroke was mightier in show, Than in effect, by which the prince was prest; So that poor Isabel, distraught with woe, Felt her heart severed in her frozen breast. The Scottish prince, all over in a glow, With anger and resentment was possest, And putting all his strength in either hand, Smote full the Tartar's helmet with ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... quay, with the most chic of Virginian cigarettes smouldering between his aristocratic lips and the very latest and most elegant of Bond Street Khaki Neckwear distinguishing him from the mixed crowd about him. Every one else is distraught; even matured Generals, used to the simple and irresponsible task of commanding troops in action, are a little unnerved by the difficulties and intricacies of embarking oneself militarily. He on whom all the responsibility rests remains aloof. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... Montmartre. And when we penetrate further into the matter—or, to be more exact, as we ascend into the higher regions of La Butte—we find the elect, who form so stout a phalanx against the Philistinism of the Louvre, themselves subdivided into numerous sections, and distraught with internecine feuds concerning the principle of the art which they pursue with all the vehemence that Veronese green and cadmium yellow are capable of. From ten at night till two in the morning the brasseries of the Butte are in session. Ah! the interminable bocks and the reek of the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... distraught, but she knew not how to naysay him, though at heart she would liefer have gone back to the castle by the shortest way. So folk brought her her palfrey, and they rode their ways, the castellan ever by her side. And by fair ways indeed they went, and ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... abstraction, they were speedily at the rectory, where a warm welcome from Mr. Brunton, Sibyl's guardian, and his family forced him to recover himself, and showed him that the story of his devotion to John Dornton had suffered nothing from Miss Eversleigh's recital. Distraught and anxious as he was, he could not resist the young girl's offer after luncheon to show him the church with the vault of the Dorntons and the tablet erected to John Dornton, and, later, the Hall, only two miles distant. But ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... still so near the lake that we could hear the water lapping the shore. A cadaverous, sandy-haired waiter brought things to eat, and we made brave efforts to appear hungry and hearty, but my high spirits were ebbing fast, and Von Gerhard was frankly distraught. One of the women singers appeared suddenly in the doorway of the pavilion, then stole down the steps, and disappeared in the shadow of the trees beyond our table. The voices of the singers ceased abruptly. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... to answer, but at that word it seemed that for the first time Beorn learnt into whose hands he had fallen, and he fell on his knees between his two guards, crying for mercy. I think that he was distraught with terror, for his words were thick and broken, and he had forgotten that none but I knew of ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... were mainly at best, alas, a slender stream. The editors and the publishers were the last people to take this remarkable thinker at the valuation that has now pretty well come to be established. The former were half-distraught between the desire to "cut" him and the difficulty of finding a crevice for their shears; and when a volume on this or that portentous subject was proposed to the latter they suggested alternative titles ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... blear-eyed: he had been young with his dead mistress, and had seemed to grow old when she died. He had fretted incessantly during that year of her husband's widowhood, whimpering and moaning about the house like a distraught creature, and following the man in a heavy melancholy when he made his pilgrimages to the grave. He continued those pilgrimages after the man had forgotten, but the heavy iron gate of the Abbey clanged in his face, and ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... you as heavy as your chains of gold, to drag you down to him in whose name you have thought to cast out devils. Do not think that these things are harmless vanities. Nothing can fill the human heart and be harmless. If your thoughts be not of God, they will keep your minds distraught from His grace as effectually as the blackest broodings of crime. 'Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number, saith the Lord God.' Yes, your minds are too puny to entertain the full worship of God: do you think they are spacious ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... may very likely then have known something of the bliss of love; but it was not for long. Though Vassily—for lack of other occupation—did not drop her, and even attached himself to her and looked after her fondly, Olga herself was so utterly distraught that she found no happiness even in love and yet could not tear herself away from Vassily. She began to be frightened at everything, did not dare to think, could talk of nothing, gave up reading, and was devoured by misery. Sometimes ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... now. She had never been able to see it distinctly from any window. It was the Good Shepherd. The noble, patient face bent over the child on the man's breast had power to still Becky's distraught mind. She could not understand, but a groping of that part of her that could still feel and suffer reached the underlying suggestion of the artist. Here was someone who was doing what, in a vague and bungling way, Becky herself had always ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... half distraught, flung himself into a cab and drove to all the hotels in Grenada" (he overlooked the police station), and, failing to find Margot, becomes mad. He goes about ejaculating "Mad, mad!" than which nothing could be more eloquent of his complete mental inversion. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... What was her feeling on the subject? Whence did her unmistakable malaise, distraught behaviour in Ludovico's presence, paling cheeks, hours of reverie, when she should have been busily at work—whence did all this come? What was really in her mind when she told him that doubtless they both loved each other, and then ended her words with a "but," and a sad shake ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... mistress. But Miss Alice had shown such uncontrollable anger on being crossed, that there was nothing for it but to yield. And as all was quiet in her room, Dalgetty hoped that this time the medicine would prove to be a friend, and not a foe, and that the poor lady would wake up calmer and less distraught. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... into the street without him. She wished to be always with him, and always talking to him; but it soon came to his imploring her not to talk when she was in the room where he was writing; and he often came to the table so distraught that the meal might have passed without ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... the city. Now this corporation was in straits. Funds had failed and the construction of the road had been arrested. The directors were casting about in search of relief. Douglas saw his opportunity. He offered the distraught officials an alliance. He would include in his Illinois Central bill a grant of land for their road; in return, they were to make sure of the votes of their senators and representatives.[334] Such, at least, is the story told ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... Who so distraught could ramble here, From gentle beech to simple gorse, From glen to moor, nor cease to fear The world's impetuous bigot force, Which drives the young before they will, And when they ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... disaster. His hoarse ejaculations were too dreadful for a Christian reader's ears. Dumfounded for an instant, he gathered his wits to fire another pistol at the pirogue. The ball flew wild, as was to be expected of a marksman in a state of mind so distraught. He had overlooked those two poor seamen of his who had been impressed to bury the treasure, after which they were presumably to be pistoled or knocked on the head. Dead men told no tales. Doomed wretches, they ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... senses in doubt, To see the grey friar a diver so stout; Then sadly and slowly his castle he sought, And left the friar diving, like dabchick distraught. ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... town and on to a road that ran between cornfields. He was an athletic looking man and wore loose fitting clothes. He went along distraught and puzzled. In a way he felt like a man capable of taking a man's place in life and in another way ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... instinctive gesture of one who tries to escape falling from some great height. Morgana, alarmed at her looks, caught her again in her arms and held her tenderly, whereat a faint smile hovered on her lips and her distraught movements ceased. ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... I do not know what I am saying," she cried, distraught. "I do not know whether I am saying what is true or only what I imagine to be true. I know nothing but this. I was mesmerised. I have been so for two years. But for that I would have been happy in your love—for I was a woman before this hideous influence benumbed me. ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... said, and sighed heavily. "But after what befell last night, when... You know what is in my mind. I was distraught then, mad with fear for this poor father of mine, so that I could not even consider his sin in its full heinousness, nor see how righteous was your intent to inform against him. Yet I am thankful that it was not by your deletion that he was taken. The thought ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... of that sinister pew, choked with its weeping throng of ugly people, Ishmael went distraught with fear. He felt if he were put in that place of dread he would die at once. He fought Annie's grasp for a moment, screaming wildly, then collapsed in a little heap ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... vouch her guiltless in my thought, In fear to warrant what is false; but I Boldly maintain, in such an act is nought For which the damsel should deserve to die; And ween unjust, or else of wit distraught, Who statutes framed of such severity; Which, as iniquitous, should be effaced, And with a new and better ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... she exclaimed tumultuously. "You have not one atom of Christian faith between you! To imagine that you can strike a bargain with the good God by letting a sick theory of expiation of a dying, fever-distraught creature besmirch his repute as a man and a gentleman, make his whole life seem like a whited sepulchre, and bring his name into odium,—as kind a man as ever lived,—and you know it!—as honest, and generous, ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... were weary ones indeed for her father. Sometimes he wandered about the store quite distraught. 'Rill was worried about him. He missed the solace of his violin and refused to purchase a cheap instrument to take the place of the one he had been ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... just distraught, Miss Kathleen," said Ben; "for it's nigh about twenty hour sin' he dropped asleep, and I was frighted ontil conshultin' ye aboot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... will wake now," he thought, with his whole heart pulling him her way. But he did not desist from his intention to drop his eyes from the distraught figure entrapped between a locked door and a fall of thirty feet. He could reach her if he kept his nerve. A slow but steady hitch along the gutter was bringing him nearer every instant. Would she see him and take ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... soldiers one sees in the streets of Berlin are big, husky, strong, healthy creatures, with jowls hanging over their collars. The officers are clean-cut, keen-eyed, and in splendid health and training. Austria seems distraught and unready for emergencies, the people are not as keen for the war as the Germans and appear to be more indifferent as to its results. I am predicting that the end of the war will see Japan, Italy, and Roumania gainers, and Belgium, Turkey, and ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... once he sped the ship onward through the midst of the sea past the Bithynian coast. But Jason with gentle words addressed him in reply: "Tiphys, why dost thou comfort thus my grieving heart? I have erred and am distraught in wretched and helpless ruin. For I ought, when Pelias gave the command, to have straightway refused this quest to his face, yea, though I were doomed to die pitilessly, torn limb from limb, but now I am wrapped in excessive fear and cares ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... said the king, "what is it you ask of me? Have you your wits distraught, you who beat ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... words, wherefore he had heard nothing. Hereupon I, as Dom. Consul afterwards told the pastor of Benz, clenched my fists and answered, "What, thou arch rogue, didst thou not crawl about the room in the shape of a reptile?" whereupon he would hearken to me no longer, thinking me distraught, nor would he make the constable take an oath, but left me standing in the midst of the room, and got into his ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... went past the gorse bushes shrinking from their presence, she stepped into the heather as into a quickening bath that almost hurt. Her fingers moved over the clasped fingers of the child, she heard the anxious voice of the baby, as it tried to make her talk, distraught. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... distraught from gazing over-much At thy great beauty; and I fear'd to touch The dainty hand which Envy's self hath praised. I fear'd to greet thee; and my soul was dazed And self-convicted in its new design; For I was mad to hope to call thee mine, Aye! ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... so gay as might have been. Will Green had me to sit next to him, and on the other side sat John Ball; but the priest had grown somewhat distraught, and sat as one thinking of somewhat that was like to escape his thought. Will Green looked at his daughter from time to time, and whiles his eyes glanced round the fair chamber as one who loved it, and his kind face grew sad, yet never ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... distraught, poring over these matters that were never meant for lads like us! Do but come and drive them out for once with ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... night there was no surcease, for such was my sense of my own responsibilities that my sleep was much broken. I would wake with a start from troubled slumber to remember something of importance that I had until that moment entirely forgotten. I developed a severe headache and became so distraught that to the simplest questions I made strangely incongruous answers. Once, at eventide, on Mrs. Dorcas' coming into my study to enquire what I would have for breakfast the ensuing morning, I mechanically answered, to the no ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... to the horse. Once more with the help of his silent companion he fastened her with blankets. Once more the journey was begun. For a little while, distraught and uncertain what course to pursue, Rhoda endured the misery of position and motion in silence. Then the pain was too much and she cried out in protest. Kut-le brought the horses ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... ready for the great sacrificial rite, and nothing so mournful had ever been seen before. Black garments and pale, distraught faces were encountered at every turn. Four hundred maidens of the noblest birth, clad in long white robes and wearing crowns of cypress, accompanied the princess. The latter was borne in an open litter ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... was there it occurred to me that this was the residence of Schopenhauer, but a singular timidity restrained me from calling upon him. My temper just then seemed too distraught and too far removed from all that which might have formed a subject for conversation with Schopenhauer, even if I had felt strongly attracted towards him, and which alone could have furnished a reason ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... impossible case this saying of hers was the strangest and most incredible. Hitherto, not a suspicion had entered his mind but that the man so mysteriously slain in Geneva Square was Mark Vrain, and, for the moment, he thought that Diana was distraught to deny so ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... legends have hovered with him continually. Since that time I have seen a number of other pictures either in the artist's possession or elsewhere: "Death on the Racetrack," "Pegasus," canvases from The Tempest and Macbeth in that strange little world of chaos that was his home, his hermitage, so distraught with debris of the world for which he could seem to find no other place; I have spent some of the rare and lovelier moments of my experience with this gentlest and sweetest of other-world citizens; I have felt with ever-living delight the excessive loveliness of his glance and of his smile ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... returned his sister, with a gesture toward the study where Cousin Jasper, distraught, worried, and forlorn, must ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... frolic, he, as one distraught, Would blindly, stumbling, seek the watery verge And sink, nor rise again. But when, untaught In craft, the mourners raised the untimely dirge, Lo! otherwhere himself would swift emerge Incontinent, and crisp his tasselled ears; And, all vivacious, ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... Sewell in a low voice; but she kept her eyes upon Lemuel all the time; and when Sewell took him and his mother the length of the front drawing-room away, she was quite distraught, and answered at random ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... forgetfulness; that she had committed a fault but not a crime; but that if I would not pardon her, she, too, would die. All that sincere repentance has of tears, all that sorrow has of eloquence, she exhausted in order to console me; pale and distraught, her dress deranged, her hair falling over her shoulders, she kneeled in the middle of her chamber; never have I seen anything so beautiful, and I shuddered with horror as my senses revolted at ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to himself and calling the gods to witness that he was unjustly treated and that no such misfortune had ever before happened to any other man; and he was beating his hands wildly together and was forgetting to salute his friends. Seeing him thus distraught Socrates plucked him by the sleeve as he passed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... the girl had fractured her skull by a fall on the ice, had crawled to and lain in an unvisited outhouse of the farm, and on that Thursday night was wandering out, in a distraught state, not wandering in. Her story would be the result of her ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Distraught, the tyrant base doth hear That now the King of Kings draws near To reign in David's seat of state And Israel's ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... fixed his gaze on something that stood just above—something which the dusk half concealed, and by so doing made more impressive. It was the sculptured counterfeit of a human face, that of a man distraught with agony. The eyes stared wildly from their sockets, the hair struggled in maniac disorder, the forehead was wrung with torture, the cheeks sunken, the throat fearsomely wasted, and from the wide lips there seemed to be issuing a horrible cry. Above this hideous effigy was ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... she replied that in the box there were several family papers, and among them a general confession which she desired to make; when she wrote it, however, her mind was disordered; she knew not what she had said or done, being distraught at the time, in a foreign country, deserted by her relatives, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the study, but always unopened, while he was knitting socks for the poor of his parish. Better known, of course, than this character of Father MacTurnan is that of Father Gogarty in "The Lake," but for all his sympathetic elaboration of this bemused and distraught cleric the character is never wholly opposed to that of Mr. Moore himself as is the character of ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... both for pity of their mistress and also for hatred that a stranger should be King in Athens, they said, "O lady, thou must never hold a child in thy arms or nurse a babe at thy breast." And when the old man asked—for the Queen was distraught with grief—whether the King also shared this trouble, they said, "Not so, old man; to him Apollo giveth ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... I sat one summer's day, With mien dejected, Love came by; His face distraught, his locks astray, So slow his gait, so sad his eye, I hailed him with ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... wouldn't always be there. School boys have limited imaginations. I suppose I thought it was an awfully jolly thing to have it there, to know my way back to it, but there was the school tugging at me. I expect I was a good deal distraught and inattentive that morning, recalling what I could of the beautiful strange people I should presently see again. Oddly enough I had no doubt in my mind that they would be glad to see me . . . Yes, I must have thought of the garden that morning just ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... her deductive logic she had it. The look of absolute horror which suddenly leaped into Eve's drawn face was overwhelming. Annie's arm tightened round her shoulders, for she thought the distraught ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... of harassed railway officials and distraught Kestrel- Smiths, but he made no attempt to clothe his mental picture in words. The lady continued ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... only add that the health in which a man writes may possibly excuse the dismal quality of what he writes, and that Rousseau was now as always the prey of bodily pain which, as he was conscious, made him distraught. "My sufferings are not very excruciating just now," he wrote on a later occasion, "but they are incessant, and I am not out of pain a single moment day or night, and this quite drives me mad. I feel bitterly my wrong conduct and the baseness of ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... her maiden bosom's blue-veined swell. The right-hand fingers played amidst her hair, And with her reverie wandered here and there: The other hand sustained the only dress That now but half concealed her loveliness; And pausing, aimlessly she stood and thought, In virgin beauty by no fear distraught." ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... they could venture to marry and return openly to England. There were numberless and indefinite possibilities in their favor. Life was all they wanted, and life they had. They were both young; the gloom of this unlucky tragedy would soon be dispelled. Kate had been nervous and distraught when he left her, and no wonder, poor love! but wine, and food, and warmth would soon bring the color back to her cheeks and the light to her eyes. Lovely Kate! sweet, wayward, tender, haughty, but his own at last—his own in spite of earth and heaven! ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... He saluted her with a frown upon his face, but evidently with familiarity. The change in the girl's demeanor was instantaneous. Evidently she did not wish to offend the newcomer, nor did she wish to break with the motorman. All were ill at ease, distraught, vexed, worried. She tried to bring the newcomer into the conversation, which he refused. The motorman eyed him with hostility now and again, as he dared to neglect his duty, but smiled uneasily in the face of the girl when she addressed him with ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... was now quite distraught. There was the possibility that the Contessa might tell Major Benjy that it was time he married, but on the other hand she was making arrangements to go to tea with him on an unknown date, and the hero of amorous adventures in India and elsewhere might lose his heart again ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... coming out of her distraught state by degrees, but in an instant, Miss Havisham said, "Let me see you two play cards; why have you not begun?" With that, we returned to her room, and sat down as before; I was beggared, as before; ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... pleasant to have spring with us again," answered his wife. "I think, though, that in winter I am happier. In summer I am always worried. I am afraid for the children to be out of my sight, and when you are away on a hunt I am distraught until you are ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... they would find a place for her in the children's dresses department, for the January white sale.... At the very least, they would be glad to give her an excellent recommendation, the buyer told her. More distraught than one stunned by utter hopelessness and ruin, she came home and, as Father had once been wont to do for her, she made her ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... Antony had been unable to continue the conflict when parted from me. Now he sat in front of the cabin with his head resting on his hands, staring at the planks of the deck like one distraught. He, he—Antony! The bravest horseman, the terror of the foe, let his arms fall like a shepherd-boy whose sheep are stolen by the wolves. Mark Antony, the hero who had braved a thousand dangers, had flung down his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... picture of the havoc it had wrought in his simplicity. He used a lover's language, but his letter was as cold and lumpish as a golden ingot. And yet the writer was not cold. He was throbbing and distraught, confused and overthrown, a boy of fourteen beside himself at the prospect of a holiday ... It was a stolen holiday, to be sure, a sort of truancy from manliness, but none the less intoxicating for that. Cosme's Latin nature was on top; Saxon loyalty ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... scarcely have known her, Laura perceived she was alone. She rose, went to the door and locked it, standing for a moment trembling, until of a sudden she fell a-crying piteously, and began to walk to and fro across her chamber, wringing her hands like one distraught, and sometimes throwing herself upon the bed, wailing and moaning all the while as if her heart would break indeed. And, truly, she had some reason for the violence of her grief. Not being a thoughtful person, nor given to meditation, she had never before duly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... blow. He tells me that when he saw her that afternoon and found out his mistake, he had no thought except to recall me. He actually came to London for that purpose, vowed to her solemnly that he would bring me back; it was only in England, that, to use his own distraught phrase, the Devil entered into possession of him. His half-insane ramblings gave me a very vivid idea of that fortnight during which he lay hid in London, trembling like a guilty thing, fearful at every moment that he might run across me ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... constant reference to it betrays the composer's exasperated mental condition. This tendency to return upon himself, a tormenting introspection, certainly signifies a grave state. But consider the musical weight of the work, the recklessly bold outpourings of a mind almost distraught! There is no greater test for the poet-pianist than the F sharp minor Polonaise. It is profoundly ironical—what else means the introduction of that lovely mazurka, "a flower between two abysses"? This strange dance is ushered in by two of the most enigmatic pages of Chopin. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... the disordered kitchen, put himself squarely in the way of the teary mother. He commanded details. The distraught woman, hair tumbling from beneath a cap set rakishly to one side, vigorously stirred yellow dough in an earthen ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... at the bungalow with the weekly mail, and Lord Greystoke had spent the afternoon in his study reading and answering letters. At dinner he seemed distraught, and early in the evening he excused himself and retired, Lady Greystoke following him very soon after. Werper, sitting upon the veranda, could hear their voices in earnest discussion, and having realized that something of unusual moment ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... He was distraught at supper. Afterwards, when Mrs. Johnson had gone to bed with a slight headache, he opened a conversation ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... avert for a moment the menaces of death. Are you afraid of my old lips? How I have pitied you these months!" She tells him that she has not been unhappy. But perhaps, he says, she is of those who are unhappy without knowing it. Golaud enters, ferocious and distraught. He has blood on his forehead. It is nothing, he says—he has passed through a thicket of thorns. Melisande would wipe his brow. He repulses her fiercely. "I will not have you touch me, do you understand?" ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... lustre and darkness fraught, From glass that gleams as the chill still seas Lean and lend for a heart distraught Heart's ease. ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... piteous to see, for he was half distraught with fear, and like as a mother whose child had been snatched from her and was being hurried to death, so he, with tears, sobs and screams, kept entreating one moment the crowd and the next beseeching ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... courtiers and lacqueys. He walked through them with his head high, the cut on his lip like the mark of a hot iron in the dead whiteness of his face. At the head of the great staircase Maria Clementina waited. She sprang forward, distraught and trembling, her face as ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... only one thought—a thought lashed to the fore by his jealous rage, and defeated hopes. And poor Joyce, distraught and grief-crazed, realized not the terrible ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock |
