"Distressful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the truth of this observation, if you will attend to what passes, when you read a distressful tale alone; before the tears overflow your eyes, you will invariably feel a titillation at that extremity of the lacrymal duct, which terminates in the nostril, then the compression of the eyes succeeds, and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... trifle with me!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands and looking at her father in distressful anxiety; "don't you see that you are wringing my heart and destroying ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... to attempt an apology for my remissness to you in money matters; my conduct is beyond all excuse.—Literally, Sir, I had it not. The Distressful state of commerce at this town has this year taken from my otherwise scanty income no less than L20.—That part of my salary depends upon the Imposts, and they are no more for one year. I inclose you three guineas; and shall soon settle all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... in Syria, who deserted from the service of the caliph to that of the emperor. The skill of a chemist and engineer was equivalent to the succor of fleets and armies; and this discovery or improvement of the military art was fortunately reserved for the distressful period, when the degenerate Romans of the East were incapable of contending with the warlike enthusiasm and youthful vigor of the Saracens. The historian who presumes to analyze this extraordinary composition, should suspect his own ignorance and that of his Byzantine ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... shop of his Chinaman opposite. From there he watched the little company issue forth and turn into Crooked Lane, where the entrance was. It gave him a sense that she had her part in this squalor, which was not altogether distressful in that it also localised her in the warm, living, habitable world, and helped to make her thinkable and attainable. Then he went to his room at the club and found there a note from Miss Howe, written apparently to forgive him in advance, to say that she had not expected him. "Friendly creature!" ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays Through tangled forests and through dangerous ways, Where beasts with man divided empire claim, 415 And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim; There, while above the giddy tempest flies, And all around distressful yells arise, The pensive exile, bending with his woe, To stop too fearful, and too faint to go, 420 Casts a long look where England's glories shine, And bids his ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... his arms together, like a laborer in the winter when his hands are frozen, and exclaimed with distressful emotion: "Yes, I have spoken, and I cannot regret having done so; but what I foresaw has come to pass: The greatest happiness that ever sweetened my daily life is gone out of it! To love Plato is a noble rule, but greater than Plato is the truth; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it into accord with any necessity that experience may prove. It has successfully adjusted itself to changing conditions in the past. It will do so again. The mobility of our institutions, the richness of our resources, and the abilities of our people enable us to meet them unafraid. It is a distressful time for many of our people, but they have shown qualities as high in fortitude, courage, and resourcefulness as ever in our history. With that spirit, I have faith that out of it will come a sounder life, a truer standard of values, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... bravely, to tread the wide water, to tempt the hot sun, the foreign exposure, the perpetual dangers of heathen countries, for her unworthy sake, all that was tenderest, most grateful, in her now first wakened nature, rose up in distressful tumult, and agitated the depths that are in all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... down on a pile of cushions that lay beside the basin, and beckoning Christie to sit near, said, as she pressed her hands to her hot forehead and looked up with a distressful brightness in the haggard eyes that seemed to have no ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... into their graves. When I recrossed the Dourdou, the light was several tones lower than it was when I first descended to the bottom of the ravine, and the vegetation was of a deeper and sadder green. And the stream rushed onward with a low wail, and a distressful cry, as of a soul passing down the Dark Valley and not yet free from the panic ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the tables were turned, and a commission of agricultural labourers were sent into the city to make report of the sort of lives led there, not by poor citizens or the lowest order of tradesmen, but by the very class who are occupied in preparing largo folio reports of their own distressful condition. Suppose they were to enter into the chambers of the student of law—of the conveyancer, for example. They make their way through obscure labyrinths into a room not quite so dark, it must be allowed, nor quite so dirty as the interior of a coal-mine, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... the trouble lies; but we talk no more of railroads, for he and his father and brothers belong to the party of progress in Persia, and the triumph of priests and old women over the Shah and Baron Reuter's railway is to them a distressful and humiliating subject. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... vengeful and determined posse; unacquainted with his whereabouts, ignorant of any way of escape from that hollow square, round whose sides window after excitable window was lighting up in his honour; all in all, as distressful a figure of a fugitive from justice as ever ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... bearing with them the melancholy evidence of the truth of what they had just heard. It came on still—it stopt—it was at their own door it stopt. The old man could not speak, but his wife rushed forward with a distressful shriek. The truth was soon all known. They had no child. They had only a dead body to weep over—to lay in the grave. Is it necessary to say more? A few days passed. They were the bitterest days the bereaved parents had ever known; but they passed, and their minds became comparatively calm. Neither ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... Lupton:[101] that is what he saw when he had landed, and ran back directly to the pier to see what had become of the brig. The weather had got still worse, the fishwomen were being blown about in a distressful manner on the pier head, and some more fishing boats were running in with all speed. Then there is the "Fortrouge," Calais: that is what he saw after he had been home to Dessein's, and dined, and went out again in the evening ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... on a table before him, and he would sit for hours together with his eyes fixed upon them, like a child who, at the moment it first begins to see, gazes in stupid contemplation at the same object, and like the child, a distressful smile would flicker ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... rather a distressful youth by the time the shanty was reached, for the pace had been hot, and he had been impeded by the fatal greatcoat and muffler. After divesting himself of these he stood still and breathed hard in front of a cheerful coke fire, while Trevannion ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... his mind with such questions, the deeper grew the darkness of the inexplicable dilemma, to which a fresh obscurity was now added in his suddenly distinct and distressful remembrance of the "Pass of Dariel." Where was this place, he wondered wearily?—When had he seen it? whom had he met there?— and how had he come to Al-Kyris from thence? No answer could his vexed brain shape to these demands, . . he recollected the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... his distressful watch-service; and already he was known all over Takern. Then it happened one morning, while he called as usual: "Have a care, birds! Don't come near me! I'm only a decoy-duck," that a grebe-nest came floating toward the shallows where he was tied. This was nothing especially ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... in good time, I trust, you hither come. Look if you see not a distressful man, That to himself intendeth violence: One such even now was here, and is not far. Seek, I beseech you; save him, if ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... we were startled by a quick, fierce shout, followed immediately by a long, piercing, and distressful cry, proceeding from the same quarter from which the reports of fire-arms had been heard; and before we had time to conjecture the cause or meaning of these frightful sounds, Morton bounded like a deer from the grove, about a hundred yards from the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... half-irritated attention to the journalistic and pamphlet warfare in which he had been the target, he now found a domestic engagement confronting him which commanded his attentions and roused all the fighting Scotch blood in his composition. Jefferson had done much and distressful thinking during the summer recess. In the leisure of his extensive, not to say magnificent, Virginia estates, and while entertaining the neighbouring aristocracy, he had moved slowly to the conclusion that he approved of nothing ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... first annual meeting at Philadelphia was now at hand; he went to that, determined to exert all his influence for its suppression. He proposed it to his fellow officers, and urged it with all his powers. It met an opposition which was observed to cloud his face with an anxiety, that the most distressful scenes of the war had scarcely ever produced. It was canvassed for several days, and, at length, it was no more a doubt, what would be its ultimate fate. The order was on the point of receiving its annihilation, by the vote of a great ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... emotions. And I had to forget the distressful eye-strain. Few eyes submit without destruction to three hours of film. But the mistakes of Cabiria are those of the pioneer work of genius. It has in it twenty great productions. It abounds in suggestions. Once the classic rules of this art-unit are established, men ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... being killed by the butcher of Ballajora as Philip went by the shambles. The helpless creature, with its inverted head swung downwards from the block, looked at him with its piteous eyes, and gave forth that distressful cry which is the last wild appeal of the stricken animal when it sees death near, and has ceased ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... tenderly as women, and so parted; for poor Ned could not stay to see his comrade die. For a little while, there was no sound in the room but the drip of water from a stump or two, and John's distressful gasps, as he slowly breathed his life away. I thought him nearly gone, and had just laid down the fan, believing its help to be no longer needed, when suddenly he rose up in his bed, and cried out with a bitter cry that broke the silence, sharply ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... wonder at this circumstance distressing a young person who three times a week exhibits herself on the stage to several hundred people, but there I do not distinguish the individual eyes that are fixed on me, and my mind is diverted from the annoyances of my real situation by the distressful circumstances of my feigned one. Moreover, to add to my sorrows, at the beginning of the evening a lady spilled some coffee over a beautiful dress which I was wearing for the first time. Now I will ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... hot with a distressful blush. Rossitur coloured with anger. Mr. Carleton's smile had a very ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... recollection the too just and too frequent tales of man's impurity and ingratitude; and tortured herself by her own apparition, the merited victim of his harshness, his neglect, or his desertion. And when she had at the same time both shocked and alarmed her fancy by these distressful and degrading images, exhausted by these imaginary vexations, and eager for consolation in her dark despondency, she may have recurred to the yet innocent cause of her sorrow and apprehension, and perhaps accused herself of cruelty and injustice for visiting ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Government policy or rebellious action; but clearer and clearer the demand for war was heard, through and above the din. "When the late intelligence from the northeast reached us," said an emotional follower of the Administration,[278] "it bore a character most distressful to every man who valued the integrity of the Government. Choosing not to enforce the law with the bayonet, I thought proper to acknowledge to the House that I was ready to abandon the embargo.... ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... of his brief colloquy with the footman. Now, as the carryall lurched forward again, and the victoria wheeled and passed them on its way back, she caught her handkerchief to her face, and to Verrian's dismay sobbed into it. He let her cry, as he must, in the distressful silence which he could not be the first to break. Besides, he did not know how she was taking it all till she suddenly with threw her handkerchief and pulled down her veil. Then she spoke three ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... first with Francis, and then with his second son, the Duke of Orleans, he was endeavouring to draw England and France into a closer alliance. For similar reasons he was extending his patronage to the Holy League, formed by Clement VII. between the princes of Italy to liberate that distressful country from the grip of the ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... clean khaki and shiny boots. On his head he bore a huge dome of fluffy bearskin, just the thing for a fashionable muff; oppressive in the heat, no doubt, but imparting additional grandeur to his mien. There he stood, emblematic of splendour, and on each side of him were encamped distressful little families, grasping spades and buckets and seated on their corded luggage, unable to move because of the railway strike, while behind him flared a huge advertisement that said, "The Sea is Calling you." Along the kerbstone a few yards in front ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... which I observing, Took once a pliant hour, and found good means To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart, That I would all my pilgrimage relate, Whereof by parcels she had something heard But not intentively: I did consent; And often did beguile her of her tears, When I did speak of some distressful stroke That my youth suffer'd. My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of sighs; She swore—in faith 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange; 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful; She wish'd she had not ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... faithfully all the day before and half the night, rubbing her with an effusion of herbs and oil for her rheumatic pains. Yet for her, Madam Cavendish had no love, and treated her with a stately toleration and no more. Mary understood no cause for it, and often looked, as she did then, with a distressful wonder at her grandmother when she seemed to ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... for, while he spake, my heart grew cold And my eyes dim; the altars and their train No more were present to me; how I fared, Or whither turn'd, I know not; nor recall Aught of those moments, other than the sense Of one who struggles in oppressive sleep, And, from the toils of some distressful dream To break away, with palpitating heart, Weak limbs, and temples bathed in death-like dew, 530 Makes many a painful effort. When at last The sun and nature's face again appear'd, Not far I found me, where the public path, Winding through ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... and Punishment." These Russian novelists have too distressful a point of view. They remind me too ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... to adduce one or two of the favourable opinions entertained in regard to some of the miscellaneous pieces which went to make up the volume of the 'Songs of the Ark.' Of the piece entitled 'Apathy,' Allan Cunningham thus wrote:—'Although sufficiently distressful, it is a very bold and original poem, such as few men, except Byron, would have conceived or could have written.' Motherwell said of the 'Sea-gray Man,' that it was 'the best of all modern ballads.' This ballad, shortly after ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Corsaro," "Stiffclio," "Simon Boccanegra," "Aroldo" (a version of "Stiffelio"), and "La Forza del Destino." His artistic relations with Verdi lasted from 1844 to 1862, but the friendship of the men endured till the distressful end of Piave's life, which came in 1876. He was born three years earlier than Verdi (in 1810), in Durano, of which town his father had been the last podesta under the Venetian republic. He went mad some years ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... But Phillida's courage was of the military sort that rises with supreme difficulty. She exhorted Wilhelmina to faith, to unswerving belief, and then again she mingled her petitions with the sobs of the mother and the distressful breathing of the daughter. This morning Wilhelmina grew no better after the prayer, and she ate hardly two spoonfuls of the broth that was given her. She would not take it from Phillida this time. Seeing prayers could not save her and that she must die, the instincts of infancy and the ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... Italy and of literature, languished, in his old age, in the most distressful poverty; and having sold his palace to satisfy his creditors, left nothing behind him but his reputation. The learned Pomponius Laetus lived in such a state of poverty, that his friend Platina, who wrote the lives of the popes, and also a book of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to. His ideas go around in a circle like the horse tied to the wheel. He is on a treadmill ever ascending, tramping, up, up, up and up, and still up, but the wheel falls down each time as far as he steps up, and after hours and hours of unceasing, wracking, distressful mental labor, he has done absolutely nothing, has not progressed one inch, is still in the clutch of the same vicious treadmill. Brain weary, nerve weary, is there any wonder that he rolls and tosses, throws over his pillow, kicks off the ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... had brought himself to a dilemma in his affairs, by vainly proceeding upon his own head, and was afterwards afraid to look his governing servant and counsellor in the face; what a copious, and distressful harangue have I seen him make with his looks, while the house has been in one continued roar for several minutes, before he could prevail with his courage to speak a word to him! then might you have, at once, read in his face vexation—that his own measures, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... pervasive country that ever yet was seen. I acquired several pounds of your country coming up from Karachi. The air is heavy with it, and for miles and miles along that distressful eternity of rail there's no horizon to show ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the distressful situation we had left behind us on that August Sunday following the disastrous battle of Camden was but little changed. General Gates, with the scantiest following, had hastened first to Salisbury and later to Hillsborough, and ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... in my dream, methought, I went To search out what might there be found; And what the sweet bird's trouble meant, That thus lay fluttering on the ground. I went and peered, and could descry 545 No cause for her distressful cry; But yet for her dear lady's sake I stooped, methought, the dove to take, When lo! I saw a bright green snake Coiled around its wings and neck. 550 Green as the herbs on which it couched, Close by the dove's ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the assaults of suffering are real, while its essential perfection and happiness are unreal figments, due to error! This is excellent comfort indeed!—To avoid these difficulties let us then assume that both aspects of Brahman—viz. on the one hand its entering into the distressful condition of individual souls other than non-differenced intelligence, and on the other its being the cause of the world, endowed with all perfections, &c.—are alike unreal!—Well, we reply, we do not exactly admire the depth of your insight into the connected ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... to believe that what the novelist terms her "distressful narrative" succeeded in its appeal to the Martha Buskbodys of the generation, for even Goethe's Charlotte took a heartfelt interest in the fortunes of Miss Jenny.[18] It was indeed so far calculated to stir the sensibilities that a most touching turn ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... and Solivet rode beside the window all day, making our course far safer and easier in one way, but greatly adding in others to the distressful vigilance that coloured Eustace's thin cheeks and gleamed in his eyes, and made his fingers twitch at his sword whenever there was an unexpected halt, or any one overtook us. He conveyed us quite beyond the army, and brought us ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sunrise, I made myself as comfortable as might be and having laid by sword and belt and set my pistols within easy reach, I laid down and composed myself to slumber. But this I could by no means compass, being fretted of distressful thought and made vain and bitter repining for this ship that had come and sailed, leaving me a captive still, prisoned on this hateful island with this wild creature that methought more daemon than woman. And seeing myself thus mocked of Fortune (in my ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... movement of the head, an effort to show reproving dignity, while in fact taken by surprise, her nerves in distressful panic, she had scarce the power to control herself, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... ghost-like, or as sea-growths lift into a half visibility through translucent shadows the colour of themselves. All were very intent, very earnest, very interested, each after his own manner, in the comradeship of the featherhood he imagined to be uttering distressful cries. A few, like the chickadees, quivered their wings, opened their little mouths, fluttered down tiny but aggressive against the disaster. Others hopped here and there restlessly, uttering plaintive, low-toned cheeps. The shyest contented themselves by a discreet, silent, and distant ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... was a book that possessed peculiar attractions. For hours would he hang over its distressful pages, and many were the leaves blotted by his tears. Yet those tears relieved him not. Still, from time to time, would he recur to the book, as if tempted by a fascination he could not resist, striving to find, if possible, in the wretchedness of another, a lower deep ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... albeit a trifle shaky, held the reins with something of his old dash; and Mistress Peggy, in an enormous bonnet with pearl-colored ribbons a shade darker than her hair, holding in her short, pink-gloved fingers a bouquet of yellow roses, absolutely glowed crimson in distressful gratification over the dash-board. So these two fared on, out of the busy settlement, into the woods, against the rosy sunset. Possibly it was not a pretty picture: nevertheless, as the dim aisles of the solemn pines ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the disease having "come out" in the person of the speaker. It had "come out" in her face, which was brilliantly rubicund; in her hands, and ankles and feet, which were a distressful spectacle of "knobs" and "bumps" of an exaggerated phrenological type— perhaps also in her temper, which was fierce and fiery as her complexion, as most of the frequenters of the Baths knew, and the ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... Mrs Higden. Where would Mrs Higden be if she warn't turned for!' At the mere thought of Mrs Higden in this inconceivable affliction, Mr Sloppy's countenance became pale, and manifested the most distressful emotions. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... I think would be disposed to serve if he were acquainted with his case. This poor fellow (whom I know just enough of to vouch for his strict integrity & worth) has lost two or three employments from illness, which he cannot regain; he was once insane, & from the distressful uncertainty of his livelihood has reason to apprehend a return of that malady—He has been for some time dependant on a woman whose lodger he formerly was, but who can ill afford to maintain him, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... account we have received this morning led to a great degree of hope that the distressful embarrassments which you have experienced may already in a great degree have subsided. You will, however, have learnt that in the suspense in which we remained yesterday, it had been determined to send Lord Howe with such instructions ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... bodies together for burial, of the voices of inaccessible wounded in the rain on Waggon Hill crying in the night, of a heap of men we found in a donga three days dead, of the dumb agony of shell-torn horses, and the vast distressful litter and heavy brooding stench, the cans and cartridge-cases and filth and bloody rags of a shelled and captured laager. I will confess I have never lost my horror of dead bodies; they are dreadful ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... praise briskly they sing now:— "Bravo, our brave Tristan!"— he was that distressful man. A thousand protestations of truth and love he prated. Hear how a knight fealty knows!— When as Tantris unforbidden he'd left me, as Tristan boldly back he came, in stately ship from which in pride Ireland's heiress in marriage he asked for Mark, the Cornish monarch, his kinsman ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... perfunctory in her responses to Mamise's pictures of the atrocity. She grew really indignant when she looked at the clock and saw that Jake was late to dinner. She broke in on Mamise's excitement with a distressful: ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... submitted to by civilized humanity and its physicians,—chicken-pox, measles, whooping-cough, mumps. I complain, indeed, of no diseases, but of their treatment. But let me not delay longer than is needful amid such distressful recollections. Three hateful decoctions were known to me by the phonetics, Lixipro, Lixaslutis, and Lixusmatic. I don't know what they were, and I don't want to know. Devil's elixirs were they all. Rubbub and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... Hartigan cheerfully; "I don't bet"; and he went on singing, "'Tis the most distressful country this that ever yet ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the prowler; and picking up the axe that I had dropped, he followed the trail. Large red stains at intervals showed that the animal had stopped frequently to grovel on the snow. About half a mile from the knoll, Mr. Edwards came upon the beast, in a fir thicket, making distressful sounds, and quite helpless to defend itself. A blow on the head from the poll of the axe finished the creature; and, taking it by the tail, Mr. Edwards dragged it to the house. The carcass was lying in the dooryard when Tom's mother ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... once before, and Clement had made one hurried and distressful rush in the trouble about Angela; but that was at Munich, and nearly nine years ago, before the many changes and chances of life had come to them. To Stella those years had brought two little boys, whose appearance in the world had been delayed till the ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lady Mary's face as she stumbled over the threshold of the window into the very arms of John Crewys, and his feelings were divided between passionate sympathy with his divinity, and anger with the returned hero, who had no doubt reduced his mother to this distressful state. The doctor was blinded by love and misery, and ready to suspect the whole world of doing injustice to this lady; though he believed himself to be destitute of jealousy, and capable of judging Peter with ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... was over to our joint satisfaction, she had to return to the distressful main theme of our talk. She harked back to Sir Anthony, touched on his splendid behaviour, recalled, with a little dismay, the hitherto unnoted fact that, after the ceremony he had held himself aloof from those that thronged round Boyce. Then, without hint from me, she perceived ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... second fox screamed on my left, and from that time I was accompanied, or shadowed, by the two foxes, always keeping abreast of me, always at the same distance, one screaming and the other replying about every half-minute. The distressful bird-sound ceased, and I turned and went off in another direction, to get out of the wood on the side nearest the place where I was staying, the foxes keeping with me ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... some events, real or fictitious, which were supposed to have happened in, the environs of Milan, about a hundred years ago, when the Torriani and Visconti families disputed for superiority. Its construction was compounded of comic and distressful scenes, of which the last gave me most delight; and much was I amazed, indeed, to feel my cheeks wet with tears at a friar's play, founded on ideas of parental tenderness. The comic part, however, was ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of that now, Betty," I said in my politest manner, for really Betty was now become a great domestic evil. She would have her own way so, and of all things the most distressful was for a ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... me in my agony. A most distressful accident occasion'd You from a stranger to become at once ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... pityingly of him sometimes, for he was a bright, promising youth, she says, when one distressful circumstance crushed his hopes and ruined his usefulness; but I do not think she desires his return, for he left his native shores cursing her as the cause of ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... grow on Irish ground; St. Patrick's Day no more we'll keep; his colors can't be seen: For there's a cruel law agin' the wearin' of the green. I met with Napper Tandy, and he tuk me by the hand, And he said, "How's poor ould Ireland, and how does she stand?" She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen: They are hangin' men and women there for ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... the room and sat down with a distressful sigh. "I am more than that," he said, dejectedly. "I am in hot water, trying to swim ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... Aunt," said Caroline, flushing with distressful impatience. "But you have to think of yourself in these days, or get left. It's the rule all over the world now. And if everybody did the same, we should be all all ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... if that which is here begun should not proceed, how thou wouldst have distressful want of knowing more; and by thyself thou wilt see how desirous I was to hear from these of their conditions, as they became manifest to mine eyes. "O well-born,[1] to whom Grace concedes to see the thrones of the eternal triumph ere the warfare is abandoned,[2] with the light which spreads through ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... the loss of her own position but her good name as well, whereas if she makes the daughter of her employer admit her fault, it means that, driven from home, the girl whose weakness has brought about this distressful situation stands little or no chance of redeeming her error if thrust upon ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... and in December at 130. What she lost is not known, but she had been sufficiently involved to make her desire to sell her diamonds, and more than once she asked Lady Mar if there was a market for the jewels in Paris. Remond's L900 had dwindled to L400. On receiving these distressful tidings, the Frenchman believed, or affected to believe, that he had been swindled, and he threatened, unless he were repaid in full, he would publish Lady Mary's letters to him. Lady Mary's fear was lest the matter should come to the cognisance of her husband: it would ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... cautious, on the other hand, to allow full value to the endurance, by tender and delicate persons, of what is really loathsome or distressful to them in the service of others; and I think this picture of Holbein's indicative of the exact balance and rightness of his own mind in this matter, and therefore of his power to conceive a true saint also. He had to represent ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... charming as Braugaene, and her manner of inducing the Princess of the Most Distressful Country to take to the bottle—KINAHAN's L.L.L.—deserved the encore which she ought to have received. No matter—Fraeulein RALPH played with spirit, which is a dangerous thing to do as a rule. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various
... not recompense her for the loss of her society; and that on no terms could she prevail on herself to continue in a house where she must see that wretched Simon, who had been a vile instrument in reducing her friend to that distressful situation. This gleam of comfort was a very seasonable relief to Miss Melvyn's dejected spirits, and gave some respite ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... l. 246. Why we are delighted with the scenical representations of Tragedy, which draw tears from our eyes, has been variously explained by different writers. The same distressful circumstance attending an ugly or wicked person affects us with grief or disgust; but when distress occurs to a beauteous or virtuous person, the pleasurable idea of beauty or of virtue becomes mixed with the painful ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... the melancholy two months, that I have passed, and in my situation, you will not wonder I shun a conversation which could not be bounded by a letter-a letter that would grow into a panegyric, or a piece of moral; improper for me to write upon, and too distressful for us both!-a death is only to be felt, never to be talked over by those ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... This is the end of the line. I have gone farther than necessary. But there is the slavey. We have been talking. At least I talked. She listened, her doltish face opening its mouth, her little eyes blinking. She has pimples, her skin is muddied. A distressful-looking creature. Yet there is something. This is her day off—a day free from the sweat of labor—and she goes on a street car into the country. So it would seem that under this blinking, frowzy exterior desire spreads its ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... sleet-laden squalls. In the cheerless light of it the Commandant, who, albeit numb with cold, had had not yet found time to feel fatigue, caught sight of Dr. Bonaday's face, and was smitten with sudden compunction. The old Doctor had sat through six distressful hours like the stoic he was; but his face showed like that of a corpse, and the usually plump and florid cheeks of Mr. Pope hung flaccid, blue with the pinch of the cold and yellow for lack of sleep. The Commandant spoke to the coxswain, and, running up the gig ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... lit up that distressful palace of all the luxuries, and they fared sumptuously, swinging on through the emptiness of abject desolation. Now they heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice of a Chinaman, the clink-clink ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... what energy, what enterprise, what industry, in but two years of one human existence! What a world of doubt, of distressful anxiety and misgiving in the heart of the woman, left to patient expectation, to prayerful, tearful hopes and fears! What trust in man and faith in God during those two years! And now, with her children, she was coming to rejoin her helpmate, and begin ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... as we descended the Museum steps and got into Eleanor's hansom, to her vivid summing-up of the case. I guessed beforehand that the lady we were about to visit had lapsed by the most distressful degrees from opulence to a "hall-bedroom"; that her grandfather, if he had not been Minister to France, had signed the Declaration of Independence; that the Rembrandt was an heirloom, sole remnant of disbanded treasures; that for years its possessor had been unwilling ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... and who had performed many sacrifices. Unto the lizard that said those words, Madhava spoke, 'Thou didst perform many righteous acts. No sin didst thou commit. Why, then, O king, hast thou come to such a distressful end? Do thou explain what this is and why it has been brought about. We have heard that thou didst repeatedly make gifts unto the Brahmanas of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands and once again eight times hundreds ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... movement he took an occasional slow stride across the parquet floor or brushed a hand wearily over his eyes. Otherwise he had mastered his voice, and spoke without the gasping pauses which had made distressful his words ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... looked upon the moonlit garden, which filled the fanciful quadrangle. The light of the fountain seemed to fascinate his eye, and the music of its fall soothed him into reverie. The distressful images that had gathered round his heart gradually vanished, and all that remained to him was the reality of his happiness. Her beauty and her grace, the sweet stillness of her searching intellect, and the refined pathos of her ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... or Wars of the Cross, had roused Europe from a state of most distressful bondage. Ignorance and barbarism were shot with gleams of spiritual light even after the vast armies were sent forth to wrest the possession of Jerusalem from the infidels. Shameful stories of the treatment of pilgrims to the ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... a great quietude, a grateful stillness, slumberous and restful; yet, little by little, upon this all-pervading silence, a sound crept, soft, but distressful to one who fain would sleep; a sound that grew, a sharp noise and querulous. And now, in the blackness, a glimmer, a furtive gleam, a faint glow that grew brighter and yet more bright, hurtful to ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... There he descried Barlaam and Ioasaph lying, as they had been in life. Their bodies had not lost their former hue, but were whole and uncorrupt, together with their garments. These, the consecrated tabernacles of two holy souls, that sent forth full sweet savour, and showed naught distressful, were placed by King Barachias in costly tombs and conveyed by him into ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... of Premium Bonds it has been recalled that in his evidence, given some years ago before a Select Committee, the then Under- Secretary for Ireland stated that in that distressful country "lotteries are very much used for religious purposes by people of all denominations," and that "it would be flying in the face of public opinion, especially of the great religious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... a very distressful little face as she crossed the room making this new announcement; and just as she disappeared through the trap-door, only her head being visible, she added with great emphasis, "The thinner you get the better; because the thinner you are the lighter ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... what might be and what is in human life. Look at the world—life's most sumptuous stage—and look at life! The one, splendid, exquisite, varied, generous, rich beyond description; the other, poor, thin, dull, monotonous, niggard, distressful—is that necessary?" ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Earl Grey's ministry took high moral ground, was a redress of another of the ancient wrongs of Ireland. The Church of England was by law established in that most distressful country, and the people, though mostly Roman Catholics, were under the necessity of paying tithes for the support of a church which they detested, and which indeed, in a large part of the island, had no existence except for purposes of taxation. The Irish protest, ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... losing his life—and that he had been spared was simply a miracle—arose from her insisting on a Royal Procession. But for that, both she and the child would have gone comfortably on a camel. They would have kept up with the other baggage animals and none of the distressful events would have happened. It should not, however, happen again. Of course, Head-nurse tried to brazen it out and assert that the Heir-to-Empire could always count on a miracle in his favour; but in her heart-of-hearts she knew ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... dried. Of this rotten bread the people only received two-thirds of their usual allowance, from economical principles; but as that portion is hardly sufficient, supposing it to be all eatable, it was far from being so when nearly one half of it was rotten. However, they continued in that distressful situation till this day, when the first mate came to the capstern and complained most bitterly that he and the people had not wherewith to satisfy the cravings of the stomach, producing, at the same time, the rotten and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... the scenes of the day that was now nearly passed, with a mixture of astonishment and distress, to which no description can be equal The sudden and amazing change that a few hours had made in his situation, appeared like a wild and distressful dream, from which he almost doubted whether he should not wake to the power and the felicity that he had lost. He sat some time bewildered in the hurry and multiplicity of his thoughts, and at length burst out into passionate ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... him out of his garden, to the gate of a neighbouring meadow. A beautiful black-horned white cow stood there, her head over the bars, looking up and down the road, and now and then uttering a low distressful "moo." ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... friends," replied Bertram, "have left Jummoo, and are now on their way to Lahore, where I must join them. I could not go without an effort to meet you here, not only because you bade me, but I also desired it, for I have been full of distressful perplexity, refusing to doubt you, my friend whom I have believed leal ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... hour had elapsed, I heard his footstep, and soon perceived him advancing, bearing something bulky in his arms, while he called loudly upon me in a distressful tone. I hastened towards him, and upon my arrival he exclaimed, "Alas, alas! the beloved daughter of my uncle is no more, and I bear her remains. She was hastening, as usual, to my tent, when suddenly a lion sprung upon her in the path, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon. |
