"Woful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The woful, terrified gaze of the blue eyes deepened pitifully, but she spoke no word, and Rex turned from her—turned from the girl-bride whom he loved so madly, with a bursting, broken heart, more bitter to bear than death itself—left her alone with the pitying sunlight falling upon her golden hair, and ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... in a revulsion of feeling common to his nature, felt that his cousin had been right, and that a miserable space for repentance was before him, not so much for the wrong he had purposed, as for the woful unwisdom of his tactics and their ignominious failure. His training as a soldier led him to obey ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... most lovely woman there, to take upon her own shoulders the ridicule that had already been cast upon the ass. Had he been young and gaily caparisoned, she might have done it; but his age, the clumsy trappings of rustic make, and his needy woful look of hard servitude, were too much ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... with delight, and feed their palates upon them. It seems the goodness is not portrayed with equal accents of liveliness as the wicked things are; otherwise men would be deterred from vicious courses, with seeing the woful success which follows them'—a result scarcely to be claimed by the actors of the day. Massinger, however, shows more moral feeling than is expended in providing sentiments to be tacked on as an external appendage, or satisfied by ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... didn't make my trade in camphor after all and I lost in stocks, when if I'd only waited five minutes more in the office I'd have got the message from my brokers and saved my five hundred. Expensive, my time is, eh?" with a woful shake ...
— The Tipster - 1901, From "Wall Street Stories" • Edwin Lefevre
... Or after, how by storm the walls were won, Or how the victor sacked and burned the town; How to the ladies he restored again The bodies of their lords in battle slain; And with what ancient rites they were interred; All these to fitter time shall be deferred: I spare the widows' tears, their woful cries, And howling at their husbands' obsequies; How Theseus at these funerals did assist, And with what gifts the mourning ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... little harbor lay but a single steam-vessel, a transport, though others could be dimly seen far out at sea, where they spent most of their time, which fact largely accounted for the woful lack of supplies at the front. A boat from the single ship that had ventured into the harbor lay on the beach discharging freight. To it Ridge hurried, and, addressing himself to the man who appeared ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... shipman, woful, woful is thy tale! Our hearts are heavy and our eyes are dimmed. What ship is this that suffered ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... were king or queen And had the world to play with, if one missed What most were good to have, such joy, I ween, Were woful as a song with sobs between And well might wail for ever, 'Had I wist!' And might my father do but as he list, And make this day what other days have been, I should not ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the real world to-night, Of love that conquers in disaster's spite. Ladies, attend! While woful cares and doubt Wrong the soft passion in the world without, Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere, One thing is certain: Love will triumph here! Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule,— The world's ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was making this oration to the town of Mansoul, it was observed by some that Diabolus trembled.[103] But he proceeded in his parable, and said, 'O thou woful town of Mansoul! wilt thou not yet set open thy gate to receive us, the deputies of thy King, and those that would rejoice to see thee live? "Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that he shall deal" in judgment "with thee?" (Eze 22:14). I say, canst thou endure ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... which supplied the place of a compass; and, to say the truth, was not ill befitting such a vessel and such mariners. By its aid we steered our course by day, while the stars served as a guide by night; and, if they were obscured, we guessed our way by the motion of the clouds. In this woful plight we continued four days and nights. On the fifth day we were at the brink of despair, and abandoned all hopes of safety. Thence we ceased our labor, and laid aside our oars; for, either we had no strength left to use them, or were reluctant to waste the little we ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... Pat related all he knew and surmised concerning Haldane's woful predicament, saying ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Vexed with the storm and sounding loud in sympathy. What have we here? What human trace of times When hearts o'erflowed, and hand and steel were swift, And red in the flashing of a hasty thought? Ah me! these times, these woful times when word And blow were wed, and none could sunder them, And honour'd live! See yonder isle set single In the lake, near by where Earn darts swiftly 'neath The rustic bridge to bear the music of the place To broader Tay, who murmurs ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... of dinner, they began to hear the noise of the poor persecuted woman, which drove them all to much admiration, desiring to know what it was, and no one resolving them they rose from the tables, and looking directly as the noise came to them, they espied the woful woman, the dogs eagerly pursuing her; the knight galloping after them with his drawn weapon, and came very near unto the company, who cried out with loud exclaims against the dogs, and the knights stepped forth in assistance of ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... others, readily occurs in the pathetic old ballad of the Conde Alarcos, whose woful catastrophe, with the unresisting suffering of the countess, suggests many points of coincidence with the English minstrelsy. The English reader will find a version of it in the "Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain," from the pen of Mr. Bowring, to whom the literary world is so ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... get together and have a society of their own, the which it is very affecting to watch—those tawdry pretences at gentility, those flimsy attempts at gaiety: those woful sallies: that jingling old piano; oh, it makes the heart sick to see and hear them. As Mrs. Raff, with her company of pale daughters, gives a penny tea to Mrs. Diddler, they talk about bygone times and the fine ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... great many old Scotch songs, such as "the Gaberlunzie," "Aiken Drum," "Tak' yere Auld Cloak about ye," and "the Deuks dang ower my Daddie"; besides "The Mucking o' Geordie's Byre," and "Ca' the Ewes to the Knowes," and so on; but, do what I liked, I could not keep my spirits up, thinking of the woful end of the poor old horse, and of the ne'er-do-weel loon its master. Many an excellent instruction of Mr Wiggie's came to my mind, of how we misguided the good things that were lent us for our use ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... say'st, young prince, what think you of the match? P. Edw. I think King Edward will outrun us all. Q. Isab. Nay, son, not so; and you must not discourage Your friends that are so forward in your aid. Kent. Sir John of Hainault, pardon us, I pray: These comforts that you give our woful queen Bind us in kindness all at your command. Q. Isab. Yea, gentle brother:—and the God of heaven Prosper your happy motion, good Sir John! Y. Mor. This noble gentleman, forward in arms, Was born, I see, to be our anchor-hold.— Sir John ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... the cruel foe! As looks the mother on her lowly babe, When death doth close his tender dying eyes, See, see, the pining malady of France; Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds, Which thou thyself hast given her woful breast! O turn thy edged sword another way; Strike those that hurt, and hurt not those that help! One drop of blood drawn from thy country's bosom Should grieve thee more than streams of foreign gore; Return ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... nor did I hope to pass Untouched by suffering through the rugged glen. In mine own heart I saw as in a glass The hearts of others...And, when I went among my kind, with triple brass Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed, To bear scorn, fear, and hate—a woful mass!' ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... man fully, inch by inch, and there were various reasons why the majority, instead of overwhelming them by a conclusive vote or two, allowed them to struggle on. For one thing, though Baillie thought there was a "woful longsomeness" in the slow English forms of debating at such a time, it was felt by the English members that, in so important a business as the settling of a new constitution for the National Church, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... from her hair She drew, and from a green-tress'd birchen tree She pluck'd a strip of smooth white bark and fair, And many signs and woful graved she, A message of the evil things to be. Then deftly closed the birch-bark, fold on fold, And bound the tokens well and cunningly, Three times and four times, with a ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... last, exerting all the speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got directly before him and held forth its arms, mutely insisting on being taken up. It said not a word, being perhaps underwitted and incapable of prattle. But it smiled up in his face,—a sort of woful gleam was that smile, through the sickly blotches that covered its features,—and found means to express such a perfect confidence that it was going to be fondled and made much of, that there was no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... preface it with the solemn and woful communication of the Evangelist John, in order to show how exactly they accord, how clearly the doctrines of the one are deduced from the Revelation of the other, and how justly, therefore, it assumes the exclusive title of evangelical. 'And I saw the dead * * * and the dead were judged out ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... she had followed about, uneasy lest the wind should blow through the open door on him, or the fire be too hot, or that every moment should not be full to the brim with fun and pleasure, touching his head or hand now and then with a woful tenderness, her throat choked, and her blue eyes wet, crying in her heart incessantly, "Lord, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and woful day to the cities of the South, when her rebel princes renounced their allegiance to the government, and raised the traitor arm of rebellion against its authority. Imagined evils, in connection with the Union, were ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... conventional idea and method to a true and simple one, Carlyle has done for morality. He may be himself the most curious opposition to himself—he may be the greatest mannerist of his age while denouncing conventionalism—the greatest talker while eulogising silence—the most woful complainer while glorifying fortitude—the most uncertain and stormy in mood, while holding forth serenity as the greatest good within the reach of man; but he has nevertheless infused into the mind of the English nation a sincerity, earnestness, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... steady, sturdy influence of some one outside himself to keep him always in the beaten tracks. Already, for better or for worse, Catie's influence upon him was a strong one; stronger, Mrs. Brenton admitted to herself with a woful little sigh, than that of his own mother, despite the ill-concealed anxiety and the doting love that only a mother can give, and then only to an only son. Between the two of them, herself and Catie, Catie's will was the stronger law. Catie, if she chose, could keep Scott's feet well in the limits ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... earth; from the earth to hell, where she lay in prison four thousand years and more, she and her lord both, and taught all her offspring to leap after her to death without end. The beginning and root of this woful calamity was a light look. Thus often, as is said, 'of ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... we live. We are all united in the great brotherhood of American liberty. Descending from the same ancestors, bred in the same school, taught in infancy to imbibe the same general political sentiments, Americans all, by birth, education, and principle, what but a narrow mind, or woful ignorance, or besotted selfishness, or prejudice ten times blinded, can lead any of us to regard the citizens of any part of the country as ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... falls, Shall by this battle be the bloody sea: The wandering sailors of proud Italy Shall meet those Christians, fleeting with the tide, Beating in heaps against their argosies, And make fair Europe, mounted on her bull, Trapp'd with the wealth and riches of the world, Alight, and wear a woful ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... like a griping usurer, does spare His money to be squander'd by his heir; Flutter'd away in liveries and in coaches, And washy sorts of feminine debauches. As for my part, whate'er the world may think, I'll bid adieu to gravity, and drink; And, though I can't put off a woful mien, Will be all mirth and cheerfulness within: As, in despight of a censorious race, I most incontinently suck my face. What mighty projects does not he design, Whose stomach flows, and brain turns round with wine? Wine, powerful wine, can ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... more dear in New England than in Old. And, lastly, unless they be exceeding careful, and God wonderfully merciful, they are like to lose that life and zeal for God and his truth in New England which they enjoyed in Old; as whereof they have already woful experience, and many there ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... not deemed sufficiently so to be sent to the hospital. Those killed are all children, except one, who is a young woman about twenty years of age. They were all suffocated by the number of persons crowded on them. The scene at the Sixth Ward Station-house presented a woful sight, the mothers of the deceased children bewailing over them in the most pitiful manner. At the time the alarm was given, there were about 480 emigrants in the building, the larger proportion women and children, who were up stairs; and in forcing their way down ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... which he was a trifle conscious, that drove him to do his work of service in the directest manner. He then fancied the girl had caught something of the tone of her lady: the savage intensity or sincerity; and he brooded on Carinthia's position, the mixture of the astounding and the woful in her misadventure. One could almost laugh at our human fate, to think of a drop off the radiant mountain heights upon a Whitechapel greengrocer's shop, gathering the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Ye brave Irish lads, hark away to the crack, Assist me, I pray, in this woful attack; For sure I don't wrong you, you seldom are slack, When the ladies are calling, to blush and hang back; 60 For you're always polite and attentive, Still to amuse us inventive, And death is your only preventive: Your hands and your ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... expect to be cut. Time and tide wait for no man. Too many cooks spoil the broth. Union is strength. Waste not, want not. What the eye sees not, the heart rues not. When rogues fall out honest men get their own. When the cat's away, the mice play. Willful waste makes woful want. You cannot eat your cake ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking through the narrow streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a silence broken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; by the woful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the madder yells ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... was to ride To see an air balloon; And all the company beside Were dressed and ready soon: But she a woful case was in, For want ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... vaguely hinted murder of the woman who had died there, or whether it took its character from the prevailing desolation, the cabin in the valley was an unlovely thing. Nor did the cleanliness, the conscientious making the best of things, soften the woful aspect of the place. Rather was the appeal the more poignant to the seeing eye, as the brave makeshift of the self-respecting poor strikes deeper than the beggar's whine. The house was bare but for the few things that Alida could take in the wagon in which they ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... this hour from danger free? Perhaps with fearful force some falling Wave Shall wash thee in the wild tempestuous Sea, And in some monster's belly fix thy grave; 20 Or (woful hap!) against some wave-worn rock Which long a Terror to each Bark had stood Shall dash thy mangled limbs with furious shock And stain its craggy sides with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Gregory:—"Because GOD'S servants withdraw themselves from the world and its works, uselessly they cannot speak: so they bind them to silence that they dare say no word save it be teaching others or praising GOD: and therefore, when they ask GOD aught, He grants it at once." But we, woful wretches, who deal with the world, that chatter all the day like magpies; now lie, now twist, now speak evil, now quarrel, now backbite, now swear great oaths, these defile our prayer and hinder it, that it is not heard; for our mouth ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... Lawyers are too commonly profound only in the technicalities of the profession; and a very keen study and acquaintance with these—certainly a too great reliance upon them, and upon the dicta of other lawyers—leads to a dreadful departure from elementary principles, and a most woful (sic) disregard, if not ignorance, of those profounder sources of knowledge without which laws multiply at the expense of reason, and not in support of it; and lawyers may be compared to those ignorant captains to whom good ships are intrusted, who rely ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... damsel, passing fair; Sunny at distance gleams her smile; Approach—the cloud of woful care Hangs trembling in her ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... of the little girl among the daisies there comes to him in woful contrast the little girl in the crowded cities' wretched streets. She is denied the daisy field. Stars do not tempt her to wonder. The narrow streets filled with material things, pressing close, crowd out sun and moon. The name ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... binding: wanting repair. Here are a few Roman Classics, which are more choice than those in the Public Library: as Reisinger's Suetonius, in 4to. but cropt, and half bound in red morocco, with yellow sprinkled edges to the leaves—a woful specimen of the general style of binding in this library. Lucretius, 1486: Manilius, 1474: both in one volume, bound in wood—and sound and desirable copies. Eutropius, 1471; by Laver; a sound, desirable copy, in genuine condition. Of Bibles, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the spirit of the Prince Was moved to see this world beyond his gates, This life of man, so pleasant if its waves Ran not to waste and woful finishing In Time's dry sands. "I pray you let me view Our city as it is," such was his prayer To King Suddhodana. "Your Majesty In tender heed hath warned the folk before To put away ill things and common sights, And make their faces glad ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... original thought; five hundred years after the light of Athenian genius had been extinguished, the schools of Greece were still pursuing the beaten paths, and teaching the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. It is the peculiar and prodigious advantage of travelling, that it counteracts this woful and degrading tendency, and by directing men's thoughts, as well as their steps, into foreign lands, has a tendency to induce into their ideas a portion of the variety and freshness which characterize the works of nature. Every person knows how great an advantage this proves in society. All ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... with his rotten old hat, he looked a woful figure as the heavy shower beat on his back. But to Amaryllis ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... keep apart from other nations; they attached supreme importance to their Abrahamic lineage as children of the covenant, "an holy people unto the Lord," whom He had chosen "to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth".[162] Judah had experienced the woful effects of dalliance with pagan nations, and, at the time we are now considering, a Jew who permitted himself unnecessary association with a Gentile became an unclean being requiring ceremonial cleansing to free him from defilement. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... one corner, constituted the furniture. Scrupulous neatness reigned everywhere, but the air was burdened with the odor of carbolic acid, and even at mid-day was chill as the breath of a tomb. Where the doors were thrown open, they resembled the yawning jaws of rifled graves; and when closed, the woful inmates peering through the black lattice seemed an incarnation ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... doctrine, and obey no guide; With stragglers of each adverse camp, who lend Their aid to both, but each in turn offend. Though zealous still, yet he begins to feel The heat too fierce that glows in vulgar zeal; With pain he hears his simple friends relate Their week's experience, and their woful state; With small temptation struggling every hour, And bravely battling with the tempting power: His native sense is hurt by strange complaints Of inward motions in these warring saints; Who never cast on sinful bait a look, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... upon immortalizing by residing in it during her sojourn in Paris, she was again fearfully agitated by that dreadful fondness for things English, in France, by which her nervous system had before been so greatly discomposed. Woful to relate, she was received by "a smart, dapper, English-innkeeper-looking landlord," and conducted to apartments "which were a box of boudoirs, as compact as a Chinese toy." "There were carpets on every floor, chairs that were moveable, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... cold. Slap from the bridge fell old Peachey, turning and twisting in the air like a penny whirligig that you can sell to the Amir—No; they was two for three ha’pence, those whirligigs, or I am much mistaken and woful sore. And then these camels were no use, and Peachey said to Dravot—‘For the Lord’s sake, let’s get out of this before our heads are chopped off,’ and with that they killed the camels all among the mountains, not having anything in particular to eat, ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... turning out to work. It is remarked by the English papers that the Attornies generally in writing to their employers adopt the same strain. They are all doing well on their estates, but hear that the rest of the island is in a woful condition.—These are the men who are the greatest, if not the only, losers by emancipation; hence ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... I got little satisfaction when I asked the Moors about the songs of their slaves. Who will say that the above words are not a very appropriate song? What could have been more congenially adapted to their then woful condition? It is not to be wondered at that these poor bondwomen cheer up their hearts, in their long, lonely, and painful wanderings over the desert, with words and sentiments like these; but I have often observed ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... yourself against anything, in the dark." Mindful of the caution, John stretched out both his arms at full length, before him; but unluckily, a door, which stood half open, passed between his hands, and struck him a woful blow upon the nose. "Dickens!" muttered he, when he recovered his senses a little, "I always heard that I had a plaguey long nose, but I vow I never have thought, before, that it was longer ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... article on the same subject, in the Nov. number of the Horticulturist, for 1850, from the pen of the lamented Downing. It seems to have been written shortly after his return from Europe, and when he must have been most deeply impressed by the woful contrast, in point of physical health between the women of America and Europe. While he speaks in just and therefore glowing terms of the virtues of our countrywomen, he says: "But in the signs of physical ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... points. Now could I curse myself, yet cannot repent. O thou delicious, damned, dear, destructive woman! S'death, how the young fellows will hoot me! I shall be the jest of the town: nay, in two days I expect to be chronicled in ditty, and sung in woful ballad, to the tune of the Superannuated Maiden's Comfort, or the Bachelor's Fall; and upon the third, I shall be hanged in effigy, pasted up for the exemplary ornament of necessary houses and cobblers' ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... who stood at the window, looking out into the tempest and the gathering darkness. "The silent falling of snow is to me one of the most solemn things in nature. The fall of autumnal leaves does not so much affect me. But the driving storm is grand. It startles me; it awakens me. It is wild and woful, like my own soul. I cannot help thinking of the sea; how the waves run and toss their arms about,—and the wind plays on those great harps, made by the shrouds and masts of ships. Winter is here in earnest! Whew! How the ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... foe was surely undermining her life and reason. And Constance noted, with a sinking heart, the dark circles around the eyes that were growing hollow, and heavy, and full of a strange, wild expectancy: the pale cheeks, thinner than ever, and the woful weariness of the ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Then followed a woful scene. The Antique began by informing him that Mien-yaun rich and famous, and Mien-yaun poor and in disgrace, were two very different persons. She went on to show that things were not now as they used to be,—that, though her daughter-in-law had permitted his addresses when he was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... the pang of parting with friends! I wished to linger longer, but the inevitable would come—Fate sundered us. This is the same regretful feeling, only it is more poignant, and the farewell may be forever! FOREVER? And "FOR EVER," echo the reverberations of a woful whisper. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... happened. The small squadrons that got to sea were destroyed by vastly superior force; the merchant shipping was swept away, and the colonies, Canada, Martinique, Guadeloupe, India, fell into England's hands. If it did not take too much space, interesting extracts might be made, showing the woful misery of France, the country that had abandoned the sea, and the growing wealth of England amid all her sacrifices and exertions. A contemporary writer has thus expressed his view of the policy of ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... however, as these are rare, and you must have, indeed, a double dose of bad fortune to be lost in such a woful way, and spend, without meeting any mortal soul, thirty long hours in the woods: for though the tract of forest is very extensive, there are strewed, here and there, several merry villages, large farms, and hunting-boxes, snugly hidden, it is true, beneath the trees,—but which ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... sight of the lovely innocent might inspire gentle and affectionate thoughts. But neither the presence of her child, nor a subsequent visit from me, could rouse my sister. She looked on Clara with a countenance of woful meaning, but she did not speak. When I appeared, she turned away, and in reply to my enquiries, only said, "You know not what you have done!"—I trusted that this sullenness betokened merely the struggle between disappointment and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... down, and with their two hands together behind their heads do make an hideous noise, crying and roaring as loud as they can, much praysing and extolling the Virtues of the deceased, tho there were none in him: and lamenting their own woful condition to live without him. Thus for three or four mornings they do rise early, and lament in this manner, also on evenings. Mean while the ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... her woful face. "P'raps you're not so much to blame, Mint. You don't know," he said, in a somewhat softened ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Panada and Mint Tea, taking no other nourishment, until his Doctor tells him that if he did not fall to with a Roast chicken and a flask of White Wine, he would sink and Die from pure Exhaustion. After this he began to Pick up a bit, and to Relish his Victuals; but it was woful to see the countenance he pulled when the Doctor's Bill was brought him, and he found that he had something like Eighty Pounds sterling to pay for a Sickness of Forty Days. Of course he swore that he had not had a tithe of the Draughts ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... destiny which shaped his ends had mercifully denied him that which is a boon to common men but a curse to public men. Jason Mallard was without a sense of humour. He never laughed at others; he never laughed at himself. Certain of our public leaders have before now fallen into the woful error of doing one or both of these things. Wherefore they were forever after called humourists—and ruined. When they said anything serious their friends took it humorously, and when they said anything humorously ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the graces and the languor of thy body and thy shape, By the fount of wine and honey from thy coral lips that rise, O my hope, to see thine image in my dreams were sweeter far Than were safety to the fearful, languishing in woful wise! ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... began. I shall never forget that woful sight of a beaten, demoralized army that came rushing back,—humanity in the last throes of endurance. Wan, hollow-eyed, ragged, footsore, bloody, the men limped along unarmed, but followed by siege-guns, ambulances, gun-carriages, and wagons in aimless confusion. At twilight two or three bands ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... they enter, where they found The woful man, low sitting on the ground, Musing full sadly in his sullen ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... You see what woful subjects they take, and how profusely they are decorated with knighthood. They are like the Black Brunswickers, these painters, and ought to be called Chevaliers de la Mort. I don't know why the merriest people in the world should please themselves ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... very woful,' murmured Eva to herself, and not listening to the latter observations ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... they Itch to govern all, Are silly, woful awkward Politicians, They make lame mischiefs, tho they meant ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... scorch. Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab, answered Perth, resting for a moment on his hammer; I am past scorching; not easily can'st thou scorch a scar. Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad? ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... that even to us, who are people of an average amount of energy, is sometimes appalling in the severity of the strain it puts upon the tongue. So, while I do not wonder that your Cuban pianist showed woful defects in his use of the pedals, I do wonder that, even with his surprising agility, he had sufficient energy to manipulate the keys to the satisfaction of so competent a witness ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... caution so very ill-timed, but abiding by my invariable rule of never arguing with a man unless I see some way of getting the better of him, I did what he bade me, though I hated dreadfully to leave the spot and its woful mystery, even for so short ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... was also evacuated by the French, and thus at last the main object of so many months' toil in the wilderness with such woful waste of life and vast expenditure of treasure, was accomplished. While Putnam and his comrades were engaged in restoring the fortifications of Crown Point, they heard the news of British victories on every hand: of the fall of Fort Niagara; and of the storming and capture of Quebec, when, ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... man, hurriedly. "I was kneeling by her bedside when the voice spoke loud within me; but immediately I rose, and took my staff, and gat me gone. O, that it were permitted me to forget her woful look, when I thus withdrew my arm, and left her journeying through the dark valley alone! for her soul was faint, and she had leaned upon my prayers. Now in that night of horror I was assailed by the thought that I had been an erring Christian, and a cruel parent; ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... his meal-taking finished, a moan was uplifted, 15 Morning-cry mighty. The man-ruler famous, The long-worthy atheling, sat very woful, Suffered great sorrow, sighed for his liegemen, [6] When they had seen the track of the hateful pursuer, The spirit accursed: too crushing ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... effect of his white coat, and he enjoyed his christening with a gleeful face and a sparkle in his blue eyes. O, for the pencil of a Beard or a Bellew, to portray those saucy pug-noses, those dirty and begrimed faces! Faces with bars of blacking, like the shadows of small gridirons—faces with woful bruised peepers—faces with fun-flashing eyes—faces of striplings, yet so old and haggard—faces full ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... thoroughly evangelical and good; but I listened to it with mingled feelings. It was painful to think that such a ministry could co-exist with slavery. The creed it is evident may be evangelical, while there is a woful neglect of ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... a woful spectacle of extremest wretchedness, to which death would have been an undeserved relief. If we compare the clamorous and loud exclaims of Margaret after the slaughter of her son, to the ravings of Constance, we shall perceive where Shakspeare's genius did not preside, and where it did. ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... in this woful condition that mankind, being slavish, interested, insidious, deceitful, and bloody, bear marks, if not of the least curable, surely of the most lamentable sort of corruption. [Footnote: Chardin's Travels.] Among them, war ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... was ruined in the Roman empire in Italy, by the free importation of grain from the Lybian and Egyptian provinces of the empire. As a contrast to that woful progress, the main cause of the destruction of the empire of the Caesars, we request the attention of our readers to the progress of British exports in official value, which indicates their amount from 1790 to 1840, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... a sorrowful experience, for a fallen horse is a horse in ruins and makes a most woful appeal upon one's sympathies. I went to bed tired out, stiff and sore from pulling on the rope, my hands blistered, my ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... human nature than the Polynesian's dance round his feather idol, or Egyptian's worship of the food he fattened on. From Salvator and Domenichino it is possible to turn in a proud indignation, knowing that theirs are no fair examples of the human mind; but it is with humbled and woful anger that we must trace the degradation of the intellect of Rubens in his pictures of the life ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... young?—Ah, woful when! Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then! This breathing house not built with hands, This body that does me grievous wrong, O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands, How lightly then it flashed along:— Like those ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... the familiar objects that I had so often buoyantly beheld,—deserted encampments, cross-roads, rills, farm-houses, fields, and at last came to Daker's. I called out to them, and explained my woful circumstances with ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... go work, or serve the King? You blind and lame! 'Tis no such thing. That's but a counterfeit sore leg! For shame! two sturdy rascals beg! If I come down, I'll spoil your trick, And cure you both with a good stick." Our wand'ring saints, in woful state, Treated at this ungodly rate, Having thro' all the village past, To a small cottage came at last Where dwelt a good old honest ye'man, Call'd thereabout good man Philemon; Who kindly did the saints invite In his poor ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... gates Of Anguish: then a cry came up from earth, Cry like my daughter's when her mother died, That stayed the on-rushing whirlwind; yet mine eyes Perforce looked in, and, many a thousand years, Branded upon them lay that woful sight Now washed from them for ever." Patrick spake: "This day a twofold choice I give thee, son; For fifteen years the rule o'er Erin's land, Rule absolute, Ard-Righ o'er lesser kings; Or instant else to die, and hear once more That hymn celestial, ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... cry for strength, for light, went up from my heart, as continuously as the waters of a fountain, to the ear of my Creator. I have thought sometimes that, in this persistent wrestle of mind with matter, enduring so many weeks and months, so many weary, woful days and sleepless nights, the physical demon was exorcised at last, that had ruled my life so long, or was ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... not this preach out to, and convince us all of a necessity of having more acquaintance with truth, with Jesus Christ, who is the truth, that we may be delivered from this woful and wretched condition; for truth only can ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... 'Here, Sir, but in woful plight; borne in an hour syne by four carles who said you had been set upon by the Master of Albany, and sair harried, and they say the Tutor doth nought but wail for his bairns. How won ye out of his hands, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... canoe was nearly swamped. He and his three canoe-men leaped into the water, and, in spite of the surf, which nearly drowned them, dragged their vessel ashore, with all its load. He then went to the rescue of Hennepin, who, with his awkward companion, was in woful need of succor. Father Gabriel, with his sixty-four years, was no match for the surf and the violent undertow. Hennepin, finding himself safe, waded to his relief, and carried him ashore on his sturdy shoulders; while ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... place. Sir George had asked her to forgive him for the hard words he had spoken, and she had again led him to believe that she would be dutiful and obedient. It is hard to determine, as a question of right and wrong, whether Dorothy is to be condemned or justified in the woful deception she practised upon her father. To use a plain, ugly word, she lied to him without hesitation or pain of conscience. Still, we must remember that, forty years ago, girls were frequently forced, regardless of cries and piteous agony, into marriages to which ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... language of cookery, there has been a woful departure from the simplicity of our ancestors,—such a farrago of unappropriate and unmeaning terms, many corrupted from the French, others disguised from the Italian, some misapplied from the German, while many are a disgrace ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... story. The preceding winter had been one of much suffering, though by no means the counterpart of the woful experience of St. Croix. But when the spring had passed, the summer far advanced, and still no tidings of De Monts had come, Pontgrave grew deeply anxious. To maintain themselves without supplies and succor was impossible. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... myself upon being one of the best conditioned animals that ever was shown, since the time of him who was in vain I defied by the knight of the woful figure; for I get up at the first touch of the pole, rouse myself, shake my mane, lick my chops, turn round, lie down, and go to sleep again." It was bad policy in me to let the words "go to sleep" sound upon the reader's ear, for I have not yet quite done; I have one more ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... flight by her aunt's woful look as she spoke these words with despairing fierceness, while she grasped the curtains more tightly and bore heavily upon ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Master-piece of Flatt'ry rise, Th' anointed Son of Dulness and of Lies: Whose softest Whisper fills a Patron's Ear, Who smiles unpleas'd, and mourns without a tear.[43] Persuasive, tho' a woful Blockhead he: Truth dies before his shadowy Sophistry. For well he knows[44] the Vices of the Town, The Schemes of State, and Int'rest of the Gown; Immoral Afternoons, indecent Nights, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... to the pint must necessarily produce very different results at different times. As an actual fact, where this mode of making bread prevails, as we lament to say it does to a great extent in this country, one finds five cases of failure to one of success. It is a woful thing that the daughters of New England have abandoned the old respectable mode of yeast brewing and bread raising for this specious substitute, so easily made, and so seldom well made. The green, clammy, acrid substance called biscuit, which many of our worthy republicans ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... marched into the peninsula formed by the deep loop of the Meuse—'le Camp de Misere' as they called it—and were sent thence in successive batches, numbered by thousands, to Germany. Such was the astonishing end of the Army of Chalons, which had been impelled to its woful doom by the Comte de Palikao and ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... see little Fanny. He was trying to drive her from his mind by occupation, or other mental excitement. He laboured, though not to much profit, incessantly in his rooms; and, in his capacity of critic for the Pall Mall Gazette, made woful and savage onslaught on a poem and a romance which came before him for judgment. These authors slain, he went to dine alone at the lonely club of the Polyanthus, where the vast solitudes frightened him, and made him only the more ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Fairwoodfell and made his abode there; he hung grey wadmal before the hole in the mountain, and from the way below it was like to behold as if one saw through. Now he was wont to ride for things needful through the country-side, and men deemed a woful guest had come ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... simpletons, not content with their own noise, must call in professional assistance: an artist in grief, with a fine repertoire of cut-and-dried sorrows at his command, assumes the direction of this inane choir, and supplies a theme for their woful acclamations. So far, all men are fools alike: but at this point national peculiarities make their appearance. The Greeks burn their dead, the Persians bury them; the Indian glazes the body, the Scythian eats it, the Egyptian embalms ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... character of this marvelous city of Tollan somewhat closely, for it is a place that we hear of in the oldest myths and legends of many and different races. Not only the Aztecs, but the Mayas of Yucatan and the Kiches and Cakchiquels of Guatemala bewailed, in woful songs, the loss to them of that beautiful land, and counted its destruction as a common starting point in their annals.[1] Well might they regret it, for not again would they find its like. In that land the crop of maize never failed, and the ears grew as long as a man's ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... threadbare, goldless genealogy. Nature—it seems—when she meant us for earth Spent so much of her treasure in the birth As ever after niggards her, and she, Thus stor'd within, beggars us outwardly. Woful profusion! at how dear a rate Are we made up! all hope of thrift and state Lost for a verse. When I by thoughts look back Into the womb of time, and see the rack Stand useless there, until we are ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... while had kept since the Creator his exile doomed. On kin of Cain was the killing avenged by sovran God for slaughtered Abel. Ill fared his feud, {1f} and far was he driven, for the slaughter's sake, from sight of men. Of Cain awoke all that woful breed, Etins {1g} and elves and evil-spirits, as well as the giants that warred with God weary while: but their wage was ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... more? the crow hath told him all; This woful god hath turned him to the wall To hide his tears: he thought 'twould burst his heart; He bent his bow, and set therein a dart, And in his ire he hath his wife yslain; He hath; he felt such anger and such pain; For sorrow of which he brake his minstrelsy, Both harp and lute, gittern ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... hall door announced the master's name as Col. J. Corydon Malcome, a sounding appellation enough; and he was often seen walking up and down the streets in his rich, fur-lined overcoat and laced velvet cap, placed with a courtly air over his cloud of ebon curls. He was known to be a widower, and the woful extravagancies into which Mary Madeline Mumbles cajoled her doting mother, were enough to make one shudder in relating. Wimbledon was ransacked for the gayest taffetas, the jauntiest bonnets, and broadest Dutch ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... of my exultation at the fact that he was knighted and recorded arms. Not quite so genteel, but still in public life, Hugh was Under-Clerk to the Privy Council, and liked being so extremely. I gather this from his conduct in September 1681, when, with all the lords and their servants, he took the woful and soul- destroying Test, swearing it 'word by word upon his knees.' And, behold! it was in vain, for Hugh was turned out of his small post in 1684. {4b} Sir Archibald and Hugh were both plainly inclined to be trimmers; but ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... likewise most lamentable Impressions which the Devil makes upon the Souls of Men by way of punishment upon them for their Sins. 'Tis thus when an Offended God puts the Souls of Men over into the Hands of that Officer who has the power of Death, that is, the Devil. It is the woful Misery of Unbelievers in 2 Cor. 4.4. The god of this World has blinded their minds. And thus it may be said of those woful Wretches whom the Devil is a God unto, the Devil so muffles them that they ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... aggrandizement, encountered serious reverses. Leopold, the father of William, by these events was plunged into the deepest dejection. No effort of his friends could lift the weight of his gloom. In a retired apartment of one of his castles he sat silent and woful, apparently incapacitated for any exertion whatever, either bodily or mental. The affairs of his realm were neglected, and his bailiffs and feudal chiefs, left with irresponsible power, were guilty of such acts of extortion and tyranny, that, in the province ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... seeming all - Far other scene her thoughts recall - A sun-scorched desert, waste and bare, Nor waves nor breezes murmured there; There saw she, where some careless hand O'er a dead corpse had heaped the sand, To hide it till the jackals come, To tear it from the scanty tomb. See what a woful look was given, As she raised ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... view, and mental perspective, but he frequently lacks in the simplest rudiments of the immediate subject-matter which he is supposed to teach. The examination papers written by applicants for certificates to begin rural school teaching often betray a woful ignorance of the most fundamental knowledge. Inability to spell, punctuate, or effectively use the English language is common. The most elementary scientific truths are frequently unknown. A connected view of our nation's history and knowledge of current events are not always possessed. The ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... the banshee keen, All woful is her cry. She comes along the gray boreen— Pray God she ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... victory!" Triumphant words, through all the land's length sped. Triumphant words, but, being interpreted, Words of ill sound, woful as words can be. Another carnage by the drear Red Sea— Another efflux of a sea more red! Another bruising of the hapless head Of a wrong'd people yearning to be free. Another blot on her great name, who stands ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... They had lived for several years on the outskirts of Meerut, but it was young Wharton who discovered the impending peril, and it was due to him that the three families escaped the fate of hundreds of others on that woful night. The young wife and Mary Marlowe became intimate friends at once, while, as has been said, there was a hearty, genuine comradeship immediately ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... woful noise Like a crack'd saints bell jarring in the steeple, Tom Sternhold's wretched ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... department, that the devouring flames rarely ever make headway. They are quickly mastered. But it was not always so. There was a period about fifty years ago when great and destructive fires succeeded one another like a deluge and wiped out large portions of the growing city. There was then a woful lack of water, which is now most abundant, and the fire engines were very primitive in character and inadequate to the needs of the place. To-day every precaution is taken to guard against fire, and the great business blocks ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... me / my mail-coat see'st thou red, Shall bring woful reprisal / on many a warrior's head. Now is my wrath aroused / in full 'gainst Hawart's thane. As yet in sooth hath Iring / wrought on me but ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... russet-robed November, What ails thee so to smile? Chill August, pale September, Endured a woful while, And fell as falls an ember From forth a flameless pile: But golden-girt November Bids all she looks ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... rhythm, and which yet produce no great impression; while on the other hand they are much above that sentimental or that sententious twaddle which sometimes finds many admirers. It is sad to see so much of this sort of verse published; for it is the occasion and the sign of woful disappointment to persons of unusual intelligence and true poetic feeling, who, however, have not in any great measure ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... "In any thinking mind." Yet it must be confessed that there does exist a woful ignorance or negligence concerning De Quincey in quarters from which better things might be expected. Misappreciation it cannot be called, where no trouble has been taken to estimate claims that needed only to be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... respects, the pedler's anticipations were correct. Katherine had "a bad time by herself" that night; for evil has this woful prerogative,—it can wound the good and the innocent, it can make wretched without provocation and without desert. But, whatever her suffering, it was altogether her own. She made no complaint, and she offered no explanation ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... him and scaled him and searched in his pockets, and pulled him about; nor that the day will never come when, growing into men and women, they will come to him for sympathy and guidance in their little trials and perplexities. Oh, woful to think that there are parents, held in general estimation too, to whom their children would no more think of going for kindly sympathy, than they would think of going to Nova Zembla ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... woful is thy tale! Our hearts are heavy and our eyes are dimmed. What ship is this ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... whether thou to our moist vows denied, Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, Where the great vision of the guarded mount Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold; Look homeward angel now, and melt with ruth! And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth! Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more! For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky; So Lycidas ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... to carry me away from the beautiful garden that I had grown to love almost like my old home. But I heard enough to know that they were as mischievous as the day is long, and that they kept their poor old great-aunt Patricia in a woful state of nervous excitement from morning till night. I gathered, besides, that their father was a doctor, away from home much of the time. That was why their great-aunt ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... the 'cross lieutenant' attended to this, then there reigned the most woful anxiety throughout the company, for he always found something. He would go behind the cadets and flip at their coats with his finger to make the dust fly, and if none came, then he would lift their coat-pockets and snap at them, and so, beat our ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... once burned in its bosom so brightly, already sunk into death-flicker and extinction, then in the sordid and icy dark that would remain there could be no war of like nature with this that to-day gives the land its woful baptism of blood and tears. Oh, no! there would have been peace—and putrefaction: peace, but without its sweetness, and death, but without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... confused, hopeless misery and ruin, lie, fettered and prostrate, even priest as well as potentate, undistinguishable victims of crude, unblenching violence, with its climax of nefarious sacrilege. We, common mortals, therefore, can hope for no deliverance from, or even succour in, the woful plight thus dismally contrived for us all by the fair-skinned race who have now become our masters." Such was naturally the train of thought that ran through those forlorn bosoms. The formidable ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... "What a woful widow you will be," said Groeneveld to his wife, as she sank choking with tears upon the ground. The words suddenly aroused in her the sense of respect for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and kept smiting him, right and left, and somewhat checked the rush of the son of Posidon, for all his monstrous strength. Then he stood reeling like a drunken man under the blows, and spat out the red blood, while all the heroes together raised a cheer, as they marked the woful bruises about his mouth and jaws, and how, as his face swelled up, his eyes were half closed. Next, the prince teased him, feinting on every side but seeing now that the giant was all abroad, he planted his fist just above the middle of the nose, beneath the eyebrows, and ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... in the kitchen, adding—"But take care, James, that you do not hit yourself against anything in the dark." Mindful of the caution, James stretched out both arms at length before him, but unluckily, a door that stood half open, passed between his hands and struck him a woful blow upon the nose. "Golly gracious!" muttered he, when he recovered his senses a little, "I always heard that I had a very long nose, but I never thought it ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... his woful plight, His limbs, that tottered with his weight, And, friendly, to the stable led, And saw him littered, dressed, and fed. In slothful ease all night he lay; The servants rose at break of day; The market calls. Along the road His back must ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... that you have such an interesting class, and yet more glad that you see how much Christian culture they need. I am astonished every day by confessions made to me by young people as to their woful state before God, and do hope that all this is to prepare me to write something for them. I began a series of articles in the Association Monthly, called "Twilight Talks," which may perhaps prove to be in a degree what you want, but ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the streets since the night we had located the mine—a telegram had called him to California on a matter of life and death, it was said. At any rate he had done no work and the watchful eyes of the community were taking note of the fact. At midnight of this woful tenth day, the ledge would be "relocatable," and by eleven o'clock the hill was black with men prepared to do the relocating. That was the crowd I had seen when I fancied a new "strike" had been made—idiot ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... those two thousand doctors will have patients to treat, and that would be a woful thing, or that ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... frame of mine was wrenched With a woful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale; And then it left me ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... and favorites by halves; and though the unhappy prisoner once wrote to him in so moving a strain as even to draw tears from his eyes, he hardened himself against all movements of pity, and refused his pardon. The conclusion of Cromwell's letter ran in these words: "I, a most woful prisoner, am ready to submit to death when it shall please God and your majesty; and yet the frail flesh incites me to call to your grace for mercy and pardon of mine offences. Written at the Tower, with the heavy heart and trembling ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... moment before had stood the proud pinnacle. An enormous mass of rocks fell into the lake below, and the vapors rose in a rival cloud. High in the firmament they curled and twisted, their wreathing forms together telling a woful tale ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... Unworthy of thy love. Thou hast no blame, Save that thou art my husband, in the world! Of trustful sleep, to death's arms by my hand? And where then shall I hide me? O perfidy! Can I e'er hope for peace? O woful life— Life of remorse, of madness, and of tears! How shall Aegisthus, even Aegisthus, dare To rest beside the parricidal wife Upon her murder-stained marriage-bed, Nor tremble for himself? Away, away,— Hence, horrible instrument of ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... white, and looked so woful, that her tormentor paused, in apprehension that the poor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... like too many more, though a thriving concern to its owners, becomes "a prime nursery of vice and sorrow." "Virtue perished utterly within its walls, and was dreamed of no more; or, if remembered at all, only in a deep and woful sense of self-debasement—a struggling to forget, where it was hopeless to obtain." But to us, almost the most interesting passage in his book, and certainly the one which bears most directly on the general purpose of this article, is one in which he speaks of ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... to be moved partly by a sense of the coldness of the reception. She realises that she has indeed come back to a changed world, where there will be little sympathy except such as Ruth can give. It is with almost passion that she abjures her name 'Pleasant,' as a satire on her woful lot, and bids them call her 'Bitter,' as truer to fact now. The burst of sorrow is natural, as she finds herself again where she had been a wife and mother, and 'remembers happier things.' Her faith wavers, and her words almost reproach God. The exaggerations in which memory is apt to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... preached and dispensed the sacraments. Let any show where any person dispensed the sacraments that was not a preacher. Again, Paul and Barnabas equally travelled together, but Paul was chief speaker: what then? therefore some labored in the word, others in the sacraments only. This is woful logic. 4. To whomsoever the power of dispensing the sacraments was given by Christ, to them also the power of preaching was given; dispensing the word and sacraments are joined in the same commission, Matt, xxviii. 18-20: what ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... year by year, with a constancy that might almost be expressed with mathematical exactness by means of a crescendo: <. And we are by no means at the biggest end of the crescendo yet. For there are scores of cities where Wagner would be even more popular than he is, were it not for the woful rarity of competent ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... this Who wears a loop of gold upon his breast, Stuck heartwise; and whose glassy flatteries Take all the townsfolk ere they go to rest Who come to buy and gossip? Doth his eye Remember a face lovely in a wood? O people! hasten, hasten, do not buy His woful wares; the bird of grief doth brood There where his heart should be; and far away Dew lies on grave-flowers ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... have thee, and I have thee not! Like one Lifted by spirits to a shining dale In Paradise, who seeks to leap and run And clasp the beauty, but his foot doth fail, For he is blind: ah! then more woful none! Bhanavar, unveil! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... there is much thereof) occurring to thy intentionall or accidentall view of the following pages in this book should prove offensive to thee, I thought good to give thee an account of what hath occasioned the same, viz. In the woful days of the late usurper, the registring of births, not baptisms, was injoyned and required, to give a liberty to all the adversaries of Pedobaptisme, &c., and, besides some circumstances, too unhandsome for the ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... darkness of the night Sir Owen awoke by reason of a woful outcry and lamenting; and then he knew that Earl Cadoc, the Knight of the Fountain, was dead from the wound ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... aloud, which so frightened the tinker that he flung down the pudding and ran away. The pudding being broke to pieces by the fall, Tom crept out covered over with the batter, and with difficulty walked home. His mother, who was very sorry to see her darling in such a woful state, put him into a tea-cup, and soon washed off the batter; after which she kissed him, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various |
